RE: Monarch
Author: Eligos
Chapter 279: Kholis XXIV
There were bad days. And there were worse days.
And above them all, gilded in piss at on the summiting trash tower of shit and misery,
was that fucking day.
I can't bring myself to be poetic about it. Even the thought makes me nauseous. Parts of it stick with me so vividly it's almost like I never left. The stench of the bog as I crouched at the edge of its abscess, hand clamped over my mouth. Horrible, gaping plants riddled with holes that reeked of fetid meat.
The sound of Maya crying quietly behind me, stifling her sorrow.
It's tempting to just give the strictest overview of what happened. Relay it all with the coldness of a field report written by a military officer who's survived too much bloodshed. But that would not do the tale justice. Too much that occurred further down the line directly resulted from what happened that day.
Much of the search is lost to me, even now.
I remember we made remarkably good time despite the poor visibility. I remember being pleased with our progress, albeit worried about how little time remained until nightfall. Some residents suggested continuing the search with portable mana lamps after sunset. But even if this was some distant branch of the Everwood, it was still a magical forest. And I had no intention of putting these volunteers in the sort of danger that had almost killed me as a child, long ago.
As soon as we caught scent of a bog, we passed word along.
They appear smaller than they actually are—the bogs—because the abundance of moss and other plants that thrive in moist environments weave together into a free-floating mat that passes convincingly for solid forest floor. Imagine being covered in a net and cast into water. How difficult it would be to free yourself. Now consider what would happen if that water was frigid year round, and there were a few arm spans of muck waiting in its depths to seize any boot that comes in reach.
You just take a wrong step. And then you die.
There is no terrain more treacherous or hateful.
I remember my boots sinking a finger's width into the mud. Observing them carefully, in case the shelf I was standing on collapsed.
"Back in town." I cleared my throat, my mind numb. "Must have breathed in some fumes coming off the mana. Because I saw someone who wasn't there."
"Cairn." Maya sobbed, angrily striking tears from her cheeks.
"There was a little girl that spoke in riddles. She was… trying to warn me. Couldn't make sense out of anything she said. Thing is, I think I've seen her before. Back in Whitefall. She tried to warn me back then, too. For some reason I just… forgot her."
"Ni'lend, I need you here with me."
"Hm?" I looked out towards the silhouette at the center of the bog. The man was face down, his fine clothing soaked through and wrinkled. I could see where the treacherous ground had given way, a wide area of insect-infested water clear of its original covering that was now torn asunder around the body. He'd managed to free himself from the moss net, but hypothermia had set in quickly. The grayish blue nails of his floating hand stood out against the murky water, visible even from here. Whoever he was, he'd been dead for hours. "That's not him."
Still, I couldn't bring myself to tear my eyes away.
Arms slipped beneath mine and wrapped around my waist. I felt Maya behind me, pressing her face into my shoulder.
"It's not him. It can't be him." I insisted.
"Are you sure the girl was a hallucination?"
I considered it again, then nodded. "Disappeared without a trace. There one moment, gone the next." Something she said, the statement that had disturbed me the most, echoed in my mind. "She said the iconoclast of the heavens was growing weaker."
Behind me, I felt Maya stiffen. "Those were her exact words?"
"Yes."
She released me, the sensation of heat and comfort distancing as she took three sloshing footsteps away from the swamp.
In ordinary circumstances it would probably be harder to talk about this. Right now, it seemed like the most important thing in the world. Because it distracted from the man in the swamp. I nodded slowly. Iconoclast didn't exactly roll off the tongue. I had a feeling if I'd read such a word somewhere or learned its meaning, I would have remembered it, purely on the basis of how cumbersome it was. Icon was pleasant enough to speak and had mostly religious connotations. The second part, or suffix, sounded like a cross between a drunkenly slurred insult and something a workman might scrape from the bottom of a ship.
"Don't like it much," I said.
"Which part?" Maya asked stoically. The tears and emotion that had surged out of her quieted just as quickly. Now she just looked ill. "The fact that the countryside is currently tearing itself apart, or that we found a corpse that matches a dear friend's likeness drowned in this horrible place?"
I turned, grimacing at the fresh wave of stench that crept back into my awareness as soon as I took a step. I looked back at her, down to the fists clenched at her side. "Any of it. It's not him."
Dimly, somewhere in the inner reaches of my mind, I knew what was happening. The same thing that always happened when circumstances grew dire.
The leaps and corkscrews my mind would go through to dredge up hope, no matter how small.
There was a rustling in the trees above. I looked up, almost hoping for an interruption. Anything. The odd observer. An enemy to fight. But there were only a half dozen birds aloft on black wings, catapulting themselves up towards the darkening sky, mindless of the thunder, in search of safety.
I looked down to Maya, and forced a smile. "Though I suppose we should confirm that?"
"Yes." Her voice was little more than a whisper.
I stepped onto the bog. Mana still came easily—though oddly, not quite as freely as before—and I stepped out onto the fetid water, feeling the surface crystallize and grow frigid beneath my boots as the path forged before me. The ice crackled with each step, a brittle sound that echoed across the silent bog. Bog ice had more traction than normal ice. Once I was adjacent to the body, I weaved mana into the ice below, fastening the soles of one boot to the surface for traction.
Gently, I bent down and pulled him onto the ice shelf, then lifted him into my arms. I didn't look at his face.
But I couldn't miss the way Maya broke, halfway back. She peered at the man's face, cold, almost analytical. Then her mouth twisted in misery, and her shaking hands went to her chest, as though she couldn't contain what welled there.
"No. Lucius,
." The words ripped from her throat in a muted wail.
I set him down a few spans away from the bog.
"Oh, no." Maya repeated, taking a few small steps forward.
It was Lucius. His skin was pale, shrunken. Eyes cloudy and sightless. Limbs swollen and stiff from death. But everything from his still-open eyes to the set of his mouth was right. The clothes and hair matched.
"I can fix it."
"How?" Maya looked up at me, not daring to hope.
"The flame of absolution," I murmured. "I'll remake him."
"You cannot raise the dead, Cairn." Her answer came back quickly. Almost angrily.
My attention returned to the body. In some ways, Maya was right. I couldn't have done it for Lillian. The years were too many, the decay too extensive. There simply wasn't enough of her left to recreate. But Lucius had been alive a matter of hours ago. Everything that made him himself was still there, preserved by the chilled waters of the wretched bog.
"Our bodies are delicate, sensitive things. It will fail unless you get every detail perfectly. Even if you do, his soul is gone."
"Well, considering how the gods are dead and the afterlife is forfeit, is it not unreasonable to consider that maybe his soul lingers nearby? And that perhaps, upon being presented with an identical, functional vessel to the failing one it just fled, it might divest the pointless eternity and
"
"It
unreasonable. That's not how any of this works."
"I need to try." I knelt beside the body and waited, half-expecting her to stop me. When she didn't, I called the spark. It was surprisingly difficult, and for some odd reason my mana pool felt smaller than before. Attaining the tranquility necessary to access the third-stage was harder as well. But I'd practiced this. Possibly more than I'd practiced anything else in my life.
It was all for this moment.
I closed my eyes and pictured how Lucius had looked. It was difficult, because I remembered him as a child more than an adult. That'd been my first impression, and it had stuck.
Thankfully, the recent memories were vivid and gave me plenty to draw from.
I brought the previous night to mind. When we'd taken a break from emancipating the cask, and he'd stepped into the street with a knowing smile, his arms wide.
Subconsciously, I whispered my reply. "So you're saying it's worth it."
With the image set firmly in my mind, I set to it, working from his legs upward. He had a sort of swagger to his gait that was always there, the sort of thing that was likely a person making the best of an injury. Likely the result of a knee injury that had healed poorly, which I found and preserved. With each pass of the spark, the wrinkling, waterlogged gray and blue skin that covered him was replaced with pink, healthy flesh. I made sure his scowling, boyish visage remained intact.
The organs were the most difficult part. His brain was intact, as was his heart. For the most part, I simply remade them as they were. But his lungs were barely recognizable from the things I'd studied in diagrams. I rebuilt his left lung first, then his right. Seared the foul fluid from them.
His stomach was a mess.
