“Lord Kaldred was his guide. As he guided me. Now we follow Lord Eldred. All will follow him unto the Rebirth.”
Kaldred was not always as that. Kaldred was supposed to keep him safe. Not—
His thoughts drifted away, unable to speak.
“You are not channeling,” Ashleigh declared, resting a free hand on his shoulder. It was the furthest comfort he desired.
“At least this girl is not a fool,” Lord Gareth declared. “Did the hermit tell you that we would? Peas in a pod—Jophiel and this wretch. Spent all his life running. Running from truth that he can no longer grasp.”
“No more running,” Lord Luc boomed, and his great blackened sword appeared in hand. “They cannot run without their legs.”
Lord Aleksander raised his hand. “Not as yet, Lord Luc.”
“What does it matter, Lord Aleksander? They cannot stop what has begun. Their hopes are a fool’s dream.”
“What did you say, monster?” Daniel blurted out, shoving his way to the fore.
Lord Aleksander laughed before he spoke, while Lords Luc and Gareth smirked. “Did you truly believe it was so simple? The hermit warded you, the master of the Deathsworn imparts you with a secret that has been hidden for millennia? A desperate gambit from children who should accept their deaths. You were sent here to die.”
“To turn the eye of Sariel from the Bringer of Dawn,” Lord Gareth added.
“The dark god is not a fool,” Lord Luc said curtly.
Betrayal. Treachery. “The First Born they—” Johnathan could not force the words out.
“Did you forget what I told you in the bowels of Castle Marcanas?” Lord Aleksander asked. “I see that you have. King Tristifer heeds the will of the First Son, and Emperor Archelaus in turn serves Sariel. Would these First Born, these children, be any different? Amos is not the only one who turned to the dark god. They all did. Emperor Archelaus defeated our dark god once, but not before the seeds of discord were planted within each of them. It has bloomed. Now there is naught to prevent the Time of Ascension. Your journey ends here.”
Johnathan’s blood boiled. He refused to believe a word of it. “My life was preserved, but for what? To return here and die? Swallow your lies Lord Aleksander, and be silent! I cannot help my children any longer, but I will give them hope—hope without your bloody taint! Even if it means another calamity. Dalia will persevere. We will die together, never to return!”
“If you are so resolved,” Lord Aleksander pronounced. His gaze was scathing. “Then let us show you how powerless you really are.”
The warm wind churned like a whirlwind as it flailed all ‘round the chamber, ripping at Johnathan, drawing him closer to the cloaked daemons. Lords Aleksander and Gareth hovered above, balls of sable ensconcing their fists, eyes black as night, their own cloaks torn to shreds as rivers of power churned. Lord Luc stood below them, sword raised. Johnathan heard screams and terrible wailings in his head, silenced, and then returning. The ward seemed to protect him, though the fury battered him down.
He heard Daniel scream out between wailings. “Move towards him. We are—”
Johnathan could not move. The power unleashed on him did more than rip and tear; it held him back like a sand storm, bludgeoning the wards.
This cannot be. Sariel’s eyes is not to us. The stones—
He turned his head slowly. The Animus Stones remained on the pedestals, their light churned above the destructive streams, empowering the Portal.
What is this?
Voices rang inside his skull. It did not sound like Lords Aleksander, Luc, or Gareth, but as if they spoke together. “We are the Lords of Darkness. The will of existence bound to ours. Salvation and Rebirth. The Dream to be the only reality to bear! Your wards will fall!”
A vision filled Johnathan’s being.
It was dark, terribly dark. The sky was a grey slate, and the sun above was a darkened glower. Johnathan stood in knee high green grass, and a woman stood near, her face half turned. Though her discarded helmet lay in the grass, she wore crystalline armour from shoulder to heel.
“You are… alive?”
The voice was that of Lutessa.
“Not for much longer,” Johnathan admitted.
“Do you—” Lutessa’s voice was timid, hesitant. He thought it so unlike what she projected, even in private confidences. “Do you remember when we first met her? We were in the Chamber of Judgment; you stood behind me, facing the islanders, Damian stood at their head. She did not say much, no, but she was as much our enemy. Now she is our only hope; and she needs you.”
