Gods of Shadow and Flame

by M. H. Johnson

  Jess grimaced and hissed, shaking off the mad hungers all but consuming her, even as she spit out another glob of frothy blood. Fierce crimson eyes locked with her mother's oddly curious gaze even as Jess deliberately wiped her lips upon the surface of her buckler, smearing it with her blood. Her blade she then slowly rasped across the surface of that same mirror that resisted all marring of its pristine form even as her mother watched, flakes of ichor and dried blood staining the beautiful artifact even further, Jess nodding in satisfaction at her now clean blade.

  Lilith abruptly laughed. "Is that some kind of ritual you learned in your last mortal life, dearest daughter? Some barbarian custom, coating your toys with your own blood even as you prepare to meet your maker? How fitting!"

  She shook her head as if in witness to a tragic jest. "I see how the dark powers of your birthright call out to you even now, my child. Your pristine Abyssal Chords of perfect ebony yearn to reforge themselves with the glorious Void once more. And yet you fight it! You deny your true calling, you who could walk astride all the planes of Heaven and Hell, consume them all with your infinite might! To blaze in glory and terror for all your mortal years, every instant an eternity of sweetest pleasure and infinite destruction!"

  Lilith hissed her contempt. "And yet, you resist. Even now. About to join your foolish broken sisters in death. You, the strongest of all of them, the only one I had deemed worthy of living by my side! You are going to allow yourself to die by my blade, to collapse beside your broken David, rather than sully yourself with the glory of the Void!"

  Jess shook as she gazed at the terrible vision of horror and beauty before her. Pristine features unflawed by mortal blemish, her mother’s eyes blazed with a dark ruby madness, her rosebud lips dripping gouts of divine blood. Covered in mail of darkest shadow, forged of twisted writhing souls, the blade she held in her hands an artifact forged from the Void itself.

  Yet Jess felt a terrible pity for this broken monstrous creature. She who had once soared the Heavens above, pure and free, a creature of light and love, horrified to learn that one day even guardians of Heaven must accept their place upon the wheel of time, that even they must pass on. It had filled that once sweet angel with such awful dread that all it took was her father's sibilant enticements to goad Lilith into making the terrible descent into utter depravity, to feast upon those hapless mortal souls she had once sworn to protect, netting them like helpless butterflies in lands foul and tainted. Taking such hideous pleasure in devouring their screams and torment, as did every other Fallen embracing the tainted secrets of Oblivion, all in a desperate bid to grasp an eternity they were terrified of losing, of death one day claiming them, no matter how many millennium distant their foreordained dooms had been.

  To have soared so wondrously high, ivory wings embracing the heavenly skies. To have known such beauty and love, only to trade it all for an empty existence as the most twisted, sadistic of beasts; her once divine spirit utterly tainted and corrupted by simple mortal fear.

  Jess, who looked outward with the painful wisdom of a woman who had lived and died scores of times, who knew what it was to gaze out at every new day with joy and hope, to feel her heart quicken with love, to gaze into the eyes of her newborn babe, to hold her family tightly to her through times tragic and wondrous both, saw the utter cowardice underneath Lilith's hate. And in that moment she understood, as never before, what an empty, meaningless existence her mother had so eagerly embraced.

  Jess gazed at the terrible creature before her with the eyes of a mother, a wife, a warrior who had faced insurmountable odds, a woman who had faced the unbearable task of lighting a pyre for her own children who had perished in war and famine alike, as well as the incredible joy of giving away her ecstatic daughter on her wedding day, of welcoming a beautiful grandchild into the world, pure and perfect, through the countless lives she had lived.

  And her pity swelled to a vast fury, beholding the source of so much horror and pain that had gripped her people, her land, that had sundered the lives of her sisters millennia before Jess had ever grasped the hilt of her mithril blade.