Dimly, I was aware that Maya was kneeling across from me, near his head. "If you get this wrong, and by some miracle it does work, he will be in terrible pain."
"Yes."
"Don't get it wrong."
I paused as I felt her healing magic enter Lucius's body, uncertain of her intentions. And then, suddenly, rather than just observing, I felt it guiding me, pointing out obstructions, minor mistakes that could easily metastasize into more serious conditions over a mortal lifetime. We fell into a rhythm of building, correcting, and problem solving, and the process moved far faster. Through the numbness, I felt a ray of hope. Because I'd expected something more to go wrong. To find something I couldn't fix, a problem that was beyond me.
But Lucius was looking more and more like a person who had simply fallen asleep.
Once I finished, the sky was darker than before. There was perhaps a half hour to nightfall. Maybe less.
Green tendrils of healing magic encircled Lucius's chest. Maya stared down at him, not daring to hope. "Shall I begin?"
"Whenever you're ready." I sat on my knees, paying no attention to how my back ached, never taking my eyes from Lucius's tranquil expression.
The tendrils tightened. Just once, then in rhythm, staggered beats repeating with spaces in between. Maya's expression was a mask of focus as she kept it, and I watched Lucius for any change, any hint of movement.
My heart seized as his eyes opened. He seemed disoriented, but they locked onto me. And he breathed a long rattling breath.
I put my hand on his forehead, barely holding it together. "Welcome back, old friend."
"… Why… the long faces?"
I heard him say it. Though his lips remained unmoving. I heard his voice clear as day.
The second breath never came.
Rage coursed through me. I quenched it, shoving it back down. "It's okay. We got it wrong."
"Cairn."
"There was a mistake. Something wrong with his heart maybe, something we missed." I looked up at her, my vision suddenly watery and blurred. "We'll need to move him back to the city. Somewhere more sterile."
"You fixed him." Maya said, barely audible. "Everything is in the right place. This is my area of expertise, Ni'lend. I'm not sure how you got it so perfectly, but you did."
"Diagrams, from libraries in the sanctum—" I shook my head, realizing that didn't matter right now. "No. He breathed. We both saw it. His eyes opened."
"Because I stimulated his heart. His muscles and reflexes are still intact. The shell of his form is following the patterns he held in life. But his soul is gone."
I stared at her. Because the words didn't make sense to me. They should have. Looking back, everything she was saying was obvious and reasonable. But I couldn't accept it.
Maya reached out towards his face gently and closed Lucius's eyes.
Somehow that made it real.
The anger returned. A seething eel of fury gnawing its way out of me from the inside. If Lucius was dead, Millicent was as well. There was no other explanation. She wouldn't have left him there in the bog. She would have tried to retrieve him, and there would have been evidence of the attempt. Vines used as rope, imprints of a woman's shoes around the perimeter where she'd walked in panic, trying to figure out the best angle to retrieve him.
But there was only one set of footprints leading up to the bog. Which meant they'd been separated before Lucius had fallen in.
I held my hand skyward, and summoned a column of violet flame, roaring as I poured mana into the spell, my roar silenced by the fire's greater voice.
Silent tears rolled down her face as Maya detached a rolled-up blanket from her pack and gathered Lucius up in it.
He was so fucking small.
The mana drain from sending the signal left me feeling empty, raw. Somewhere in the back of my mind, it occurred to me that the regeneration had altered again, now far slower than it should have been. But I couldn't bring myself to care.
What did it matter, anymore?
Luther was first to arrive. We heard him a ways off, crashing through the brush. He arrived red-faced and strewn with leaves, breath slowing as he panned the scene, looking between the two of us, to the melting bridge of ice that still persisted in the bog, and finally to the figure wreathed in a blanket. "Shit. Is that the Duke or Duchess?"
"Duke." Someone said. It might have been me.
"Shit." Luther repeated, mouth turning downward. There were voices behind him, probably the Kholis folk drawing closer. He looked between the two of us. "Feel like an ass for even asking this right now, but did the two of you manage to get to the vantage before you… found him?" When we both shook our heads, Luther frowned. "Okay. I think we need to call off the search. It's already dark, and there was a close call with a dire wolf already. We'll search the forest for Lady Timbermour in the morning."
"If morning comes," I murmured, too quietly for anyone to hear.
"Was anyone hurt?" Maya asked, gripping her arm behind her back.
"No. Wouldn't be much of a Valen if I balked at an oversized dog. The two of you should see the villagers back to shelter. I'll scout the perimeter."
"It's better if we do." Maya stated tersely, leaving no room for argument.
"Not sure that's a great idea. He doesn't look so good." Luther lowered his voice and tilted his head toward me.
"
" Maya growled, real threat in her voice.
"I need to hear it from him." Luther crossed his arms and watched me, his blue eyes a silent question.
Even though I felt wretched, I reached for the voice of the prince, and found it with a degree of struggle. "I'm alright, Uncle. Lucius was dear to both of us. It's difficult to lose him."
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"For what it's worth, I'm sorry." Luther shook his head, still watching me with an assessing eye. "It will only grow more dangerous out here as evening dawns. And neither of you are in armor."
"Together, we're more dangerous than any beast that might prey upon us," I said, the words empty bravado. "See the town to safety. We'll bring back news of the scale."
/////
Traversing any forest at night was slow going, even with torches. The closely held lighting meant long shadows, and the terrain was often more treacherous than it appeared.
Like fucking bogs, for example.
"Tell me what the girl said to you again?" Maya asked.
"The iconoclast of the heavens grows weaker." I repeated, not particularly attentive to the conversation, focusing on my footing as we worked our way up a sudden incline. Maya had been doing her best to distract me since we'd departed the bog.
Having difficulty focusing, I changed the topic. "I'm not sure what to do here."
"Speak your mind, Ni'lend."
"I'm not… supposed to use my power to save a single person. That has been made utterly clear to me. It is a limited resource. I need to conserve it, otherwise I risk coming up short during Ragnarok. If I were to funnel mana through the inscription on my chest, there's no way of knowing how far back I'd go. The black beast will, generally, place me back far enough to—eventually—handle whatever problem
my death. Assuming it's a problem he considers 'worthy' of resolution." I mused aloud, Lucius's pale visage never far from my thoughts.
"And if he considers it unworthy, there is a chance he may punish you by placing the point you regain consciousness somewhere difficult. Even potentially to a point
Lucius died."
"He shouldn't." I shot a glance skyward. "After the sanctum, we reached an accord. But he
."
I didn't state the obvious. It didn't need to be said.
"Well. I think no matter what happens, we need a better handle on the situation." Maya said, walking a ways ahead of me. "We have no idea what triggered it or who, nor a sense of the scale. If it's localized to the area around Kholis, Lucius may end up being critical in managing the disaster at hand."
Her voice was logical. Matter of fact. If I didn't know her better, I might have gotten the impression she was entirely unaffected by the broader implications. But she still wouldn't look at me.
My suspicion was confirmed when Maya picked up the pace, jogging the rest of the way to the summit. I watched for her reaction, a little curious. Kholis was so isolated from the outside world it was difficult to get a sense of anything else nearby. It was hard to say without looking, but there was a good chance we'd be able to see Whitefall from there—
Any thought faded as Maya turned back.
I'll never forget the way she looked. There was something ageless in her expression, a sorrow so fathomless I'd never seen its like. The wind swept her hair over her trembling mouth, and when it faded, a small smile was fixed there. Her hands were fists at her side, and her tail was wrapped tightly around her wrist.
My legs surged forward before it even occurred to me to run, carrying me to her.
She caught me as I arrived, burying her face in my shoulder.
"It's going to be okay."
But I barely heard the whisper.
Because the world was on fire.
Wide swathes of blue flame tore through the landscape in an unnatural wave, rolling over shuddering trees and leaving only blackened skeletons in their wake. Distant blue lights across the landscape marked the same sort of chasms that had opened in Kholis, gaping wounds in the earth itself. Mana, in its purest form, was a catalyst. Waves of fire battered the landscape, and had been doing so for some time.
"We need to get back to Kholis. Warn them of the threat."
She shook her head minutely.
"There's still time—" The words died in my throat as I turned to the east. From this distance, the wave almost appeared to be moving slowly, a corona of blue fire sweeping over the river, then the buildings, then the section of town that contained Lucius's manor. "The townsfolk. My uncle."
