Killers, Traitors, & Runaways

by Lucas Paynter

  Einré, to Chari’s displeasure, was not so easily flustered. “What obligations have I to TseTsu?”

  “When we met Airia Rousow, she impressed upon us that the so-called gods should not supplicate themselves to humanity’s worship,” Chari said. “You spoke of her as a mentor. Did she not convey the same warning to you?”

  “And my sisters,” Einré confirmed. “We all heard it. We did not all listen.”

  “And you did nothing,” Chari retorted. “Regardless of your disinterest in worldly affairs, you cannot tell me you are blind to the inquisitions and crusades that even now take place. Yet you deny even the basest onus when you could have stopped this?”

  The way Einré looked down on Chari disgusted her. It felt like a demand of worship for worship’s sake, when the Mystik of Growth had done nothing to earn this respect other than inherit an office.

  “You wish to admonish me now for presumed missteps taken many centuries prior?” Einré replied. “Very well. And what would I have done, High Priestess?” The title stung Chari. “I could have clashed with Hapané and potentially sent the heavens into disarray, just as Airia and Taryl did. Or would you prefer I settled things with her passively? A church dedicated to the worship of the Goddess Einré might have sprung up from quieter intervention. Even were I willing to approach her in deed, I’d have not had the heart. She is my sister.”

  “Yet even now, you suffer no regrets?” Chari asked, ignoring Einré’s sentimentality. “Having seen the fruits of your reclusion?”

  “My sister did not step into the light to be worshiped. Our people—those of our family, the children and grandchildren of our cousins and neighbors—were warring with one another. She did not intervene that she might be worshiped, but that is what she received: worshippers. Saryu.”

  Chari mulled on the word for a moment. ‘Saryu’ had never had any meaning for her but the denomination she’d been raised in, and the phrase of greeting they were conditioned to speak with one another. She shared it then, without thinking.

  “Ure dun’as Saryu qi.”

  Einré smiled sadly, and translated the words of the sacred tongue for Chari. “Do not worship me.”

  Their conversation ended there, and Chari later found herself speaking to Ellis, who had taken a break from his writing to provide her company. At first, she took it as a gesture of kindness, but Chari remembered he’d been ordered to tend her needs, and surmised this was no exception.

  “How can you worship her, knowing what you know?”

  “It’s the way she makes me feel,” Ellis replied. “I’m safe. Connected. I may die one day, but I die knowing that there’s something greater than what I see and feel. Isn’t the security of that knowledge worth a lifetime?”

  Chari shook her head. “All I’ve done and seen, and still I feel nothing. There is no longing in my heart for truth—indeed, only a contempt for all I’ve learned. The gods are neither absolute nor just, and most have no love for us. And those who do … their love is biased. Perverted. Warped.”

  “I’ve always felt safe here,” he replied. She wasn’t certain that an offer wasn’t buried in that statement.

  “On your island, apart from humanity.”

  “I still interact with people!” Ellis protested. “Her Holiness sends me to the mainland all the time, usually for supplies. The occasional errands too. So I’m hardly apart from humanity.”

  “Have you others to adore?” Chari asked. “Family? Friends? Lovers?”

  Ellis faltered. He had no shame, but knew any answer he gave would be cast in an unfavorable light. “I’ve watched my family from afar. Seen them grow up, and grow older than I was when Einré took me in. But aside from acquaintances in Cordom, she’s my friend and my…”

  Chari found it difficult to fault him, though she found the whole thing distasteful. “Understand, you are being used.”

  He nodded. “I know. No matter how old I become, I’ll always be like a child to the Goddess Einré. But even if it’s just for her pleasures, I am here to serve. It’s not about what we want, but what is asked of us.”

  Chari grimaced but said nothing. She felt very much alone, though home was not so far away.

  * * *

  By the time the world stopped spinning, Poe recognized his surroundings. It was not where he had been—the soot-dusted walls of the castle spire were gone. The trees growing from the root-laden terrain were all familiar—he knew each of them like friends. These were the woods he had grown up in, those that bordered Heaven’s gates in the World Between Heaven and Hell.

