Crown of Doom and Light

by Jayde Brooks

  Apus’s eyes filled with sadness and love. “And they love her,” Apus said softly. “They love Andromeda more than themselves and it is their love for her that keeps her and that gives her hope in her darkest times.”

  Andromeda smiled broadly. “Yes.”

  Next she turned to Larcerta, still on her knees, holding herself and rocking slowly back and forth. She was the most fragile of them all right now.

  Andromeda knelt down in front of her. “It’s your turn, Larcerta. Tell me.”

  Larcerta shook her head. “I can’t say it,” she muttered. “Don’t make me.”

  “You must, Sister. I need this from you, Larcerta.”

  “But you already know,” she argued.

  “I think that I do, but I can’t be certain of everything that I have seen, Sister. It confuses me. It scares me.”

  “And me!” she shot back defiantly.

  “Please, Larcerta. Help me to understand.” She took hold of her sister’s hand. “You’re the only one who can. Find your courage for me, Sister.”

  “Death,” she said, gravely. “Theians burn.”

  “You said that already,” Apus said angrily.

  “What else?” Andromeda pushed. “The Dragon. You see the Dragon?”

  “Yes.”

  The Dragon was Khale, the Great Shifter, in her most fierce form, and she was mother to the one who would save them and destroy them.

  Andromeda’s heart raced. “And the bull?”

  Larcerta nodded. “Even then, he is still beautiful,” she admitted.

  The bull was the Demon, Sakarabru, at his most destructive.

  Andromeda had seen glimpses of these images in her travels, but they had always been like flashes of random light she could never fully make sense of.

  “And I see her,” Larcerta finally admitted, her eyes glazing over. “We shout to her. We applaud and cheer for her as she fights for us against he bull.” Her lips quivered and broke into a weak smile. “We put our faith in her that she is our Redeemer and she will defeat him for us and save us all.”

  “And her Guardian?” Andromeda probed. “He is there?”

  Larcerta nodded. “His magnificent wings stretch powerful and wide as he fights beside her,” she said, admiringly.

  “And she—she defeats the bull?” Andromeda asked. “She kills him and she saves us? She saves Theia?”

  Larcerta’s gaze slowly met Andromeda’s. “She kills the bull.” She swallowed. “And Theia. And then she’s gone”—she shrugged—“until she is reborn.”

  Andromeda was confused. In her own travels she had seen the Redeemer vanish, but she had never seen her reborn. Sometimes Larcerta was maddened by her visions, seeing things that were false. Not everything she said could be trusted.

  “But not of this world,” Larcerta continued. “Not in her own form, but in another’s.”

  “What does that mean?” Andromeda asked, unable to contain her frustration. “I don’t understand, Larcerta!”

  “You gave her his power, Andromeda.”

  Andromeda nodded. “Yes! So that she would have the strength to defeat him! And she does!”

  “Ultimately, she destroys us all.”

  “But not if you sing the song!” the twins, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, interrupted in unison.

  Andromeda turned to them. “The song?” she asked, confused. “What song, Sisters?”

  They looked at each other before speaking to her. They never spoke to anyone without first getting approval from the other to do so. They turned back to Andromeda. “The song that sends her to Ara.”

  Ara was where every good Theian rested in the afterlife.

  Andromeda stood up and walked over to the twins. “Tell me of this song.”

  Again the sisters looked at each other, and again they spoke as one. “It is magic. And it is the one thing that can stop her when nothing or no one else can. It is the song of her death.”

  Regret filled Andromeda’s heart. “Must she die?”

  They looked at each other and nodded. “Of course,” they said, turning to Andromeda. “Only the song can send her away, but only when she is no longer her, but him.”

  “And then we will be free of him?” Andromeda asked.

  “Yes,” they said in unison. “And her. Only the mother can sing it.”

  “Khale?”

  They nodded. “Only she can sing it. No one else.”

  Andromeda took a deep breath. “Sing me this song, Sisters, so that I will know it.”

