Toren Daen
I fell from the sky, my consciousness flitting in and out. The wind whipped past my face as the temple beneath rushed up to meet me.
Toren! A melodic, distant voice thundered across my mind. Toren, do not let yourself fall! Brace yourself!
I groaned, blinking my eyes open.
I inhaled sharply in fear as I thrust my left hand out, calling on my telekinetic emblem. I fell through one of the holes in the roof, the pews rising to meet me.
It sputtered once, pushing against the ground in a flare of white. My arms wrenched painfully as the pushback impacted, my momentum slowing for a spurt. Then my core gave out, backlash wracking every inch of my body.
I smashed into the floor, the cold, cold earth unwelcoming of my form. I felt as my broken ribs creaked and seized. I spasmed on the stone, coughing up blood. My consciousness threatened to mist away, only the forceful, weak light of Aurora's mind near my own keeping me awake.
Mardeth's body cracked against the edges of one of the holes in the roof, then splatted wetly against the ground not far from me. Something clinked against the floor not a moment later.
Brahmos' onyx horn–streaked through with reddish veins–rolled along the moonlit floor.
For a moment, everything was still in the temple. My ragged, wet breathing was all I could hear, the mosaic of the basilisk in human form near the altar watching us with outstretched arms. The mortals at its feet groveled in subjugation, bowing their backs and prostrating themselves in tiny tiles of terror. The horns along the side of its head seemed to reject the light, casting everything in deeper darkness.
And those scarlet eyes peered directly into my soul. Measuring me; judging me unworthy.
I trembled, wanting nothing more than to curl into a ball and let the darkness take me. Every inhale caused sharp, wretched pain to streak across my body. It was as if a dozen nails were piercing my nerves over and over, punishing my overuse of magic.
Then Mardeth's body began to shift. His hands had been severed at the wrists, and no longer did he heal. He growled as his dark green skin shifted slightly, some of his original gray coloring returning. Liquid too green to be blood dribbled from his lips.
No, I thought, trying to force myself to move. Mardeth was shifting, muttering incoherently as he moved. No, he's not dead yet! I can't let him get back up!
But no matter how I commanded my limbs to move, they disobeyed their master. The abuse I'd put them through was showing its mark. I demanded and surged, trying with all my might to move.
Nothing happened. I simply spasmed on the floor as Mardeth slowly forced a foot underneath him, his wild eyes looking around. One milky white, still blind as ever, the other alight with fire.
They settled on me. Pure, unadulterated fury surged through his eyes as he glared at me.
"Toren Daen," he growled, stumbling to the side as he finally stood. He rocked forward, a tendril of solid green sludge slowly growing from the cauterized stump of his right hand. It wrapped around Brahmos' horn on the ground, the tentacle clutching it like an ice pick as he slowly hobbled closer to me. "I'll kill you for what you took from me," he ground out, bracing himself against the pews by our side.
I couldn't move as the vicar slowly hobbled toward me, murder wrought across his broken features. He moved painfully slow, as if the very shadows of his robes were trying to haul him down to hell. But still, he pushed on, and I could not move.
Until I felt solid hands underneath my arms, pulling me upward. I groaned, leaning into the action. Aurora's shade helped pull me to my feet, bracing me as I wobbled under legs that felt as if they'd just held up the sky.
And Mardeth's twisted visage finally approached, his eyes burning with maddened fury.
I didn't say anything. I just snarled bestially as Mardeth swung the horn downward like a dagger, its tip intent on my heart.
I barely sidestepped, the edge tearing a bloody line across my chest as I avoided the tip. Lady Dawn's feathering touch guided me as I lashed out with a weak hook, my knuckles crashing against the vicar's stomach.
I felt it–the gritty sensation of flesh grinding against flesh. The meat of Mardeth's stomach caved from my pathetic blow, but the vicar felt it despite the weakness behind my strike.
And I could almost hear it. The blow rang like a hangman's bell into the dread silence of high noon through my mind. The song of it called to me; cemented my purpose. All around me, the ghosts of those lost in the plague spectated the coming execution.
Mardeth stumbled back, no bond present to help him brace against the wear of time and fighting. I took a step forward, feeling Aurora's steadying hands along my shoulders. My knees shook with each footfall, but my bond's guiding touch ensured I did not fall. I would not fall.
The Vicar of Plague struck at me with a wild sideways stab, hoping to drive the horn into my head. I saw the flash of black and red coming, allowing my knees to buckle for the barest instant.
