Cailean frowned. He understood as well, but to systematically annihilate entire towns and villages, to be enveloped wholly in one's paranoia? He shook his head. "Still, it's no excuse. No excuse for targeting a certain race because of what their predecessors were. You and the rest of the dissident are the opposite of monsters, Ley. Your people are a sentient attestation to that fact."
Cailean pulled her into his arms. She returned the embrace with a ragged sigh.
"Hard to see that sometimes." Her jaw tensed against his chest. "Scars have a nasty way of fixing things in place."
Cailean pulled away, produced a flask from the inner pocket of his coat. He shook it mischievously and grinned. "True, but drinking has a way of soothing aches." He took a sip, then passed the flask to Ley. "Go on. Put some fire in your blood."
Cailean looked at the numerous blades and vials, adrenaline surging as he thought of knifing Galska Nuul, of what it'd feel like when his monstrous reign was finally quelled. Of restoring peace to a city bent by fear.
"Bar told me something once," Leyandra said. "'Memory is medication.'"
Cailean lingered on the phrase, a tiny smile playing on his lips. Bar had always been a man of words. More often than not he'd had his nose in a book; their home had seemed an archive, what with sheaves and pages strewn about the countertops and floor.
"What do you think he meant?" Leyandra asked.
Cailean shrugged. "Knowing Bar?" He chewed his thumbnail pensively. "A lot. You?"
"I always took it literally," Leyandra said. "I like to think good memories can soothe a broken heart. That they can ease a troubled mind." She frowned. "I suppose it works the other way as well. A dark memory can trigger rage."
Cailean thought of marrying Bar in that golden sea of grass. He thought of Bar becoming ash the night he died. He closed his eyes, immersed in agony and bliss. He could almost hear Bar whispering in his ear. "Make your medicine, my sweet."
He opened his eyes and blinked.
They started from the room.
"You all right?" Leyandra asked.
Cailean nodded. "Just…making medicine."
CHAPTER THREE: MENDACITY
Then—The Month of Cemb, Black Year 1154
The End
City of Masques.
Garden of Souls.
Befitting epithets for a city intimate with festivals and death. For a city where the two were often times entwined. That Harbanan stood was not by chance, but by the dark benevolence of Galska Nuul. One soul, one month, in perpetuity. Habitual reaping. An equivalent exchange of lives, at least in the fallen angel's eyes.
Eyes like ghosts these last four months. Four masques. Four offerings unclaimed. It troubled Cailean—where had the monster been?
His stomach churned as he paced the snow-swathed Beacon courtyard, hands behind his back. He felt hot despite the cold. More tense than he had ever been. Sweat slicked his brow. His left eye twitched.
Breathe.
Easier said than done. Just like ending Galska Nuul. How many times had the bastard shirked the Galrun Muir? How many lives had been lost?
And how much blood is on your hands?
It a question that'd been stalking him for years. His introspection rounded back to Bar and Cailean heaved a sigh, his dejection clouding in the frosty night.
In the distance rang a bell. Cailean turned and started toward the Beacon doors.
The time of masques and souls had come.
They called Drahl Muuz cathedral the Crown of Spires. Folklore claimed it once had been the diadem of the serpent god Dragúl. History told it'd been erected by the ancestors of Gabriel Muir. Apostates thought it fashioned by the raven god Varésh. Whatever the origin, it was widely accepted Drahl Muuz had sheathed itself in the earth a millennium prior to the birth of Harbanan.
The grounds were a cacophonous swirl of vibrancy and mirth. Harbanan lived for its monthly masque. A part of Cailean understood, loathe as he was to see good in a festival that most times ended in death. It brought comfort in a time of fear. The comfort of routine. A comfort bred by fear, but a comfort nonetheless.
"Ig tahn na'tuul," he murmured. May you rest. For the people of this godsforsaken city, there was nothing Cailean longed for more. A decade's worth of terror at the hands of Galska Nuul was a torment none deserved.
He tensed his jaw, once more entranced by the fantasy of ending Galska Nuul, of slaughtering the monster in his husband's name.