"What does it look like to you?" Maya asked. She sounded uncertain, like she wanted me to confirm it.
"Ragnarok," I answered. The coloring was wrong. It was healthy blue mana, rather than red. But other than that, the scale and size of the devastation was nearly identical to my hazy memory of the iterations that came before. "The end of the world. It's over."
"We're still here."
Almost subconsciously, I began to run mana through the inscription on my chest. My earlier concerns were absent merit. There was no reason to drag this out. I felt a quick movement, then a sharp pain.
"Ouch." I grunted, looking down at the V of my collar in confusion. There was a jagged cut around a finger span, directly intersecting the inscription on my chest. Immediately, I could feel the magic fading, the spell fizzling to nothing. "What—Maya—It's clearly
"
Maya looked at the ground, tail still wrapped tightly around her wrist. "I'm not ready to go yet."
It hit me like a hammer, and whatever I'd been about to say died in my throat. When I spoke again, my voice trembled. "You'll still be there when I return."
Maya smiled and shook her head. "No.
be there. The person I used to be. The one who wasn't sure if she could fully place her trust in you. The one with doubts. You'll need to…" She paused to wipe her eyes. "Share all this with her. Either let her into your mind, or tell her everything. What we did every day. Every detail. The dreams and whispers we shared."
My throat tightened. "I will."
The weight of it settled over us slowly. What we'd known from the moment we found Lucius's corpse. Whatever'd gone wrong here would take more than three days to fix. We would lose this time. It wasn't as if the concept had never occurred. To some extent, we'd always known this could happen.
When she'd gathered herself, she met my gaze, the same ageless quality in her stare. "Come with me."
I followed, feeling the hollow ache of what I'd already lost, and the phantom pain of what had not yet happened. I wasn't sure where we were going. Then again, it hardly mattered. Maya wanted more time, and I'd give her as much as I was able.
If that meant wandering around the forest until the fire took us, that was fine by me.
She seemed to be searching for something, which was a little odd, as I was fairly certain neither of us had been in this section of forest before today.
"If you told me what you were looking for, I might be able to help you find it," I said after a time.
Maya scowled, still panning the forest as we retraced our earlier steps. "I thought I saw a clearing."
"There!" She tugged my arm, beckoning me onward. There was a line of weeping willow trees, their long hanging leaves forming an almost protective curtain. And once Maya pulled the curtain back, the sight took my breath away. Silver-green grass spanned an expanse in the center. The open air danced with golden motes as fireflies darted through the air. Their yellow lights radiated off white flowers that seemed to glow with a luminescence of their own, and, perhaps because of the canopy of willow trees, the smoke was less cloying there, though the air was warm.
Shortly after, I realized whatever this place was; it wasn't naturally occurring. The line of willow trees had been planted in an obvious circle, one planted perfectly in the center. Leaned against it and uneven, one end partially sunk into the ground, was an ancient white shrine of marbled stone. The god—or goddess, it was difficult to tell—had a stoic expression, though the tilting gave them a distinctly quizzical impression, as if they were asking why we'd chosen the end of the world to come here.
"Do you recognize him?" I asked.
Maya shook her head. "Who is he?"
"No idea. Perhaps part of the old Pantheon. But I get the feeling this is his shrine, and we're the first visitors to this place in a very long time." I looked back at her curiously. "Should we make an offering?"
"It would only be proper, given what we intend."
"Right." I looked between the shrine and my companion, uncertain. "And what are we doing, exactly?"
She smiled sheepishly, shifting on her feet as she looked away. "Saying our vows."
The knife that'd been firmly planted in my guts since the bog twisted deeper.
Her face fell. "You don't want to?"
"I do." I closed my eyes. "Gods, of course I do. It's just—mine aren't very suitable for the occasion."
"Neither are mine. I wish to speak them, regardless."
"Okay. I'll… make the offering."
With shaking hands, I opened my satchel and selected a few rare apothecary bits and pieces that would burn pleasantly, arranging them in the brazier, taking longer than strictly necessary while I tried to revise the vows I'd already come up with. But my mind was too scattered, too numb. Nothing sounded right. Anything new I came up with was too trite, or melancholy, or despondent.
I lit the brazier in quiet surrender, breathing the pleasant aroma in, hoping it would calm my nerves. When I turned back, Maya was waiting. Nothing about her had changed, but the way the fireflies framed her face, floating around her head like a crown of light, and the white flowers at her feet—I wanted it to last forever.
She held her hands out, and I clasped them in return, chuckling nervously. "
is this so stressful?"
"It's just us," she said.
And she was right.
Through the curtain of willow trees, I saw a distant blue light. A reminder that time was short.
I cleared my throat, staring down at our hands at first. Because it was easier. "As you know, I never married in my first life. I think, once, I would have considered that a tragedy. A loss. But now, standing here at the end of all things, I'm so grateful—"
A sob tore from Maya's throat, and I freed a finger to point it at her. "Don't start. Because if you start, I'll start, and then we'll die as one of those couples who can't stop weeping over each other and our divine host over there will send us straight to the hells."
"Right. Right." She took a deep breath.
"I'm so grateful that it's you. That it will always be you. No matter how many times the world makes and unmakes itself—"
This time I was the one to choke, and I looked away, trying to hold it back.
"Chin up."
I nodded quickly, looking up until the tears receded from my eyes. "—you are my only constant. My touchstone. And somehow, you've been that ever since we first found common ground. I remember once, in those early days, you told me I was lucky."
Maya winced a little.
"And you didn't know everything. Not yet. At the time it struck me as an accidental cruelty. But as time goes on, and we've fought, and clashed, and survived, and loved, I've realized how very right you were. I am lucky. Because no matter how much time goes on, or how terribly things go wrong, I know you'll be there..."
Again, the knife twisted. I forced myself to continue anyway.
"I'll do everything in my power to protect you. For as long as you'll have me. I…" I grimaced, and she squeezed my hands tightly. "If you fall sick, I will never leave your side. I can't imagine my world without you in it. The memories we've shared are my most precious possessions, especially these last few days. And I will treasure them, always. If we have children, I will be a father to them. A good father. Regardless of my title or what is required of me. No matter where the future takes us. You will always be my home."
"You wrote that before the end of the world?" Maya asked.
We shared a small outburst of nervous laughter, and I rolled my eyes. "Guess I'm perpetually grim."
The blue light, once barely more than a speck through the canopy, had grown larger with alarming speed. It would be upon us soon.
"I have…" Maya dragged out the last two words, "always wondered what it might be like to be one of the women in your memories."
"Bringing up ex-lovers during our nuptials? Poor form."
Her eyes widened. "Cairn of House Valen, are you
my vows?"
"Perish the thought." To my credit, I held the smile in.
Maya waited, almost daring me to speak. When I wisely didn't, she returned to her recitation. "To find you at a time when there is no arch-mage, or Ragnarok. Imagined where we would go, what we would do. What our lives would be like. These last few days have felt like a window into that world, and I've…" Her face faltered a little. "…never been happier. Exchanging presents. Spending time with dear friends. Training together. If I could only choose three days to repeat for eternity, it would be these." She broke down a little then, and I hugged her to me.
"Every day will be like the last few days when there is peace," I whispered. "Maya of House Valen."
"There's more." She whispered, her voice raw. A sweltering heat washed over us. The wave of fire was close now. It would overtake us at any moment. "But we are out of time."
"Say it anyway."
I felt her shake her head. "I think the Iconoclast of the heavens is Lycaon. I think he's weakening."
The words were such a harsh turn from the quiet moment that it took a moment for their meaning and greater implications to reach me. When they finally did, my heart stilled. Rivulets of sweat dripped down my forehead. "Why… didn't you say that sooner?"
"Because I don't know for sure. But the gods and great forces beyond our understanding work in mysterious ways. A while ago I noticed certain… gaps in your memories. Generally during times of great trauma or duress. Very often, right before a turning point. I think you have a guardian. But even if it is true, everything I'm basing it on is guesswork." Maya wiped tears from her face, almost angrily. "And we'd just found—I didn't want to follow bad news with worse. Especially when it was anything but certain."
