The daemon moved suddenly and quickly, but Aerona put her blade up. Vindication glowed piercingly white and blue. The cloaked man pushed down against her—his strength seemed greater than any she had felt before, but her blade did not melt.
“What sorcery is this?!” the cloaked man screamed. “You are not chosen!”
She smiled wanly and said, “Ne’er cross the Harpy.”
In a flush of strength, she sent the cloaked man flying across the chamber, and felt a chilling but warm sensation through her body. Damian’s eyes opened wide in disbelief. Aerona looked down to where she stored her father’s greatest treasure, and it shone with a silver light: immense and immeasurable. “You are no keeper nor proselyte!” the cloaked man exclaimed.
“You are just a healer, Sebastien.”
Enraged, the Dalian leapt and swung his blade savaged from the side, overtop, and below. She saw every clumsy, futile blow, and dodged it effortlessly.
The Dalian seemed distraught. The silver glow beneath her leather was an extension of her sword. She clasped Vindication with both hands and struck the healer, but shadows swirled and coalesced, suffusing the room. Sebastien was gone, though there was a faint pattering of feet behind her.
For all that the Dalian had done, for all that he would do, Aerona forgot all of it, and rushed to Damian’s side. “What did he do to you?”
Wary and confused, he struggled to speak. “Just my pride. To lower me in front of you. The man has ne’er taken a woman.”
“How much did you keep hidden?”
“All I did, I did for…” He seemed lost in thought, unable to find the word or courage to say it.
“You will answer for what you have done Damian. I must go after him. This has to end.”
“Bring me his head. Bring me his accursed head!”
Some miles past the Qinnan river, Aerona called for a stop.
Sebastien may have inexhaustible energy but I do not.
The last rays of daylight were breaking through a thick mess of clouds. “Set camp,” she said. “We must have strength when we face him.”
“Would that be wise, Aerona?” Darelle asked, doubling over, near breathless. “The sun in the sky is our ally, no? You would face the daemon in darkness? That is his domain, or I am a fool.”
We have a light now that will never extinguish. “It is still some hours on foot. We would not make it; nor can we wait overlong. Some fell sorcery out of legend is coming, and when it does, day is night, now and always. Strength is what we need, and we will have it before we face our foe.”
“You heard her,” Darelle shouted out. “Set camp. We must all eat, yes, and now. Go!”
They unloaded sacks off their backs, sorted out the bread, cheese, and salted pork. Aerona dug the fire pit out, and with flint and tinder that the men provided, it soon roared.
Darelle broke off a heel of bread and handed Aerona some cheese. She thought the man would try to talk her out of this.
No man would ever succeed in that. I must do this.
“The captains, they will not come to port, not on my orders or yours,” Darelle said while biting into his bread and cheese. “It is Damian that they await, and only him that they will obey. I told you as much, did I not? I do think you should forget the chase of this monster. I do not need you to tell me what he did, but still, return to Lanan and mount our overlord’s head on a spike and appeal to Dalia. Surely, they will give us back the Corsair whence his errand is done. This is not what you wanted?”
Another time, another place, not now. “The time for that has long passed,” Aerona said, washing down the bread with water. “He is defeated, yet we will need him before long. Damian is to remain alive, Darelle. Do not cross me.”
“We are yours,” he said with a long face, disappointed. “I am a man of honour, as are the men you see here and all o’er the islands. We will keep you and him alive, as improbable as that task may seem.”
“You do not have to follow me into Lakarn.”
“We have come this far with you. If going into the cursed town in the dead of night is the course, then we will follow you.”
“It is no longer men and women that we fight. Damian invited monsters into our home. I do not know if steel alone will suffice.”
“They are flesh and blood. Death will find them, as it finds all men, do not worry. Yet must we face them in Lakarn?”
“This may be our only chance, wherever we find them. Even if it is in Lakarn.”
“Then let us eat and be off. Sooner this is done, the better.”
