The egrigor would now be corrupted; he would not be a pleasant being. She knew from when they had ventured here with Pharoh that this battle would mean one of two things. The egrigor would either be bested, or the sorcerer who fought him would be destroyed by the wyrd of their battle.
The Repository of Wyrd was like a seething black mass. The corrupt Wyrd around it was so thick and so convoluted with Chaos as to appear black instead of green. The blackish-green miasma was spreading out, loosing color the further it got from the root-room, tainting the wyrd within the well and the roots above the repository. The color was so daunting, so cankerous, that Grace didn’t want to go near it for fear of being tainted by the poison wyrd clogged around the split opening which acted like a door. It was through this opening in the repository that the black wyrd issued.
The repository moaned in a high-pitched wail as they drew closer and closer. A moaning, cracking noise came to them, like giant trees bending and shifting in a violent wind. If there had been any doubt before about the integrity of the egrigor inside, there was no such thoughts now. There was no doubt that the egrigor was corrupt as any other touched by the wyrd, though worse so for he was at all times in his life touching it, and living off it. He depended on it as humans depended on air and sustenance to keep them going.
Grace would not have to see the egrigor, for the Room of Requisition lay just outside the battle chamber. She could still see something pacing back in forth in the battle chamber, through the slight splits in the root room. It didn’t bode well, and she couldn’t be sure if the being was black, or if it was the color of the wyrd tainting the image.
Grace turned her mind back to the smaller root room attached to the larger one that made up the entirety of the Repository of Wyrd. The first room, the Room of Requisition, was where they would actually touch the repository, inputting their desires, their changes to fate. This is where any sorcerer intent on controlling the Well of Wyrding would go. They would whisper their bane or their hopes into the orb which stood there, and then go through to battle the egrigor. If they won, the repository would automatically put their desires into motion.
In the center of the room hung a black orb which was seemingly connected with all the roots through a series of lightning bolts. The bolts shifted and jumped here and there, never staying rooted to one spot, but instead shooting out random bursts of lightning to the roots until whatever orders they carried had been written on them, and then shifted to another spot.
As if the thought of her once-friend had conjured the memory from the depths of the Otherworld, they were all overcome with a vision, and while Rosalee was used to such things, Grace didn’t like it one bit.
They watched in their minds as Porillon stepped forth, placed a hand on either side of the silver repository, which was shooting out stray bolts of lightning, and began her incessant chanting. Almost instantly the color began changing from silver to green. It looked very much like someone had dripped ink into water and began stirring, for the green bloomed and then swirled until the silver was not really silver anymore but a mix of the two colors.
They watched the vision of Porillon in slow motion, as if it were a dream they were seeing through some faraway window. It was almost as if they were there, but Porillon was an image made of smoke, transparent and muted in color, but there all the same. They saw her head flailing about as she screamed her poisonous commands to the tree above her, which sheltered her in the repository.
Silent tears came to Dalah’s eyes as she watched the image of the frenzied Porillon committing such a heinous act.
They all knew what they must do, and they wanted to spend as little time in the Well of Wyrding as they had to, so with haste they stepped forward, framing the orb with their bodies in a triangle formation. Instantly the Repository of Wyrd activated, and they were part of the struggle for dominance.
The streams of lightning that were previously arching out toward the root wall instead shifted to the women framing the black and violet orb suspended from the ceiling. The lightning didn’t hurt, but instead brought pressure to bear on their chests, and made it hard to breath.
Everything around them began to fade and become less relevant as the repository turned its attention to them, instead of the poisoned words it previously had been marking upon the walls.
It was an alien thing, a foreign intelligence that Grace would never have thought possible. It contained an intellect, and Grace could feel this other mind scanning her, judging her worth, and appraising her. Finally it spoke.
“And what would you give to the wyrders?” A female, monotone voice asked from the repository. The manner of the orb had changed. Whereas before it was intent on the work placed before it, now it seemed almost to want conversation. The black and violet illumination within it started to swirl together instead of racing about. The repository wasn’t a glass orb, Grace realized, but instead one that resembled thin, yet resilient, skin. The thought made her shudder in revulsion.
“Now we are in a powerful position. We are three where she was only one,” Dalah said, her words thick as the power coursed through her from the repository. They had the feeling that the repository was listening to them very intently.
“This is true,” Rosalee said as she drew near to Dalah, and Grace followed.
“We have the chance to rewrite the future of the Great Realms. What shall we grant to the next generation?” Dalah looked at both of them, her plump cheeks rising in a mischievous smile.
“We shall give to them power,” Rosalee said, placing one hand in Graces. “Power to combat that which has already been transcribed on the Evyndelle.”
“We shall give to them wyrd,” Grace said slipping her hand into Dalah’s. “Control of wyrd so that an incident like this may never happen again.”
“And we shall give to them the glory of the Goddess,” Dalah said, slipping her hands into both her friends’ so that they formed a triangle. Even now, as they spoke, the green wyrd was starting to change around them to the more healthy silver it should have been. It started with the joined hands and leaked out like smoke, like quicksilver drifting across the surface of water, slowly bleeding into the wyrd and changing it back to the way it should have been.
