“Humans have short lives and shorter memories,” Kharna replied simply. “Being the emotional creatures they are, we believed they had struck the bargain out of fear for their lives and their desire to serve their ‘gods’. We could not trust the fate of this world into their hands. We needed those who could do what needed to be done.”
Acid surged in the Hunter’s throat. “Us.”
“You slaughtered each other in the name of your forefathers.” Kharna’s voice held no trace of emotion. “You showed yourselves willing to do whatever was needed to survive, at any cost. Coupled with your enhanced physiology and the ruthlessness you’d inherited from your Abiarazi ancestors, that sort of logic made you the ideal choice.”
The Hunter’s jaw dropped. This revelation about the Bucelarii hit him harder than anything he’d learned thus far.
“To our offspring, we entrusted the secrets of Enarium and the blood with which to activate the power stored here. To you, we entrusted the Im’tasi stones that would aid you in your quest.”
Stones like the one set in Soulhunger’s pommel. Back in Voramis, the First of the Bloody Hand had told him the gemstones were connected to Kharna, would feed him. Yet to hear it from the god’s own lips sent a shudder of revulsion down his spine.
A long, straight-edged sword with a glowing gemstone set into its hilt rippled into existence before Kharna’s fingers. “Each of these weapons contained a piece of the Im’tasi that linked me to the power gathered in Khar’nath. The lives claimed are my sustenance in my struggle.” Kharna’s eyes pierced to the core of the Hunter’s being. “With each death, you have strengthened me in the fight against the Devourer of Worlds.”
The Hunter stared at the blade hovering above the god’s hand. He’d wrestled with guilt about killing, fearing he would be the one to hasten the end of the world by freeing Kharna from his eternal prison. He’d known he was feeding the god, yet this discovery…it changed everything.
“Before my battle with the Devourer weakened me too greatly, I reached out to each Bucelarii and spoke to them. I told them what was needed of them, showed them the logic of what I asked. I knew I placed a great burden upon their shoulders, yet they agreed. They, too, had inherited the emotions of the humans whose blood flowed through their veins. Many of them were burdened by the knowledge of what they had done in the name of survival and were willing to accept what was asked of them. They sought to atone for the suffering they had caused. And so, using the knowledge of my brother Irroth, my father implanted in your minds a single thought, a subconscious imperative that drives all of your actions.”
“What…was it?” The Hunter found himself afraid to know the answer.
“To feed me, and to return to Enarium.”
The words were spoken in such a plain, matter-of-fact tone, yet to the Hunter, they held an enormous weight.
All his life, he’d been aware of something in the back of his mind. He’d heard Soulhunger pounding in his head, until the dagger began to speak like a physical voice. The voice he’d called his inner demon had manifested in Voramis, yet it had driven him onward in his quest to find answers—answers it knew he would only find in Enarium. Both voices had grown louder and more insistent the closer he drew to his ultimate destination. They had been terrified when the Illusionist Cleric threatened to erase his memories—memories that had set him down the path toward the Lost City and Kharna.
Realization hit him with the force of a crashing waterfall. He’d wondered why the voices—dagger and demon both—had gone silent since his arrival in Enarium. Could the voices have been this “subconscious imperative” of which Kharna spoke?
It seemed almost too impossible to even consider, yet he forced himself to evaluate it. He’d seen street hypnotists manipulating people’s minds to make them bark like dogs or cluck like chickens. If the Illusionist Clerics had powers like that, including the power to erase memories, was it so far-fetched to imagine that the Illusionist himself could do something as simple as implanting a command?
And what of the voices? They had seemed so real, somehow separate from his consciousness. He had found a way to conceal his thoughts from the demon and erect a mental wall to hold it at bay. Yet what if he’d never had the voice of his demonic ancestor talking into his head? What if his mind had simply translated the command into a voice that drove him to kill, to feed Kharna? The voices of Soulhunger and his inner demon could have been his mind’s way of putting the Serenii’s command into something he could understand—like the dreams of a feverish man or the hallucinations of a Bonedust addict.