The men ate together around the fire. Aerona spent more time looking at their faces than giving heed to whatever bawdy jests Darelle spoke. Her father always said to know the men, and she needed to know what these men would do. They bore strong faces and possessed a stalwart resolve, but some fear underlied it all.
They may not have seen the overlord in weakness, but they all knew it came to pass. It is a sight that no man or woman of the islands e’er thought to see. It has unnerved them. Soon, they will face what cast my consort down. What will become of them, then?
The men stomped the fire out and the chase continued. Aerona lead them across flat plains, and weaving in and out of thin forests. The men who were sent out to scout had returned, with naught more than shadows and illusions to report. Their number now reached twenty.
She slowed them at the end of a forest of elms and oaks. The land dropped away into a narrow valley. The smell of sea and salt was in the air, and in the darkness lay the ruined town of the dead, Lakarn.
Some of the men paced and murmured, but it dissipated when Aerona withdrew Vindication from its sheathe. Long and viciously thin, it glowed white and blue: a shining beacon that cut through the night. Walking down into the valley, they followed her.
She reached the valley floor, and the air suddenly felt thick and hot. The men carried makeshift torches, the orange glower revealing strange symbols in the ground, writ in crimson, almost like blood. As she walked forward, the signs began to waver and fade out. That odd sensation of cold and warm chills returned to her, and as she extended her sword high in the air, an outpouring of pure light seemed to smite the markings and heal the land. The symbols gone, the green grass and cobbled roads returned; she could not smell or see the dead anywhere.
Aerona found herself thinking back to the twelve men, and the stranger who came to her on the grounds of Ashen Falls. I am not one for myths and legends, but is this truly the Sword of Creation?
There was a wonder and majesty to it all, and even the hardest of the men who walked with her could not contain their joy. Lakarn was a town feared as haunted and accursed. Now it was like of old: healthy and hale, green and grey. It only lacked the sound of labour and trade and laughter.
The joy was short lived.
Two men stood where the road widened between the worn tavern on the right, and a row of stalls upon the left. The first Aerona recognized, standing behind, not quite cowering, but not proudly either. Hood still down, Sebastien could not look at her straight. The other man had a boyish look to him. His long blond hair billowed in the wind, and he wore black from shoulder to foot, his cloak puddling at his feet. His eyes were sharp and piercing. He bore a smile that hid little, and revealed much.
Lord Aleksander.
“The elder had wondered where it was,” Lord Aleksander declared. “Your dear old father had it all along, entrusting it to his daughter, years after he passed. It is well that he died before the coming of Lord Kaldred. You may be standing on this side, looking to destroy your friends there. I do wish to slay you. It is good that it did not come to pass.”
“I want that man,” Aerona declared proudly and sternly. “He has much to answer for.”
“Poor Sebastien here? He is terrified, even you can see that,” Aerona did not think it could be done, but the youth bore an even wider smile, as if he knew everything. “He will answer to the dark god, perhaps me, if the Great Fate is kind.”
“We w
ill take him from you, if you will not give him freely.” Aerona heard the scrape of steel against leather, and her band of warriors stood at the ready. “You are two, and we are twenty and two. We do not fear you.”
“Over proud—always the sin of man. Do they really think your sole relic will keep them safe? They know, do they not? God Stone, Animus Stone, Spherules of Divinity, it is all the same. Yet do they know what laid ruin to Isilia illuminates near your breast? Do they trust you with it?”
“What we not be trustin’ is you,” Darelle said impatiently. “Damian can be faulted for much, but it is you that turned on him.”
Darelle…
“Ah Darelle Tiniev, always the hero,” Lord Aleksander mocked. “A jumpstart, speaking when you should not. It is your legacy, I am afraid. I will gut you first, I think.” Seeming not to care about the healer any longer, the young lord stepped forward, unafraid.
“Stop or I will unleash it!” Aerona declared.
“If you had the inclination, Sebastien here would not have survived the chaos in Lanan. Your threats are vain.” Lord Aleksander kept walking forward, fingering the blackened hilt of a long sword.
