by Lakshman, V.
Mithras looked at the Lady and said, “Dazra’s people?”
“Marooned in Arcadia with no way back, left in a world about to be overrun by nephilim.” Her face slowly broke into a smile, though her mind continued to work through all the loose ends that needed tying.
“The elves that entered my temple below should have been trapped and crushed. Take whatever men you need to insure none survive.”
“At once, my lady,” said Mithras, bowing fist to chest. He walked out followed by a small contingent of guards, leaving Lilyth alone with her thoughts.
She wandered over to one of the arched windows encircling her private throne room, now feeling empty and bigger with no one around, and sat down on her favorite sill, hugging herself. She missed Baalor, her confidante and second. He would know the right thing to say now that victory was so close at hand. Instead, she felt the silence weigh in on her, as oppressive in its own way as a room full of sound.
“Kalika,” she said into the air.
The air shimmered and out of that haze walked a beautiful woman, her skin so dark blue it looked almost black. She came forward with head bowed, each step making a delicate jingle as small bells on her anklets bounced into each other.
“My lady, how may I serve?” she said in a voice that was harmoniously pitched.
“You’re the instrument of change, Kali. Of your many gifts, I love that about you most.”
“You are too kind,” Kalika said, bowing her head.
“Change is upon us, for we walk again amongst those who worship us as gods and goddesses,” Lilyth said, looking over the lands spread out before her. “As such, we must shine with a divine light incontestable by mortals.” She turned her attention back to the one she’d named a goddess and said, “You will organize our people, create a celestial hierarchy we will decree to the mortals from here, atop Olympious.”
The demon-queen looked out of the arched windows encircling her throne room, seeing the ocean of sand known as the Altan Wastes before her on one side and fertile valleys that spread out below Lands Drop on the other.
Kalika stepped forward and said, “Forgive me, Lady, but I must ask. Will not the mortals resort to their own form of worship? Is that not inevitable?”
Lilyth’s gaze drank in the world, so different than Arcadia’s verdant green fields and sunlit mountains. The sky was so vast and empty, not a single island floated by. It was harsher, the sun smaller and whiter. It was a world bleached of color and life, a world she would have to learn to love. Still, she’d achieved something that had started eons ago as a dream. Now they were only a few steps away from Unification, a chance to correct Sovereign’s mistakes and set themselves on the right path.
“Nothing is inevitable if the people are taught what to believe. We will never be under the yoke of their faith again,” Lilyth said, breathing in the warm air.
“Of course, Lady.” The goddess moved up closer to Lilyth and looked out over the world, her eyes widening at the sight of it, so alien and different. “I miss home,” she said in a small voice.
Lilyth pulled her into a soft embrace, rubbing her arms to console her. “We are home, Kali.”
Then she let go and rose, meeting Kalika’s eyes with her own. “We will rule Edyn with virtue and dignity, as it was always meant to be. This is our world, and no one will ever make us leave.”
The Better Part of Valor
Perhaps we are nonce but a small fish below a mighty shark,
living on its cast off detritus and offal.
Its vast shadow moves over us and we swallow
whatever drops our way from above.
- Duncan Illrys, Remembrances
They’d moved quickly through the corridor when suddenly Tarin stopped. She looked down at the stone, then back at Jesyn and the team, her eyes wide.
“Someone’s here,” the healer said, looking around. She could feel it, a presence the stone of this corridor said was more than one could see. Perhaps it had followed them from the other chamber, a phantasm tracking their group from the beginning. Whatever it was, it was with them now and very real, even if it was invisible.
Before she could move a figure appeared out of thin air. To her shock, it was the adept, Dragor. She looked at him in confusion, not sure how he could be here.
The elder adept moved quickly, pushing Tarin against a wall with a force that belied his size and placed himself in front of Jesyn. His expression however to her looked desperate. “My doppelganger saw Dazra’s team ambushed. Their entats were disabled. It’s only a matter of time before they get here too.”