"Could it have something to do with the cause of all this?" The questions felt numb, even as I spoke them. Pointless.
"No. But I did think of something." She rubbed her face with her hands, her expression beleaguered, a little crazed. Her voice picked up tempo. "The warning was that the beast was weakening. Not dead. It isn't over. There are iterations left. There
"
"But we don't know how many. Since the beginning, the hardest sort of crisis for you to solve are the ones where you have the least to go on. If you woke up on the day of our arrival here, where would you go?"
"Ride north," I answered, feeling the malaise settle over me. "In the direction of the devastation."
Maya snapped her fingers. "A day is gone. Now what?"
There wasn't much to go on, other than direction. It would take time to gather the minds and practitioners I would need. I felt the malaise settle over me, cold fingers wrapping around my shoulders as if it had never left. The same helpless haze that first shrouded my mind after my Mother's death. It'd always been there, in the back of my mind, waiting for my return. We were going to die. And then the world would end, again, and again, and again, and again, and again, until whatever power the black beast held dwindled to nothing.
"You're… right."
Her voice was light. A cooling refuge beneath the sweltering inferno. "It isn't over. Not yet. You just… need to live through this. Travel northwards. This timeline is already forfeit. The beast will not move the return point forward beyond wherever it is already set. Find the source. This never happened before now for a reason. Something set it off, or someone." Maya stepped back a little, her eyes wild, hair falling forward into her face.
She looked so beautiful then. But her words were denial.
"Do you hear yourself?" I asked, my voice gentle. "Live through the end of all things?"
"Maybe I'm a fool, and this is all false hope. I'd rather die a fool than a stupid, feckless girl who saw the writing on the wall and didn't bother to try." The lithid's fragment rose up over her shoulder, poised and ready.
Even through the numbness of my mind, I thought I understood what she intended. To shield us both from the flame with the fragment. But the wall of fire devoured all. It would last seconds at most. Still, the thought was kind. And when things are at their worst, even the smallest kindnesses bear the greatest meaning.
Her eyes twitched from the fire behind me, to me, back to the fire again. Gods bless her, she was timing its approach. She wanted to go down fighting.
If that was her choice, I could make peace with it.
There was no end more noble.
"Show the pantheon your defiance, Ni'lend."
Determined, resolute, and scared out of her mind, Maya spoke her will into being. I've heard charismatic kings, encountered countless nobles with magnetic voices.
And her conviction outshone them all.
Her voice echoed with power.
The lithid's fragment unfurled, growing wider and convex. It ensnared us in a wreath of shadow, the same sort of shield she'd learned to use at the beginning of our stay in Kholis. Blue fire swept over us, obscuring all vision of the outside with endless flame.
It… held.
Beyond all reason or logic, the shield held.
I blinked, shocked to still be breathing. There was a world of difference between the projectiles we'd tested and the pure, seemingly endless destruction that now washed over the shield. I turned, looking at the raging fire in wonder, reaching out to touch the shield. It seemed solid, even now.
"How?" I turned to ask her. And felt the color drain from my cheeks.
Maya hadn't moved. Her face was a mask of concentration, focused entirely on sustaining the shield, her arm outstretched. But there, above the crown of her forehead, streaks of white threaded through her raven hair that hadn't been there before. I was sure of it. Immediately I looked to her other hand, slightly hidden behind her back. A dark reflective surface shone between tightly gripped fingers, its sharp edges digging into her flesh, summoning blood.
Her pale lips whispered two words. "Forgive me."
"What are you doing?" I asked, my voice raw.
"Saving you, so you can save us all." She stated, almost flippant. As she spoke, the wrinkles around her eyes grew more prominent than before, her skin tighter, more translucent.
"Tormenting yourself accomplishes nothing. Maya please,
" I desperately tried to get through to her, all the while eying the mirror in her hands. If it wasn't already biting into her fingers, I might have tried to wrest it from her.
She shook her head, a pained smile becoming a pained grimace. "A willing sacrifice provides more power than a life forcefully taken."
Her expression when she'd turned away from the overlook suddenly came back to me. My jaw slowly opened. "This was decided when you cut my inscription on the ridge. Your mind was already made."
She nodded, one eye closing as she winced, her posture shrinking by the moment. "Love isn't always given to us in the manner we'd prefer. It isn't always flowers, and dances, and long walks by the riverside. Sometimes it means doing everything in our power to protect someone. Even if it causes hurt. Or it means breaking a promise. I understand why you did what you did in the Sanctum."
"It was the only way to be sure," I mouthed.
Her fingers grew frail. A cry of pain escaped her, and she coughed blood.
The handkerchief was already in my hand, a practiced reflex from long ago. I dabbed the blood at the corners of her mouth. "What do you need, Ni'lend?" My voice emitted a tranquility I couldn't even imagine feeling.
"Support. My legs..." They quivered, even as she spoke.
I ducked beneath the arm hanging at her side—the arm that held the mirror—letting her lean on me. She barely weighed anything. "Lean your full weight on me."
"I am," she whispered. I shifted and realized she was right. The mirror was decimating her musculature, still eating away at whatever she had left. The fire beyond the shield showed no signs of stopping.
"Do you want to sit?" I asked when the quivering worsened.
"No. Might pass out if I move…" A matron clung tightly to me, one I loved dearly but barely recognized. As I'd thought, she looked much like her mother, if Nethtari had lived a much harsher, more strenuous life. But there was a roguish rebellion to her expression that was quintessentially the woman I loved. "It hurts… a little more… than I was expecting."
"This is enough." I shook my head. The fire showed no signs of stopping. And she was in so much pain. "This is more than enough."
She shook her head. "Let me be selfish. Just this once. Even if I fail… I just want to hold on to these memories a little longer."
"I could have done so much better." I hissed, hating myself for it. "The wonders I could have showed you. The places we could have gone."
"This was all I wanted. A home." Maya whispered into my ear.
"You will have it again," I said, staring at the raging fire. "I swear it. By the old gods and the new."
"My legs are going." Her eyes widened. She slumped more heavily even as she said it.
I scooped her up, cradling her in my arms. Maya turned her head into my chest.
"… it hurts."
"Do you want milk of the poppy?"
There was another shake of her head. Of course she didn't want it. Because there was a good chance that once she'd drunk it, she'd fall asleep.
All I wanted was for her suffering to stop. But this was what she'd chosen.
Someone started speaking. It was a moment before I realized it was me. "Breathe." I stared down at her, smiling to impart comfort, like I somehow had all the answers when I didn't have a single fucking one. "In... and out." I kept breathing, and eventually, she matched me. "Don't ignore it. You can't suppress it past a certain point." I looked up towards the shield. "Focus on the complexity of the task at hand and acknowledge the pain instead. Tell it you know it's there, but you're a little busy right now, and it will have your full attention when you're ready. Watch how it ebbs and flows, because it's never constant. Take solace when the wave recedes and use that time to collect yourself and brace for when it returns."
"Ah…" She murmured, perspiration dripping down her forehead. "You have to… find the source. Where the detonations started. The search will take the most time. If you find it… we'll know where to look."
"Peace, Ni'lend. Peace."
It was almost a relief when the shield flickered. It was finally weakening. I pressed a hurried kiss to her lips, falling to one knee, covering as much of her with my body as possible, and shut my eyes tightly. It wouldn't protect her from the flames.
But it was all I could do.
I held her there, tense, waiting. Seconds passed into minutes.
And nothing happened.
No sudden singing of flesh.
I opened my eyes. The devastation of the Everwood greeted me, endless husks of charred trees and ruined grass, all turned black and gray beyond a small patch of green at our feet.
There was still blue light, growing more distant on the horizon. But the fire was gone.
"You actually did it. I can't believe what I'm seeing." I raved, feeling uncentered, a little mad.
There was a soft thud, and I looked down.
The bloody mirror had fallen from her hands and landed in the patch of green grass. In its dark reflection, I saw the stark reality of what had transpired. Her clothes barely fit her anymore, hanging loosely around my arms. She still gripped me tightly, her eyes closed.
There was a small, satisfied smile on her face.
Her chest never moved.
No one person had ever looked so beautiful.
All thought ceased. Save one.