As they spoke, the words drifted from their mouths in script. Grace watched them drift from their mouths as if she were reading a book. The words worked quickly, instantly being drawn to the Tree of Life, and where their words touched the roots changed from cancerous black to the healthy brown of bark and the vibrant green of moss.
“We wish for this never to happen again,” Grace put in, wondering why their request was already working on the tree.
“The request is not understood,” the repository told Grace.
“We wish for the Well of Wyrding to be forever closed off to humans; no one can come or go from the Cloistered Hall once we leave.” Grace said in a rush, drawing the baffled looks of Dalah and Rosalee.
“That is impossible,” the repository said. “For humans to never touch the Well of Wyrding again, or the Evyndelle, would constrict the flowing of wyrd from this world to the next, killing the wyrd which rules humans and which they work with. Humans would cease to be, as well as all the things in the world that have become dependent upon them. This request cannot be fulfilled.”
“But there has to be a way to stop this from happening all the time; to stop the constant corruption and cleansing,” Grace pleaded. “We have only just made it out of hardship, and now hardship is returning to us.”
“These are not my concerns, I am but the Repository of Wyrd,” it said in its feminine, monotone voice. “I do not understand such concerns.”
“Then how would one stop this,” Dalah asked.
“One might align themselves with the wyr,” Grace had never heard of this wyr thing before, and suddenly it was coming up every time she turned around.
“What is this wyr?” Rosalee asked.
“It is a new filter, a new turn of events. The wyr will ch
ange everything that has ever been known about wyrd. It is the bane of the Well of Wyrding, and yet its saving grace. The Wyr is the scales by which all wyrd will be judged and filtered. The wyr is the master of the Well of Wyrding, and the well is but its servant.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Grace said.
“Would you like to align yourself with the wyr?” the repository asked yet again.
“I’m not sure I would,” Grace had so many thoughts running through her head at that moment that she could barely put them in a cohesive order. The wyr, that which the Norns wanted to destroy, was somehow tied to Amber? And then the wyr was also the master of all wyrd? The Well of Wyrding, the monument that the Goddess put in place to control wyrd and the destinies of man, was but a servant to this other power? How could that be?
“What does it mean, a servant and scale?” Dalah asked, confusion creasing her brow.
“The Well of Wyrding will be used for what the Goddess had always intended it to be used for. Humans have put too much stock in the fact that their salvation depends on the Well of Wyrding. The well always has been only a vessel, a receptacle to hold all the wyrd which courses through all the worlds. The well is the filter of the wyrd, and however it is swayed it will then begin filtering that wyrd into the lives of man. The Evyndelle is the salvation of man.”
“But the tree is fed by the wyrd, and thus the lives of man are dependent on the Well of Wyrding,” Grace argued.
“Not if it were used as the Goddess had intended. It is but to be a source of power, all people drawing off it and adding to it. The Well of Wyrding, thus, becomes the servant of man, serving them instead of controlling them. The well is so easily swayed because it was intended to be affected by man to begin with, those adding to it while they also take from it.”
Grace’s mind was filled with the thoughts of a new world where people could tap mentally into the well and draw from it knowledge of whatever they wanted to learn, and also adding to the well knowledge they had gained. It was a beautiful thought, all those wyrders being in touch with one another, and learning and adding to the Well of Wyrding as if it were the largest book ever written.
“That is the way it is intended,” the repository said. “The well was always meant to fuel people and teach them, but along the way it became a struggle to see who could dominate, and so the well was corrupted, and then thought it needed to be purified. In a perfect world the well would always be in a state of flux, but man would be able to control that which flowed into them. They would no longer be the servants of the well, but instead the masters, telling the Well of Wyrding what they desired, and filtering the power themselves instead of being forced to use that which was pressed upon them.”
“And this wyr being the scales?” Grace asked.
“All wyrd will pass through the wyr. It will have powers previously thought impossible. It will be the judge of wyrd, and it will manipulate more than the wyrd within the well, but also the wyrd within others. This wyr will be able to make wyrd ineffectual, or very powerful. The wyr is the scale of wyrd, it is the advocate of the wyrd, filtering through itself what others can and cannot use.”
“So it is almost like those using wyrd would have to ask the wyr if they could use it?”
“The wyr will be able to stop people from using wyrd, but at a great cost. Once one has been halted from using their wyrd, it will forever burn that wyrd from them, and never again will the halted person be able to use wyrd.”
Grace was confused but she thought she understood.
“Do you wish to align yourselves with this wyr?” the repository asked.
“Yes,” Grace said and the other two women looked at her in shock. “Yes, I would.” She had a really good idea what this wyr was, but didn’t want to voice her suspicions now.
“Yes,” Rosalee said a little reluctantly, and Dalah nodded.
“I don’t think the repository can see you, Dalah,” Grace reminded her.
“Yes,” Dalah said around a growing dryness in her throat. She cleared her throat. “Yes, I would like to align myself with the wyr.”
