Alex nodded slowly, and Twilight’s next words were abrupt and focused even as Jess swooned in darkest trance. “When Jess makes her choice, assuming you are alive to do so, you will see her collapse and fall into seizure. You must, as fast as you can, race back to Highrock, and arrange for her to be brought before the sacred tree in the rooftop garden. Rage will do what he can to bring her there, but it also depends upon you to make sure she arrives there without interference before you give in to sleep, and all this fades to dream. Do you understand?”
Alex blinked and shuddered, nodding rapidly. “Yes. Implicitly. I will get her to the tree within the rooftop garden, no matter what!”
Twilight nodded his head approvingly. “Very good, dear Alex, there is hope for you yet. Now, we wait. We wait for Jess to make the right decision.”
Alex nodded, gazing at Jess with solemn eyes.
37
And Jess sat there for some moments, eyes closed, lips parted ever so softly, as if being seduced by a lover's delicious caress, such terrible sweetness did the Void tantalize her quivering soul with, leaving her utterly hungry for more. With the siren call of endless destruction in all its brilliance and terrible beauty did the pit of darkness at the heart of their universe tempt her with, the promise of unlimited power. Power unrivaled even by the gods of old.
Endless, sweet, and terrible, to be immersed and gloriously drowned in a roaring fury of unquenchable passion, unspeakable delights. For what did mortality matter if infinite pleasures could be savored in a single frozen moment of time? What power did sorrow need hold over her fierce soul, she who could feast on a thousand fruits of the senses in the blink of an eye?
It was in that instant of terrible temptation that the Void revealed its darkest, most delicious secret. With time itself susceptible to her power, every second could last an eternity as she danced about the multiverse she destroyed. She could savor endless eternities, blasting through and ravaging countless levels of reality, pillaging all the realms of Heaven and Hell, draining them dry of all life and power.
For her, endless ages of unspeakable pleasure could be had with each passing moment, even as the great clock of existence wound down at last, a thousand thousand eternities for her to revel within, savoring countless sybaritic delights even as the multiverse came crashing down in a glorious cacophony. She, the supreme engine of destruction, that ultimate catalyst of the Void itself, would get the shrieking pleasure of destroying every iota of existence; every blazing sun, every world, every grand civilization contained within the universe entire.
She, Jezabelle, would alone be allowed the singular honor of savoring every shrieking moment of the universe's destruction, disjoining every framework of matter that was or had ever been, unleashing energy in its purest, rawest form... the very memories of the universe itself.
She would pitilessly devour all the hopes and dreams of all that was or could ever be. All the myriad billion billion stories comprising the grand quilt of existence upon which all the wonders of the multiverse were constructed would be instantly set ablaze in a cacophony of darkest pleasure.
The great tapestry of Creation, all of it, remorselessly burnt to ash and consumed by the dark glory of the Void.
Jezabelle screamed in terror and jubilation. For in that terrible moment of oneness she realized that she was not just linked to Oblivion, but in fulfilling her inevitable destiny she would become one with the Void itself. Its ultimate avatar. The queen of destruction gifted with the terrible pleasure of consuming all things before slipping into peaceful Oblivion at last, for all time. Beyond all time. Her final act, consuming time itself. The serpent of existence, devouring its own tail.
Jezabelle sighed with pleasure, savoring for one terrible moment the dark glory of embracing her destiny as the destroyer of all things.
And her eyes snapped open to look into the panic-stricken faces of her friends, gasping, turning blue. Only then did Jess remember Twilight saying her beloved friend Jera was even now with child.
A cold wave of self-loathing spiked with fury poured through her in that instant as Jess looked down at herself and grimaced, her mind sparkling brilliantly with the remembered faces of her mother, sister, brother, and father; gentle eyes gazing back at her with laughter and love, even as their family's vast apple orchards softly swayed behind them in the afternoon breeze.