“Then why did the Illusionist Clerics wipe our minds and erase the knowledge of what we had agreed to do?” the Hunter asked in a quiet voice. “Why did the Cambionari, the ones supposed to serve you, hunt us down and kill us?”
“That was one outcome we did not foresee.” Kharna said, with a hint of sorrow in his voice. “Their memories were shorter than we imagined. The minds of men were flawed, prone to loss. With the passage of time and generations, the truths of the Devourer and the power of Enarium were lost to the humans. But the memories of the suffering and death during what they called the War of Gods remained. They saw the Bucelarii as the cause of their pain, and thus sought vengeance.”
“If you knew what was happening, why didn’t you stop it?” Once again, the familiar anger sparked in the Hunter’s chest. Everything he’d endured, and Taiana and all the other Bucelarii along with him, had been caused by the Abiarazi, but now it turned out the Serenii bore the burden of blame as well. “If, as you said, we’re working for you, why did you allow the humans to hunt us?”
“Allow?” Confusion showed in the Serenii’s face. “You speak of us as if we are gods, that we permitted this evil to happen. For millennia, your kind has asked that question. We are not the Creators of this world. We do not control the humans. Once, we influenced and guided, perhaps, yet we were never the ‘gods’ they believed us to be. I do not guide the actions of mankind—mankind alone bears the burden for that. Only humans can claim responsibility for the evil they cause, as well as the good.”
With effort, the Hunter swallowed his fury. He’d always thought of the gods as the creation of humans that needed someone to blame for their problems. To find out this was true left him feeling somehow…empty.
“We did not discourage the humans from calling us ‘gods’ because logic dictated that emotional beings required a moral compass to direct their actions.” Kharna’s voice took on the flat tone once more. “By having to answer to a superior being, even a divine one, humans can exist in a society of rules. Without that higher power, everyone is simply a god unto themselves and thus can act as they see fit. Even we, beings of supreme logic and science, understood that there was a higher power that had entrusted us with the care of this world. That duty informed our choices and enabled us to see beyond our immediate desires. We chose to give that same gift to the humans, to accept the mantle of divinity so they might live in a world where logic and order tempers passion and appetite. Only in a world of balance could peace exist. And in that balance, the power of the Devourer could never take root.”
Again, Kharna’s words, so simple and logical, shattered everything the Hunter had believed to be true. The Serenii had been gods because people believed they were. Humans gave the Serenii power over them and, in doing so, established the very thing that gave them a sense of purpose, of order.
How much evil had been perpetrated in the name of the Thirteen? How many had died in the name of one god or another? Yet how much good had also been brought into existence because of the Serenii that allowed the humans to set them up as divine beings? How many lived and thrived because of people following the “teachings” of the Beggar, the Bright Lady, the Apprentice, or any of the others? Even if the gods didn’t truly exist, what would Einan be like without them?
To that, the Hunter could find no answer.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“The ones you know as Cambionari were original
ly tasked to work beside the Bucelarii and Elivasti,” Kharna said, and the vision before the Hunter shifted to follow a group of armored humans traveling with purple-eyed Elivasti and Bucelarii carrying the Im’tasi weapons. “We had defeated the Abiarazi but not eradicated them. To ensure the safety of Einan and to gather as much power as possible to use against the Devourer, they were to be brought to Enarium to be placed in the Chambers of Sustenance.”
The world flew beneath the Hunter’s feet, and his view zoomed in on one of the Chambers of Sustenance. Within lay a monstrous figure—a grotesque mixture of reptile and beast, with a spiked back, leonine legs, and claw-tipped fingers—tethered to the stone by transparent tubes.
“Their life force was to sustain me until Khar’nath and the power of the Er’hato Tashat could gather the power required to seal the rift against the Devourer once and for all.”
“Good riddance,” the Hunter growled. The demons had brought only misery and death to the world from the very beginning.