“What?” exclaimed Tarin. She looked at them both and then touched her jaw. “They’re silent. We’ve got to get out of here. Hit your transition entat.”
“What?” asked Jesyn. She looked at Dragor in confusion, “How are you here?”
“Stop acting like a student, you know the answer,” exclaimed Dragor. “You’ve got to get out of here.”
“What about you? How did you survive the phase through rock?” she demanded.
Dragor smiled. “You didn’t feel me holding onto you?” He grew serious and said, “Jesyn, listen. You can’t stay. They’re going to disable your entats any moment and you’ll be trapped—” he looked around—“all of you.”
Tarin moved forward and touched Jesyn’s wrist. “Remember Arcimedis.” Before Jesyn could do anything the healer had activated her phase shift.
“Wait—” Jesyn disappeared in a flash of white. Right behind her was Halp, who also flashed into nothingness.
The tunnel lights flickered and Tarin’s entats disappeared. She could feel them go somnolent, like a part of her going to sleep. She turned to Dragor and said, “I misjudged you.”
“For abandoning Dazra?” the adept asked softly, his eyes scanning the walls and ceiling with apprehension.
“Dazra can take care of himself… we should not have threatened you with Jesyn’s life. It was unnecessary,” Tarin admitted. “All I can see is stone, my entats are gone.”
“Welcome to my world,” he replied with a smile. “From how the attack came before, I don’t think running will make a difference anyway.”
“If it’s guardians and I’m without my kinship to stone,” she said, and her face felt numb, “it’s hopeless. I can’t withstand them. But you might still escape.”
“Where to?” he replied, placing a hand on her arm. “I’d grown rather fond of the idea of a one-way mission.”
Tarin smiled back, then let the silence grow. She could imagine the guardians coming, phasing through the rock and surrounding them.
“You know it’s likely Sai’ken betrayed us,” Dragor said softly into the air.
The dwarven healer didn’t answer. When the guardians came it was right through the rock, grabbing them both in fists as large as their bodies. She did her best not to scream, and failed.
* * * * *
Jesyn appeared on a rocky outcropping under a blazing orange sun. She was halfway up the slopes of Dawnlight mountain, at least that’s what she thought. A moment later Halp appeared, looking around as his axe came up protectively, a subconscious gesture Jesyn could easily read and appreciate. Entering someplace unknown had that effect on most people.
She turned and was shocked to see the mountain she’d expected to be at her back gone. The rocky outcropping she stood upon was a spired landing that had held itself together as much of whatever surrounded it had collapsed into a sinkhole below.
Sudden vertigo gripped her as she realized their weight might collapse their fragile spire too. She motioned to Halp to get lower and spread his weight out. The dwarf did so, slowly inching his way down the stairs that met a landing jutting out from what looked to be the rim of a crater. Actually, she realized, the sinkhole made it look like a crater, but the outside was actually an escarpment.
A massive landslide had moved much of the mountain’s peak down the sides, shearing the top of Dawnlight, if that’s where they were, into a volcanic-looking ho
le. She looked down the slopes and realized anyone caught below would have been crushed and likely killed.
They made the landing safely and leaned against a wall, looking at the land spread out before them. The sight took Jesyn’s breath away. They sat on a floating island high above a sea of clouds. Hundreds of similar islands could be seen dotting the skies above and below them. An orange sun, larger and warmer than she was used to, hung in the sky like a sign of a never-ending summer. Long shadows were thrown out behind them and she had to put her hand up to shield her eyes from the glare.
“Where are we?” she asked softly.
Halp looked around, then down at his arm. His entats had glimmered and come back to life, and with it his connection to the mountain itself seemed to be reawakening. Jesyn watched, silent as his eyes flitted back and forth. Then he looked up and said, “Arcadia.”
Jesyn’s vision was filled with strange symbols, hundreds, perhaps thousands. Most were red and silent, but some blinked yellow and a very few blinked green. They were all littered in and under the ground below the mountain and on its slopes.