She remembered that day with painful clarity, innocent as it was; a family picnic, the Calenbrys celebrating their eldest daughter's commencement of her senior year before returning to Highrock. She remembered still her brother's jests, her father's gentle laughter, her sister's teasing quips. It had only been but a few months since that special day, after all, for all that it felt worlds apart from the terrible moment Jess was now lost within.
And what, Jess wondered, would her mother think of her now? To see her wayward daughter whose antics she had long endured, now crackling with eldritch power, listening with baited breath to the seductive whispers of the Void itself, a voice that would entice her to ultimate darkness, her awful baptism being the slaying of everyone and everything she had ever loved.
A keening wail escaped her lips, Jess comprehending at last the true horror of her nature. She knew then why she understood so well how to sense the weakness of any foe or army, rupture any spell, destroy any fortification, yet was so horrid at expressing herself in terms of art or creation. Why she understood neither tone nor melody, yet had a knack for the beat and measure of any dance.
For to understand her foe's measure, to force him to dance to the beat of her deadly dirge were but aspects of that most terrible of all callings; the art of cleaving life free from her foe's grasp with elegance and deadly precision. The gift of leaving cold silence and rotting death where life had once sprung bright and free. The art of destruction in its purest, most awful form.
It all boiled down to one inescapable, hideous truth. Unmaking was at the very core of her nature. Her true purpose. For all her dreams and desires, ultimately she was little more than a forged weapon, naught but a sentient aspect of the Void itself.
Jess moaned and cried out, desperately shaking herself back from the razor's edge of fearsome temptation, even as the power rang seductively through her, an elixir potent enough to entice and damn even the gods above. “Twilight! I’m ready!” she shouted, as much railing against hideous temptation as fiercely girding herself for what was to come. “What do I do to cut the chord?”
If Jess didn’t know her cat infinitely better she would say his sigh was one of relief. “Draw your sword, Jess. Very good. Ignore your friends for now. The air is thin, but it is not yet dead by the tree. They will collapse, but will revive when they are taken back to richer air. Can you see the shimmering obsidian chord of power throbbing with all the glory and fury of the Void latched to the very center of your soul?”
Jess grimaced and nodded, suppressing a shudder. "Very good," Twilight soothed, and Jess could sense her familiar snapping his gaze to the anxious-looking hound whose blood sigils glowed with worry. "Rage. Wrap your blood tendrils around Jess and her companions, and be ready to drag them out of here the instant Jess collapses. Excellent. Very well, my beloved mistress, take a deep breath. When you are ready, cut the Chord."
And spending but a single terrible moment balanced between the precipice of terror and desire, for all that the moment stretched for an endless eternity, Jess made her choice.
Echoing the ancient cry of an order of paladins that had faded to dust endless ages ago, Jess swung her blade in a great cleaving stroke, screaming as she felt her soul explode with a howl that tore through the hills about her as if she cut through the very fabric of existence itself, slicing in twain the terrible chords of power wrapped about her very soul. Her agonized shriek echoed and reverberated for an endless moment, so profound and terrible as to send the massive twisting moons sailing upon crimson skies above hurling deep into that forbidden cosmos as the bloodied heavens cracked and the land itself began to crumble under t
he might and fury of the thwarted Void, chunks of the landscape slipping horrifically into the crackling pit of ebony blackness that lay just beyond all dimensions, ever waiting for the opportunity to devour all of Creation.
Terrible howls echoed through the air, as if the Void itself gnashed its teeth in frustration, the pocket dimension trapped within Shadow crumbling in upon itself even Rage wrapped his blood tendrils snugly around a spasming, foaming Jess as well as her unconscious companions before racing for the barrier with such terrible speed that not even the massive sinkhole swallowing all of Pomell could hinder them as with a final leap, the nightmare hound out of darkest legend burst free of that dying realm of dream to appear shaking and blinking, back fully once more within the realm of the living.
With a happy bark at the warm sun overhead caressed his skin, the massive beast shook himself free of any lingering traces of Shadow as the gentle breeze ruffled his thick coat, an odd mixture of crimson and ebony not to be found anywhere else upon the face of Dawn. Rage sniffed over his collapsed companions and began whining softly over Jess, who barely seemed to be breathing at all.
