by Kova, Elise
Taavin took a small step back, as if surprised by the question. She watched as his guards slid back into place—mentally battening the hatches against her once more.
“No… the flame of Yargen has been burning since the goddess last left this world. It is a remnant of the goddess herself—and her power. Through it, her chosen voice hears the words of power Lightspinners use, as well as her guidance for the mortal realm she created.” He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “At least, that is what I am supposed to do.”
“I see…” Vi murmured. He couldn’t hear the goddess through this flame. Vi knew it by his expression and reaction alone. But something prevented her from saying so outright. Perhaps what stopped her was the keen knowledge that pointing it out would only bring him extra pain. She didn’t want to be torture to him, intentionally or otherwise. So Vi shifted the topic slightly. “What about the champion? You always bring up the voice and the champion together.”
“Because the champion is Yargen’s other chosen mortal. Though… there has not been one since the last time Raspian walked this earth.”
Vi suppressed a shudder at what she knew now was the name of the dark god she’d seen the zealots worshiping in her last vision. “Why do you think I am the champion?”
“Because a traveler told me of our meeting.”
Traveler. Vi stilled at the word. It couldn’t possibly be… “This traveler, was it a man or a woman?”
“A woman.”
There was no way it was the same traveler who had spoken to Sehra. No possible way. That meeting had to have been more than twenty years ago. Yet was it truly just chance she’d heard of two different mysterious travelers with knowledge of Yargen so close together?
“What did she tell you?” Vi dared to ask.
“That my visions would reveal the locations of the apexes of fate—landmarks on the path of a dying world where my destiny overlaps with the champion’s. That the champion holds the key to fueling the flame once more, and making sense of Yargen’s will.” Vi snorted, then laughter exploded from her mouth. Taavin blinked out of sight for a second and she quickly re-drew the glyphs for narro and hath in her mind, securing them back around her hand. A frown crossed his mouth. “Just what is so amusing?”
“I can see why you hate me so much. I haunt your dreams and then, when you finally meet me, I’m absolutely useless.” Vi gave another self-deprecating laugh. When it came to magic, it seemed nothing she did would ever be enough, in any direction. There would always be someone she was letting down.
Her laughter subsided as she became keenly aware of Taavin’s stare. Vi turned up her face to look at him, waiting for his retort. The silence stretched on, and his eyes traced her features what must have been a thousand times.
Vi forced a smile and ignored the tension. She didn’t want it to be there. There wasn’t time for it. But before she could think of another substitution for discussion, he spoke.
“I never said you were useless.”
Vi swallowed. His words tightened her chest and stomach. Some kind of relief punched her in the gut, leaving her breathless and stinging in a way that was foreign to her. Was she really so desperate for affirmation that she was doing all right?
“Well, perhaps I can continue to prove I’m not by helping you find the next apex? Do you have any ideas from your visions?” She resisted asking if she was present in these visions.
“I’m still working to discern their meaning.”
“What do you have so far?”
“It makes little sense…” he murmured, pacing back and forth twice.
“You have someone to be a sounding board off of,” Vi reminded him. Given how he acted, and all he’d said, Vi suspected it was a relatively new development for Taavin.
“I doubt it’ll be much clearer for you.”
“Will you just let me help?” She threw her hands up in the air and the magic disappeared. “Oh, by the Mother,” Vi muttered, holding out her hand again. She took a breath, finishing a string of curses, and then uttered, “Narro hath.” Taavin reappeared. “Sorry about that.”
“You’re persistent, aren’t you?” He tilted his head slightly. When he did so, the bottom of his hair nearly touched his shoulder.
“I’ve been told I can be when something piques my interest.”
“I’m glad the end of the world has inspired your curiosity.” Vi opened her mouth to say that he was the one who had, but before she could, Taavin saved her from herself.
“I have seen a room, dark, two women standing before a single flame. Roses and wheat…”
“Not enough to go off of,” Vi reluctantly agreed with his earlier sentiment. “At least for that one. Any others?”
“In my dreams I have also witnessed a throne room—covered in the crystallized fragments of Yargen’s magic. A dying man who was tainted by touching godly power with mortal hands.”
Vi sighed softly, wishing it were a clearer lead. “That sounds like something more on the Crescent Continent than here.”
“It is unlike any throne room I’ve ever seen on Meru.”
“Is that all?”
“Do you know anywhere called Eye-owe?”
“Eye-owe,” Vi repeated, then shook her head. “It doesn’t ring a bell. What’s it like?”
“Something about a temple, perhaps?”
Vi thought back to all her maps. She certainly didn’t recall any temples named Eye-owe. But, given the North’s opinions toward marking their ruins, she couldn’t exactly rule it out.
“One more has been clear and reoccurring,” he continued when it was clear she had nothing more to add. “Though I doubt it’ll be any clearer for you. I see two women by a statue. I see a tall tree, towering above them.”
“That statue…” Vi shifted to the edge of her bed, an idea dawning on her. “What does it look like?” She knew what he was about to say before he said it. Vi could already see it with perfect clarity.
“One woman standing, the other kneeling, holding—”
“An axe,” Vi finished for him.