  “Breath is Ara/Rest—rest in Ara and sleep in her—arms/The altar calls her/Ara whispers and promises rest, Beloved/Peace beyond peace/My Beloved. Redeemer.”

  Time is but a mockery of itself. The past mocks the future. The future mocks the present. The present mocks them both, because ultimately time is a meaningless measurement of everything.

  “I’m told that you bear secrets, Andromeda. Secrets as ancient as the stars and as endless as the oceans. I’m told that you even know mine.”

  The sound of his voice ebbed and flowed as echoes in her mind. And it was nearly impossible to take her eyes off of him. He was as beautiful as he was treacherous. He was as desirable as he was dangerous. Sakarabru had appeared in this world as if by magic. He had no mother or father. One day, he just—was. Not even he knew how he had come to be. Maybe angels had sent him from Ara. Maybe devils had sent him from hell. She didn’t know. She would never know.

  He was a younger version of himself, not quite a man, but too old to be considered a boy. Youth made him volatile and whimsical. Young Sakarabru relished exploration and seeing just how far he could push the body before it completely bled out. How far could he push her before she stopped begging for her own death?

  This was their first encounter.

  “Tell me your secrets, Andromeda,” he said, circling her.

  He’d plucked out her right eye, leaving her the one that she now used to watch him. Golden, shoulder-length hair tickled the tops of his narrow shoulders. Hypnotic and brilliant green eyes locked onto her. He leaned down, his face inches from hers, and lavished her with a smile too beautiful for words.

  “My patience is your enemy, Seer,” he said seductively. “I would think you’d know that by now.”

  How long had she been shackled to this slab of rock? How many times had he sadistically sliced into her? Too many . . . too many . . . too . . .

  “Shhhhh,” she said, her lips quivering. Pleading with him wouldn’t help. Begging him for mercy was pointless. But she couldn’t tell him what he wanted to know. “If I tell you,” she struggled to say, “then all of this will be for nothing.” For reasons unknown even to her, Andromeda laughed.

  He wasn’t amused. “I could kill you, Andromeda,” he warned. “And then we could both be done with this.”

  “No,” she said, desperately. She had only just started. Andromeda had to see this through from the beginning to the end. She swallowed a mouthful of her own blood. “You enjoy this too much. You enjoy doing this to me.”

  His green eyes turned dangerously dark. “You are right.” The Demon was angry. It was cold. It was rigid, and almost hidden. But it was there. And it ran deep. And then he did something peculiar. He kissed her cheek.

  He straightened up and walked away from her, out of sight. Andromeda sighed, relieved. The kiss. It was everything. It was the reason she’d come. She screamed until it turned into a roar, and then everything around her turned black.

  Where does one hide a kiss?

  Who are you? It asked Andromeda. Where am I and what will you do with me?

  She carefully handed it to the blacksmith. “Be careful with it,” she warned. “Don’t even breathe on it.”

  Andromeda waited and watched as he carefully folded the molten metal around it and form it into a trinket. No one would notice a trinket. No one would ever think that it held something as dangerous as the mind of a demon.

  This was their second encounter.

  “It’s the rumors,” Sa
karabru said, breathless as he paced back and forth in front of her. “They haunt me like ghosts, perpetually swirling around me until they become like voices inside my own head.”

  Agitation threatened his arrogance. He was uncertain. Frustrated. It showed. The war had begun, and his army was shallow in numbers. Khale’s army was stronger and she had the masses on her side.

  “Tell me, Andromeda.” He stopped. “Are you my prisoner or am I yours?” He turned and looked at her.

  Andromeda hung shackled by her wrists. He had been pounding on her for days with his fists. He’d kicked her, broken her arms, ribs, and legs. The intimacy involved in his assault was almost sensual. But then, Sakarabru was older now. He had been beautiful as a boy, but now he was handsome and in the fullness of his self.

  “You escaped me before, Seer,” he said in a low and threatening growl, as he came closer to her. He towered over Andromeda, his massive chest bulging in her face at eye level. She longed to lick it. “You will die here this time. You will choke in your own blood with or without revealing your secrets to me.”