38
With a desperate groan, Alex lurched over, coughing and gasping so hard he feared he would vomit. Dust and dead air seemed to fill his nostrils and he still felt the lingering touch of that devastated pocket of Shadow, so recently of the mundane world, being torn apart and transformed as it was swallowed whole by the dark heart of the Abyss, the great and terrible Void itself.
“Jera!” Alex cried out, though his voice was little more than a breathless whisper, body utterly depleted to the point of collapse from his bout of coughing and the crushing exhaustion he felt from having spent too long in that dying realm of Regio, unable to deny any longer the true reason why he and his beloved had been able survive the experience at all. Or so he prayed.
Desperately, Alex heaved himself to Jera's side, anxiously stroking her hair and massaging her back, breathing a shuddering sigh of relief as her shallow breaths turned to a weak cough and cry. He gently held her close, stroking her shivering brow.
“Alex,” she gasped, the sweetest word he had ever heard, even as she collapsed and began to cough and wretch upon the hardpacked road they found themselves on. “Oh, by the gods, Alex. By the gods!”
Alex shuddered but nodded solemnly, even as he gently stroked her back and held her as she wretched out the last lingering touch of that dying realm that had come too close to pulling them in with it. “Heaven's mercy, Alex, I remember it. I remember everything!”
She began to cry, her chest wracked with helpless sobs of exhaustion and terror as she sobbed upon his shoulder.
"It's okay," Alex soothed even as he shuddered in remembered horror. "I remember it too. Far more than I want to. I even think I got most of it down. I wrote like a madman when Jess and... Twilight were conversing." He shook his head with a soft chuckle. "In the midst of all that destruction and terror, it was all I could do. Save some record of what had happened, even if we forgot. Even if we became lost to time."
Jera squeezed him close despite her exhaustion. "I swear, Alex, all I want to do is forget. Forget all of it, all that awfulness." Her tear-stained eyes gazed deeply into his own. "Everything that is, except you. You and me."
Alex smiled and kissed her. “Me too, my love. Me too.”
“Alex?” She whispered softly into his shoulder as he held her.
“Yes?”
"Let's just go home. Let's not even worry about the college. We need but go to my father's chateau. Ask for my hand. I know my father would take on a mage with your skills for our crops in a heartbeat," she smiled. "And I know mother would bless us if she knew how happy you made me... if they knew how close we came to not coming back at all."
Alex squeezed her tight. “I know how much you want that, my heart. And I ache for it too. But as much as I hate to acknowledge it, terrible events were set in motion, and we still have a responsibility to those who have entrusted us with doing what we can to thwart disaster. We still have a role to play, however small a part. For the sake of our college, so that our peers are safe from the nightmares we faced, we must see this through. We must get the Wand of Dreams back to Highrock!”
Alex sighed even as Jera curled up, angry, wanting to push him away, but unable to bear leaving the comfort of his arms. “I know, dear Jera,” he soothed. “I want to visit your family too. Come. Let us go back to the college. We have a wand to return, a commission to earn, and we will have done our part for now. Then let us visit your family and mine and take a break from these games that I too have lost all appetite for, for all that necessity dictates we play them a bit longer.”
She shuddered but gave a tentative nod and he squeezed her close for reassurance even as he whispered in her ear. "Besides. We have to take care of Jess. She... hurt herself to save us, I think. Hurt herself badly. And lest we forget, we are still tainted by our trip into the Shadowrealms. Only when we truly sleep will we forget. And we both know that there is a risk that once our heads hit our soft pillows, we'll slide back into the Dreamrealms entirely, and never awaken again." Alex sighed, giving a defeated shake of his head. "I suppose we can only hope that we will be lost within dreams of wonder, free of nightmares at least. Who knows? Sleeping in each other's arms, perhaps we will spend eternity dreaming of paradise, together."
