by Jeramy Goble
Get up. Get up, damn it!
She bent her knees and used her scraped hands to push herself back to her feet. She crossed the threshold and started to run again, but only for a short burst. Perhaps it was coming upon the pool so quickly, or the weight of the task before her, but she almost stopped. She shuffled over to it as if approaching the edge of a cliff.
Inch by inch, she grew closer. After checking that Leona and Vylas had entered the chamber behind her, Jularra looked back into the depths of the room, letting her gaze sink to the pool before her. Her heart continued to knock relentlessly on the inside of her chest. She swallowed and stepped into the empty pool.
As she pulled her other foot in, she was immediately jolted by a sweeping dread. I don’t know what to do! It will find me any second. I’m going to die!
Anxiety circulated through her soul and her heart raced with panic. She was about to step backwards and out of the pool when the memory of seeing her mother slump to her knees flashed through her mind. Then came the sharp image of Korden’s mauled corpse. Keleah's blood-choked screams. Finally, sounds of a crying baby that she would never meet seemed to seep from her ears and reverberate throughout the chamber.
No. None of this should have happened. It has to stop. It can’t go any further.
Her mind drew thousands of pictures of similar events her country had endured. Her imagination stung her with images of what she feared might be happening back in Morganon.
No! No more bloodshed!
No more bloodshed!
No more… blood.
Blood!
Jularra looked down at the empty pool, and then back to Vylas and Leona. Leona watched Jularra, no doubt working to develop a plan, while Vylas scanned the room, reviewing the intricate carvings on each tomb like an absentminded scholar.
Jularra produced her dagger and sliced quickly along the meatiest part of her palm.
Blood! she repeated to herself.
Flinging the dagger to the side, she squeezed the wound, making sure blood fell into the empty pool. Once the first few drops successfully landed, she walked to the center.
You’ve raped our blood for centuries. It’s time we reclaimed it.
She fell to her knees and sat on the balls of her feet, her hand suspended over the rock floor.
She stared at the rock, enthralled by its unassuming appearance as it caught and absorbed her dripping blood. Jularra had grown used to seeing it filled with much more blood during her oath renewal every hunter’s moon, but this visit was not to perpetuate the oath. It was to end it.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Only when she claimed the crown as a child was she made to bleed. Her visits at the hunter's moon did not require it—only that she be bathed in the pool’s blood. This time, she was choosing to bleed.
Maybe something will happen by making this offering.
The blood of my complete understanding.
Please work.
As more blood splashed onto the humble stone, a simple bubble appeared within it. It grew, popped, and then—nothing. The small puddle of Jularra's blood rippled slightly and then was still.
This was the Voidwarden’s pool. She now suspected that simply presenting it with blood wouldn’t be enough; wouldn't allow her to invoke anything.
What do I do? she thought with rising panic. What do I need to do?
Her mind screamed in confusion and disorder. She knew she was squandering time and had to calm herself. She let her bleeding hand fall to her side as she closed her eyes, breathing deep, exaggerated breaths. She licked her dry lips, sucking in air and then exhaling in as controlled a manner as she could.
Let it out.
She lifted her head and opened her eyes.
“Gods of the Gifts, I am Jularra, daughter of Amala, and daughter of the Acorilinian Mountains. You have honored me as one with complete understanding of your Gifts. I implore you now for your attention, your mercy, and your guidance.”
She paused to look along the edges of the pool. No change.
“Make me the keeper of this pool. Permit me to call upon this place of power. It has been abused and perverted by its current steward, and by the hand of the ancient Nurudian sorceress, Colendra. She did not, and the Voidwarden does not, serve you or your Gifts. This perversion has gone on long enough.”
Taking another quick breath, Jularra continued.
“Allow me to use this pool as a tool for your future bidding. Let me restore the practice of your Gifts throughout Acorilan. Let me use this domain of power in a way that honors you. That serves you. That serves the Gifts, and the world that inspires them." Her voice grew louder, her rippling disgust for the Voidwarden giving her words more and more bite. "Let me end the days of this pool being an instrument of the Voidwarden’s ego, and let me return it to you. Let me do your work.”