  In all of her agony, she reveled in the advantage only she knew she had. He believed he held the power in their union, but she knew better.

  He took a deep step away from her, drew back his fist, and slammed it hard into her face, once, twice, three times. Quick and hearty blows that sent pain quaking through her entire body until she urinated on herself.

  “Tell me of this Redeemer!” he yelled. “Tell me of this myth, this legend, that should destroy me!”

  He was angry because he was vulnerable. Khale and her forces were too much for him. He worried that he would fail in his quest to conquer Theia, but she knew that soon he would discover the secret to winning this war. He’d find it in a young Djinn, a mystic named Kifo. And Kifo would bring forth Sakarabru’s new army, his Brood Army, raising them from the dead and making them as terrifying, as vicious, as demonic as their leader.

  “What should I tell you, Demon?” Andromeda struggled to speak with every breath. “That a myth and a legend will defeat you?”

  “So it is true? The Redeemer is a myth?” he questioned.

  “You have said that is it true.”

  “What do you say, troll?” he asked, bitterly.

  Her nose was broken. Andromeda wiggled several loosened teeth with her tongue. “I say,” she struggled to catch a breath, “who am I to dispute the great Sakarabru? Who am I to dispute his belief in myths and legends?”

  He raised his long, muscular leg and thrust the heel of his boot hard into her stomach. Then he spun around, and slapped her hard across the face with the back of his hand, leaving behind the sliver of a fingernail embedded in her cheek.

  With each visit, he was giving away small pieces of himself without realizing it. Andromeda was a gatherer, a collector of his essence.

  “Three times, Andromeda! Three times you are his and three times you pray for death and three times you are denied!” Larcerta’s words came to her. Twice Andromeda had visited him. Twice she’d collected his essence. And twice, she’d begged for death.

  “I grow weary of you, Seer,” he said, coming towards her with a blade, a kpinga. It was his weapon of choice. “Keep your secrets and leave me to deal with my rumors. But you will not leave this room alive. Not this time.”

  The tip of his weapon pressed against the side of her neck. She closed her eyes.

  Suddenly she was no longer in his grasp. The air was clean and crisp and new, as if she were the first to breathe it. She stood on the shores overlooking a vast ocean and then she saw him, a reflective figure upright in the water and staring back at her. It was a Mer, and he began swimming towards her. Andromeda looked down at her hand, curled it into a fist, and slowly opened it. The sliver of Sakarabru’s fingernail was so small. To anyone else looking at it, it was nothing.

  He swam as close to her as he could before the water became too shallow. Then he lowered his torso, slithered across the wet sand, and stopped at her feet.

  “Give it to me,” he commanded.

  Large dark eyes glistened up at her. He was long and very strong and he held out his hand to her.

  “You will keep it until she comes for it?” Andromeda asked, betraying her reluctance.

  He nodded once. “I will keep it safe, but she will have to earn it,” he explained. “She will have to fight me for it.”

  Andromeda poured the small piece into his hand. “She will fight and she will win,” she assured him.

  He hid the piece underneath one of the scales of his tail, turned, and slithered back into the ocean.

  She sighed. “Once more,” she murmured, sadly.

  Their third and final encounter.

  “I grow weary of your impudence, Andromeda!” Sakarabru grunted.

  He had lifted her off the floor again by her shackled wrists. Her body hovered over the open flame burning below her, its heat rising and torturing the fragile and delicate tissue he’d left exposed. Andromeda wished for death for the third, and what would be the final, time. She willed it, but it seemed to stand off in the far reaches of her mind somewhere, mocking her.

  “Or is everything I’ve heard about you a lie?” he asked, stopping to glare at her. “Perhaps you are not the visionary you claim to be.”

  She had never claimed any such thing.

  “Perhaps Khale and her kind have a false god in you.” Andromeda was no god.

  “It is only time that is on the side of Khale and her army now, Seer. This legend of their Redeemer is nothing more than that. A legend. A myth. They have no savior who is powerful enough to stand against me.”

