by Tammy Salyer
“I shall have that,” Mylla heard, and a moment later, her Scrylle-wielding arm was snapped in two just above her wrist as the fallen Knight broke it.
Mylla shrieked so loudly that her vocal cords seemed to tear, dropping to her knees as agonized tears sprang to her eyes. The broken arm flopped unnaturally, and the sight of it, more than the pain, made her vomit her stomach empty in one great gush.
“Foolish and troublesome but not for much longer,” Balavad said.
On her knees, she cradled her broken arm and looked up to her one-time companion’s desecrated form. In that moment, Mylla felt for the first time something too foreign and unique to her to recognize at first—she felt beaten. Through the wash of tears, she watched Eisa’s arm raise the Scrylle like a hammer and knew it would be the instrument of her death. Behind her, the rest of the Knights were yelling and cursing, trying to get to her. But there was no chance. The twice-ordained, infested-by-a-malevolent-Verity, fallen Dyrrak Knight bearing not one but two celestial Scrylles was simply too powerful.
She closed her eyes, bowed her head, and waited.
But the blow didn’t fall. For a split second, she wondered if something miraculous had saved her. Then, as if she’d fallen into the heart of a volcano, dragørfire exploded around her.
Mylla looked up through the inferno at her nemesis. The screen of red was too dense for Mylla to see more than the vague shape of Eisa, who stood as if frozen, the Scrylle still upraised, looking past her. Mylla fell back on her rear and pushed hard with her legs to scoot out of the fallen Knight’s reach, never taking her eyes from where Eisa stood.
As if cut with a knife, the flames stopped and showed her something… indescribable.
The Ærden Fenestros Eisa held aloft was changing. From the fist-sized solid-matter orb, it evanesced into an insubstantial mist that flowed free of the Scrylle setting, still the muted reddish hues of the original celestial stone. Eisa’s dull eyes were fixed on it, and she lowered the Scrylle, holding it away from her body as if it were a predator that could unexpectedly strike.
The mist began to grow, expanding and shifting in the wavering heat of the dissipating dragørfire, completely disjoining from the Scrylle. Eisa flung the Scrylle scepter blindly away, and Mylla heard it strike the stone of the wall, though she didn’t turn to see where it landed.
The Fenestros, having become amorphous and unrecognizable as a celestial stone, expanded and swirled into a columnar shape enclosing Eisa. A shape Mylla recognized. It gradually coalesced into thicker and thicker horizontal tendrils that wound around each other, continually growing, continually rising. Several of its tendrils whipped around Eisa’s legs, arms, and even her neck. The fallen Knight tried to fight them, but they merely tightened down, immobilizing her. The column spread out and over Eisa, embracing her within its shifting mist. Where her body made contact with it, tiny lights of all colors and hues erupted and blinked, then evaporated like sparks, and the column kept growing up, now piercing the smoky, fiery pall over the sky, and it grew down along the wall, like the roots of an old oak spilling over stones. Mylla, aghast and paralyzed with awe, could only watch as the Fenestros, for lack of a better word, sprouted once more, becoming the tessalope. And trapped within the time walker’s “trunk” was the fallen Knight.
“Back away, Mylla, come here.”
The voice belonged to Griggory, whom, she realized when she jerked her head around to look, had somehow appeared behind her. And not only him, but perched on the mighty bore of the emberflare cannon was Heart of Purple Might, his golden-ginger eyes blazing like the fire he’d just bathed her and Eisa in.
The klinkí stone wall had fallen, and the ancient Knight stood surrounded now by the others on the walkway. Their eyes, which would normally have been staring in surprise at the sudden appearance of their old companion and the enormous dragør, were instead fixed on the thing happening to the Fenestros. Their reactions were only natural, said an oddly detached voice in the back of Mylla’s mind. It wasn’t every day a titanic wystic creature from another realm appeared in front of you and, again for lack of a better word, consumed your enemy.
A hand, Griggory’s, reached under her armpit and hauled her to her feet. As she held her injured arm, her teeth clenched against the cry of pain that wanted to escape, she heard Eisa roar in fury. When Mylla looked back, the translucence of the tessalope’s trunk was growing darker and denser around Eisa, like sap solidifying into amber around an insect. The fallen Knight let loose another wrath-filled bellow, and with her jaws cracked wide, she suddenly froze there.