I failed you, Bar, but I'll not fail the city you loved. You mark my words, you pretty shit—it ends tonight. Even if it means my life, I'm going to punch my dagger through that fucker's heart.
He started for the oaken doors.
"A coin flips, and the world transforms."
Cailean gasped.
Slaughter bloomed like waking stars; costumed corpses caked the chamber floor. Blood shimmered in the dying light. He stood amidst the butchery, body tingling, mind empty save the memory of oaken doors. What the hell was this? How had he gotten here, so deep in Drahl Muuz? A ragged breath escaped his lips, clouding in the frigid air.
"So long I dreamt of you, O Galrun Muir." The voice was wrong; soft like summer wind, cacophonous like a thousand buzzing flies. It gave a resounding, drawn-out moan. "Craved you like the styrgé thirst for gore…" A reverberant chuckle, hungering yet coy. As ethereal as its host.
Cailean started at a breath against his neck, a whisper in his ear.
"Cailean Catil, I've missed you so."
He pulled away, half stumbling as he drew his blade. He wheeled around but there was nothing there.
Incorporeal amusement.
"Come out!" he snarled. "You fallen fuck—reveal yourself!"
The illumination waned. Bodies rose with fire in their eyes and screeches in their lungs. Needled-toothed and ravenous, they came. Cailean sheathed his blade and bolted for the rearward doors.
Fucking styrgé. A nasty vampire breed. He could handle one or two, but this? They'd flay him head to toe and drink him dry.
But not before I cut your master down. The beasts could have him after that. A Bar-less life was unappealing and acutely masochistic.
Cailean barreled into the hall beyond the doors. He had distance on the risen dead; newborn styrgé shambled instead of running. He kept on at a desperate sprint, following the laughter as it goaded him to tears. How could anything so divine as angels bend to sociopathy so profound? What had bled this creature of its sanity and heart?
Cailean ran until weariness betrayed him. He pressed into the vestibule, steps hampered by a stitch. There were corpses here but they were still. He neared them with his dagger drawn and paled. They were men and women of the Galrun Muir.
"Ig tahn na'tuul," he whispered, swallowing a lump. He hoped Leyandra was all right; thankfully she wasn't here.
"The irony amuses me." In a twist of light came Galska Nuul, pale and lithe with brimstone eyes, wingless and adorned in white. "A prayer for souls that never were." He grinned at Cailean's dismay. "Homunculi. You were mine since you arrived those years ago."
Cailean bared his teeth in a rictus of disgust. His stomach churned and his blade arm shook. "You lie."
Galska Nuul approached. "If only it were so." His smile fell; his eyes swirled and his flesh began to warm. "Fiction is the cruelest mistress of them all. That she should greet you here…"
Time slowed; deaf ears turned words away. Cailean shook, immobilized by dread, by dark bewilderment wrathful as a winter night. He fell to his knees, hand to his mouth, a scream in his throat. It was a lie. He was surely asleep, wrapped in a blanket and dreaming a dream. A horrible dream from which any moment he'd wake. Wake to find Bar in his arms on a warm summer eve. An eve of moonlight, stories, and stars.
"Memory is medication," Galska Nuul intoned, "and medication makes the memories."
Cailean retched at the fallen angel's words. Blood and bile smacked the floor.
Yet he pushed himself to stand. By strength of will he rose to meet this thing, to meet its sunset s
tare.
And could not raise his blade—not to him.
Not to Bar.
"The world is a complex thing," said Galska Nuul. "A coin, if you prefer."
Cailean ignored the words. The fallen angel looked like Bar, smelled and spoke like him as well. A memory came—Bar had acted strangely in the week before his death. "Would you castigate a man for past mendacity?" he'd asked. The question clung to Cailean like hoarfrost to a fence; the implication made him sick. Had Bar been trying then to tell him what he really was? Or was this all a twisted joke, the fallen angel toying with his memories and thoughts? Had Bar ever actually been real?
"If you're really him...what was I to you? Did you love me or was I just a pawn—"
Galska Nuul hissed. He closed the gap, wrapped Cailean in his arms, and, in a twist of light, whisked them to the apex of Drahl Muuz. To the highest point in all Harbanan so they might observe the city as it fell to madness and monstrosities beneath a gentle snow.