“What?”
She pushed off the bed, starting for the door. “See? It was a good thing you told me. Because I know exactly where that last apex is.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Mother Tree, oldest of all the trees in the North, was at the center of the fortress. It was into this tree that Dia—a star from the gods—had fallen. On her descent, she had become mortal. Under its leafy boughs was where the Mother was said to have gifted her the axe.
This had to be the location of the next apex.
It was easy to identify it by its height and overall grandeur. But it was harder than one would think to get to. She had to spiral around smaller—but by no means small—trees, go up to go down, and spend nearly a half hour getting to the end of what should’ve been a five-minute walk, had she been able to go straight to the center. It was made worse by sneaking around in the dead of night, constantly looking over her shoulder to ensure she was alone.
But she saw no one and now the final barrier to her goal was before her. Vi was almost breathless from her haste. She stood on the other side of a living wall. Groundbreakers had woven saplings together to make a beautiful fence. Beautiful… and without any sort of clear entrance unless one had the magic to manipulate the trees to unweave themselves.
Vi looked up and around cautiously. The sensation of someone watching her was back. But Vi was certain it was nothing more than paranoia. She’d heard no footsteps and had seen no eyes peering at her through the darkness.
She stared through the woven barrier to the base of the Mother Tree. Shaded in an alcove was a ceremonial room that Vi had only been in a handful of times. Once for the blessings of Yargen to be placed on Ellene shortly after her birth, then twice every year since, for solstice rituals. The Mother Tree was a highly sacred place; Vi didn’t blame them for keeping people, or wandering princesses, out most other days of the year.
The bark of the natural
barrier bit into her palms as she gripped it tighter. The room would be opened soon for the upcoming solstice; she could wait and not risk discovery now. But Vi doubted she could find a time to confidently come alone during the handful of days it was open to all in the fortress. Now she was certain to have time alone to see her vision, and speak with the man who came after.
Furthermore, Vi continued to try to rationalize her decision, she was a Child of Yargen too, wasn’t she? That meant it would be acceptable for her to trespass on the most sacred space in the North. Not trespass, she couldn’t trespass as a child of Yargen, right? Vi quickly tried to tally up the pros and cons in her head, before pushing the thoughts away. Rationalized or not, her path ahead was clear. She wasn’t going to back away now, not when she was this close.
“You understand, right?” Vi whispered to the Mother above, looking up toward the heavens. Nothing changed and Vi took that as tacit permission to begin climbing the woven barrier.
Luckily, its lace-like weave made plenty of gaps and spaces for hand- and footholds as she climbed. From the ground, it looked much shorter than at its top, and Vi employed great care in swinging her legs over and starting down the other side. Thankfully, she’d spent a lifetime trying to keep up with Groundbreakers in the jungles. Tree climbing was easily a strong-suit of hers, and Vi moved with swift confidence.
Feet back on the ground, Vi raced underneath the arch that led to the hallowed room that very much mirrored Sehra’s throne room. Except in place of a throne at the center, a barely-visible sculpture of two women stood. One was kneeling, her long braids nearly touching the ground—Dia, the forest star—and the other was said to be the Mother, imparting an axe upon her to carve out a new civilization from the raw earth she’d created for all mankind.
“A giant tree, a statue of a woman holding an axe.” This had to be the apex Taavin had seen.
Vi held out her hand and readied herself. Whatever the vision showed her this time, she would be ready. She could handle it. At the very least, she wouldn’t shout in horror and alert everyone to her presence. Good or bad, she was trained to be an Empress, and should not startle so easily.
Her eyes were wide. She could not look away if she tried. Yet the vision that possessed her was different from all the others. It was clearer, sharper. Now it was as if time itself flowed through her, posing her at its edge to peer through its secrets.
The world around her shifted. Days turned to nights. Stars spun across the sky. Flowers blossomed, saplings grew into trees, and vines knotted further over the remains of a civilization progressing quickly toward decay.
The fortress around her took shape and quickly changed, time and again. The city of Soricium grew and retreated with the seasons becoming more and more scarce—fading into a grayish stasis—as the trees withered, decayed, and exposed a sky larger than any Vi had ever seen, unbroken by treetops, to Shaldan’s barren earth.
Finally, the spinning top of the progression of time stopped on a desolate landscape.
Vi looked out over a barren field. Rubble lay like tombstones around the rough stumps of trees that looked as though they had been shredded to toothpicks. The great giants of Shaldan—trees that had stood from the dawn of time—lay on the ground in charred husks.
The Mother Tree was little more than sawdust.
She could almost taste the ash in her mouth, bitter and still smoldering from what looked like the aftermath of a battle that far exceeded even the horrific stories of the siege on Soricium during the War for the North. The smell of rot somehow reached her and brought Vi to gagging, as the remnants of what could be called men and women had been left as carrion for the birds.
Each corpse was contorted into angles of agony. They twisted with open mouths, locked in an eternal scream. Their eyes were wide and absent of all color—gone completely white and glossy. Deep trenches cut into their skin from where they had clawed at the white and rocky parts that coated their bodies between veins of still-glowing red.