She dropped her chin and frantically searched the pool for any changes. Desperation stung her eyes. Another rapid inspection of the pool revealed nothing.
Then a heavy scrape of metal made her flinch. The voice that followed it left her grinding her teeth.
“I see you’ve brought me no child,” the Voidwarden hissed. Its words stank of feigned disappointment and condescension. Jularra looked, but could not separate the Voidwarden from the shadows across the room.
“Time’s up!” it snapped. The shape of a grin started to poke through the darkness. The shapeless filth started to slink into the light.
But it froze in place as the roof of the chamber began to crumble. Leona had conjured her power. Her usual cluster of smoky rings were spinning about her, basking her in a light that banished the shadows from a massive portion of the Voidwarden’s chamber.
Relief flooded Jularra. She watched Leona, standing at the base of the stairs with her arms in the air, her palms facing the hundreds of stalactites up above. With accompanying ruptures and rumbles, Leona lowered her arms and brought her elbows down to her sides, her palms still facing upwards. With a swift clenching and reopening of her fists, dozens upon dozens of stalactites tore away from the roof of the chamber to trap the Voidwarden inside chunks of stone.
The Voidwarden immediately started to beat and bash against the stone, but it would take some time for it to free itself. It would have to do it with brute force; its shrieks and wails displayed its frustration as it found the stalactites insusceptible to its magic. Leona was buying Jularra time.
Having contained the Voidwarden for a moment, Leona marched over to the pool, never taking her eyes off the sphere of earthen spikes she was controlling.
“Come on, Jularra,” Leona said, calmly but with urgency. “You’ve got to do something. Now. Clear your mind as best you can. We will protect you.”
Jularra wanted to cry that she didn’t know what to do. Instead, she nodded. She didn’t want to distract Leona, or waste the opportunity she'd created.
“Please, Gift Gods, I come to you again,” Jularra resumed. “I ask you to visit me. Visit this place. Inspect my life. Search my soul. Feel my heart. Know my intent. I need you, Gods of the Gifts. Empower me to fight against this contamination on our lands. Let the victor define your truth. Acorilan needs you. We need you.”
We.
The revelation banished her worry and replaced it with humility and calm.
“Help my ancestors!” she cried out. “Help me release them!”
More and more of Leona’s stalactites were obliterated. But Leona grinned at what she heard. With Jularra’s last word, metal and stone crunched and reverberated through the chamber. As the sound dissipated, the familiar, numerous little doors around the pool's interior flipped open. Blood began to race in.
Leona’s grin grew wider. “That’s it!” she screamed. “That was it! The old queens! Summon them!”
The Voidwarden’s fury grew louder. It had cleared enough stalactites to give itself room for a counterattack. Dark energy condensed and started twisting around on itself. The grin dissipated into the rest of its mass as it prepared to ret
aliate.
In a snap of movement, Jularra saw Leona spin, arms reaching out towards her. Some of Leona’s rings flew toward Jularra and encircled her.
Just as Leona’s protective measures swirled into place, the Voidwarden exploded in a shockwave of energy, shooting the debris and remaining whole stalactites out from its center. The blood continued to fill the pool, and the smoky rings surrounding both women dissipated. Jularra looked back to Leona, who was grasping for the air around the Voidwarden, struggling once again to contain it. The Voidwarden’s mass twisted and branched out, trying to find weaknesses in Leona’s energy.
Leona’s energy ebbed and flowed as she flung her hands around her. “Jularra?” Leona yelled with urgency.
Jularra looked down at the filling pool. She could only hope the accumulating blood meant the Gift Gods had granted her request to make use of the pool.
“Queen Briwinna. My ancestor. Lady of Water. Appear to me of your own accord.”
