The Mark of Gold

by A. S. Etaski

  I backed up before its shade could engulf me. “What happens if I trade the rune blade to a Dragonchild who collects such things?”

  *…Nnnot wise, Elf.*

  “But he must be paid, and I understand To’vah blood actually keep their bargains. What would happen to you if I did this? Or do you still want Ishuna?”

  Soul Drinker hovered as if playing this through for the first time. Turning, drifting around me, it laughed in cunning delight, moody and piercing. *Yesss… Hmm. …Yes, I dare you. Give me to either one, Child, either one…*

  As the demon’s thoughts took full form, I dropped my shield of memories and plunged forward into a different collection altogether.

  Desperately, I sought the sense in it.

  *Mother. Father.*

  *Do you know, sometimes, they are One? The Same.*

  ~One.~

  I hadn’t thought of Ullipmious in months and months. I didn’t want to recall the emaciated Ornilleth prisoner covered in offal, who’d coaxed a demonblood to help it escape in exchange for a pair of wings. Its thoughts had reached as deeply as Kerse’s cock had inside me, though it barely remembered being One, clinging to a fractured, separate visage of its Elder Mind. As frightening of a memory as Kain and I had been, bound in lust. As painful as Kerse and I, bound in ritual.

  *The dissolution and transformation of the Self always begins with the Parent following a Birth. The Parent rises above all Creation in that moment, rises above itself, for the caretaker will both consume and set free this new Self, this Rebirth of Itself.*

  I listened. I felt. I heard my sister, the Priestesses, and the Valsharess in the claim. I wondered about Ullipmious, if that fractured mind had survived?

  ~And if the new Self must stay to feed the void of the elder,~ I answered, ~the caretaker becomes the defiler.~

  The one who claimed to be Soul Drinker agreed. *The Destroyer! Yesss, that is crucial! That is our hunger, we all defile what we make.*

  ~It doesn’t have to be this way.~

  *Yesss, it does.*

  ~Not here! Not my home.~

  *It will always be. You cannot stop us when we always want you. Always, all of you! We want you!*

  I snarled. ~How did you get here? Show me.~

  The flicker of memory was unintended; so quick, it only took a blink to know. It had been a Parent, once. A refugee and stowaway newly arrived in the cradle of this world, writhing in this throne room, wherever it was, and on the cusp of agonizing birth.

  My home had given it strength to know its creation as a new mind. It knew a new soul separate from the Abyss. And hated it.

  ~Why?~

  Because its Child, its new Self, rejected becoming its Parent, refused to dissolve into the Abyss. It did not stay to feed the Void, no matter how the Parent had beaten it down to stay. This could not happen before, had it birthed where it conceived.

  The Child had done something familiar to escape.

  And left its Parent behind. Trapped.

  Here.

  *How daarrre youuu…*

  Soul Drinker pitched me out, threw me like I was the dagger, spinning at vertiginous speed until my mind struck something I could not break. I collapsed onto a barren floor as if I had a body but the instants immediately after were different. The sharp ache was all over, one sensation engulfing me. I could pinpoint no bruises, scrapes, or breaks because they hadn’t stopped yet to be assessed.

  It was just pain. Continually being struck by something I couldn’t see.

  I couldn’t stand.

  *Red slut,* it hissed above me. *You were a fool to challenge me a second time. How easy you made it. You lost our contest of wills; each bearer only gets one chance.*

  As it spoke, flint-like shards appeared in the walls of the throne room, glossy, reflective, showing me my face at different, searing moments of my short life. My back, my neck, my head all set afire by countless, heated needles.

  *Those shards piercing your mind? Oh, yes, they are only too easy to push in deeper. Again, and again, until they pin you down. You and your fractions are mine, Sirana.*

  Soul Drinker watched in endless delight, squealing in glee, spinning in place to witness it all. Every humiliation at home, every violation following everywhere I’d ever crawled and tried to be. Within the prison and these glassy shards, my face contorted in ways I’d never seen before but had delighted others for a century.

  I would entertain the Abyss for eternity.

  *Your soul serves me. Give up and spread yourself before me.*

  ~No…~

  A Tragar strode up and kicked me, turning me over with his toe. His belt buckle clinked.