  Jess roared her challenge then, knowing what must be done. Against insurmountable odds, there was no retreat. She must charge forth, with all fury and hate. A final blitzkrieg, attempting only to land a fatal blow before she fell to her enemy's blade. She could almost imagine Eloquin's blistering counsel as she charged forth, slamming into her mother's charge, even as her mother's blade scraped against her buckler, Jess pressing forth, ramming her suddenly blazing longsword deep into her mother's gut, even as her mother's blade slipped past Jess's now brilliantly shining buckler, expertly snapping low to plunge into Jess's chest, crashing into her solar plexus, terrible Voidal artifact plunging perfectly into the tiny hole presented by that thin band of shining gold given to Jess as a token of love what seemed lifetimes ago, even as Lilith's howling blade cracked into Jess, the tip piercing her chest.

  Jess collapsed, feeling her mother's blade suddenly give, as if it had just punched through her sternum, Jess had no doubt, crashing to her knees even as her blade sunk deep into her mother's entrails, Lilith howling in triumph no less for her wound, her thrust having smashed into her daughter with all her might.

  Jess smiled and coughed a great pink frothy glop of bloody foam as her mother's brilliant mad eyes widened in stupefaction. For her awful blade, forged in the fiery depths of Hell, had snapped.

  A blade Jess understood at once must be lodged in her chest. An agony Jess would accept. Her death, for the land she loved. Lilith's look of disbelief became one of sudden wide-eyed panic, her gaze inexorably caught by the buckler Jess had rammed into her face. A buckler once known as the Mirror of Truth, now flickering brilliantly before a suddenly terrified Lilith's eyes, the demoness desperately twisting her face away, yet pulled by some terrible force to gaze deep into the heart of its blazing luminescence.

  She shrieked and lurched back as Jess, somehow, despite the blow she had felt pierce her chest, fought back the most horrific of agonies, forced herself upright once more, lurching toward her desperately backpedaling mother, even at that moment gazing helplessly upon the mirror before her.

  "Behold the Mirror of Truth, Mother! That which shines light upon the darkest reaches of all men's souls! You cannot deceive it, Lilith, no matter how great your wiles or desperate your pleas. It sees to the heart of all things, even your twisted, cowardly soul!"

  And Lilith began to whimper, to cry out, to scream a hideous deathly wail as her features began to twist and melt in a stomach lurching display, lush cheeks of the temptress bubbling and oozing like wax into a grotesque mask, her features now that of a hideous old crone, face devoured by gangrene, leprosy, and all the filthy scum within her soul. Hair turning deathly white and falling out in sickening bloody clumps, her cry was the bitter cackling wail of a dying plague victim, the grotesqueness of her vile nature searing all pretense away.

  "How?" the hideous creature hissed, teeth falling out in gangrenous clots off rotting gummy flesh, her head now that of living corpse. Yet her terrible blade, tip now broken, was held in a grip fierce with millennia of hate. For all that the limbs were crooked with foulness. For both strength and twisted cruelty were equally a part of her nature. Yet she was too shocked to swing for her daughter's head, gazing in screaming horror at her hideously rotted reflection.

  "Your blood," Jess answered coldly. "Your blood and mine. Smeared across the surface. Burning free all artifice. An unbreakable connection, Mother. A truth you yourself spoke! For just as you have used our connection to burrow through my defenses, to uncover a sacred horn I sealed away a score of lifetimes ago; just as you used wards of our shared heritage, ancient locks of a child's hair, to counter my arts, so I too have used our joined blood to rupture free any and all pretense between us!"

  Jess’s voice echoed endlessly through the ether, having somehow transformed. No longer a bloody whisper, she now spoke with the presence of a commander. The voice of a queen.
“Behold the truth of your own foulness, Lilith! You who would steal the pristine white wings of an angel must now accept the truth of what caused you to Fall!”

  Jess’s smile was as bleak as a winter gale. “Do you remember, Mother? Do you remember what happened to your wings when you crashed to the earth? So black and heavy they were as they pulled you ever deeper into the ground, into the very bowels of Hell itself, till you had at last managed to tear them free!”

  Lilith screamed in furious desperation, remembering at last the hate fueled strength still in her limbs, lashing out to strike her fearlessly approaching daughter who parried the blow effortlessly. Yet for Lilith, it was too late. She was unable to deny that terrible truth, once revealed to her. Stolen wings of such ivory purity, such pristine weightlessness, able to soar to the very heavens themselves, instantly grew black and corroded under the weight of Lilith's corrupt soul. They slammed to the ground with the weight of damnation, tearing into the unyielding surface of the tiny bubble of reality Lilith had formed to torment and devour David while watching the desperate battle below.