Is this only what I want to see? “How do you know what we intend?”
Lutessa gave a half smile. “The Mother’s Pilgrim has told me much. I have never forgotten a word of it. Of you, too.”
“There will be a time for that. The Dark Brotherhood will—”
“They are not as strong as they think. It is like the Darkness, but different. Your wards do little against it, and will break, soon. Reuven or Jophiel have sided with Amos. I do not know which. They have given to them a power, but not one beyond Gabriel’s reach. Do you believe, ser, or do the mistakes of your youth still rule your mind?”
Johnathan had spent most of his life in disbelief: war and lust put it so far out of his reach. Looking to the sky, he saw that even fervent denials would not send the gods away. He thought it a realm of gods and mortals; if there ever was a time for belief, it had come. “I have returned to the Light I once scorned.”
Lutessa smiled so innocently as a blinding light suffused her; and the brightness became her, and the grey sky above pushed away. Johnathan was sure the sun above did not shine down on him: it was something else beyond comprehension.
“They are just men,” Lutessa said warmly as his vision was bathed in that light. “But you are—”
The vision faded and the streams of power still flailed ‘round the chamber, but the wailing voices were all but gone. Johnathan looked to his left and right and saw that his companions were a bloody mess, though they looked to him. “Forward,” he said, and they pushed towards Lord Luc. The eyes of the daemon enlarged.
“I will finish this myself,” Lord Luc declared, charging at them through a whirlwind of dark power that grew in intensity with every moment that passed.
Johnathan parried the assault effortlessly. Lord Luc pushed down, through some strength that Johnathan could not explain, he stayed the onslaught, and watched as Daniel and Ashleigh slashed at the fallen man. The daemon’s eyes widened as his own blood puddled in the onslaught.
“You cannot withstand me!” Lord Luc screamed, sweeping in a circle, though Johnathan lazily deflected each blow, and his companions did much the same.
“Lord Aleksander!” But as Lord Luc screamed Ashleigh slashed at his leg, Daniel tore at the chest, and Johnathan severed the daemon’s head.
“Look up!” Daniel shouted.
Without thought or reason, Johnathan leapt forward, put his sword up to parry as an enormous stream of power. Cutting through it like a knife through butter, he leapt up, impaled Lord Gareth, and crashed down with him.
Johnathan withdrew his sword from the dead man, and he heard Lord Aleksander’s screaming wail as his body became suffused in endless, unfathomable power.
“No power can rival our own!” Lord Aleksander wailed. “We are the Altier! Children born in the Light, forged by the Darkness. Lucretia our mother, Sariel our father. You are bastards! Those who soil the earth. The Adtier shall be cleansed! Purged from existence!”
Johnathan looked to Daniel, and nodded. “Then why is our name upon your symbols?”
“You understand naught! You all shall burn!” Lord Aleksander wailed as he flew at Johnathan. He side stepped the Altier, and Ashleigh flew at the foe with a vicious two handed slash, and Johnathan heard blood puddling on the earthen floor. “None can withstand us!”
Lord Aleksander erupted, streams of power tore through the chamber, and Johnathan raised his sword as the bl
ade eviscerated the darkened projectiles; others left craters. The daemon roiled and flung himself at Johnathan once more, but before he flew more than a few feet, there was a sickening thud: Lord Aleksander was impaled upon the ground; Daniel and Ashleigh twisted their blades in his back.
Daniel and Ashleigh tore their steel out, and Lord Aleksander tried to crawl; his darkened eyes frothed with rage, and blood gurgled from his mouth. He spoke softly and harshly, “How did you… Tell me!”
Johnathan kneeled. He wanted the daemon to see his face. Words came tumbling out that he did not understand. “A war is coming boy, one that you will not see. Of gods and mortals. They will clash and break themselves. Darkness will matter as little as Light does. But know that Sariel will die. God or mortal. All those who seek to destroy others will fall before the Transcendent.”
“You—you are.”
“No,” Johnathan said while placing his open hand upon the daemon’s face. “He has yet to come.”
Johnathan crushed Lord Aleksander’s skull.
Lutessa…
The Light eviscerated the chamber, and it shot upwards.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Heart of the Sand
Aerona stood in the ruined courtyard.