  *You will give me to the Dragonchild. Coax him to take it for payment, for that satisfies your Slut Queen’s geas, and may be my way to escape. The pain will stop if you go.*

  I scrambled on heels and elbows away from the prong-tipped, saw-edged cock revealed. ~No!~

  *You’ll scream for a while longer, Sirana, and do what we want anyway. You cannot stand. You can only lie there. You are broken for the last time. I’ll feast on what’s inside, nice and slow, and you will wake again. Promise.*

  My spine bowed like forge-bright wire threaded through the center, and I kicked at Lana’s demonic Vungren with my heel.

  *Hehehehe!*

  The demonic, white-bearded Dwarf grabbed at my boot, teeth both square and sharp. He had yellow eyes, sick and putrid. Not pure and golden.

  ~Gaelan! Jael!~

  *Ohh, they are dead, sweet slit.*

  ~No, they’re not!~

  *Yes, they are! You are too late!*

  My Sisters were alive to hear me. Somewhere. I scrabbled along the floor.

  *Hold still. Look at me. Don’t think about them. Think about me, and what is about to happen to you. Again. And again.*

  He presented his cock in one stubby hand, and I averted my eyes.

  ~Jael…~

  I must find her. She was why I was here. In my mind’s eye, I saw Shyntre’s map as he’d shown it in the Wizard’s Tower. I added to it all the vast land and waters I’d crossed so as not to lose the scent of her.

  I closed my eyes. ~Where to next?~

  Quiet.

  ~They are dead. They can no longer control you.~

  I saw Kerse’s new wings in my memory. He’d never tried them before we stopped him, never left the ground before he killed himself, trying to kill us. The gate to the Abyss hadn’t opened yet, and weight of the world surrounded us all. If I could have sprouted his wings, I might have found Gaelan faster.

  Now I was here, yet I was not really lying upon a hard stone altar, waiting helplessly to be raped again. The weight which had helped them all to hurt me was missing. Or it was never present. I’d forgotten.

  I opened my eyes. The red-eyed Tragar gave ground as I rose above its own height. ~If I cannot stand, Soul Drinker…~

  The squat creature toppled backward, landing in a pile of shadow before flowing up to rejoin with the demon of the Soul Dagger as I brought myself to its level.

  ~Then I will fly.~

  Blood red eyes narrowed like scalpel-thin cuts, condensing its delight.

  *Eeeeheeee!*

  Spindly, clawed hands lashed out at me again, seeking the wounds from my own shards burrowed in. I reached forward, braced for the moment I seized an essence I’d finally become brave or numb enough to touch.

  *Ohhhh, thisss will be fuuun…*

  Clasped together, my hands matching its grip, the demon pricked my palms a thousand times at once, and I screamed but did not release it. Immediately, a thin, gossamer thread of fluid seeped from between each of our pressed palms, crystallizing as each drop struck the throne room.

  Soul Drinker glanced down and hissed. *What is…?*

  ~Hey. Look at me.~

  It did, and I could face this familiar presence once again and not be afraid.

  ~Just greedy and hungry,~ I thought while pushing us towar
d the stairs to the throne. ~Desperate and bored. Grappling for any prey that stumbles by the mouth of your den. You can’t wait for something better. Curious, do you mimic Braqth on purpose?~

  Enormous eyes flared like lava. It boasted, pushing back at me, *I was on this world long before her!*

  The crystal built itself up beneath us, nipping at wisps of darkness and turning it ice blue. I floated us toward the barren chair in the center of the platform.

  ~Getting here first proves you’re caught with no way out, or you’d have done it by now without me. I won’t be helping you, demon. Someone put you here for a reason. I only want to talk to Innathi, and I must get past you, correct?~

  I pressed the curling shadow in its throne where it stopped, and climbed into its lap, straddling the seat with our hands mutually encased in crystal. The black throne began to shimmer from liquid quartz pouring out over the sides, and Soul Drinker tried to yank its hands away.