“But over time, when the hunt for the Abiarazi in hiding proved fruitless, the Cambionari turned their attention to those they deemed a suitable replacement.”
Dread sat like a stone in the Hunter’s gut. “The Bucelarii.”
Acid surged in his throat as he watched a handful of Cambionari wrestling with a struggling Bucelarii, dragging the woman toward a Chamber of Sustenance to be locked away.
“Eventually, they lost sight of their true mission and began simply killing the Bucelarii they found. Though they believed they were cleansing the world of the stain of the Abiarazi, they were simply hastening the return of the Devourer.”
The return of the Devourer. The Hunter had seen that written in the bas-relief image both in Kara-ket and the Vault of Stars.
“You didn’t think to leave any sort of written instructions?” Again, anger flared in the Hunter’s chest. “Anything to make it clear for the Bucelarii, Elivasti, and humans what they were fighting for, what their real mission was!”
“We did.” A hint of frustration—yes, even gods could be frustrated—echoed in Kharna’s voice. “But the knowledge of our written language was lost. Too few had ever learned our language, and the humans had only a crude system of writing at the time. They could not grasp the complex principles necessary to use the power of Enarium.”
That certainly explained why the Elivasti didn’t simply activate the city for themselves. They had lost the knowledge. Only the Sage, and perhaps a few of the other Abiarazi still living, knew anything about it.
“And let me guess, you want me to use the power of Enarium to turn against the Devourer?” the Hunter asked. “You want me to feed you.”
“It is necessary.” Kharna sounded tired; thousands of years of struggle against chaos could take a toll on even a god. “To keep out the Devourer, we must activate the Keeps and the power of Enarium to close the rift.”
The Hunter’s brow furrowed. “And what of the people in Khar’nath? What happens to them?” He had opened the gates, but it would take days for the nearly seven hundred thousand people to escape the Pit.
“Theirs is a necessary sacrifice. Without them, this world will end.”
And there it is. The Hunter had dreaded the truth, yet Kharna spoke the words in such an emotionless tone, a god who sat above it all and watched the world suffer far below. This creature before him—Serenii or divine being, it didn’t matter—expected him to condemn hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children to death.
“I see your thoughts, little Bucelarii,” Kharna rumbled in his mind. “It is a question driven by emotion rather than logic.”
“And logic tells you that it’s acceptable to kill that many people?” the Hunter snapped.
Kharna replied without hesitation. “To save ten times the number, yes. Even if it was only twice or thrice the number, the rational thing to do would be to let the few die to save the many.”
“Then you truly are as cruel as humans think you are.” Fury burned within the Hunter. “Even if you are not the mad god they claim you to be, you are no less responsible for the suffering of this world with that perspective. How many humans would you sacrifice to save this world? Will it ever be enough?”
“Perhaps that is a question you had best ask yourself.” Kharna’s words held no recrimination, but his gaze held a world of meaning. “How many would you sacrifice to save this Hailen you are so fond of? How many to find your daughter, to protect the one you call your wife or the human Kiara? What are your limits, Bucelarii?”
The Hunter opened his mouth to retort to the first statement, but Kharna’s questions left him speechless. Even when he believed that using Soulhunger could lead to the end of the world, he hadn’t hesitated to use the dagger. Soulhunger had killed the First and Third, Garanis, Queen Asalah, the Warmaster, and all the other threats to his life and Hailen’s. He had killed without hesitation, all for what he deemed to be “the right thing”.
So how was he any different than Kharna in this? Or his bloodthirsty ancestors, the Abiarazi? How was he any better?
The stately figure of Kharna fixed him with that impenetrable Serenii gaze. “Life must sustain life. The Pit takes the life out of people and gives it to keep the world alive. We sacrificed ourselves to save Einan—why shouldn’t the humans be willing to do the same?”
“If they chose to do it, that would be one thing.” The Hunter clenched his fists. “But these people were forced into it. They were ripped from their homes and families, hauled here in chains, and thrown into a filthy prison. Or, worse, they were born here simply so they could die when the time came. Perhaps that is the logical choice in your mind, but I cannot believe it is the right one!”