  “How is it that I’ve come here?” he asked aloud. But he was alone, and no answer came.

  As he walked the uneven terrain, he began to recognize discrepancies—an unbroken branch here, a thinner trunk there. The sunlight that shone through the foliage seemed brighter, but the surrounding colors were faded. It was very much like his forest, but it was not the one he’d left.

  A sound caught Poe’s ear, a steady scratching. He followed it without fear, for he knew these woods better than anyone. Too many victims of his blade could attest to that.

  In the distance ahead, he saw a pair of legs lying limp on the ground, tangled in one another. They were being dragged along with their owner, and soon disappeared past a trunk. Poe hurried ahead and saw a young boy with white skin and matching hair hauling the body off the main road. The Dark Sword was strapped unevenly across his back, more than half the length of the boy’s body.

  “Is that…?” Poe was scarcely able to believe what he saw.

  Now he ran, eager to have a look at the boy. Poe passed through the space between two trees, and when he emerged, the boy and the body were gone. But the woods were not empty, for he had come across a grislier scene—three fresh corpses scattered around him, each cut into as many pieces, and there the same boy stood, hunched and panting heavily. He gripped the Dark Sword with both hands bowed toward the ground, but it was not the blade’s weight that burdened the boy—it was the kill and the exhilaration of success.

  “You must cease this,” he pled to his younger self, but the child took no notice. When his breathing steadied, he rose up to survey his handiwork.

  And he smiled.

  When he walked off, leaving the bodies to rot in the sun, Poe knew he shouldn’t follow. No sooner did he round the bend in pursuit than he found himself witnessing another familiar moment.

  Poe the younger paced across the road, flaunting his Dark Sword menacingly. He had grown a little, in his early teens now and at absolute ease with the killing. Poe the elder leaned against a tree trunk and watched helplessly.

  “Turn back,” the younger warned. “I’ll not say it again.” There was glee in his voice; he knew they would not. None turned back. None had the will.

  A couple stood before him, a young man and woman both dressed in the dull garments of Purgatory, the village below. The woman clung to the arm of the man, trying futilely to hold him back.

  “Kaldin—” she pled.

  “It’s alright, Sahra,” he cooed. “I shall clarify this.” He approached Poe the younger with confidence and ease. “You seek to turn us away in fear that we’ve come before our time? That we wish to raid the splendors of Heaven when we’ve not yet heard the Call?” And then Kaldin gave a friendly, hearty laugh. “Oh, no! You misunderstand! Heaven wants us here!”

  Poe the younger shared a sinister smile. “Heaven doesn’t want any. None at all.” And he swung the Dark Sword, brandishing it with just one hand. The first stroke cleaved one of Kaldin’s legs, crippling him. The second removed a full arm and the third opened his belly. He might crawl away, but he would certainly die.

  The girl, Sahra, screamed in horror. She reached her left hand out and cried Kaldin’s name. The young Poe accepted the arm she offered, slicing it off past the elbow in a single stroke. The elder Poe winced, seeing his own brutality with new e
yes. As Sahra cried, and stumbled away, Poe the younger walked after her. The elder Poe turned away; he already knew how this ended.

  “Enough,” he growled. “I’ve seen enough.”

  Still, Sahra’s screams shook the trees, as Poe tried to push the memory from his mind. In the flesh, she had made no special impression, but her suffering now felt like a splinter buried in long-healed flesh. Poe tried to run, and realized the terrain had changed from uneven root to cold and steady stone.

  “I’ve returned…?” he asked when he recognized the castle around him. But just as quickly, that recognition turned to black, for it was not the castle he expected.

  The ebony stone harkened back to darker days, when a young Guardian Poe and Fainshild Moira traversed the inhospitable Dark Lands in search of the blade that even now hung across the grown Poe’s back. The scene before him was all too familiar, the Dark Madam’s chiding still echoing in his ears.

  “Don’t do it,” Poe begged, even as his younger self wrenched the struggling, disbelieving Moira by the arm and threw her before the Madam, a matronly woman clothed in shadow. She pulled Moira up without effort, and although the girl struggled to get free, she held her back with one arm as though she were nothing.