  He was such a fool. The savior, the Redeemer, had been born. Her name was Mkombozi, and she was the daughter of the Great Shifter, Khale ne Khale, and of the Demon Sakarabru, conceived before the two of them had begun their war.

  “All of a sudden,” he said wearily, “you are of no use to me, Seer. I will not waste another moment of my time with you. I will not allow you the luxury of time to escape from me.”

  Sakarabru waved his hand in the air and turned to walk away as Andromeda’s body fell into the flames. She may have been of no use to him, but he had been of use to her. In his quest for answers to the question of his end, Andromeda had suffered greatly, but her suffering had not been in vain. As she managed to roll off of the fire, screaming, and onto the floor, she found it—a bead of sweat from the beautiful Demon’s brow. She collected it and saved it on her tongue.

  Khale listened patiently as Andromeda told her of this prophecy. The Great Shifter was still a child, but she needed to be taught about the future of her world now. She needed to begin to embrace her inevitable fate and begin to prepare for it, though there were no signs whatsoever of an impending war, or even a Demon.

  Khale sat cross-legged on the floor at the foot of her overly protective father. Her mother’s indifference was insulting to Andromeda, but of no consequence. She hadn’t come here for them. Khale was the only one who mattered.

  “If this Demon is so powerful,” Khale’s father probed, “and you say that he is, then how can we defeat him?”

  “You’ll be long dead before he begins his war, Shifter,” Andromeda said dismissively, turning her attention back to the child. “It will be your war, Khale, and it will be your child who defeats him.”

  Khale stared back at Andromeda. “How, Seer?” she asked in her small voice.

  The Shifter was young, but already Andromeda could see wisdom in her eyes that surpassed her years. Still, she was too young to hear all of the dreadful details of seduction and lovemaking that would later be required of her. Andromeda chose, at least for now, to only focus on the pertinent parts of the prophecy.

  “The child will need to bond with the three Omen,” she explained.

  “Omen,” her mother said, suddenly interested. “Are they jewels?”

  Andromeda ignored her. “Only the Redeemer, your offspring, can bond with these Omen, Khale. I have hidden them so that no one but
she can find them.”

  “What are these Omen?” Khale asked wryly.

  A demon’s kiss. A sliver of his fingernail. The sweat of his brow. All collected by Andromeda, who had endured more pain than she ever thought possible. She had endured enough suffering than any being should ever have to survive. And she had prayed for death, three times.

  “They are the essence of his strength, mind, and body, little one. They will give her insight into the most dangerous and darkest part of this beast. And they will be enough to destroy him, but they will also destroy her.”

  Khale’s eyes grew wide. “I don’t understand.”

  “The Omen will make her more powerful than the Demon, Khale, and more powerful than you. The Omen have no boundaries, no limits. They are evil full and pure. Nothing can survive them. Nothing and no one.”

  Khale swallowed. “She will kill us all?”

  Sadness emanated from Andromeda that could not be denied. Not even by Khale’s greedy and selfish mother.

  “Seer?” the father asked, gravely.

  “You can stop her, Khale. But the moment must be perfect. The Redeemer must be allowed to complete the bond with the Omen. She must be allowed to defeat the Demon,” she warned. “You must bear witness to this act in order to be certain that he is destroyed.”

  “And then?” Khale asked, anxiously.

  “And then you must end her. You must destroy your daughter without hesitation.”

  “What must I do, Andromeda?” Khale asked, softly.

  “Remember this,” Andromeda smiled. ““Breath is Ara/Rest—rest in Ara and sleep in her—arms/The altar calls her/Ara whispers and promises rest, Beloved/Peace beyond peace/My Beloved. Redeemer.”

  She would visit Khale time and time again with tales of the prophecy. And she would recite this spell, the Spell of Dissolution, over and over again until Khale had memorized it. Meanwhile, Andromeda would continue on with her life, the same as she always had, transitioning through time and dimensions, experiencing the glory and pain of it all, discovering new and secret places that others couldn’t even imagine existed.