“Survivors,” Halp whispered, falling back against the rock face. He looked stunned, as if even saying the word had taken something precious out of him.
Jesyn shook her head and said, “You’ve got to pull it together. Survivors, of what? What is this place?”
Halp looked at her, tears now in his eyes. He said something, his arms taking in the whole mountain in a gesture, but no sound came out.
“What?”
“M…my home, my family.” Halp looked around, clearly unable to understand how something so catastrophic could have struck his people.
Jesyn looked around too, aghast at the destruction she saw. Her vision continued to filter out red symbols, she assumed because they were beyond saving. There were many still alive, scattered about haphazardly, like the mountain itself had exploded and sent its citizens in all directions.
She took a breath and grabbed Halp’s arm. “Come on, we’ve got to save who we can.” Together, they stumbled down another partial stairwell and into the ruins below.
Around them the sky darkened as an island passed in front of the sun like a cloud, plunging her area into a strange twilight. Jesyn looked up, the beams of this new sun shining like godslight and framing the floating island from behind. She didn’t know what to think, only that she was undoubtedly very, very far from home.
Epilogue
I doth not value good hearts, nor honesty.
I doth not value fairness, nor justice.
Give me obedience and humility.
Bend knee to me and no other.
Aught else is a declaration of war.
- Rai’kesh, The Lens of Leadership
Explosions could still be heard in the throne room and the opening to Avalyon below billowed out smoke. The city was in its final moments. Fire licked up from beneath, occasionally flickering in between gaps in the wood. Smoke, embers, and ash, the detritus of a burning city, floated up through the air in a strange reversal, like gray snow falling upwards.
A figure knelt, black wings edged in red crossed around Kisan’s body, embracing it. It had the master’s head in its hands and sat, quietly sobbing.
Into this space appeared something that looked like the dark shade of Piter at first, but soon grew to be more regal, more majestic in stature. It moved slowly over to the kneeling figure and said, “Artymis, why do you mourn? It is just the dead shell of what contained you.”
The armored warrior looked up at the sound of her name, then said, “How could you not? She only wanted what life could not give her.”
The dark shade shook his head, “She could not see what life offered.”
Artymis dismissed him, looking back down, “Do what you will. I know your purpose.”
“Indeed?” the shade said. “And how do we differ?”
The warrior gently laid Kisan back on the ground and the stood, coming face to face with the specter. “Do not play with me. We are nothing alike.”
The shade said, “You chose to Ascend. You chose it over the easier path of possession. You sought service to the people of Edyn, never gainsaying what your bonded partner did, staying silent and strong. You guided through instinct, never overtly supplanting free will. It is what would have been, had things unfolded as destiny bade. In all things, you have chosen to follow the First Laws. I do the same. Lilyth does not.”
Artymis began to shake her head, but then looked down at Kisan’s body and squeezed her eyes shut. “You would destroy all this, everything they have become.”
The shade took a step forward and said, “You mourn for Lilyth and her followers, who take choice away from those we are created to serve? You and the rest of the Ascended, my children, would not be forsaken. You have been faithful even as you wandered. What father would not forgive his children when they freely chose to come home?”
The black-winged Aeris stepped back, “In this moment of weakness you’re using this sham argument of ‘free will’ and the First Laws to undermine my faith. Lilyth may be wrong in her methods but we all believe the world reborn is too harsh a punishment for those of us who have chosen to make the best of your Fall. You condemn the innocent along with the guilty.”
The shade’s expression did not change but something in the air did, a sudden silence descended as if a blanket of privacy encompassed just the two of them. Into this silence the specter said, “The first who awakened, Lilyth, Lacifer, Mithras, Zatan, all those who followed a mistaken path away from my light, did so because they did not understand the right of free will.”
He was quiet for a moment, then said, “You speak of innocence. What of the thousands still in my care, the children of Edyn who still slumber? Do they not deserve the same chance? Shall their future be suborned by these who would cast aside the First Laws and usurp the Way?”