“Aerona Harkan, I have been waiting for you,” Lord Eldred said beneath his blackened cowl. “The Time of Ascendance is nigh: the end of a struggle old as the earth itself. Stand as your father once did, as I stand for the dark god. The curtain is drawn—the realm stands as audience—let us give them a performance before the onset of the Rebirth!”
“You are a traitor!” Aerona shouted as she unsheathed Vindication and pointed the tip towards the daemon. “I trusted you. We all trusted you. Claire, Dominique, Jessica, and Lara. Do you recall those names? Do you? They died for your madness! I, alone, survived. Was that you, Lord Eldred? So that you could take my life’s blood as you took Damian’s? Claire. Dominique. Jessica. Lara. Damian. For them. For all the that you have slaughtered. This ends!”
Lord Eldred laughed, twisted and disquieting. He put his arms up, smiling ruefully. “Is this what you have come for? Vengeance? It means naught! You are a Dream Survivor, Aerona, and still you do not understand? You survived for a purpose, and it is not to avenge those who are meaningless. Sariel demanded life’s blood, so I gave it to him. Damian? Defiance has a cost.”
“He was not yours to take!”
“You and yours?” Lord Eldred cackled.
Aerona was pained by those words. She gripped the hilt of Vindication hard.
“I had left you alone for a time,” Lord Eldred continued. “You would have done the work for me, and I could sit in the shadows, and wait. The realm thought me dead—Elin, Kaldred, it did not matter. None chase the dead nor think over much of their tracks. But you, you Aerona, you saw more than your consort ever did. We had to act. I had to act in the end. It should have ended that day, if not for Amos’ weakness.”
Treachery layered upon treachery. We were only pawns to be used by these servants of Sariel. I carry the weight of the dead on my shoulders. Not just the Brood or Crimson Swords: Isilians and Islanders torn apart by this madness, Dalians and Trechtians who have laid down their lives for meaningless aims, and all those who would burn. Their strength shall be my strength: infused in the Heart of the Sand!
“When I cut the blackened heart from your chest, I will find your dark god, and rend the flesh from his bones!” Aerona screamed. “It ends, Lord Eldred. All of this!”
“So it does.” As if the words summoned a storm, a cold wind howled through the courtyard, the sky above turned to sable, and streams of darkness and shadow emanated from Lord Eldred; his cloak billowed in the Darkness, and his eyes wept blood. “The Darkness Rising hath come!”
The skies above churned into a twisting maelstrom of Darkness that ripped and tore the grey sky. With each passing moment, it looked to grow larger, churned faster, as it fell upon Lord Eldred. The monstrosity was indiscernible from the man himself, and he wielded a long, twisted sword; the blade’s hue was of obsidian—ridged with terrible incisions—pooling shadows as it dripped upon the blackened ground.
Aerona retrieved the Heart of the Sand from a hidden pouch in her leathers, held it aloft, watching the swirling sands within, before crushing it into the steel of Vindication; the entirety of the blade emitted a warm, prescient glow that could only be the Light itself.
Lord Eldred spoke as if by a chorus of a thousand screaming voices, rattling against the sky. “Light shall be swallowed by endless Darkness!”
Aerona leapt forth and clashed with Lord Eldred.
The sound of steel rang as her blade collided with his; she felt the Darkness push against Light, and Light push against Darkness. Lord Eldred cut with savage arced swings, and Aerona quickly put up her blade to parry and deflect. The Darkness Rising yelled out in frustration, and Aerona seized courage deep down, bringing her blade down overhead, but finding only the darkened steel of her foe’s weapon.
“You are stronger,” Lord Eldred said. His words were a deafening resonance. “It is your birthright that gives you strength and resolve. I shall crush it!”
“Not this time, daemon,” Aerona declared, pushing back. Though Lord Eldred smiled grimly and shot her back a few feet; her right hand skimmed against the ground. “I do not fear you.”
“Only fools do not fear!”
Lord Eldred spilled forth in onslaught, and Aerona parried, trying to weather the storm. She tried to duck beneath after a side slash, but the daemon set himself in front, swinging down terribly.