It passed cleanly over my head. Aurora's sturdy grasp anchored under my arms, pulling upward in turn as I threw an uppercut with my right hand.
With the combined surge of momentum, my fist connected cleanly with the vicar's jaw, smashing what teeth he had remaining together in an audible crack. He stumbled backward several steps, falling over as his tendril of acid dissipated. Brahmos' horn clattered to the ground, glinting in the moonlight that streamed through the acid-carved ceiling.
The basilisk mosaic behind Mardeth dared me. Those red eyes sneered in arrogance, belittling everything I was.
That executioner's bell rang once more in my mind. Two strokes.
I knelt on trembling legs, picking up the horn. Blood streamed down my chest where Mardeth had scored a cut, matching the barest flash of red on the sharp tip of the horn. The vicar struggled to his feet, but when he met my eyes, no longer was it simple fury burning there.
I inhaled, feeling my ribs stab sharply as I breathed in the barest intent in the air. I tasted the fear. The raw terror that suffused Mardeth's mind, all at once.
In this moment, he was so, so human. As I tasted his fear–like the flapping wings of a million poisonous insects digging into my mind–I almost pitied him. I could almost imagine the slum boy he used to be, fighting and scrounging for scraps every day as he lamented his weakness. I'd seen a hundred just like him in East Fiachra as they raged against the hunger pains. As they struggled not to give in to the temptation of blithe.
I'd seen broken things like him before. Broken people.
But Mardeth was no human. Because animals could feel fear, too. Prey could cower and tremble in the presence of a hunter.
He knows his mortality at last, my bond's voice feathered across my ear. I could almost sense her spirit standing directly behind me, her arms supporting mine in this last crusade. For so long this creature has wrought pain. It has always claimed to know pain. But only now does it fear what is beyond that pain.
I gripped Brahmos' horn in my hand, the contours seeming to settle perfectly in a reverse grip. The horn was long and straight like a railroad spike.
Perfect for driving into flesh.
"All you've ever done is take," I growled out, banishing the image of a whimpering slum rat as I stalked forward. In defiance of both Mardeth and the looming mosaic behind him. "Everywhere you touch, you take and take and take. You don't care what you leave behind. Who you leave behind," I hissed. Was I speaking just to him, or to the basilisk as well?
Mardeth stumbled backward, a crazed cast to his mottled face. His single misty eye darted around wildly, like that of an animal trapped in a cage. He lashed out with his stumps of forearms, trying to punch me as sputtering bits of acid appeared over the cauterized wounds.
I slipped one, slamming a curled fist into Mardeth's ribs. His mottled, blithe-ridden flesh gave under the weight of my blow. I felt one of his ribs crack before I wove around another swipe of his putrid, rotting arms, popping the vicar in the jaw with a solid cross. My enemy tumbled backward, tripping onto his back as his ankles hit the stairs of the altar.
A third tolling of the sentencing gong. A fourth.
Mardeth grunted, turning himself over and looking up at the mosaic that loomed over us all. Just like the many prostrating worshippers at the basilisk's feet, so too did the wretched priest bow in submission. Pleading with all he was worth for divine intervention.
Its eyes judged him just as worthless as they did me.
Mardeth stumbled up the steps as I slowly stalked forward, the burning feeling of my body breaking down forgotten as I used Aurora's bond as an anchor. The vicar tripped over the altar, moving away from me until he finally hit the mosaic tiles.
He looked up at the Vritra's form, a silent, desperate pleading in his eyes. "Please," he burbled, black liquid streaming from his lips. "Please!"
It seems that, in the end, the man of the cloth finally finds a mote of faith, Aurora mused darkly as I approached like a specter.
"Your gods won't save you," I said, my voice wet and pained. I held Brahmos' horn close, its deadly point poised to strike as the vicar seemed to realize he had nowhere to go. "They would have never saved you. They are not here. They were never here. This is an empty tomb, and even in their place of power, I am your judge."
He backed against the wall, the uncaring, apathetic portrait of one of his gods staring down. Mardeth called out in a rabid cry, lunging at me one final time.
I checked his strike against my left forearm, my bond bracing my block further. Then I drove my right hand forward.
The horn in my hand sank deeply into Mardeth's chest as he lurched, his back hitting the wall. He gasped as rotten, black blood spurted from between his robes.
I took another step forward, slamming my forearm against the vicar's wretched throat. I held him there, looking into his terrified eyes. I read it there. The utter horror. The questioning, rabid fear. And, finally, I slammed a fist into the spike over his heart like a hammer over a nail. Like the sentencing gavel of a judge over wood.