“So you would see the world end to spare a few lives of humans you have never met? That is illogical.”
“Fine, then it’s bloody illogical,” the Hunter snapped. “Yet you yourself gave in to human emotions when you chose to stay behind and fight the Devourer of Worlds.”
It still felt weird to think of Kharna and the Destroyer as two separate entities—for as long as he could remember, the god he spoke to now had been the greatest threat to Einan. Any doubts he’d had at the beginning of the conversation with Kharna had been torn to shreds by everything he’d seen and heard. Whether his vision had unlocked old memories or revealed truths buried deep in his consciousness, he knew Kharna spoke the truth. Yet his mind rebelled against much of the information he’d learned. There was simply too much that ran contrary to everything he’d known—or believed he’d known—his entire life.
With effort, he forced himself to push on. “Emotion is not a weakness. It is what makes us strong, gives us something to fight for when everything is hopeless. It is what lifts us up when we’re past our breaking point and keeps us going when we are ready to collapse.”
As he spoke, images from his memories passed before them, as if Kharna plucked them from his mind and brought them to life. He relived moments he’d spent as Danther the tailor, sitting with Farida and sharing sweetmeats and a smile. He watched scenes of him talking with Hailen, listening to the boy chatter. More and more people flashed past: Master Eldor, Kiara, Taiana, Old Nan, Bardin, Graeme, Visibos and Sir Danna, Evren, Rassek and Darillon, and more. So many more.
“You felt a bit of those human emotions once, long ago,” the Hunter went on. “Perhaps you feel them even now. It is why you still fight against the Devourer when a more logical being would have simply yielded to the inevitable.”
Kharna actually seemed to grow pensive, the earth-shattering presence in his mind falling silent.
“Once, I thought the things I felt would be my undoing. That moment when I held a dying child in my arms and realized I could do nothing to save her, it would have been so easy to yield to the numbness of logic. She was a child in a cruel world, and her human life would only measure in a few decades at most.”
He tapped in to the emotions he’d felt kneeling beside Farida’s body, and it burst from his chest with the f
orce of a crashing tidal wave.
“I nearly crumbled beneath my pain, yet I can see that it made me stronger.” The Hunter raised a clenched fist. “As I healed from the pain, it prepared me for the next pain, and the next one. Where logic might have crumbled, emotion kept me pushing onward.”
He thrust a finger at the figure of the Serenii. “You say sacrificing all those people is the logical thing, yet there has to be a part of you that knows the pain that will cause.”
“And still I can see no other way,” Kharna replied, and the voice echoed like a thunderstorm in the Hunter’s head. “All life comes at a cost. Matter is neither created nor destroyed, simply rearranged within the same space. There must be death for life to exist. Animals and plants die to feed other animals, plants, and humans. The Devourer would seek to bring an end to all life, until only chaos and eternal nothingness remains. It cost my brethren and I everything, and still we cannot stop him. There is only one way.”
“No.” The Hunter shook his head. “I cannot believe that. There has to be another way.”
“There is not.” Kharna’s voice echoed with a note of finality. “If such an alternative existed, my brothers and I would have found it by now.”
“Then I’ll find it,” the Hunter said. The resolution in his own voice surprised him. “I will find a way to get enough power without sacrificing a million human lives to save this world.”
“You believe yourself wiser than the greatest minds of the Serenii?” Hubris, a truly human emotion, echoed in Kharna’s voice.
“Not even close. I have no chance of matching your sheer logic. But I refuse to believe in the impossible—there is always another way.” Years as an assassin had taught the Hunter that every fortress had a flaw, every secure perimeter had a gap, every solid steel door had a weak point. “A way that doesn’t involve so many innocent lives being snuffed out. That is the sort of thing the Sage and the Abiarazi would choose if it gave them what they wanted. Perhaps you are more like them than you suspect.”
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