As Jularra worked to stay focused and concentrate on her incantation, a stream of blood defied gravity and flowed up along the inner wall of the pool, over the edge, and down the other side. Once it reached the floor, it ran quickly along a channel until it reached the front of Briwinna’s tomb.
Jularra’s courage had taken countless hits since the sun rose that day, but she was emboldened by the sight of the blood flowing through the channels in Briwinna’s tomb door, introducing a fresh layer of hope.
Once the blood had traveled the paths on the tomb door, Briwinna’s spirit began to take shape in front of the stone carvings. She had been summoned countless times through the ages by the Voidwarden, and upon seeing Jularra, her head tilted in confusion.
“Be free, and live again!” Jularra continued. “Reclaim the blood that was taken from you!”
The blood - which had come to rest within the channels of the tomb door - sprayed out and was caught by Briwinna’s spectral form. Her body began to fill in and shift from translucent to solid. Her hair and skin rippled with life. She brought her arms and hands up to look at them, and shivered when she felt the cold tickle of the chamber’s air once more. Her last wardrobe—which had rested in small alcoves within her tomb since the day she sacrificed herself—flew out and decorated her naked body. She choked her first breath, then looked to Jularra.
Jularra smiled and gazed back at her through tear-filled eyes. Considering the possibility of bringing her ancestors back to life was entirely different from actually seeing it happen.
Briwinna drifted over to the pool.
“Jularra?" she began.
“Please, we can’t talk just now. The Gift Gods have let me use the pool. I’m going to try and share its power with you. We need to restore the other three queens to help destroy the Voidwarden!”
Briwinna looked over at Leona, still struggling to keep the Voidwarden distracted.
“I know you've only just got your blood back,” Jularra rushed to explain, “but the pool needs a drop in order for you to command it. Cut yourself, and then summon one of the others. Hymtera's tomb is next to yours, yes?”
Briwinna nodded and quickly sliced her palm.
“Vylas!” Jularra shouted. “Help us summon the others!”
Vylas ran over. He took the dagger from Briwinna and cut his own palm, adding his blood to the pool. Jularra had to shout over the commotion between the Voidwarden and Leona.
“That's Briwinna! She’s going to summon Hymtera. I’ll summon Lilvili, and you summon Oprendia!”
Jularra caught Vylas’ gaze and waited for him to confirm he understood. He nodded.
As each turned to their respective queen’s tomb, a pulse of deep sound plummeted down into the room. Jularra winced and looked over her shoulder. The Voidwarden had found a weak spot in Leona’s constraint, pushed out, and broken her focus. For the moment, it was free.
Without looking at Jularra, Leona shouted, “Keep going!” She bounced on the balls of her feet and began chanting in preparation for her next ritual.
The Voidwarden was not going to miss its opportunity this time, however. It stormed towards the pool, ejecting ribbons of itself at those in the pool, as well as Leona.
The whipping darkness flung out and knocked each one of them over. As they lay, disoriented, the grotesque mass began to swell. Higher and higher it rose toward the ceiling of the massive chamber. Within moments, the Voidwarden had risen entirely from the floor and spread across the ceiling, trickling in and out of the room’s remaining rocky teeth. With geologic force, the Voidwarden stabbed back down through the room, punching through the floor, shaking the ground and opening up deadly cracks. The Voidwarden quickly seeped back up through the ground and consolidated back into its normal form.
As it settled, countless streams of scorching lava began to ooze up through the cracks. With each millimeter of ground the flows claimed, the room grew brighter. The walls and ceilings took on more of the glowing orange color from the blistering material.
“What gave any of you the idea that I could be overcome?” the Voidwarden asked, its voice grating with ancient arrogance.
“I have an agreement with this land. A bond!” It stopped walking to focus on its fury. “I made the terms of that agreement clear, ages ago! It has never been altered or misconstrued. And you seek to break that agreement? No. The repercussions of your failure to uphold it will not be prevented. If you seek to remove my ability to maintain control, I will simply kill you, as I have countless others in Morganon already!”