And then the fifth toll of the hangman's bell reverberated through the very temple; through my very soul. And when I slammed my fist into the horn once more; twice more, driving it deeper and further through the vicar's broken form, no bells rang. Because finality had already been reached.
Black blood splattered over the Vritra mosaic as the tip of the horn erupted from Mardeth's back, sinking into the wall. I saw the terror in Mardeth's eyes as the deed was done, his form pinned to the stone like a fly to a dartboard. His body–awakened to Vritra blood–was powerful enough to survive even this for the barest of times. But he was destined to die. His song was over.
"All you have ever done is take. It's time someone took back from you," I snarled, my eyes boring into Mardeth's blackened soul. His heartfire danced as it slowed. But for the first time–as I recognized the vicar for the prey he was–I saw something new in his soultether.
I grasped the base of the horn, snarling as I called on my lifeforce one final time.
Not to heal myself, though I desperately needed to. Not to sympathize with a crowd, as I'd done with my music. Not to create a conduit for my telekinetic shroud. No. I needed it for something deeper.
I called on the reserves of my lifespan, a long tendril of heartfire snaking along my hands and through the horn like a perfect focus. It snaked and crawled forward like a tide of blood; like a hawk as it hones in on a rabbit. The vein of lifeforce wrapped around Mardeth's heart, encasing it in chains of aether.
I could never sympathize with this monster. I could never sway his blackened soul with my intent-based music, or heal him in turn. He wasn't even human.
And so, instead of sympathizing, I dominated. I snarled as my sweaty, blood-caked palms clenched around Brahmos' horn. The vicar's heartfire–already wavering and weak from near death–collapsed under the demand of my dawnlight dominion.
I was of the phoenix and the djinn. Mine was to create and nurture; push toward a better future. My blood encouraged growth and healing. The vicar's was to simply decay and break all it touched, weathering it under a hateful storm.
But that storm relented under my will.
Slowly, his aether changed its dark tune, seeping along my thread of lifeforce as I drew it from his very blood. After all, heartfire was the aether of the body. And was it not natural for a predator to consume their prey, taking nutrients from them to continue their existence? It was a cycle like any other. A flow of blood and a waltz of brutality, where only the leader of the dance emerged.
The horn–already barely held together as it was drained entirely of mana–began to change as this energy flowed through it. The black, onyx sheen flaked away, a burning white not unlike my own plasma taking its place. The reddish veins that coursed along its rigid structure were slowly overwhelmed as lifeforce threaded through them, the color of a waning dawn slowly coursing back toward me.
"Heartfire is what tethers the soul to the body," I said, feeling as Mardeth's personal aether–dominated and forced to become mine as my chains of lifeforce enwrapped his heart–slowly flooded into my system. I felt a rejuvenating wave as my wounds began to slowly heal over, the vicar's body shriveling as if dehydrating. "Without it, you can't even have a vessel. Your soul will drift away, unanchored."
I chuckled weakly, feeling as my ribs reknit themselves. I pushed Brahmos' horn–now colored a brilliant white with veins of orange and purple–deeper into Mardeth's body. I savored the ease with which it sank further, strength returning to my muscles as my wounds washed away.
All the while, I looked the vicar in the eye, basking in the utter terror that he felt. His limbs had struggled weakly before, crashing against my body in a vain attempt to stop me from draining him of life. But as the slow draw of his lifespan continued, his thrashing weakened. "This is for all the people you've hurt, Mardeth," I said, leaning closer so that my breath kissed his ear. "Every bit of life I take from you, I'll give back to those you've broken. I'll heal over every bit of damage you've caused. Children will laugh in the dead halls of the broken Doctrination. People will sing songs of joy long in the future as they continue their lives, unburdened by your rot. The power I take from you will only make this world brighter–and you will only be a footnote in the history of this world."
Somehow, the terror in Mardeth's eyes sank into something even deeper. I continued to siphon his heartfire from his chest, the blackened energy becoming my own every second that time went on.
"No," he burbled. "No, this pain… I'll use it! I'll–"
"Pain isn't the path to power, Mardeth," I said, almost soothingly. Like I was speaking to a confused child, unaware of the dangers of thrusting their hands into the fire. I could feel Aurora's touch. As my lifeforce connected to Mardeth's on that pulling stream, I saw the withering vicar's eyes widen, staring in terror at the phantom behind. Through this draining link, he saw the angel at my shoulder. That kept me strong. And he trembled.