Cailean pushed himself from the fallen angel. He ached in ways he'd never known. There was cackling in his head, resonant and wry. Black amusement birthed and fostered by each hammer of his heart. His ignorant, shattered, laughing heart.
Harbanan wailed.
"Everything…" Cailean wept, keeping his dagger level with the monster's eyes. "Why?"
"For equilibrium," said Galska Nuul, and his words were soft. "They call me Madness. They call me Lucifer. They call me Entropy, for I am that which raises Law, provokes it to ascend. Each is requisite for symmetry lest Pandemonium drink the world."
He closed the gap in a luminescent blink and ripped the blade from Cailean's hand. He punched it through his chest and pulled him close. Held him as the cathedral waned. Held him as he had the night that they'd been wed.
"You were mine since you arrived those years ago. Mine in more ways than you know," whispered Galska Nuul. "Once you let the devil in your bed there is no letting go. Once marked, always marked."
"B…ar…" Tears fell from Cailean's eyes; shock kept them wide. Blood trickled from his mouth. Trust from his soul. How could this be? He gazed at Bar, lost in the stare he had loved. Their history danced and died in those pastel eyes that had sold him lies; Cailean clutched the fallen angel's arm.
Then darkness carried him away.
INTERLUDE: THE VULTURE
Then—The Month of Ovem, Black Year 1154
"Would you castigate a man for past mendacity?" inquired Bar.
He and Cailean walked the Beacon grounds amidst an evening snow.
Cailean quirked an eyebrow. "Something I should know?"
Bar chuckled softly. "No. Just a question." He sucked his upper lip. "But suppose there was… Suppose my past was marred by fabrications of a most egregious sort."
"I would rather not," said Cailean. "Supposition leads to horrible thoughts and I'd prefer to keep you in as bright a light as I'm allowed."
"As you're allowed?" Bar poked at Cailean's ribs. "Has my brilliance waned, my sweet?"
Cailean rolled his eyes. "No, but I can see your ego's waxed."
Bar smirked. "That's not the only thing…"
Cailean allowed himself a snort. They continued on in silence for a time, the snowfall ebbing as they neared the shrine of Nor Vaa'Dahn. The effigy greeted them with unfurled wings and open arms; azure torchlight echoed in her eyes.
"Been a while since you prayed," said Cailean. "Something wrong?"
It was less of a question than it was an opening for Bar to speak. He'd been acting strange these last few days. Strange for Bar, at least. Antsier and more abrupt, beset with hypotheticals and ignorant of his work.
"Feeling lost is all," said Bar as he bowed his head. "Out of place."
Cailean took his hand. "You can talk to me about this, Bar. You know that, right?"
Bar smiled. "Your sympathy is endearing. It's what I love about you most." There was a sadness to his words. He let go of Cailean's hand. "Just need a moment to myself. I'll find you when I'm done."
Now—Time Unknown
Bar was monstrous.
And I am dead, thought Cailean as he drifted through the memory for what could have been the third or thousandth time. The simplicity of this fact feasted on him like a vulture did on flesh. And what could he do but drift and wallow in this void, this retrospective hellscape all his own?
"You were mine since you arrived those years ago."
Cailean lingered on the words, each one a needle tracing patterns in his flesh. Torturing the modicum of trust that still remained. Had anything between them been sincere, or had he simply been a puppet dancing to the movement of his strings?
And what the fuck had Bar meant? Equilibrium, Entropy, and Law—epithets personified and claimed as if they all were gods. Bar was not a god, not so far as Cailean was aware, but that didn't mean he wasn't what he'd said. Keepers knew his actions were indicative enough.
Cailean screamed, and the blackness ate his rage.
He cried, and the emptiness drank his woe.
If this is Hell, he thought, then let me not exist. To be unwritten was a better fate than this—reliving agony in a place where sound was dead and light had never been.
He sighed.
And his breath became a fog, luminescent and abrupt; a swaddling, comforting and warm.
A light to ward away the dark.