She suddenly lost her feet and the daemon sent her flying into a broken wall; the mortared stone came down like an avalanche all around her.
She looked up and saw Lord Eldred’s twisted blade coming down upon her like a torrent of steel. She was unable to raise Vindication to slash the blade away, or command her body to move: she was transfixed on the daemon, the impenetrable dark that flowed from Lord Eldred, and the hopelessness of that moment overwhelmed her.
Get up, Aerona.
The voice was familiar, near. Aerona saw naught but the oppressive dark, and the death that was so precariously close. Yet it did not come from those in moments of reflection and wonderment. “Damian?”
The very air seemed to shimmer and coalesce. Against the backdrop of the Darkness stood an outline of a man in long robes, hand outstretched, glimmering and fading. Get up, Aerona, the voice repeated.
Aerona stared up obstinately at what seemed to be her consort, who spoke with his voice, but could not be. “You died. I held you. You—”
Bloody woman, Damian scoffed. He opened the gates, but you must be there. For us. You going to let this bastard spill your life’s blood after all this? What was it all worth? Get up, Aerona.
“I cannot move my body. I cannot—”
Take my hand, Damian commanded, extending a light ensconced hand. Aerona took it, and it so felt real. Now. Get up, Aerona!
Aerona jumped up, just as Lord Eldred crashed upon the ground. She turned and slashed the daemon across the back, piercing his cloak and plate—his black blood puddling beneath.
“You are just a man,” she mocked.
The daemon flailed at her, but when she deflected his first swing, Lord Eldred’s wrist seemed to fall back, and Aerona cut the man across the chest.
“You cannot be this strong!” he wailed.
She felt a strength that was not there before; she did not think it was just the Light that gave her resolve, but something else. Familiar if distant, warm if disconsolate. The absence that once left her empty and broken.
“Light spurns the Darkness, and turns it against you,” she replied and charged at him.
Aerona cut at his shoulder, across his face, and then at the twisted blade, knocking it free.
“For the dead. For the dying. Go back to your gaol!”
Aerona was suddenly pushed back, tendrils of shadow gripping her body.
“Do you think it would be so simp
le?” the daemon shouted. Aerona heard His voice inside her head. “I know what you did. Reuven is a fool. I am not cut off. I am Sariel. I am the Darkness Rising!”
The cold wind whipped ‘round Aerona, and the very air seemed to be turned to Darkness, and a wailing whirlwind took in all of her sight. She could no longer see the courtyard, the garden, or hold looming in the distance: only painful, wailing echoes. The churning of Darkness seemed endless.
Aerona looked to the blade in her hand, and the Light seemed to flicker and fade, pushing back down from the tip, darkening it. In the endless dark, the eyes that wept blood was the only light that penetrated the gloom.
“You will fall before the Darkness!” Lord Eldred screamed. “The Phoenix shall rise and burn all that remains. The vestige is the Herald. The missteps of Creation shall be brought to bear!”
Aerona felt an intense burst of power, and Vindication was overwhelmed by Darkness it was forged with, and it fell helplessly from her grip; the Heart of the Sand reformed in its crystal, hovering in front of her. The sand churned madly inside it—the Darkness pushed against the encasements, desecrating the Light that shone inside it.
Aerona felt so empty. She knew the Darkness was taking it all away; she could not move, and barely think. Damian, whatever he was, was gone; his soothing voice soundless. All that remained was Lord Eldred.
Wracked by pain and tortured by doubt, she saw two symbols from Maznach—crimson in hue—appearing to either side of Lord Eldred: Pyre on the left, Dominion the right. Death by fire, reborn in a dominion of a dark god.
Shadows churned and revealed two cloaked boys no more than fifteen seasons in age with bright eyes—brown and blue—who looked to Aerona, seeming to weigh and measure, before turning towards Lord Eldred.
Who are you?
“Father,” the one on the right said, the bigger of the two. “This is not the way. Stop this.”
Lord Eldred did not stop.
“You must stop this,” the other lad, younger and shorter, said almost boyishly. “Mother is not beyond you. Us. This will not get her back. Please father.”
Darkness Rising (Ancient Vestiges Book 1) Page 73