He paused significantly before adding, “I believe in you.”
I started to speak and thought better of it because I truly did not know what to say.
Had I done that?
Could I do that?
Would I be able to take and harness a demon’s power and make it my own without killing it?
I would have to find out.
A Man and His Blade
“How do most Empyrean Knights get their swords, Alric?
“Do they visit a battlefield like the one we were just in and hope they are selected by a holy sword?
“Do they quest for the right blade?
“Do visions guide them toward their destiny?
“Are keeps set up near heavenly battlegrounds, allowing new recruits to go out and have their worth judged by the fallen Angel Swords?”
Alric’s reply was quick. “Yes.”
I guess that answered that.
So much for a conversation.
To be fair to Alric, through the lore he had shared I knew the answer. I was just trying to pass the time in conversation while loping over the scrub-laden hills that approached the distant peaks of the vertiginous Doeren Muer on the horizon.
Alric’s reassuring words from the day before echoed warningly through my mind as I looked forward.
“The mountains ahead are home to the fey. Crossing through them will save us much time…if they let us pass.”
“Fornost lies within Doeren Muer.”
The words came from my mind unbidden, not so much a question, merely a thought. “Aye. Far from where we will cross.”
Images of Alric’s home sprang to mind—the high, defiant peaks, the verdant, wooded mountainsides, the rocky outcroppings projecting above even the highest trees, the depthless blue skies reflected in untroubled glacial lakes, the mysteries of the sidhe and dryads whose miraculous works could sometimes be glimpsed when looking askance at the hills but never directly, the simple carved stone dwellings of his people interspersed along the hills, waterways, and lakes of the numerous sheltered valleys—so much in so little.
Unlike the sere, drained Infernal Plains at their feet, the sides of these unbowed mountains were covered in variegated profusion, a strict line of demarcation marking the boundary of corruption in the foothills at their roots. Plumes of clouds shrouding the mountainsides resembled pillars of smoke rising from the banks of fog cloaking the dense forests.
This moisture appeared to leave the plains below untouched, or, perhaps like the demonic forces haunting their reaches, the plain’s thirst could never be satisfied.
If, as Alric said, crossing the mountains would be much faster and safer than trying to skirt their boundary, I would have to be prepared to get wet…and muddy.
Thankfully, I now had my Sigil Shield, which made such concerns moot.
Or so I hoped.
Of course, Alric had also said we would have to be granted permission to cross the mountains by the Doeren Muer’s denizens—the sidhe, the dryads, the dragons, and any other race that decided to bar our way through their realms.
Having an Angel Sword would help earn our passage, but even it was no guarantee.
My earlier questions really had ulterior motives other than being a means to pass the time.
While Alric accepted my silence with his own, I renewed my query. “Would you tell me how you first came to bear Loer’allon as your own?”
“The remembrance should still be within your mind, Saedeus.”
“I just wanted to hear the tale in your words, Alric.”
“Some things are earned. Others are given. Some are both.”
Oh, well.
So much for a story.
I snorted.
I bet none of his fellow Empyrean Knights had urged Alric to recount the tales of his triumphs at the tavern while sharing a frothy mug of spirits and a good time. Neither would his companions have asked him to regale envoys with stories of his exploits during formal visits of state.
No, old Alric would have been too busy caving in demonic heads to waste his breath on matters as insignificant as establishing interpersonal relationships, improving communication, or building camaraderie. His tale was told in blood and a trail of enemies that never ran dry.
Then the visions came and I was shown the error of my ways.
A Gift Regiven
I relived Alric’s life.
Or much of it, at least.
I had not wanted to re-experience a summation of his existence—Alric’s life seen in flashes faster than the blinks of an eye—as I had when I had first inadvertently taken his soul upon myself, but that was how Alric wanted me to see and feel his story.
I would not interfere.
This time, however, I relived the streaming images and sensations of Alric’s life with a much deeper understanding, compassion, and appreciation.
No longer so sheltered, my view broadened, although it still might be considered restricted by most, I felt his experiences, his challenges and realizations, resonate deeply with my own.
I was a different person.
Had so little time truly passed?
Alric might be brighter, more capable, and poised than I would honestly or even foolhardily claim, but we still lived in a similar place, one with relentless forces beyond our control shaping and guiding us while we struggled to find both our place and the opportunity to shape our world and our lives within it.
As I watched Alric’s father, Laric, pass his refulgent sword on to his son, Alric’s words filled my mind. “Most Empyrean Knights come by their blades through combat, through feat of arms, the bestowal a final accomplishment earned after many arduous trials, the end result of a long quest after a lifetime spent upholding the highest ideals of self-cultivation, personal refinement, sacrifice, and selfless effort.
“I did not.
“I am something of a rarity.
“I come from a long line of Empyrean Knights, a chain of dedication tried but never broken.
“I grew up with Loer’allon.