"May the frost always wane at your waking, until I find you once again." I kissed her forehead.
And took her home.
And above them all, gilded in piss at on the summiting trash tower of shit and misery,
was that fucking day.
I can't bring myself to be poetic about it. Even the thought makes me nauseous. Parts of it stick with me so vividly it's almost like I never left. The stench of the bog as I crouched at the edge of its abscess, hand clamped over my mouth. Horrible, gaping plants riddled with holes that reeked of fetid meat.
The sound of Maya crying quietly behind me, stifling her sorrow.
It's tempting to just give the strictest overview of what happened. Relay it all with the coldness of a field report written by a military officer who's survived too much bloodshed. But that would not do the tale justice. Too much that occurred further down the line directly resulted from what happened that day.
Much of the search is lost to me, even now.
I remember we made remarkably good time despite the poor visibility. I remember being pleased with our progress, albeit worried about how little time remained until nightfall. Some residents suggested continuing the search with portable mana lamps after sunset. But even if this was some distant branch of the Everwood, it was still a magical forest. And I had no intention of putting these volunteers in the sort of danger that had almost killed me as a child, long ago.
As soon as we caught scent of a bog, we passed word along.
They appear smaller than they actually are—the bogs—because the abundance of moss and other plants that thrive in moist environments weave together into a free-floating mat that passes convincingly for solid forest floor. Imagine being covered in a net and cast into water. How difficult it would be to free yourself. Now consider what would happen if that water was frigid year round, and there were a few arm spans of muck waiting in its depths to seize any boot that comes in reach.
You just take a wrong step. And then you die.
There is no terrain more treacherous or hateful.
I remember my boots sinking a finger's width into the mud. Observing them carefully, in case the shelf I was standing on collapsed.
"Back in town." I cleared my throat, my mind numb. "Must have breathed in some fumes coming off the mana. Because I saw someone who wasn't there."
"Cairn." Maya sobbed, angrily striking tears from her cheeks.
"There was a little girl that spoke in riddles. She was… trying to warn me. Couldn't make sense out of anything she said. Thing is, I think I've seen her before. Back in Whitefall. She tried to warn me back then, too. For some reason I just… forgot her."
"Ni'lend, I need you here with me."
"Hm?" I looked out towards the silhouette at the center of the bog. The man was face down, his fine clothing soaked through and wrinkled. I could see where the treacherous ground had given way, a wide area of insect-infested water clear of its original covering that was now torn asunder around the body. He'd managed to free himself from the moss net, but hypothermia had set in quickly. The grayish blue nails of his floating hand stood out against the murky water, visible even from here. Whoever he was, he'd been dead for hours. "That's not him."
Still, I couldn't bring myself to tear my eyes away.
Arms slipped beneath mine and wrapped around my waist. I felt Maya behind me, pressing her face into my shoulder.
"It's not him. It can't be him." I insisted.
"Are you sure the girl was a hallucination?"
I considered it again, then nodded. "Disappeared without a trace. There one moment, gone the next." Something she said, the statement that had disturbed me the most, echoed in my mind. "She said the iconoclast of the heavens was growing weaker."
Behind me, I felt Maya stiffen. "Those were her exact words?"
"Yes."
She released me, the sensation of heat and comfort distancing as she took three sloshing footsteps away from the swamp.
In ordinary circumstances it would probably be harder to talk about this. Right now, it seemed like the most important thing in the world. Because it distracted from the man in the swamp. I nodded slowly. Iconoclast didn't exactly roll off the tongue. I had a feeling if I'd read such a word somewhere or learned its meaning, I would have remembered it, purely on the basis of how cumbersome it was. Icon was pleasant enough to speak and had mostly religious connotations. The second part, or suffix, sounded like a cross between a drunkenly slurred insult and something a workman might scrape from the bottom of a ship.
"Don't like it much," I said.
"Which part?" Maya asked stoically. The tears and emotion that had surged out of her quieted just as quickly. Now she just looked ill. "The fact that the countryside is currently tearing itself apart, or that we found a corpse that matches a dear friend's likeness drowned in this horrible place?"
I turned, grimacing at the fresh wave of stench that crept back into my awareness as soon as I took a step. I looked back at her, down to the fists clenched at her side. "Any of it. It's not him."
Dimly, somewhere in the inner reaches of my mind, I knew what was happening. The same thing that always happened when circumstances grew dire.
The leaps and corkscrews my mind would go through to dredge up hope, no matter how small.
There was a rustling in the trees above. I looked up, almost hoping for an interruption. Anything. The odd observer. An enemy to fight. But there were only a half dozen birds aloft on black wings, catapulting themselves up towards the darkening sky, mindless of the thunder, in search of safety.
I looked down to Maya, and forced a smile. "Though I suppose we should confirm that?"
"Yes." Her voice was little more than a whisper.
I stepped onto the bog. Mana still came easily—though oddly, not quite as freely as before—and I stepped out onto the fetid water, feeling the surface crystallize and grow frigid beneath my boots as the path forged before me. The ice crackled with each step, a brittle sound that echoed across the silent bog. Bog ice had more traction than normal ice. Once I was adjacent to the body, I weaved mana into the ice below, fastening the soles of one boot to the surface for traction.
Gently, I bent down and pulled him onto the ice shelf, then lifted him into my arms. I didn't look at his face.
But I couldn't miss the way Maya broke, halfway back. She peered at the man's face, cold, almost analytical. Then her mouth twisted in misery, and her shaking hands went to her chest, as though she couldn't contain what welled there.
"No. Lucius,
." The words ripped from her throat in a muted wail.
I set him down a few spans away from the bog.
"Oh, no." Maya repeated, taking a few small steps forward.
It was Lucius. His skin was pale, shrunken. Eyes cloudy and sightless. Limbs swollen and stiff from death. But everything from his still-open eyes to the set of his mouth was right. The clothes and hair matched.
"I can fix it."
"How?" Maya looked up at me, not daring to hope.
"The flame of absolution," I murmured. "I'll remake him."
"You cannot raise the dead, Cairn." Her answer came back quickly. Almost angrily.
My attention returned to the body. In some ways, Maya was right. I couldn't have done it for Lillian. The years were too many, the decay too extensive. There simply wasn't enough of her left to recreate. But Lucius had been alive a matter of hours ago. Everything that made him himself was still there, preserved by the chilled waters of the wretched bog.
"Our bodies are delicate, sensitive things. It will fail unless you get every detail perfectly. Even if you do, his soul is gone."
"Well, considering how the gods are dead and the afterlife is forfeit, is it not unreasonable to consider that maybe his soul lingers nearby? And that perhaps, upon being presented with an identical, functional vessel to the failing one it just fled, it might divest the pointless eternity and
"
"It
unreasonable. That's not how any of this works."
"I need to try." I knelt beside the body and waited, half-expecting her to stop me. When she didn't, I called the spark. It was surprisingly difficult, and for some odd reason my mana pool felt smaller than before. Attaining the tranquility necessary to access the third-stage was harder as well. But I'd practiced this. Possibly more than I'd practiced anything else in my life.
It was all for this moment.
I closed my eyes and pictured how Lucius had looked. It was difficult, because I remembered him as a child more than an adult. That'd been my first impression, and it had stuck.
Thankfully, the recent memories were vivid and gave me plenty to draw from.
I brought the previous night to mind. When we'd taken a break from emancipating the cask, and he'd stepped into the street with a knowing smile, his arms wide.
Subconsciously, I whispered my reply. "So you're saying it's worth it."
With the image set firmly in my mind, I set to it, working from his legs upward. He had a sort of swagger to his gait that was always there, the sort of thing that was likely a person making the best of an injury. Likely the result of a knee injury that had healed poorly, which I found and preserved. With each pass of the spark, the wrinkling, waterlogged gray and blue skin that covered him was replaced with pink, healthy flesh. I made sure his scowling, boyish visage remained intact.
The organs were the most difficult part. His brain was intact, as was his heart. For the most part, I simply remade them as they were. But his lungs were barely recognizable from the things I'd studied in diagrams. I rebuilt his left lung first, then his right. Seared the foul fluid from them.
His stomach was a mess.
Dimly, I was aware that Maya was kneeling across from me, near his head. "If you get this wrong, and by some miracle it does work, he will be in terrible pain."