“I warned you—”
The realm seemed to become suffused in a blue and white light, and Vindication the beating heart of it. Aerona, with a vicious overhead slash, brought it down upon the black cloaked youth, but the sword seemed to stick, unable to press further. The light seemed to diffuse, and a wall of pure Darkness formed in front of her, thick and threaded, swallowing all the light that touched it. Vindication was lodged in the web of black shadows, and a pulsing, blinding Darkness at its heart.
“You are not alone as a proselyte.” Aerona said, before being thrown back, the light inside her still strong, but no longer greater as it once was.
“To think yourself so much,” Lord Aleksander mused. “You are utterly unworthy of the legacy. The elder thought you could wield it, but until the dark god’s vestige is ready, I am the proselyte, and you are no more than a shade of the Bringer of Dawn: a lesser vestige for one long past. What was it the old man in green said? You were not ready. The fool was wrong. You are not that warrior. You never will be. All you are is a daughter of lesser sires. You cannot stand against Entropy!”
A dark fog surrounded Aerona. It felt thick and stifling, and she could feel it creeping over her body, tempting her with a fell power. Screams rang out behind her, and of agony, madness, and sedition.
Get up, a soothing, familiar voice declared in her head. You are my daughter. Get up. You are not unworthy. Their trust is not misplaced in you. Do what I cannot any longer. Get up.
“Father?”
Lord Aleksander is a sickness. You are the cure. Fight against the corruption, the disease, the decay. All the stones are meant to bring the Dawn. Use my gift to you. Get up. Get up.
“He is too strong. The Darkness is too great.”
The light of hope is never extinguished. Give yourself to the stone. Get up.
“I c-cannot.”
Get up.
Amidst despair, Aerona rose from the ground on one knee, then another, and before she knew it, on two feet. The Darkness swirled all around her, encompassing a ferocious wind that would not let up. Before her Lord Aleksander stood taller than he seemed, holding the stone out, now a bubble of Darkness. Not caring any longer, Aerona took the stone out of her leathers, and crushed it against the steel.
The cloaked youth looked down in terror. Vindication grew brighter and stronger than e’er before, near blinding, and she cleaved his terrible shield in half. The Darkness seemed to shriek and wail, rushing back into the stone, amidst screams.
Whence the screams faded and Darkness paled, the realm was bright and clear; there was not a sign of corruption, and fear was so far away. The trial done, Vindication lost all its brightness, cascading down her sword, reforming her father’s treasure in her right hand, bright and illuminating. Sebastien was nowhere to be seen, but Lord Aleksander squirmed, coddling a blackened stone, dull and faint.
“S-stay away f-from me!” he moaned.
Aerona paused to look behind her, not heeding the wailings of a broken, beaten man. Darelle and the men who served him so loyally lay dead behind her, pale, blood puddling. “You slew them,” she said, tears welling.
“All men die.”
“I near slew the last man who said that to me.”
“It will be the same as before.” It was a different voice, though as cold and chilling as the young lord’s. Two tall men in cloaks appeared beside her foe, hoods up: one cradling Lord Aleksander, the other stern and commanding. “It will drive you mad, Harpy.”
“I will send you to the grave before it does in for me.” she bristled.
“Do you really wish to try your mettle against two stones?” The cloaked figure asked, the one who cradled the young lord.
“You are spent, as is the stone. Do not be so foolish,” the stern man said.
“Where is Sebastien?” Aerona demanded.
“If you find him,” the stern man said, “slay him.”
“That is not an answer!”
“Only this we will tell you,” the other man said, raising his eyes from Lord Aleksander. “You have cleaved the Shadow of Dusk, but the True Son opens the path to the Abyss. Will you and your father stop the storm that is coming?”
“She cannot,” the stern man said brusquely. “Only the Bringer of Dawn can do that. He has faded.”
Before she could say aught, Darkness swirled at the feet of the three men, overtaking their bodies, and they were gone as quickly as they had appeared.
Heed not the words of liars.
“Father? Father how can I hear your voice?”