"You die because you reject community," I whispered. Mardeth's blank eye stared in terror as Lady Dawn held me sturdily, her burning orbs seeming to swallow Mardeth's entire soul. "Because you deny every bit of strength that comes from working with those beside you. I am here because of all those that hold my shoulders. That stood by me 'round the cookfires. That lifted me when I fell, and held me when I wept. You denied that when you rejected your origins, Mardeth. You denied life."
I could almost sense it. The moment his withered heartfire frayed too much to keep his soul bound to this mortal plane. As the light of life drained from his eyes, I could almost imagine the grasping claws of fiery demons dragging his soul to hell beneath my feet.
And finally, there was nothing left to take. Mardeth's twisted physique had become a shriveled husk, his already lanky body shrinking inward as if I had taken every bit of moisture from his corpse. His face was twisted in an eternal mask of fear and despair.
My hand stayed wrapped around the horn that staked the vicar to the mosaic behind us, the Vritra looking down impassively from above.
I took a shaky step back, still feeling the effects of backlash as they coursed through my mana channels. My body throbbed, a deep ache pervading me that not even my heartfire could wash away. My reserves had been nearly entirely refilled from the slow, methodic draw I'd performed on Mardeth, but that didn't mean I was entirely fit once more.
It is done, Aurora said, a quiet weariness in her tone.
No, I thought back shakily, fighting to stay conscious as backlash threatened to claim me once more. My core throbbed, and something in my heart ached from my extensive use of healing throughout the day. I'd probably lost a decade of my life from how I'd drained the vicar. No, I still need… Need to heal this city. Need to put out all the fires he started. They need me.
My bond was about to respond before we felt a sudden power thrum from across the city. An expansive, yawning blackness, so much more powerful than Mardeth ever was. I froze, my exhausted mind trying to think of what to do as the force rocketed toward the temple.
The power felt… familiar somehow. I stumbled forward, resting my forearms against the altar as I tried to think of what to do.
But my thoughts were foggy; indistinct. Was this a Sovereign, finally sent to see the horrible uproar that had occurred? Or had Aurora finally been discovered? I needed to run. To hide, didn't I?
I tried to move, but my body decided to finally give out for good, locking up as I tried to shift. There were some things I couldn't heal.
Toren, Aurora said, about to say something. I felt her hands brace under my arms once again, prepared to try and move me once more.
And then the power reached us, descending from the ceiling above like a leashed typhoon.
Moonlight glimmered across the figure's long, pearlescent hair, her slim body blocking out the silver streak of light that had once illuminated the Vritra mosaic. Twin onyx horns thrust from their forehead like an impala's, seeming like a crown as they adorned skin the color of purest alabaster. She was draped in a dark fur mantle, a battledress that glittered with flashing, purple highlights along the trim savoring the darkness in the temple like fine wine.
The woman held her delicate hands crossed conservatively over her stomach, the light from above split by her hair. She held a dreadful beauty to the curves of her features, like the grace and dignity of an unsheathed sword. Everything about her was sharp and elegant in a way that seemed almost impossible. The aura that radiated from the moon-blessed woman was as vast as a sea, kept in check by a simple force of will. It wasn't like Mardeth's slow, smothering intent as it dithered poison in your ear.
No, this was a storm held back at will. A hurricane held still in time.
I'd heard of this woman by description. I'd even seen an artist's rendition in several of the books I'd read. And I'd seen how she'd planned and moved against the High Sovereign for the betterment of Alacrya in the marching chapters of a novel from another world. But Seris Vritra's domineering presence wrenched the breath from my lungs, my core aching further in response. She slowly hovered down, her troubled eyes turning to inspect the decimated temple.
And then they settled on me, and I felt my heart lurch. Those onyx eyes burned into my soul.
All thoughts of what I'd read fled my mind. Even my knowledge of The Beginning After the End vanished like a puff of smoke as her pupils met mine, a shudder unrelated to her power threading across my limbs.
She might've looked different. Might be projecting a power that made my bones shake and my body tremble in instinctual fear. But I'd stared deep into those eyes, seeing something mirrored in them not a full day past. I'd seen their longing as they drank in the night sky, far-off stars and distant mountains casting them in quiet sorrow. My own eyes had swum in those depths, nearly drowned in them.
For a heartbeat, the world seemed to hold its breath as we stared at each other, a strange reflection of the moment we'd shared not long ago. As we lamented the stars and our petty place in the wider cosmos.
Until finally, I wrenched the word–the question–from my soul.
"Renea?"