"Yes."
"Don't get it wrong."
I paused as I felt her healing magic enter Lucius's body, uncertain of her intentions. And then, suddenly, rather than just observing, I felt it guiding me, pointing out obstructions, minor mistakes that could easily metastasize into more serious conditions over a mortal lifetime. We fell into a rhythm of building, correcting, and problem solving, and the process moved far faster. Through the numbness, I felt a ray of hope. Because I'd expected something more to go wrong. To find something I couldn't fix, a problem that was beyond me.
But Lucius was looking more and more like a person who had simply fallen asleep.
Once I finished, the sky was darker than before. There was perhaps a half hour to nightfall. Maybe less.
Green tendrils of healing magic encircled Lucius's chest. Maya stared down at him, not daring to hope. "Shall I begin?"
"Whenever you're ready." I sat on my knees, paying no attention to how my back ached, never taking my eyes from Lucius's tranquil expression.
The tendrils tightened. Just once, then in rhythm, staggered beats repeating with spaces in between. Maya's expression was a mask of focus as she kept it, and I watched Lucius for any change, any hint of movement.
My heart seized as his eyes opened. He seemed disoriented, but they locked onto me. And he breathed a long rattling breath.
I put my hand on his forehead, barely holding it together. "Welcome back, old friend."
"… Why… the long faces?"
I heard him say it. Though his lips remained unmoving. I heard his voice clear as day.
The second breath never came.
Rage coursed through me. I quenched it, shoving it back down. "It's okay. We got it wrong."
"Cairn."
"There was a mistake. Something wrong with his heart maybe, something we missed." I looked up at her, my vision suddenly watery and blurred. "We'll need to move him back to the city. Somewhere more sterile."
"You fixed him." Maya said, barely audible. "Everything is in the right place. This is my area of expertise, Ni'lend. I'm not sure how you got it so perfectly, but you did."
"Diagrams, from libraries in the sanctum—" I shook my head, realizing that didn't matter right now. "No. He breathed. We both saw it. His eyes opened."
"Because I stimulated his heart. His muscles and reflexes are still intact. The shell of his form is following the patterns he held in life. But his soul is gone."
I stared at her. Because the words didn't make sense to me. They should have. Looking back, everything she was saying was obvious and reasonable. But I couldn't accept it.
Maya reached out towards his face gently and closed Lucius's eyes.
Somehow that made it real.
The anger returned. A seething eel of fury gnawing its way out of me from the inside. If Lucius was dead, Millicent was as well. There was no other explanation. She wouldn't have left him there in the bog. She would have tried to retrieve him, and there would have been evidence of the attempt. Vines used as rope, imprints of a woman's shoes around the perimeter where she'd walked in panic, trying to figure out the best angle to retrieve him.
But there was only one set of footprints leading up to the bog. Which meant they'd been separated before Lucius had fallen in.
I held my hand skyward, and summoned a column of violet flame, roaring as I poured mana into the spell, my roar silenced by the fire's greater voice.
Silent tears rolled down her face as Maya detached a rolled-up blanket from her pack and gathered Lucius up in it.
He was so fucking small.
The mana drain from sending the signal left me feeling empty, raw. Somewhere in the back of my mind, it occurred to me that the regeneration had altered again, now far slower than it should have been. But I couldn't bring myself to care.
What did it matter, anymore?
Luther was first to arrive. We heard him a ways off, crashing through the brush. He arrived red-faced and strewn with leaves, breath slowing as he panned the scene, looking between the two of us, to the melting bridge of ice that still persisted in the bog, and finally to the figure wreathed in a blanket. "Shit. Is that the Duke or Duchess?"
"Duke." Someone said. It might have been me.
"Shit." Luther repeated, mouth turning downward. There were voices behind him, probably the Kholis folk drawing closer. He looked between the two of us. "Feel like an ass for even asking this right now, but did the two of you manage to get to the vantage before you… found him?" When we both shook our heads, Luther frowned. "Okay. I think we need to call off the search. It's already dark, and there was a close call with a dire wolf already. We'll search the forest for Lady Timbermour in the morning."
"If morning comes," I murmured, too quietly for anyone to hear.
"Was anyone hurt?" Maya asked, gripping her arm behind her back.
"No. Wouldn't be much of a Valen if I balked at an oversized dog. The two of you should see the villagers back to shelter. I'll scout the perimeter."
"It's better if we do." Maya stated tersely, leaving no room for argument.
"Not sure that's a great idea. He doesn't look so good." Luther lowered his voice and tilted his head toward me.
"
" Maya growled, real threat in her voice.
"I need to hear it from him." Luther crossed his arms and watched me, his blue eyes a silent question.
Even though I felt wretched, I reached for the voice of the prince, and found it with a degree of struggle. "I'm alright, Uncle. Lucius was dear to both of us. It's difficult to lose him."
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
"For what it's worth, I'm sorry." Luther shook his head, still watching me with an assessing eye. "It will only grow more dangerous out here as evening dawns. And neither of you are in armor."
"Together, we're more dangerous than any beast that might prey upon us," I said, the words empty bravado. "See the town to safety. We'll bring back news of the scale."
/////
Traversing any forest at night was slow going, even with torches. The closely held lighting meant long shadows, and the terrain was often more treacherous than it appeared.
Like fucking bogs, for example.
"Tell me what the girl said to you again?" Maya asked.
"The iconoclast of the heavens grows weaker." I repeated, not particularly attentive to the conversation, focusing on my footing as we worked our way up a sudden incline. Maya had been doing her best to distract me since we'd departed the bog.
Having difficulty focusing, I changed the topic. "I'm not sure what to do here."
"Speak your mind, Ni'lend."
"I'm not… supposed to use my power to save a single person. That has been made utterly clear to me. It is a limited resource. I need to conserve it, otherwise I risk coming up short during Ragnarok. If I were to funnel mana through the inscription on my chest, there's no way of knowing how far back I'd go. The black beast will, generally, place me back far enough to—eventually—handle whatever problem
my death. Assuming it's a problem he considers 'worthy' of resolution." I mused aloud, Lucius's pale visage never far from my thoughts.
"And if he considers it unworthy, there is a chance he may punish you by placing the point you regain consciousness somewhere difficult. Even potentially to a point
Lucius died."
"He shouldn't." I shot a glance skyward. "After the sanctum, we reached an accord. But he
."
I didn't state the obvious. It didn't need to be said.
"Well. I think no matter what happens, we need a better handle on the situation." Maya said, walking a ways ahead of me. "We have no idea what triggered it or who, nor a sense of the scale. If it's localized to the area around Kholis, Lucius may end up being critical in managing the disaster at hand."
Her voice was logical. Matter of fact. If I didn't know her better, I might have gotten the impression she was entirely unaffected by the broader implications. But she still wouldn't look at me.
My suspicion was confirmed when Maya picked up the pace, jogging the rest of the way to the summit. I watched for her reaction, a little curious. Kholis was so isolated from the outside world it was difficult to get a sense of anything else nearby. It was hard to say without looking, but there was a good chance we'd be able to see Whitefall from there—
Any thought faded as Maya turned back.
I'll never forget the way she looked. There was something ageless in her expression, a sorrow so fathomless I'd never seen its like. The wind swept her hair over her trembling mouth, and when it faded, a small smile was fixed there. Her hands were fists at her side, and her tail was wrapped tightly around her wrist.
My legs surged forward before it even occurred to me to run, carrying me to her.
She caught me as I arrived, burying her face in my shoulder.
"It's going to be okay."
But I barely heard the whisper.
Because the world was on fire.
Wide swathes of blue flame tore through the landscape in an unnatural wave, rolling over shuddering trees and leaving only blackened skeletons in their wake. Distant blue lights across the landscape marked the same sort of chasms that had opened in Kholis, gaping wounds in the earth itself. Mana, in its purest form, was a catalyst. Waves of fire battered the landscape, and had been doing so for some time.
"We need to get back to Kholis. Warn them of the threat."
She shook her head minutely.
"There's still time—" The words died in my throat as I turned to the east. From this distance, the wave almost appeared to be moving slowly, a corona of blue fire sweeping over the river, then the buildings, then the section of town that contained Lucius's manor. "The townsfolk. My uncle."