  *You’ll never find her without me!* it cried in panic. *Only I can show you the way to the Elsewhere!*

  ~Another lie. I can hear your suppressed thoughts inside the throne, you know. I can hear your heart, now.~

  I wasn’t bluffing. Something akin to a heart raced in the center of its mass as crystal climbed up like a slow, stone wave.

  ~I have found it best simply to silence defilers like you in one’s own mind. You who delight in betraying the sovereignty of any new mind born into this world.~

  Soon, we submerged into the stressed fractures and creaking shifts of the smallest particles, settling into a tight, rigid pattern.

  ~Careful. Bend, don’t break.~

  Finally, its voice was gone from my head.

  Good. This is enough.

  I leaned back, passing through many facets only to fall off the throne, my mind numb, staring at the vanishing ceiling. Then a sliver of deep gold light appeared in the void behind the demon entombed in crystal, and I turned my eyes toward it. Sand shifted in a breeze beyond.

  Encouraged, if achy and weary, I stood up again, my red armor bright and my pedant shining blue in the light. I approached the crack in the stone with care, peeked in…

  And stepped through.

  The “Elsewhere” was much… firmer than it had been before in that brief time I’d shared a stone raft floating on waves of sand with an ancient queen. Back then, the stars had been blinking and spying upon us, and a blue whorl lighting up the night sky like a collapsing moon trying to suck me in like a hooked fish.

  The tall, iron-red dunes moved slowly as if in memory of a stout wind. The sky was that of a soon-ending day, shifting from blue to pink to purple and deepest indigo. The Sun itself was absent from any point above the horizon. I didn’t know where the light which cast all the shadows came from, though they grew longer as I stood.

  Like night is coming.

  I could have chosen any dune to climb but selected the one behind me so I could see how far away the night might be. My slow-sinking boots stopped in place when, at the top, I saw a twisting canyon not far in the distance. From here, the bands of colors signaled to me where I was.

  Koorul.

  I loped toward it, becoming accustomed to working the sand before I remembered that I didn’t have to. This was not a real place. This could not be but another dream, or a trance. I was communing with the blade that killed and kept the Queen of the Desert. Here, I would find her.

  The waterfall deep in this sacred place is where it started.

  The distance seemed to fold in on itself as if I dragged the horizon closer to me from sheer will. The canyon walls reached toward the sky, growing higher as I approached their every shade of swirling fire struck through with thin, dark veins of purple and blue.

  I kept going, plunging deep into the canyon on a fleet thought, where it cooled and darkened gradually. My nose detected moisture, the drifting vapor leading me through the labyrinth until my ears picked up the echo of rushing water. I ran up one final hill, was greeted by the small, sparkling river, and curved down into the ravine.

  Innathi was waiting there, standing barefoot in the flowing water, wearing the same flowing, sleeveless gown of startling white. Her dark arms and wrists were decorated with gold bands and bracelets; her hair was piled up and accented by fine, gold chains; rings of several metals and gems adorned her fingers.

  Hearing my gait, she turned with a welcoming smile, her arms lifting, opening. “Cris-ri-phon!”

  We paused in place, and I waited to see if she knew me at all. If she knew she was dead. Her scarlet eyes glimmered as she appraised me, realizing her mistake. Her gaze rested on the nearest cliff wall before returning to me.

  “Ah. It is you, khalithan. It has been so long, I thought you’d died.”

  I smirked. “The gatekeeper is a selfish and obstinate one, your Majesty.”

  Innathi’s expression brightened. “Do you mean you got past the Black Heart?”

  I opened my palms. “I am here, aren’t I?”

  Her lovely, mature face smiled skeptically. “Sometimes it lets the bearer glimpse the souls beyond in exchange for something.”

  “So I discovered, and in the most difficult way. I can assure you, your Majesty, that it didn’t want me to catch another glimpse of this ‘Elsewhere,’ much less stand here in private council with you.”

  Innathi gazed up at the darkening sky, and I joined her. Unlike before, the stars were still-points of pure light, not a wink among them. I hadn’t seen a true Sun set here.

  “Hm,” she said, bowing her chin to grant my words an intrigued smile. “Not just the bearer, then? Are you the wielder in truth, now, khali?”

  “I am. I escaped the Deathless, and the relic is mine now, for better or worse.”