  Lilith cried out in sudden agony as the awful weight of her wings pinned her to the ground with such force her spine cracked, body splayed helplessly, face contorted in horrific agony. "Daughter!" The hideous crone croaked, gazing at her implacable daughter with ever growing horror.

  Yet Jess’s gaze was as cold as the Void itself. As pitiless as an angel of battle smiting the forces of Hell could ever be. “By the rights of blood and Primacy, mother, I claim that which has been surrendered to me!” A gaze that seemed to fill Lilith’s horizon like a pair of terrible burning suns peered deeply into Lilith’s own festering, puss-filled sockets. Yet it seemed Lilith could sense enough to moan under the awful weight of her daughter’s gaze, Jess able to taste the terror of her mother's very thoughts at that moment.

  “Do you know what David’s final words were, Mother? He gave himself to me. Body and soul. To me. Unworthy girl he had saved from the vile plan you had hatched for me, eons before I had even been born! To save a girl born to Hell and teach her what it meant to live, to love, the nobility of the spirit, the purity of the soul! He gave himself to me, Mother, and I make Claimance upon that which is mine!”

  Jess’s voice roared, drowning out her mother’s shrieks. “I claim his soul, which you would bind to your will, to dance freely within my garden once more! And I claim his heart, Lilith. His heart, which you so cruelly rent from his chest!”

  “I take back that which you stole!” And Lilith let out one final despairing wail as the angel of battle coldly cracked open her own mother’s ribs. The rotted old bones, riddled with filth and corruption, crumbled to dust at Jess’s touch, even as she carefully plucked forth the beautiful golden heart that beat divinely within the dark maw of the Fallen queen’s maggot-ridden chest.

  Gently, tenderly, she pried David's heart free, even as the ragged shell of her mother, soul long ago worn to barest threads of bitterness and malice, crumbled to ashes and was no more.

  64

  Tears spilling down her cheeks, trembling under an unspeakable burden, Jess stumbled toward the broken corpse that had once been her friend and counselor, her beloved guide through endless lifetimes, her cherished angel. Jess sobbed in grief and bitterest regret as she gazed upon the shattered body of the boy she had loved. Limbs cruelly broken and twisted, chest pried open, Jess could only imagine the suffering that had been endured by her beloved David.

  She smiled as her tears splashed upon her David’s gentle face, the only part of him spared Lilith’s savagery.

  "I brought your heart back to you, my David," she whispered through her tears, only to look down at the glowing orb of light within her hands, finding to her shock and horror that his light, his love, his soul, was entering her now.

  She shook her head in mute denial even as she imagined his gentle spirit gazing warmly down at her. -I give myself to you, Jessica de Calenbry, she who was once Jezabelle of Lilith. Body and Soul. Guard our home well, beloved one.- She could feel his tender words caress her heart, and she screamed.

  Her scream tore through the endless mad war below.

  The nightmare wolf of flame and fury whose terrible presence filled the entire horizon even as he reveled in the savage destruction of an entire armada of sailing fortresses, his jaw snapping shut upon yet another of the vast formation of orbiting citadels, when Jess's cry echoed endlessly across all the planes of Hell, stopping him in his tracks.

  Rage then gave forth a terrible howl upon hearing his mistress’s distress, his cry so terrible it shook through the tainted ether with the force of a supernova, instantly searing away the abyssal chords of magic anchoring in place the vast armada he faced. Thousands upon thousands of armored moons were torn free of their arcane moorings, endless legions of dark wizards struggling desperately to avert catastrophic destruction as their vast fortresses slowly fell to the devastated lands below, even as the ancient Primal turned away from his brutal conquest of the skies, immediately launching himself in inconceivable directions toward his mistress's side.