"What does it look like to you?" Maya asked. She sounded uncertain, like she wanted me to confirm it.
"Ragnarok," I answered. The coloring was wrong. It was healthy blue mana, rather than red. But other than that, the scale and size of the devastation was nearly identical to my hazy memory of the iterations that came before. "The end of the world. It's over."
"We're still here."
Almost subconsciously, I began to run mana through the inscription on my chest. My earlier concerns were absent merit. There was no reason to drag this out. I felt a quick movement, then a sharp pain.
"Ouch." I grunted, looking down at the V of my collar in confusion. There was a jagged cut around a finger span, directly intersecting the inscription on my chest. Immediately, I could feel the magic fading, the spell fizzling to nothing. "What—Maya—It's clearly
"
Maya looked at the ground, tail still wrapped tightly around her wrist. "I'm not ready to go yet."
It hit me like a hammer, and whatever I'd been about to say died in my throat. When I spoke again, my voice trembled. "You'll still be there when I return."
Maya smiled and shook her head. "No.
be there. The person I used to be. The one who wasn't sure if she could fully place her trust in you. The one with doubts. You'll need to…" She paused to wipe her eyes. "Share all this with her. Either let her into your mind, or tell her everything. What we did every day. Every detail. The dreams and whispers we shared."
My throat tightened. "I will."
The weight of it settled over us slowly. What we'd known from the moment we found Lucius's corpse. Whatever'd gone wrong here would take more than three days to fix. We would lose this time. It wasn't as if the concept had never occurred. To some extent, we'd always known this could happen.
When she'd gathered herself, she met my gaze, the same ageless quality in her stare. "Come with me."
I followed, feeling the hollow ache of what I'd already lost, and the phantom pain of what had not yet happened. I wasn't sure where we were going. Then again, it hardly mattered. Maya wanted more time, and I'd give her as much as I was able.
If that meant wandering around the forest until the fire took us, that was fine by me.
She seemed to be searching for something, which was a little odd, as I was fairly certain neither of us had been in this section of forest before today.
"If you told me what you were looking for, I might be able to help you find it," I said after a time.
Maya scowled, still panning the forest as we retraced our earlier steps. "I thought I saw a clearing."
"There!" She tugged my arm, beckoning me onward. There was a line of weeping willow trees, their long hanging leaves forming an almost protective curtain. And once Maya pulled the curtain back, the sight took my breath away. Silver-green grass spanned an expanse in the center. The open air danced with golden motes as fireflies darted through the air. Their yellow lights radiated off white flowers that seemed to glow with a luminescence of their own, and, perhaps because of the canopy of willow trees, the smoke was less cloying there, though the air was warm.
Shortly after, I realized whatever this place was; it wasn't naturally occurring. The line of willow trees had been planted in an obvious circle, one planted perfectly in the center. Leaned against it and uneven, one end partially sunk into the ground, was an ancient white shrine of marbled stone. The god—or goddess, it was difficult to tell—had a stoic expression, though the tilting gave them a distinctly quizzical impression, as if they were asking why we'd chosen the end of the world to come here.
"Do you recognize him?" I asked.
Maya shook her head. "Who is he?"
"No idea. Perhaps part of the old Pantheon. But I get the feeling this is his shrine, and we're the first visitors to this place in a very long time." I looked back at her curiously. "Should we make an offering?"
"It would only be proper, given what we intend."
"Right." I looked between the shrine and my companion, uncertain. "And what are we doing, exactly?"
She smiled sheepishly, shifting on her feet as she looked away. "Saying our vows."
The knife that'd been firmly planted in my guts since the bog twisted deeper.
Her face fell. "You don't want to?"
"I do." I closed my eyes. "Gods, of course I do. It's just—mine aren't very suitable for the occasion."
"Neither are mine. I wish to speak them, regardless."
"Okay. I'll… make the offering."
With shaking hands, I opened my satchel and selected a few rare apothecary bits and pieces that would burn pleasantly, arranging them in the brazier, taking longer than strictly necessary while I tried to revise the vows I'd already come up with. But my mind was too scattered, too numb. Nothing sounded right. Anything new I came up with was too trite, or melancholy, or despondent.
I lit the brazier in quiet surrender, breathing the pleasant aroma in, hoping it would calm my nerves. When I turned back, Maya was waiting. Nothing about her had changed, but the way the fireflies framed her face, floating around her head like a crown of light, and the white flowers at her feet—I wanted it to last forever.
She held her hands out, and I clasped them in return, chuckling nervously. "
is this so stressful?"
"It's just us," she said.
And she was right.
Through the curtain of willow trees, I saw a distant blue light. A reminder that time was short.
I cleared my throat, staring down at our hands at first. Because it was easier. "As you know, I never married in my first life. I think, once, I would have considered that a tragedy. A loss. But now, standing here at the end of all things, I'm so grateful—"
A sob tore from Maya's throat, and I freed a finger to point it at her. "Don't start. Because if you start, I'll start, and then we'll die as one of those couples who can't stop weeping over each other and our divine host over there will send us straight to the hells."
"Right. Right." She took a deep breath.
"I'm so grateful that it's you. That it will always be you. No matter how many times the world makes and unmakes itself—"
This time I was the one to choke, and I looked away, trying to hold it back.
"Chin up."
I nodded quickly, looking up until the tears receded from my eyes. "—you are my only constant. My touchstone. And somehow, you've been that ever since we first found common ground. I remember once, in those early days, you told me I was lucky."
Maya winced a little.
"And you didn't know everything. Not yet. At the time it struck me as an accidental cruelty. But as time goes on, and we've fought, and clashed, and survived, and loved, I've realized how very right you were. I am lucky. Because no matter how much time goes on, or how terribly things go wrong, I know you'll be there..."
Again, the knife twisted. I forced myself to continue anyway.
"I'll do everything in my power to protect you. For as long as you'll have me. I…" I grimaced, and she squeezed my hands tightly. "If you fall sick, I will never leave your side. I can't imagine my world without you in it. The memories we've shared are my most precious possessions, especially these last few days. And I will treasure them, always. If we have children, I will be a father to them. A good father. Regardless of my title or what is required of me. No matter where the future takes us. You will always be my home."
"You wrote that before the end of the world?" Maya asked.
We shared a small outburst of nervous laughter, and I rolled my eyes. "Guess I'm perpetually grim."
The blue light, once barely more than a speck through the canopy, had grown larger with alarming speed. It would be upon us soon.
"I have…" Maya dragged out the last two words, "always wondered what it might be like to be one of the women in your memories."
"Bringing up ex-lovers during our nuptials? Poor form."
Her eyes widened. "Cairn of House Valen, are you
my vows?"
"Perish the thought." To my credit, I held the smile in.
Maya waited, almost daring me to speak. When I wisely didn't, she returned to her recitation. "To find you at a time when there is no arch-mage, or Ragnarok. Imagined where we would go, what we would do. What our lives would be like. These last few days have felt like a window into that world, and I've…" Her face faltered a little. "…never been happier. Exchanging presents. Spending time with dear friends. Training together. If I could only choose three days to repeat for eternity, it would be these." She broke down a little then, and I hugged her to me.
"Every day will be like the last few days when there is peace," I whispered. "Maya of House Valen."
"There's more." She whispered, her voice raw. A sweltering heat washed over us. The wave of fire was close now. It would overtake us at any moment. "But we are out of time."
"Say it anyway."
I felt her shake her head. "I think the Iconoclast of the heavens is Lycaon. I think he's weakening."
The words were such a harsh turn from the quiet moment that it took a moment for their meaning and greater implications to reach me. When they finally did, my heart stilled. Rivulets of sweat dripped down my forehead. "Why… didn't you say that sooner?"
"Because I don't know for sure. But the gods and great forces beyond our understanding work in mysterious ways. A while ago I noticed certain… gaps in your memories. Generally during times of great trauma or duress. Very often, right before a turning point. I think you have a guardian. But even if it is true, everything I'm basing it on is guesswork." Maya wiped tears from her face, almost angrily. "And we'd just found—I didn't want to follow bad news with worse. Especially when it was anything but certain."