He javelined through the void. Whispers found his ears, a soundless scream escaped his lungs. Raindrops kissed his cheeks and he slammed his head and back against the ground. The pain was comparable to a hammer to the chest, but even it could not distract him from the majesty that was the nimbus-dusted night.
CHAPTER FOUR: SUDDEN SKY
Now—The Month of Cemb, Black Year 1155
One Year After the End
It was an ashen sky.
A waking sky.
A sudden sky. One that drew a violent gasp from Cailean as he gulped the rainy air. As shadows of a previous life waltzed across his mind. One of agony and war, purposeless and bleak, yet at the same time harboring hope for something past the wonted madness of the world. Something beautiful and warm, like a summer breeze against one's cheek.
"Or a whisper in one's ear."
Cailean started, bolting upright.
"Find me past the eldritch moon, beneath a hidden sun."
He looked about the pallid glade. All was still; he was utterly alone.
Cailean touched his chest, touched the scar where blade had punched through bone and siphoned trust. Is this real…?
Or was he mad, dreaming as the desolate dead were wont to dream? He touched his face with a trembling hand. His skin was rough and unrefined, scarred and dry like parchment left to bake beneath the sun. A far-cry from the silk-flesh he had worn in death. A remnant of the war-sworn life he'd led.
Cailean pushed himself to stand. The glade spun and he staggered like a foal. He retched a bitter, midnight ichor and it burned. With it, bile and blood, pooling at his feet and washed away by rain. He tottered toward the trees. Every breath was short, and every fiber of his being screamed as the atrophy awoke.
He collapsed in a heap, weighted by the steeds of apprehension galloping through his mind. He was alive—and he had never felt such dread. Things dead were meant to stay as such, for things returned were never whole, so said the axioms of the Galrun Muir. So said the mind of a man who'd danced with nightmares wrought from borrowed flesh.
The night screeched and an owl landed on the ground. It scrutinized Cailean with a storm-eyed stare and snapped its beak. "Get up." The words were resonant and unexpectedly direct. "Endure the atrophy and rise, O Bane of Nuul. Rise and seek the eldritch moon. Drink her like you would the rye of Muir."
Would that he could, Cailean would have laughed at the absolute absurdity of the owl's words. Bane of Nuul? He was limp as a fucking rag and weaker than a babe, naked who the hell knew where and listening to a bird. These weren't exactly hallmarks of the man who'd vanquish Galska Nuul.
"How…" H
e paused to catch his breath. "How would…how would you have me rise?"
Fuck, but this was tiring. So many questions, so little verve. Cailean frowned as if to convey this thought and the owl cocked its head. The Bane of Nuul commands you pick him up, he thought, and he yearned for a cask of rye. Longed for whatever liquor might temper the inanity of his plight.
"Clearly, gratitude is not your bent," the owl said and it seemed to glare. "Your mind is gallingly cacophonous."
So that was owl's game. Cailean returned the glare. I've little love for things that wander where they ought not be. Especially nameless birds with a flair for histrionic convocations. He smirked and the owl screeched.
"I was sent by the spirit of Lúm Duu'Mahl," it hissed. "She has a certain fondness for you, but I wonder now if she was wrong. Perhaps I'll leave you here and tell her you were dead when I arrived."
She'd know you're full of shit, thought Cailean. Are you going to help me up or not?
"What makes you sure I can?" the owl asked with such apparent nonchalance it might as well have been a barkeep mopping floors. "With such a draining flair for histrionic convocations I have strength for little else, oh woe is me." The owl snapped its beak. "You must have been particularly loathsome to have died the way you did."
Cailean tensed his jaw. Gradually he pushed himself to sit; the exertion was akin to lifting blocks of stone. He took a pained breath and let the raindrops kiss his skin. He licked his lips and they were dry; his throat was sore but he ignored the ache. His mind was glued to Bar and the memory of that night. To those monstrously intoxicating eyes and the beautiful lies that Bar had led.
"Maybe."
Cailean swallowed a sob; tears met rain and streamed along his cheeks. He sat there wondering, sifting through the memories of their lie, searching for a sign, an inkling of an answer to his every why.
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