“What’s happening, Griggory?” Mylla asked, followed by a desperate, “Can she get free?”
“Heart of Purple Might released the tessalope. You see, it’s the dragørfire, it helps the Fenestros seeds to grow.”
Like pinecones in a forest fire? Safran asked, struggling as they all were to find an analogy that would help them make sense of what he was saying.
Griggory shrugged, neither confirming nor disconfirming her idea, then went on as if it were unimportant. “Eisa—or what’s left of her—is trapped in time right now. For her, a moment will be the same as an eternity. Such is the power of a tessalope. But for Balavad…” He let the words hang. None of them needed an explanation of a Verity’s susceptibility to forces of the Cosmos. His sharp blue gaze, the same color as the hearts of their klinkí stones, took them each in, one by one. “The time walker won’t keep her forever. Knights and friends, the time has come. We cannot win this war. Nothing can. Except—”
Before he could reveal the way to victory that they all but strained from their skin to hear, running bootsteps approached from the stairwell leading to the top of the wall. Purple Might’s jaws cracked with menace, and a puff of flame burst free as he turned a languid head to see who was coming and whom he might have to crispen.
There was a faint squeal, then: “Great Verities’ blargy eyes, call the beast off!” cried a gruff, older man’s voice Mylla vaguely recognized.
Roibeard paced quickly past the base of the cannon. “Commander Nennus, is that you?”
“It is! And Brun and the Rekkrs. What is that…”
The commander was still speaking, but Mylla had stopped listening at the Rekkrs.
Havelock.
With Purple Might assured they were friends, the two commanders and two more men were ushered forward to join the group of Knights, and she watched them step around the cannon in single file. She remembered Nennus, commander of the Magdastervian forces, and knew Tannir Brun, commander of the Asteryssians, from their short but tense association. The third man was Henrick Rekkr, father of the man she’d loved, still loved, Lock. All of them were covered in soot, and some bore minor injuries, their blood mixing with the ash on their skin and clothes in a bitter paste.
Lock was last. When he came around the cannon’s base, Mylla’s breath caught. Their last words to each other had been cold, but her heart toward him had never been. She’d had to let him go, her duty and her fate at odds with his. His loyalty had never wavered, like hers had, and he had stayed in Ivoryss after Balavad’s first attack when she had gone, believing still that her duty lay with Vaka Aster instead of Vinnr and the people in it, including those she loved. Then, she hadn’t yet known what her future would bring, but she’d known she would forever regret losing him.
Their eyes found each other, and though time was against them, everything they wanted to say to each other, the love they still held, passed between them in that brief but eternal glance.
“—Syzyckí Elementum, you understand.”
Griggory was explaining something to the group, something important, and Mylla tore her eyes from Havelock’s to catch up.
“It’s all up to you now, Mylla,” the ancient Knight finished. “The fate of the Cosmos.”
“Wha—” She cleared her throat. “What?”
“‘Where the Five Flames have burned, Fimm’s final vessel will sing the Elementum.’ It’s the agreement the Five made wh
en they broke from the One. The Elementum will rejoin them.”
She was trying hard to follow, and was comforted to see the rest appeared to be struggling as well. “You mean all five Verities will be one again at this Syzyckí Elementum?” she asked.
“Ulfric and I read of it in the Arc Rheunos Scrylle,” Symvalline said. She paused, her eyes squeezing shut in a spirit-deep pain Mylla’s broken arm could never hold a candle to, then continued. “We read, ‘The final age of the Great Cosmos will turn on the Union of the Five, the Syzyckí Elementum. It will bring the destruction of destruction and the remaking of the unmaking.’ Griggory, do you understand what it means?”
“Destruction of the destruction,” Stave mumbled, looking as pensive as was possible for a man who thought of subtlety as an insult. “That doesn’t sound good, it doesn’t.”
“Hush, everyone. Griggory?” Roibeard said, drawing their attention back to the man who seemed to have some, and if fate were with them, all the answers.