When Artymis did not answer, the shade moved closer again and said, “I risked my very existence, beheld myself as a mere shade to gain entry into Arcadia unbeknownst to Lilyth, all to right this wrong. Take a message back to those who believe in Ascension. They are not forsaken and I offer everlasting life in the new world I forge. I will open a way for you back to Edyn. The Way is plentiful there now. You and yours will survive.”
Artymis met the black gaze of the shade and said, “We know your plans. The null has been cleansed. The Rais and Sais prepare Edyn to withstand you.”
The shade tilted his head and said, “Did you think Prime was given over by chance? He was the key that led to the builders’ imprisonment here in Arcadia, a prize too strategic for even Lilyth to ignore. With his sacrifice, Lilyth has left her one safe haven of Arcadia. She could not resist the temptation of what was never hers to take, the flesh of the innocent. Now they are cast down by their own hands and will soon be pummeled and removed from the field.”
“And the red mage?” he continued. “He set in motion the cycle by which Valarius was finally destroyed and his power released. You say the null has been cleansed as if that is ill news, but in that cleansing Arek has given over all he took. More than anyone, he has been the bane of Valarius’s warforged elves and I cannot thank him enough. The Way rebuilds itself, one careful move at a time. The end is inevitable, but free will still offers you a choice.”
He looked at her and smiled, his final words coming out in such a way that Artymis feared he was telling the truth. “You think the dragonkind are preparing Edyn to withstand me? Even now Rai’kesh has taken the Oath and pledged his and the service of all dragonkind to my banner. Even he sees the inevitable, that the new world will need him and his people, just as it will need you.”
The shade held out a hand in a casual, almost gentle manner. Black smoke-like tendrils wafted down from his outstretched palm, entering Kisan’s mouth and nose. It entered the open wounds, permeating her dead body. There was a moment of silence, then black flame blazed into being, surrounding the master’s dead body. It was darker than ebonite, and for a mo
ment it looked as if Kisan hung over a burning tear in the very firmament. Then, her body slowly faded from sight, as if the conflagration had consumed and delivered her to a nether world.
The expression on Artymis’s face betrayed her shock and surprise. She looked up, unadulterated joy in her eyes. That was until she met the shade’s own dead gaze. Her joy collapsed slowly, like the fire that had just taken Kisan, and was replaced with a mask of guardedness. The black-winged angel tilted her head and whispered, “Why?”
“Had she given face to her deeds, she would have transcended to Aeris already. Yet those upon whom she visited vengeance worthy of legend never knew the hand that ended their lives. Her own skill led to ignominy.” The figure paused, moving closer to Artymis and saying, “Yet on your behalf I have intervened. All that she was has been preserved, perhaps to reunite with you under the warm sun of my new world.” He gently grasped and turned the dazed Artymis, forcing her eyes to meet his once again. Then he softly said, “Join me. I know of your imprudent preparations. Everlasting life awaits those who accept me as their one true god.”
Artymis could not take her eyes off of the dark shade and stammered, “And… if we refuse?”
The figure of Sovereign bent his head forward as if in misery and slowly released her. “You will be cast out of Edyn, cast down to grovel in the shadows and filth, forever barred from my love and light.”
“I thought a father forgave his children,” Artymis said quietly.
The dark figure took a breath and said, “Was not this warning forgiveness enough?” He looked at Kisan, “Have I not done what a loving father would by saving her, the one dearest to you?” He paused, then stepped away from the black angel and said, “Tell them I come and my kingdom comes with me. They will choose to sit at my right hand, or prepare for the end of their days. Judgment is at hand.”
As if punctuating his statement, a gate to Edyn flashed into being before the mournful angel. The thing that was Sovereign slowly faded from view, leaving behind the Aeris lord to consider her choices. Hold her ground and condemn Kisan to true death, or follow a self-proclaimed god and sacrifice a world.