  Two sapphire eyes also peered forth from the blackness of eternal night consuming endless legions of hellspawn below. Ears of shadow pricked up at the sound of his beloved mistress’s cries of distress, even as he reveled in the choking deaths of entire legions, swallowed up in his infinite shadows, bubbling to nothingness in the utter frigid darkness of a lost universe he himself had helped consign to oblivion, before time had wound its clock once more.

  Leaving behind a swath of utter destruction, Midnight also withdrew from the shattered remnants of the once vast and terrible army, now merely a seething mass of frightened and demoralized hellions whose commander had just fallen.

  Dark gods no longer, cat and hound vanished in fire and shadow to appear instantly by the side of their beloved mistress.

  Glowing with the warmth of David’s heart, a divine grace that did not stop the flow of tears, Jess cried out once more, even as her beloved companions stood by her side, cat and hound gazing solemnly at the tableau before them, Morlekai’s gentle grip upon Jess’s shoulder, all sensing the terrible sacrifice that had occurred.

  After a timeless moment, Jess looked up, gazing deep into the eyes of a grieving Morlekai. "It is time, Jess. Let us end this."

  Jess gave a sad tear-stained nod, somehow not at all surprised to find Morlekai beside her, sparing but a single glance for the endless legions of Hell milling upon the broken plains below, the tortured land even now groaning under the weight of that vast army, their twisted dreams of conquest stopped with the death of their general, possessing no way now to breach the gates between the realms above and those below.

  - I give myself to you, Jessica de Calenbry, she who was once Jezabelle of Lilith. Body and Soul. -

  By the powers of blood and Primacy, by her connection to and conquest of her own dam, she acknowledged that on some horrid level she was connected to that foul, writhing army below, and thus they to her as well, even as she was connected to the beautiful angel who had guided her through so many lives, his very heart beating within her.

  She turned to her ever loyal familiar, gazing at her with an intensity as vast as the deepest reaches of space, the void between the stars. Jess shivered, but held his gaze. Midnight smiled, dipping his head. "Come, my Jezabelle. It is time, I think, for all truths to be revealed. Don't you?"

  Jess nodded, turning her gaze at last to the Mirror of Truth. Where before there had always been a mad swirl of darkness and light, she now saw the face of an imperfect girl. Tainted by wrath and arrogance, graced with the virtues of love and self-sacrifice. Strangely, to her eyes, she looked the same as she had ever seen herself, save for tiny crystalline horns upon her temples, the brilliant six pointed star blazing upon her brow.

  With all her heart, all her power, the very essence of David's being flowing through her, she willed for those hellions below to see what she saw, to gaze into the sacred mirror for themselves.

&nb
sp; “By Rites of Blood and Primacy, I open myself to you. My heart laid bare. My secrets revealed. Feel what I feel. See what I see! By the connection thus forged, I bid you all to gaze upon the truth of your own souls, even as I gaze upon my own!”

  Still coughing up pink, frothy blood, her words were but a furious whisper, yet the terrible power unleashed rocked through the land, endless legions collapsing in horrified stupor, outthrusts of rock crashing down upon the milling masses below. As Jess gazed into the mirror and smiled with such poignant sorrow, she could sense the endless millions of foul, tainted souls gazing through her eyes, skittering across her mind, all admitted access for one terrible moment to the vulnerable girl she had always been, before being forced to glimpse for themselves all the terror that was at the heart of their own tainted souls.

  A truth they could deny no longer.

  The star upon her forehead, so reminiscent of her beloved David, now blazed like an ancient sun, and the endless legions of Hell screamed and died as the divine light roared from her brow to theirs, from her heart to their own, even as the horrific truth of their own foul, decrepit existence seared them from within. A purifying blue light washed through the shattered plains below, caressing the endless broken landscape in a wave of power so brilliant that only ash was left in its wake.

  65

  Blinded by that sea of brilliance, ears still roaring with the fury of an entire realm being consumed by divine light, it was several breathless moments, or perhaps an eternity passing in the wink of an eye, before Jess realized the only sound she heard was the gentle rustle of trees, the babbling of a tiny brook. She smelled the crisp scents of pine and the gentle fragrance of apple blossoms. So too, ever clearer, she heard the gentle sounds of children at play.