Without having ever seen it, Vi knew that this was the ultimate end of the White Death: a stony, cold agony that kept one trapped for eternity in its suffering.
Vi half-wheezed, half-retched, gasping desperately for a breath of fresh air—for sound, liberating sound from the deadly silence that surrounded her. There was nothing but silence and death. It was then that her eyes turned skyward.
The heavens had been broken.
An all-black sky, void of stars, was ripped apart by a bloody slash trimmed at the edges with white. Drifting through the bleeding fragments of a broken cosmos was the form of a serpentine, winged monster, wide talons dipping to tear off pieces of the world below. Red lightning cracked around its body, as if charged by the ripping of reality itself.
Vaguely, the terrifying imagery registered to her through the words of crones and soothsayers. They had spoken of an apocalypse, of a reckoning where all souls would be summoned to the Father’s realms—a day where the sky itself would shatter and the world as they all knew it would come to an end. But Vi had never heard the tales spoken in this much horrifying detail.
The dragon roared and the world shuddered, vibrating with a sound that she couldn’t hear. Vi may have screamed, but there was still no sound in her ears. The monster turned its gaze toward her and she was filled with the same sensation she’d felt the moment the diseased noru and the lightning man in her vision had looked to her.
It saw her and it wanted her.
She raised her hands on instinct to shield herself, to make herself small. She wanted it to end, to be free of the horrific images she was being inundated with. No vision until now had been this horribly vivid and she would not be able to endure should it continue.
“Make it stop!” The sound of her own voice broke the trance.
Darkness, the blissful darkness of the backs of her eyelids, filled her sight, and when Vi opened her eyes again, the world was as she knew it. She staggered and sank, her trembling knees no longer able to bear her weight. Gasping through fingers holding in silent screams at the horror she’d witnessed, Vi continued to stare wide-eyed at where her fire had been. Surely, surely, there was some mistake.
That wasn’t their future. It couldn’t be.
Gasping, Vi relished in the sound of her voice and the familiar cool darkness of the North in winter. A pair of boots, illuminated by hazy glyphs, appeared in her field of vision. Vi followed them up to the intricately embroidered coat Taavin always wore, along the scar on his cheek, and to his eyes.
“What did you see?” he asked grimly.
“The end of the world.” The words didn’t sound like her own. They were detached, removed, split from her body. What she now could never unsee would forever change her.
“Tell me everything.”
Vi recounted the vision in as much detail as she could bear. For as difficult as it was, doing so gave her some clarity. It removed the initial shock and horror and turned the sights into something to be analyzed.
When Vi had finished, she asked, “This dark god you speak of—Raspian—and his followers… the White Death… they’re all linked, aren’t they?”
She didn’t want him to nod. This was the one time in her life where Vi desperately wanted to be wrong.
“They are.”
Vi let out a string of curses that would make her tutors blush. Taavin stayed silent, allowing her to reach the end of her list before speaking again. Curses were cathartic, but they weren’t going to help them get anywhere. Vi tried to remember everything he had told her following her last vision.
“The elfin’ra, you said they were sealed away on Salvidia?”
“They were.”
Past tense. “What changed? Why is all this happening now?”
“Raspian and his followers were sealed away by the goddess in their last, ancient struggle for power over this realm… but nineteen years ago, that seal was broken. Since then, his evil, his pure chaotic energy, has been seeping into the world—twisting it. And his followers, w
ho were also set free with it, now seek a way to bring his full return.”
If everything he said was true, it meant there was no cure for the White Death. Her father had left for nothing. Her people sought a cure that could never be found.
No one on Solaris knew how desperate their situation was, but her.
“Taavin, these visions I see at the apexes… are they what will be, or what may be?”
“What will be, should the world progress without any changes in course.”
“So, then, the course can be changed?”
“Perhaps.”
Vi breathed a sigh of relief, even though a corner of her mind still refused to believe it. Normal future sight—by a Firebearer—was generally regarded as absolute truth. But Vi wasn’t exactly a Firebearer. So she’d have to take Taavin’s word for it.
“How do we make sure?”
“Just as there have been apexes of fate in the past, there will be apexes in the future. Places where—”
“—the world changed or places where it could still be changed,” she finished for him, remembering what he had said when she first asked. Vi finally pulled herself off the ground, feeling stronger. “So we need to find future apexes, and make sure we shift fate there.” Simple logic, but Vi expected it to be much more difficult in practice. “How do we find them?”
“I will need to study… and record your vision to compare against my notes on my own dreams as I look for the next apex for you.”
She wanted to go now. She wanted him to have the answers immediately, and Vi shifted from foot to foot in an effort to let out some of the restless energy. Vi let out a deep sigh, trying to let go of the strange tremors rippling through her.
“Are you afraid?” Taavin cut through her racing thoughts.
“What? No.” Vi folded her hands before her to keep them still.
“You should be. Only a fool wouldn’t be.”
“I—”
“Go and rest now, Vi. I have work to do.” He vanished.
Vi stared at where Taavin had just stood. “Are you happy to have the last word?” Vi mumbled at the thin air, before turning and leaving.