  She turned toward me in the clear river, splashing water, the gown’s hem soaking up the precious liquid. Her luminous eyes were wider, slowly growing excited like when we first met, again able to imagine looking forward.

  “Can you take me to wherever the Davrin have fled?”

  “I can, your Grace.”

  “Can you evade the Deathless in doing so?”

  “I have means, yes. Obtaining it is where I’ve been for so long.”

  “Yes. You are determined with the will to travel far. I can see it in your wilder eyes.” Innathi lifted her chin. “We may not be able to aid you in body as the Black Heart controls that schism of this relic, but we can aid in knowledge of your past.”

  “We?” I asked, then blinked as I spotted other forms in the mist of the waterfall.

  “Oh, yes. There were other wielders both before and after me.” The Davrin Queen glanced behind her. “We are still here in one form or another, though none kept and wielded the Soul Blade for as long as I did.”

  I believed her and could see what she meant. None of the misty figures drifting stepless toward us as the canyon grew darker were as vivid and crisp to me as Innathi was. I did not know whether that reflected the strength of her will or mine in what was most familiar. I easily counted a score of Humans, half as many Dwarves, but only a few Elves whose shade of skin in life I could not determine.

  There were also a handful of creatures I did not recognize in any form, some of them larger in stature than a Ma’ab man, though I suppressed my immediate assumption that this size made them all male. I watched them approach, trying to see them as Gavin might. Other than the Queen, however, I could not rightly say much about them than a vaguely recollected identity which must be their own. Perhaps I did not wish to see them any clearer.

  So many… over how long? Yet all of these, in the end, failed to control Soul Drinker. All of these.

  How many had escaped? Had anyone?

  Warily, I asked, “Where are those killed by the dagger, if these are the wielders?”

  Innathi’s brow lifted with interest, and she smiled how I’d imagine a Valsharess might while scarlet eyes pointedly looked left, then right, then up. “They are all around you, khali. Thi
s is a familiar form to take, what you expect to see, but you commune with all of us.”

  I was glad that I had taken a piss before this.

  Where to begin? How had she died? That seemed obvious. What happened, either at the start or the end? There was too much before and in between to explain yet. I could not stay until I starved, again. I needed to find my tether and pull my way home.

  As I thought about leaving, the misted figures dissolved into the sparkling river, and Innathi pulled up her gown and stepped out of it, leaving footprints and drag marks upon the red stone. I did not know how close she might come to me, or what she might say next.

  I asked, “Do you know, from your time of rule, a Davrin bua with pure gold eyes?”

  Innathi stopped, and her smile faded until her face was almost blank, her gaze growing distant even as she watched me. “Not during my reign, no.”

  I waited, willing her to add whatever it was. “But, Majesty? You do now?”

  Her chin lowered, eyes piercing me as she stared up from beneath her brow. “My Husband confessed it to me, the last time I saw him. I could not imagine him ever neglecting something of that import, but you somehow wrenched this secret from him.”

  I held my breath. “Wrenched what?”

  “That my younger sister had given birth to a son in hiding, a bua I never knew existed.” The Desert Queen contemplated. “He was kept well-hidden for centuries, he was fully grown when my General stumbled on the remote prison holding him. Cris-ri-phon failed to free the bua before he was moved elsewhere.” She smirked briefly. “He also said the bua possessed most unusual eyes for the pure Davrin he saw. Something his Mother did to him. It is not a natural color among us.”

  I swallowed. “Could the unusual eyes have anything to do with the To’vah?”

  Her eyes flew up to me, her head tilted. “You know this word links to the color?”

  “Recently. It’s important to know what it means to you, Majesty.”

  “It… it means…ah,” Innathi stepped farther away from the water, her feet dried to leave no marks. She pressed fingers to her brow. “My Queen-Mother Alyarra warned me not to call upon them, even during a crisis, for they manipulate whole reigns to their design. It is always a struggle for a Queendom when a To’vah becomes known from an alliance of any sort, for they shall be fervently worshipped by the ignorant and superstitious. Their strength is alluring to many, and they are too eager to accept gifts of metal and magic.”