No answer came.
Aerona had so many questions, so much that she did not understand.
She intended to talk to the only man who could answer her questions.
Her consort.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Dream
Ashleigh saw an endless sea of white.
She feared what was in the clouds above, and that it would only be a matter of time until the ground rushed up against her. That never happened. She was not falling either. There was no dirt or grass, sand or stone; the shapeless white was as hard as Isilia’s sere wasteland. Retribution was still in its sheathe; the weight of the blade served as a reminder that she was not alone. The parched linens were the same garments that clung to her sweat-drenched skin over the course of her journey across the sands. It was all the same except for the realm around her.
“Where am I?!”
She heard only the reverberating echo of her own voice, as if spoken in a hollow inside a great mountain. Unwilling to linger, she stood and walked forward.
I am not lost. When I search, I will find my road.
It did not take long before the white was broken by a solid stone door. The stone slab neared seven feet in height, unadorned, dull grey in colour. It led to more whiteness and more doors: to her left, right, and straight ahead.
Straight ahead.
That lead to more doors of kin to all that came before. She kept taking the doors ahead, and every time more doors appeared until they formed a circle around her.
“What is this mockery?!”
She heard only the echo of her own voice. The sound died, and she looked at each door.
Identical. Every last one. “What is it that you fear?!” Ashleigh cried out.
“I do not fear,” a voice said. “Is it not beautiful? Here you will watch power unbridled.”
The white upon the ground shifted to Lanan; the city appeared beneath her feet, as if she saw it from the eyes of an eagle. Northwards there were great dromonds and war galleys that flew black and white banners, canons firing, men and women screaming amongst raging infernos and broken debris. A terrifying mottled bird rose above the Overlord’s Seat, small at first, but rising ever higher with bloodied talons, its beak black as pitch. Then the fires spread from the ships to the city, creepi
ng towards the castle; the bird squawked triumphantly, all but drowning out cries of anguish further below.
“He rose from the ashes to give us salvation,” the voice continued. “Join with him, child. Just like Rafael did. Join with him.
“No!” she screamed.
“This is the way. The power of Darkness does not rent or destroy; it heals and mends, and brings us closer to Sariel. Sariel the Great, Sariel the Deliverer, Sariel our salvation! Rush to his embrace. Seek not the false prophets who would see the realm tear itself into depravity and ruin.”
She ran from the voice. The door to the right had a tinge of orange upon its centre. The voice trailed behind as she opened the door.
The whiteness returned and the voice faded, but not gone. At the edge of sight there stood a tall stone throne, its back nearly fifteen feet in height. High Servitor Jophiel sat upon it, his face warm and welcoming as she remembered; his eyes were probing, as if he was looking for something hidden. The high servitor’s palms faced outright, holding two spheres of light: upon the right, it scintillated like the pale moon, with thick dark veins; on the left, it glowed a dull, dense orange, and it seemed like sand was shifting throughout, as if some wind tossed it about.
“Where did you take me?! What was that voice?! Why is Lanan beneath us burning?! What did you do to me?!”
The high servitor stared at her intently. “You are in the Unseen Realm. It is here that we will seek the meaning of dreams. It is your fervent wish, is it not? Do not fear that daemon’s voice; he may writhe and shout, but he cannot reach you here, not as long as I ward you.”
“The Unseen Realm,” Ashleigh remarked, chewing it, and considered the meaning. “He called it that before.”
“Who?” High Servitor’s Jophiel’s eyes lit up with worry and alarm.
Ashleigh had offered the name countless times, but not with as much pain as it did now, as if it was never meant to be uttered in this place. “Lord Kaldred.”
“An evil name, even here,” he declared, placing the two objects upon tall pedestals that rose to his chest. “Men and women come here at night, their thoughts laid to bear. It is their thoughts, and no one else’s. For that daemon to speak to you thence, his reach is further than my worst fears. We are in peril, child of the waste.”
Darkness Rising (Ancient Vestiges Book 1) Page 46