The moment that was said there was a thundering outside as the constant heartbeat of the Well of Wyrding grew louder and more vicious. They felt the attention of the well draw closer to them, and they knew that they were being watched. Grace would give anything she had to bet that it was the Norns watching them just then, aware of what they had just done. Their escape would not be a pretty one, for they had just sworn themselves to the aid of the Norns’ chosen enemy, and the Norns knew it.
“So it is done,” the repository said. “The egrigor awaits.”
“But we didn’t do anything.” Grace argued.
“But you did; you aligned yourself with the force that will control wyrd. You have aligned yourself with the wyr that will forever change the course of wyrd. You are now the champions of the wyr. Step inside and fight for your new master, for if you win, the well will be reset, and Chaos will stop seeping into the world.”
“Well that doesn’t sound so bad now,” Rosalee said with a shrug.
Grace thought that was the biggest understatement. In fact she thought the only thing that sounded good about that was that the well was going to be reset. She didn’t like the idea of having an unknown master, especially one that gave the Norns such pause.
Dalah had stepped into the room with acute apprehension tearing through her. She figured that she would die here this day; she didn’t consider that she might live, for that was not her luck.
The egrigor had formed out of the shadows of the arena, which, now that she entered it, looked much larger than it had on the outside. Impossibly larger, to be honest. Dalah knew that the egrigor would take the form of whatever Porillon had fashioned it to look like, and she shouldn’t have been surprised at what she saw. It was obvious from the shape the egrigor took that Porillon had expected they would come down here to rectify what she had done.
The form she had fashioned was that of a black shuck. It stood, in all its horse-like build, at the other side of the battle arena, the menacing tusks jutting up and out from the bottom jaw of its gorilla face glistening with blood. Despite the fact that it was the size of a pony, its body was shaped like a hyena, its cloven hooves tearing up divots in the stone floor of the arena. It glared at her with phosphorous green eyes, swirling their Chaotic fire within the depths of its sockets.
The effect wasn’t lost on her; it was supposed to daunt Dalah into feeling like she was staring straight into the eyes of Arael, because the black shuck was his second form.
“You don’t have any power over me,” Dalah said and made the symbol of the Goddess over herself.
“Shields will not work in here,” Dalah heard the voice of the Repository of Wyrd say. She felt shields go up around the room and knew it was more for the sake of those outside than anything else.
The egrigor stalked back and forth, growling in the laughing sort of way the black shucks did. She felt the wyrd that was more than hers, the wyrd that was part hers, part Grace’s, and part Rosalee’s, coursing through her in a tangled jumble up her back from the base of her spine. She shivered a little as it culminated at the base of her neck.
The wyrd she had been given was made up of earth and water, and so Dalah figured that if she merely added the strength of her own wyrd to those elements that she could do a lot of harm. Seeing how the Evyndelle was wood, Dalah used that first.
The roots she manipulated out of the Evyndelle and through the root-wall were so thick, so heavy, that she at first had a hard time getting a hold of them.
It took a lot of effort on Dalah’s part, but all the same with only a little bead of sweat on her lip she forced the other women’s’ wyrd up her spine, to the lemniscate, and down her arms. From there she flung out her arms with a cry of effort, and the thick roots burst through the wall of the arena with an ear-shattering boom. The whole complex shuddered.
Dalah nearly lost her balance, but in a moment regained her comp
osure, and with a wicked twisting of her arms, her hands held like talons, her face contorted in a chaotic mask, she began twisting and wrapping the roots around the black shuck.
They merely passed through him, causing no harm, no obstruction, and no bother.
With a flick of its head the shuck summoned a force of wyrd so hard that it flung Dalah into the wall. The shields that had been put in place along the arena when she had come into the room crackled with power, sizzling on her back and rebounding her back into the center of the arena. Blood bloomed on her knees and palms where she skidded on them across the stone floor, and she stood with difficulty.
“I’m not as spry as I once was,” she said conversationally to the black shuck, but the bloodthirsty look on its face made it clear to the sorceress that it didn’t care. She used the time that she was talking to summon yet more power to her aid.
The water wyrd gleaned from Rosalee was different than the wooden one. The earthen wyrd felt slightly stiff, and almost as if splinters were traveling down her arms. This time it felt like extra veins had grown on the surface of Dalah’s skin, and were pumping the cold, wet wyrd through the new irrigations to her hands.
The wyrd didn’t hold long on her hands, and instead blasted out in the form of thousands of icicles. She felt the pain of the ice tearing through her hands, puncturing through her fingertips, ripping from the wounds already bleeding on her palms. The stigmata marking her as one of the Realm of Air flared as the ice ripped even through that.
The air was filled with thousands of barbs and shards of ice, all of which would have instantly killed anyone, but merely passed through the black shuck to thud menacingly on the wall behind it.
Then it was the beast’s turn, and Dalah had all she could do to block the attacks. He flung fire at her, breathed from his mouth in a great, jetting gout. She barely had time to pull up a wall of water, flinging it out before her, summoned from the air itself. It held its own before her, stopping the stream of fire.
The Well of Wyrding (Revenant Wyrd Book 3) Page 15