Their hopes fell as soon as he spoke. “I’m not saying anything.” He held a finger to his lips in a gesture of secrecy, staring directly at Mylla. “Remember? I can’t tell you. I’m not able to tell you. But I’ve learned a few things in my turns about implying.”
“Erm, excuse the interruption,” Bardgrim interrupted, “but I’m—as unbelievable as it is—with Stave here. What exactly is the ‘destruction of the destruction’?”
Havelock took a step toward the center of the group. “Does it really matter?” They all looked at him. “If this Syzyckí Elementum stops Balavad, then Vinnr will be saved.”
Roibeard was shaking his head. “The five realms are the province of each Verity, created independently while they’ve been separated. If the Verities become one again, we don’t know what will become of their realms.” He looked to Griggory once more. “Do we?”
Griggory still had the social graces to look troubled. This, more than anything he could have said, told Mylla that he didn’t know.
All that had happened in Ærd was rushing through her thoughts now. At Roibeard’s questions, a lock against what she’d most feared the Verity of Ærd’s words meant clicked opened. “Fimm told me to bring the Ærd Scrylle back, that it could stop Balavad if I did.”
“Stop him how?” Stave asked.
She shook her head. “I wish I knew, and the creature serving as Fimm’s vessel didn’t say. I think Fimm was telling me that’s how to stop him—by uniting the Five.”
The creature serving as Fimm’s vessel… Safran sent, looking at Mylla closely. As Fimm’s final vessel? Mylla, what you said to Eisa about being the last Ærden, is that true or is there another?
“The final vessel is a time walker, another creature like that,” she said, gesturing toward the tessalope encasing Eisa. “So that makes me the last human Ærden, I guess.” Even as she said this, however, something in Safran’s words, or perhaps in her implication, set her teeth on edge.
Thoughtful silence fell over the group. Roibeard finally broke it.
“These are our options. Continue this fight, which we will lose, and soon Magdaster and the rest of Vinnr will burn. That would leave any of us who manage to survive with the task of protecting the remaining celestial artifacts from Balavad, hoping to someday find his vessel and cage it. I don’t need to tell any of you that even if we somehow win in that scenario, we will still have lost.” His eyes found Symvalline’s. “Some more than others.”
“And in the meantime, Balavad will be free to wreak the same destruction on other realms,” Symvalline said, and Mylla didn’t need to read minds to know she was thinking of Isemay, safe in Arc Rheunos—for now.
“Or, we chance the Syzyckí Elementum,” Roi finished simply.
With a certainty stronger than any she’d ever felt, even the certainty she wanted to become a Knight, Mylla realized this was her task. As the last Ærden, it almost seemed her destiny. She straightened her shoulders and said simply, “I’ll do it. I’ll take the Scrylle to Fimm.”
“Yes!” Griggory chirped enthusiastically, drawing inquisitive glances from all.
Roibeard put a supportive hand on her shoulder but remained hesitant. “Even then, we don’t know what the outcome will be. It may stop Balavad, but it may end the world, all the worlds, at the same time. It’s a risk that we have to weigh against continuing to fight. Some will die if we fight, but all may die if we don’t.”
Mylla caught Brun and Nennus looking at each other. Nennus gave a subtle shrug, and Brun tilted her chin in a sharp agreement, then spoke up. “This last thirty-night, we’ve seen everything we’ve spent our lives protecting burned and blasted away. You Knights have as great a stake in what happens next as we do, but your loss is different—not greater or lesser, just different. So, if this is a vote, the commoners of Vinnr vote for the Syzyckí Elementum. We’d rather die as Vinnrics than become one of those monstrosities.”
Roibeard nodded at the commanders, then turned to Bardgrim. “And you, Jaemus? You must decide for the Himmingazians.”
“Me? Decide? For Himmingaze?” He dissembled, casting his glance left and right but avoiding eye contact with anyone. Finally, he gave up when Mylla caught his gaze. She was smiling, only a small smile but one that showed her understanding, and her shared reluctance to being the one all their people’s hopes for a future fell on. “Er, well, you know all Himmingazians have a desire to visit the stars. Perhaps if—in the completely off chance, mind you—we’re all instantly dissolved into Cosmos dust, it’ll just be that much easier to get to them.”