“Loer’allon has chosen someone in my family to be her wielder for ages. She has been in my clan since the first Angel Swords fell from the skies so many centuries ago; when men once again took up the mantles of angels and began fighting off the demonic incursion as we had in days so long ago that the memories were lost to us before angelic intervention.
“With her blessing, my father handed Loer’allon to me directly.
“And now I have passed Loer’allon to you.”
The full import of Alric’s words hit me.
Loer’allon would pass out of Alric’s clan if I did not pass her on, if she did not choose someone else from his family.
I represented the end of an unbroken lineage over a thousand years old.
I was, to put it mildly, something of a buzzkill.
But that was nothing new.
At least for me.
Then, as I was learning to see, largely thanks to Alric’s unwavering tutelage and his stubborn refusal to let me succumb to my base nature, there was also the positive, the truth Alric would not say directly but would only imply.
I was, sadly and probably disappointingly for him and the Knights at large, his spiritual successor…
His son in arms.
Alric had probably once envisioned passing Loer’allon on to his own child, or perchance a close relative he had groomed to take the mantle of Knighthood and honor Loer’allon and all she stood for by accepting her hilt.
With his untimely death that dream had shattered, never to be rebuilt or recovered.
Instead, he ended up with me—an awkward, rude, ill-kempt vagrant.
I could also include ignorant, short-sighted, presumptuous, overblown, and egotistical, among too many other far too accurate descriptors.
I felt sorry for Alric.
But I also felt a fierce pride.
I was glad that he believed in me, that, no matter how lowly I was, he felt that I could grow into someone worthy
to take his place.
I might be Alric’s pale shadow, but he believed enough in me to push me forward into the light of day that I might cast my own, one that he fostered so that it could endeavor to be as impactful as his.
As unfortunate as Alric’s demise was, his death was my rebirth.
I was hardly worthy of the sacrifice.
But I would wield his sword as best I could.
I no longer had plans to go south to pass Loer’allon off to the Empyrean Knights.
I planned to go south to meet the spawning torrent of the Chaos Gate itself, to scream my defiance into its maw, and show the demons within and those spewing forth in their tumultuous multitudes what happens when a good man is cut down before his time.
I would be the realization of Alric’s dreams.
As warped and twisted as I might make them become.
A Chance Encounter
“Relax, Saedeus.
“Breathe.
“Let your breath become you.
“Allow your awareness to flow outward.
“Do not hold any one thing within your mind...
“No conception.
“No thought.
“No reflection.”
A pause. “What do you feel?”
I certainly did not feel tired.
The Empyrean Aegis saw to that.
My strides ate the distance faster than any horse. Ahead, the peaks of Doeren Muer, sometimes called Heaven’s Edge for both the range’s beauty and apparent nearness to the firmament given the vertiginous heights of its lofty peaks, already loomed much larger than the day before.
I could pick out numerous details of her flanks, from massive, vegetation-crusted outcroppings to sparkling waterfalls, as I loped toward an unspoiled Eden emerging from the dust and decay of the desecrated plains.
Losing itself in Alric’s words, my mind calmed and widened, a mantle encompassing the space around me, my body but one facet of the entirety touched by my awareness.
“Openness.
“Clarity.
“Depth.
“Ease.
“Stillness.”
Each word was a statement, a conversation, unto itself.
“What does that openness touch?
“What does that clarity reveal?
“What fills that depth?
“How is that ease expressed?
“What arises from that stillness?”
Light.
The plains danced with the energies of creation, an etheric beauty as yet untrammeled by the demonic infestation.
The Sigil Shield let me see and feel this vibrancy, the very heartbeat of magic, with blinding intensity, with overwhelming proximity.
My eyes, once closed, were now open.
“Light,” I breathed.
“Let that Light become you.
“Breathe It in.
“Fill yourself with It.
“Let Its radiance overtake you.”
Letting go, dissolving completely into the effulgence that was the intrinsic beauty and reality of my world, Uërth’s true blessing, I became the Light.
The world shifted.
Or perhaps it stayed the same, becoming more fundamental, more alive, a place of limitless potential, a divine realm made real.
My arms and legs pistoning back and forth, up and down, each stride shone with a luster brighter than the galaxy’s heart viewed in a clear nighttime sky.
I was the subtle arcana of the land, the vast energies of the sky, the ineffable moment of creation.
I was Light.
Gawking, coming back to myself, I almost stumbled.
Only I would almost face-plant when experiencing the divine.
I was also translucent!
I could see through my arms to the distant mountainous horizon.
I could see the bare earth rushing past through my legs.
Was I invisible?
“What’s happening, Alric?
“Am I a ghost?”
“You are more real than you have ever been, Saedeus.”
“And by real you mean unreal?
“I can see through my Abyssal body, Alric!”
I waved my arm around frantically, trying to impress upon him the force of my argument through sheer manic motion.