Alex gently kissed her lips when she began to sob. "All is not lost, my love. For I suspect that just as that mysterious tree that Lady Vaila is so protective of will help Jess, perhaps it will also help anchor us to the realm of the living. I am almost certain of it, my love. We shall awaken once more, whole and healthy, able to leave Highrock together, hand and hand, and live our lives in peace." Alex felt his heart swell as he tenderly stroked his lover's hair. "I promise you, my Jera, upon that fateful awakening we shall be reborn anew, forswearing all intrigue and darker things, dedicating ourselves instead to the daughter we will one day have."
Jera smiled and sighed. “I would love nothing more than that, my Alex.” She gave a resolute nod. “Even as I was gasping for air in that dying realm I heard enough to know. You are right. We have to get Jess back to that tree upon the rooftop garden. I pray to the heavens above that it will help her, and hopefully us as well.”
Alex gave her a proud grin. “I have faith that it will keep us safe, my beloved. We need only get back there safely, before we collapse. For Jess's sake, if not our own.” He then turned to gaze at Jess, looking so frail and helpless, chest gently rising and falling with shallow breaths.
Minutes before she had appeared a being out of legend, so potent as to transcend reality itself, all perspective being lost when gazing upon her. For even as she had seemed to be standing but inches from their shaken bodies while almost cavalierly discussing the fate of existence itself with her counselor and familiar, her aura had been simultaneously that of a titanic creature of unspeakable majesty and power, seeming to fill the horizon entire with her presence, impossibly far away. Gravity and space itself had seemed to warp around her, logic twisting and snapping under the terrible strain of the forces in play.
So horrifically potent had been her majesty that Alex had sensed that entire pocket dimension of Shadow, lost Pomell and all its surrounding lands, slowly surrendering itself to Jess, and never had he been so terrified in his life than when he had gazed into her madly grinning countenance, radiating all the awful power of a fallen god bent on destruction.
Yet now she looked to be no more than a gravely ill young woman near death's door. So weak, it seemed, that she was but hours or minutes away from her final breath.
Her attire had been torn away, literally burned to cinders, whether in the conflicts fought or the terrible power she had wrought, Alex could not say. She was naked save for her shirt of mail, bare flesh peeking out from between the fine links of her shimmering mithril hauberk covering her from wrist to knees, and was equipped only with the terrible blade she had retrieved, sheathed in the most exotic of scabbards.
>
The juxtaposition between the demonic queen in all her glory who had held the fate of the world within her hands, and the frail figure that lay utterly helpless before Alex could not have been greater, for all that they were one and the same.
Even now the fiery-eyed hound built of sinew and fury, glowing with crimson sigils twisting through his dark ashy fur seemed far less a monster of darkest nightmare than he did a massive tamed wolf, whining like a puppy, ever so gently licking his mistress's face, as if hoping to waken her from her deathly slumber. He turned to gaze at Alex and Jera, howling piteously.
“It will be okay, Malek,” Jera soothed. “We'll get Jess back to Highrock right away, we promise.”
The fearsome creature whose shoulder came nearly to Jera's own, gently butted his head into her chest, knocking her over even as he gave an approving bark, before he locked eyes with Alex, snapping his head back with a curious wag of his tail.
"By Justice, I think he means us to ride him!" Alex said in awe, even as he and Jera gently placed Jess on his back. Alex shuddered as his terrible vision that had seen far more of the true nature of reality than he could stand even now, caught sight of thin tendrils of crimson energy gently encircling Jess, even as the beast nodded his head at Alex and Jera. "All right, my love. You next, I think."
Jera nodded. “Alex. Do you still have the wand?”
Alex grinned. "Of course. In all that madness, my journal and the wand are the two things I held tight." He patted his waist sack gently.
“Excellent!”
Jess and Alex gasped as loud clapping could be heard from behind them. The spun around to find that where there had been empty road before, they were now being watched by a number of battle-hardened figures and what appeared to be a bard. The bard was scribbling notes as fast as he could, even as three individuals in odd assortments of exotic armors and weaponry smiled sharply at the exhausted trio of youths and the now fiercely growling hound before them.
Oblivion's Queen Page 43