It was the closest he could come to agreement. Roi released Mylla’s shoulder as Griggory held something out to her. She looked down. It was the Ærd Scrylle, its native Fenestros attached. She took them, then looked toward the tessalope imprisoning Eisa. Its internal lights of all colors dashed along the fibrous tendrils chaotically. Like in Ærd, there was a suggestion of a face along its trunk, looming high above them. The cavities of its eyes glowed with a hot luminance, and if it could be said to bear an expression, it was one of suffering. Inside its unusual body, a battle was being waged, and Balavad would win eventually. The question was, how much time did she have before he did?
She returned her attention to the pensive faces of her companions, then let her gaze stray skyward, seeking her other, albeit temporary, companion. “It’s a long walk from the starpath gate to Fimm. I’m going to need a ride.”
Chapter Forty-Four
The cold winds of Ærd had grown even more biting in the days since she’d been here, but Mylla didn’t have to suffer them for long. From her perch once more atop Noble Inferno’s head, holding the dragør’s horn with her one good hand, she tensed against the wind, not even bothering to create her klinkí stone bubble for warmth. They wouldn’t be flying long, not with Noble Inferno’s speed.
The uncanny once-living walls of Fimm’s fortress rose before them just minutes after they came through the starpath well. The tessalope faces were gone this time, and Mylla wondered where the remaining ones were. Outside the wall, Noble Inferno lowered her head, and Mylla jumped to the hard-packed barren earth.
She stood before her companion. “Master Inferno, I have no idea what will happen to me, or any of us, when I go in there. Would you like me to open a starpath and return you to Vinnr before…” Before what? The end of all things? Before these unexplained Five Flames could scorch the Great Cosmos in a celestial conflagration until it fused like sand into glass?
It matters not, Knight Evernal. Here, there, when this day ends, what difference will it make?
The dragør spoke with a flat surety that confused Mylla. Like Griggory, the dragørs had a knack for obfuscation. Perhaps that was where he’d come by it.
She shook her head at the frivolous contemplation. There were heavier matters to attend to now. “I thank you for your aid, whatever my thanks is worth to you,” she said and bowed as she would have before the Arch Keeper once upon a time.
Surprising her, Noble Inferno said, A
nd I for yours.
After a blink, she spun to the gap in the wall behind her and passed through.
Outside, the Ærd sun had long since set, but even if it had been fully ablaze, the darkness in the fortress was total. Mylla’s wystic stones served their purpose as light once more, and she paced doggedly to Fimm’s seat. As she neared the Verity, its eye-lights sparkled high overhead, too high for her to reach even if she’d stood on her toe tips, but they at least provided her with a point to navigate toward. It was utterly silent within the titanic hall, making her feel entombed. It could well turn into my tomb, she reflected.
Her arm ached, but less than it could have. Symvalline had used the Himmingaze and Ærd Fenestrii briefly to salve the sharpness of the pain, but they didn’t have enough time for Mylla to be fully healed by the celestial stones. They all knew that whatever it was she had to do in Ærd would not require a sound body anyway. The time had arrived when this was a Knights’ fight no longer. Now it all came down to the Verities.
Nothing moved, no sounds were heard, and though the walk felt interminable, soon Mylla came to stand before Fimm. The Verity in its giant tessalope form remained as motionless as all else in the hall.
Wasting no time, she pulled the Scrylle and Fenestros from her carryall and held them out to the Verity. When she spoke, her words were direct. She had no more time for reverence or appeasement. “I’ve done what you asked, Creator. Here it is. Now, as you promised, please stop Balavad. I speak for the creations of all Verities when I say we’d rather die than become the usurper’s slaves.”
The vessel had been so still that when it spoke, Mylla was almost startled. “What you ask requires something in return.” Fimm’s eye-lights blazed.
“What?”
“You, Warden Evernal.”
This wasn’t something that she felt good about hearing, exactly, but then, she felt little anymore. If anything, she was simply weary and ready for it all to be over. “I already told you I am prepared to die.”