He was not impressed.
“You are now truly within the aegis’s mantle, Saedeus.
“Blades cannot touch you.
“Magic passes through you.
“Objects provide no obstacle or hindrance.
“You are the divine will made real.
“You are the actor and arbiter of divine justice.”
“And I’m a ghost!”
Alric chuckled. “If you say so.”
“So I say!”
Not taking Alric’s word—for who was less trustworthy than an Empyrean Knight sworn to uphold the highest ideals of Heaven and Earth?—I charged a suitably impressive boulder at full sprint.
The ground passed beneath me in an indistinguishable blur. My footprints left no trace as my strides devoured the distance between the rock and myself. With each step the rock loomed larger and larger, growing more impressive until finally its wind-smoothed surface was close enough to touch.
Without stopping, I ran right through.
A brief moment of darkness, one still lit by the luminous forces of Creation, was all I felt of the fortress-sized boulder that was now slowly disappearing in my wake.
I was a ghost!
Still looking over my shoulder, savoring my victory, I came back to myself, the rush of my blood, the beat of my heart, my awareness resettling neatly within my body once more, donning a welcome blanket only briefly left behind.
Turning my head to face forward, a smile still on my face, I ran into that boulder’s much larger, and far less forgiving, cousin.
I bounced off the rock’s face with all the energy of a ball rocketing off a bat.
Too surprised to bother catching myself or adjusting my fall, I flew backward through the air until I finally skidded to a halt some distance from the unyielding stone megalith.
“You truly are a treasure trove of equanimity and grace under pressure.”
Leave it to Alric to spoil my fun.
“Would you like me to show you how to adjust your armor so that it absorbs the energy of impacts?”
I ignored him.
At least this time I didn’t faint.
When I finally stood, refusing to dust myself off out of pride, knowing deep down that the armor’s lambent surface would be unmarred even by my folly, Lucius was kind enough to introduce me to his cousin.
His name was Raynard.
I was not glad to meet him.
Heaven’s Edge
A loud percussion, the sound of distant thunder, brought me back to the exigencies of the moment.
Another rumble followed and another.
The reports echoed across the plains, surging and overlapping like the irregular advance of breakers at high tide.
Orienting myself, I sprinted toward the sound.
Smoke rose on the horizon.
Irregular plumes spiraled upward, the billowing pillars weaving and shifting in the wind.
Concussive blast after concussive blast followed.
At least now I knew why the Infernal Plains were so empty of infernals.
They had all gathered ahead.
Black, writhing masses carpeted the earth—maggots gorging on a bloated corpse. Winged atrocities dove from above, a venue of hellish vultures squabbling over carrion.
Where had they all come from?
The Ways were sealed…at least the ones I knew through Alric. Without the Ways, only a demon lord had the power to teleport so many of its brethren en masse.
I hoped against hope that a Duaga had not decided to call these plains home.
Judging by the necrotic waves of power crashing against the shimmering arcane shields thrown up ahead, I would not be so lucky.
The battle was
too far…perhaps ten leagues or more away.
I would not reach it in time to aid whoever or whatever was fighting back so valiantly against the demonic tide.
Sadly, a small part of me did not want to get there.
I knew the fate of those who failed all too well.
“Shift, Saedeus!”
“Shift?”
“Shift! Bridge the distance between us with Light!”
A remembrance came unbidden, like the recollection of a memory long forgotten…or hidden.
Letting go, I flowed into Light and was gone.
Nightmarish forms burst into being around me, the agonizing embodiments of atrocity. Oozing vile fluids, covered in gore and slime, scaled, chitinous, and scabrous, gibbering, howling, and moaning in dirges that mauled the soul in ranges beyond hearing, demons tore across each other in a mad frenzy to reach the huddled figures wreathed in eldritch wards blasting coruscating destruction from behind their sorcerous barrier.
Incorporeal, a body of Light in motion, I scythed through the demons, Loer’allon glowing with all the glory of the sun on the first day’s dawn.
Lucius wove a cloud of pestilent destruction, bursting through demonic forms faster than the unaided eye could register, his lethal path traceable by slowly settling gouts of unnamable fluids.
Her blade an untrackable blur, Loer’allon cut and smote, clouding the air with gore and ichor, the weather of destruction in a rain of death.
Fell energies came for me, grasping and clawing for purchase, but I was not there.
I was an apparition of death, Chaos’s final companion.
I became the center of the demons’ universe and its end.
Tentacular horrors, horned abominations, and winged banes all tried themselves against me and fell.
None stood before me.
In retrospect, it was the one flying, the one who never stood before me, that was the one I should have been standing before.
A blast of force powerful enough to smash through my etheric form drove me into the ground.
My awareness wavered and blackened, the dark tremors of unconsciousness, of oblivion, creeping in from the periphery of my vision.
Soul Stealer: Legacy of the Blade Page 13