"Could it have something to do with the cause of all this?" The questions felt numb, even as I spoke them. Pointless.
"No. But I did think of something." She rubbed her face with her hands, her expression beleaguered, a little crazed. Her voice picked up tempo. "The warning was that the beast was weakening. Not dead. It isn't over. There are iterations left. There
"
"But we don't know how many. Since the beginning, the hardest sort of crisis for you to solve are the ones where you have the least to go on. If you woke up on the day of our arrival here, where would you go?"
"Ride north," I answered, feeling the malaise settle over me. "In the direction of the devastation."
Maya snapped her fingers. "A day is gone. Now what?"
There wasn't much to go on, other than direction. It would take time to gather the minds and practitioners I would need. I felt the malaise settle over me, cold fingers wrapping around my shoulders as if it had never left. The same helpless haze that first shrouded my mind after my Mother's death. It'd always been there, in the back of my mind, waiting for my return. We were going to die. And then the world would end, again, and again, and again, and again, and again, until whatever power the black beast held dwindled to nothing.
"You're… right."
Her voice was light. A cooling refuge beneath the sweltering inferno. "It isn't over. Not yet. You just… need to live through this. Travel northwards. This timeline is already forfeit. The beast will not move the return point forward beyond wherever it is already set. Find the source. This never happened before now for a reason. Something set it off, or someone." Maya stepped back a little, her eyes wild, hair falling forward into her face.
She looked so beautiful then. But her words were denial.
"Do you hear yourself?" I asked, my voice gentle. "Live through the end of all things?"
"Maybe I'm a fool, and this is all false hope. I'd rather die a fool than a stupid, feckless girl who saw the writing on the wall and didn't bother to try." The lithid's fragment rose up over her shoulder, poised and ready.
Even through the numbness of my mind, I thought I understood what she intended. To shield us both from the flame with the fragment. But the wall of fire devoured all. It would last seconds at most. Still, the thought was kind. And when things are at their worst, even the smallest kindnesses bear the greatest meaning.
Her eyes twitched from the fire behind me, to me, back to the fire again. Gods bless her, she was timing its approach. She wanted to go down fighting.
If that was her choice, I could make peace with it.
There was no end more noble.
"Show the pantheon your defiance, Ni'lend."
Determined, resolute, and scared out of her mind, Maya spoke her will into being. I've heard charismatic kings, encountered countless nobles with magnetic voices.
And her conviction outshone them all.
Her voice echoed with power.
The lithid's fragment unfurled, growing wider and convex. It ensnared us in a wreath of shadow, the same sort of shield she'd learned to use at the beginning of our stay in Kholis. Blue fire swept over us, obscuring all vision of the outside with endless flame.
It… held.
Beyond all reason or logic, the shield held.
I blinked, shocked to still be breathing. There was a world of difference between the projectiles we'd tested and the pure, seemingly endless destruction that now washed over the shield. I turned, looking at the raging fire in wonder, reaching out to touch the shield. It seemed solid, even now.
"How?" I turned to ask her. And felt the color drain from my cheeks.
Maya hadn't moved. Her face was a mask of concentration, focused entirely on sustaining the shield, her arm outstretched. But there, above the crown of her forehead, streaks of white threaded through her raven hair that hadn't been there before. I was sure of it. Immediately I looked to her other hand, slightly hidden behind her back. A dark reflective surface shone between tightly gripped fingers, its sharp edges digging into her flesh, summoning blood.
Her pale lips whispered two words. "Forgive me."
"What are you doing?" I asked, my voice raw.
"Saving you, so you can save us all." She stated, almost flippant. As she spoke, the wrinkles around her eyes grew more prominent than before, her skin tighter, more translucent.
"Tormenting yourself accomplishes nothing. Maya please,
" I desperately tried to get through to her, all the while eying the mirror in her hands. If it wasn't already biting into her fingers, I might have tried to wrest it from her.
She shook her head, a pained smile becoming a pained grimace. "A willing sacrifice provides more power than a life forcefully taken."
Her expression when she'd turned away from the overlook suddenly came back to me. My jaw slowly opened. "This was decided when you cut my inscription on the ridge. Your mind was already made."
She nodded, one eye closing as she winced, her posture shrinking by the moment. "Love isn't always given to us in the manner we'd prefer. It isn't always flowers, and dances, and long walks by the riverside. Sometimes it means doing everything in our power to protect someone. Even if it causes hurt. Or it means breaking a promise. I understand why you did what you did in the Sanctum."
"It was the only way to be sure," I mouthed.
Her fingers grew frail. A cry of pain escaped her, and she coughed blood.
The handkerchief was already in my hand, a practiced reflex from long ago. I dabbed the blood at the corners of her mouth. "What do you need, Ni'lend?" My voice emitted a tranquility I couldn't even imagine feeling.
"Support. My legs..." They quivered, even as she spoke.
I ducked beneath the arm hanging at her side—the arm that held the mirror—letting her lean on me. She barely weighed anything. "Lean your full weight on me."
"I am," she whispered. I shifted and realized she was right. The mirror was decimating her musculature, still eating away at whatever she had left. The fire beyond the shield showed no signs of stopping.
"Do you want to sit?" I asked when the quivering worsened.
"No. Might pass out if I move…" A matron clung tightly to me, one I loved dearly but barely recognized. As I'd thought, she looked much like her mother, if Nethtari had lived a much harsher, more strenuous life. But there was a roguish rebellion to her expression that was quintessentially the woman I loved. "It hurts… a little more… than I was expecting."
"This is enough." I shook my head. The fire showed no signs of stopping. And she was in so much pain. "This is more than enough."
She shook her head. "Let me be selfish. Just this once. Even if I fail… I just want to hold on to these memories a little longer."
"I could have done so much better." I hissed, hating myself for it. "The wonders I could have showed you. The places we could have gone."
"This was all I wanted. A home." Maya whispered into my ear.
"You will have it again," I said, staring at the raging fire. "I swear it. By the old gods and the new."
"My legs are going." Her eyes widened. She slumped more heavily even as she said it.
I scooped her up, cradling her in my arms. Maya turned her head into my chest.
"… it hurts."
"Do you want milk of the poppy?"
There was another shake of her head. Of course she didn't want it. Because there was a good chance that once she'd drunk it, she'd fall asleep.
All I wanted was for her suffering to stop. But this was what she'd chosen.
Someone started speaking. It was a moment before I realized it was me. "Breathe." I stared down at her, smiling to impart comfort, like I somehow had all the answers when I didn't have a single fucking one. "In... and out." I kept breathing, and eventually, she matched me. "Don't ignore it. You can't suppress it past a certain point." I looked up towards the shield. "Focus on the complexity of the task at hand and acknowledge the pain instead. Tell it you know it's there, but you're a little busy right now, and it will have your full attention when you're ready. Watch how it ebbs and flows, because it's never constant. Take solace when the wave recedes and use that time to collect yourself and brace for when it returns."
"Ah…" She murmured, perspiration dripping down her forehead. "You have to… find the source. Where the detonations started. The search will take the most time. If you find it… we'll know where to look."
"Peace, Ni'lend. Peace."
It was almost a relief when the shield flickered. It was finally weakening. I pressed a hurried kiss to her lips, falling to one knee, covering as much of her with my body as possible, and shut my eyes tightly. It wouldn't protect her from the flames.
But it was all I could do.
I held her there, tense, waiting. Seconds passed into minutes.
And nothing happened.
No sudden singing of flesh.
I opened my eyes. The devastation of the Everwood greeted me, endless husks of charred trees and ruined grass, all turned black and gray beyond a small patch of green at our feet.
There was still blue light, growing more distant on the horizon. But the fire was gone.
"You actually did it. I can't believe what I'm seeing." I raved, feeling uncentered, a little mad.
There was a soft thud, and I looked down.
The bloody mirror had fallen from her hands and landed in the patch of green grass. In its dark reflection, I saw the stark reality of what had transpired. Her clothes barely fit her anymore, hanging loosely around my arms. She still gripped me tightly, her eyes closed.
There was a small, satisfied smile on her face.
Her chest never moved.
No one person had ever looked so beautiful.
All thought ceased. Save one.
"May the frost always wane at your waking, until I find you once again." I kissed her forehead.
And took her home.