Jularra, Vylas, and Briwinna slowly came to their feet, overcoming wobbly legs and foggy heads and doing their best to wipe off the blood they had fallen into.
Jularra, still finding her feet, spoke up. She had heard enough from the Voidwarden.
“I am nullifying the agreement,” she said firmly. “Our people and our lands have been your slaves for long enough. There is no excuse for expecting hundreds of generations to go on forever living in the shadow of your cruelty.”
The Voidwarden laughed.
“Detsepera came to me and asked for my help,” it said. “She knew what she was asking, and she knew my price.”
“If I was wrong,” Jularra shot back, “I would not have gained the recognition of the Gift Gods. I would not have been empowered to unite my ancestors against you.”
As the Voidwarden prepared to respond, the argument was interrupted by the shifting chamber. The teeth of the chamber began to drip. Faster and faster the drips, before turning into solid streams.
Jularra spun with confusion and locked eyes on Leona, who was in the middle of a spell. Faster and faster the water streamed into the room until it was raining inside the mountain.
Within seconds, the water had cooled off every flow of lava and clogged the cracks created by the Voidwarden. Before it could retaliate, Leona threw out her arms and squeezed the temperature down to below freezing, simultaneously forcing the rapidly-forming ice sickles to shoot towards the Voidwarden.
“Go!” Leona shouted.
“Come on!” Jularra screamed at Briwinna and Vylas. The three spun to face the tombs of their respective queens and simultaneously spoke their chants.
“Queen Hymtera. My ancestor. Lady of earth. Appear to me of your own accord.”
“Queen Lilvili. My ancestor. Lady of fire. Appear to me of your own accord.”
“Queen Oprendia. My ancestor. Lady of air. Appear to me of your own accord.”
Streams of blood rose up along the inside wall once again before streaming over the edge, down along the ground and across to the tomb doors.
“Be free, and live again! Reclaim the blood that was taken from you!”
Once the final words were spoken in unison, the blood of each remaining queen sprayed into its owner’s body. Each queen shivered to life as they once again donned their burial clothes.
The sound in the room died. As each restored queen was flooded with life, they turned as one to stare at the Voidwarden.
Twenty
In
Morganon, the Ridgerazers struggled to maintain their constant barrage upon the Torgurian catapults. Columns of Latham’s archers waded through the infantry and harassed portions of the city walls, and rather than being free to attack the catapults, the Ridgerazers increasingly found themselves forced to break an attempted spell to deflect incoming arrows. Many Ridgerazers had already been wounded, and each delay was time Morganon didn’t have to spare.
After throwing herself behind the wall to dodge an arrow, Abranni crawled over to Melcayro, who was conjuring a sphere of fire. Once he had launched it, Abranni slapped his leg.
“You need to come back up here,” she told him. Melcayro barely glanced down at her before starting to conjure another ball of flame.
“There isn’t time!” he answered, dipping a shoulder to dodge an arrow.
Her back to the wall, Abranni slid slowly up to look out at the field.
“We’re getting behind, ‘Cayro,” she said. She peered up at the massive hand of shadow high overhead. “Whatever this magic is, it's really doing a number on the Acorilinian infantry. See how their lines have broken to the south down there?”
A neighboring archer on the wall confirmed Abranni’s suspicions. “I was out there earlier," he said. "Most of my line was killed. The enemies are being enchanted somehow to look like the family of our people out there.” He shuddered. “It was sick. Really sick.”
“What the hell kind of magic is this?” Abranni wondered aloud.
A Ridgerazer knelt down to join the conversation as the archer shrugged.
“All I know,” the Ridgerazer said, “is that it has to be the Voidwarden’s doing.”
“Any idea how we can overcome it?” Melcayro asked, flipping his hand up at the sky.
The Ridgerazer shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
Melcayro looked down at Abranni as he scoured his thoughts for ideas. The shade had almost completely swallowed up the entire valley, obscuring the catapults across the field. But the sounds their whipping slings made as they released their rocks could still be heard. Once again, voices of alarm rang out down the length of the wall.