  “Let me go! Let me go! Poe! Poe!”

  Moira’s cries would not move the young Poe, who avoided looking at her.

  “And now, your prize,” the Madam said as she produced the Dark Sword, wrapped in black leather cords. The kneeling boy accepted the blade with both hands, but its weight was tremendous and he fell forward.

  “It’s too heavy a burden,” he complained, struggling to lift it.

  The Dark Madam leaned over and lifted the boy’s face. Even now, Poe remembered what it was like, the allure of her pure black eyes, the creases of her matching lips. He remembered what the boy was feeling now as her long nails stroked his forehead, before coming down to settle on the blade. As the bond was forged, Poe the younger rose up; the blade now held no weight at all. She did not give him council or wish him well; she only said, “Go,” and so he did.

  Still, Poe the elder tried to reach out to stop his younger self, but the boy strode deafly by as though he were not even there. Poe turned in pursuit, only to find himself back in the woods, see his younger self, a few months prior, cradling the bloodied body of his father.

  “Enough of this,” Poe demanded as he wrenched himself away. “What is the point of this? Why am I suffering to see this?”

  He knew not to expect an answer. He wanted out, and reached back to draw his new blade. He vaguely recalled dropping it in the spire, but it rested just the same in the space the Searing Truth had long occupied. As he held the blade, he christened it the Angel Edge—the counter to his Dark Sword and his prayer for salvation—and raised it in the air. If he could not bring himself to escape, he would force a path open.

  But when he brought the blade down, nothing happened. Wherever he was, he could not forge a physical breach between the present and the past.

  “You wish to take your leave, young Guardian?”

  Poe was so surprised at the question that he turned unthinkingly around, to find himself standing before Cybel—the Archangel of Heaven and his former matriarch—in her curtained chamber. She approached the younger Poe without shame, her generous breasts hanging out of her loose robes, obscured only barely by her flowing blonde locks.

  “Norin, my father, has died before his time,” the boy said, trying to keep it together. “His mantle has fallen upon me.”

  “It has,” Cybel agreed. Poe the elder felt nothing but contempt for her cold indifference. “Why, then, have you left Heaven’s gates unattended?”

  “My training was incomplete. I need the means to compensate for my skills until such a time as they are honed. Lady Cybel,” the boy bowed. “I seek passage to the Dark Lands. I wish to claim—”

  Poe remembered staring at the floor, terrified that the Archangel might deny him. For the first time, he saw her eyes widen in realization, and heard the distaste in her voice as she concluded, “The Dark Sword.” The boy knelt, head bowed patiently, waiting for an answer. His elder self watched as Cybel’s expression shifted from certain refusal to a curious study of the boy before she smiled, as though a flash of genius had come upon her.

  “You shall have your blessings,” she promised. “You cannot traverse the Dark Lands without them.”

  “Then I may—?” The boy rose in disbelief.

  “You have a month to journey there and back, with or without the blade. Either way, the experience shall temper you. Following this, you may never take your leave again, lest your son or daughter relieves you of your duty.”

  Poe the elder watched with disdain as she passed her blessings to his younger self, granting him an aura of protection from the caustic atmosphere of the forbidden lands.

  “I shall take your place at the gates in your absence,” she promised. “Do not leave me waiting.”

  “Never, Lady Cybel,” the boy promised and hurried off.

  Cybel watched him leave, beckoning a servant over from behind the curtains. The girl walked over, cowed, and sank to her knees; the mistress had gone too long without pleasure, and the servant kissed her foot.

  Poe was prepared to turn away and find himself elsewhere; but then the servant asked, “You are prepared to spend a month outside of Heaven, mistress?”

  Poe couldn’t decide if it was worry or relief he heard in her voice.

  “It’s a worthy price to ensure the boy keeps his place,” Cybel replied. “The Dark Sword will erode him, and ensure he never claims what is not rightfully his. Guardian Poe belongs here, servicing me.”

  Poe’s fist tightened in frustration.

  “And … if he dies?”

  Cybel looked down on her attendant, as if just remembering who was speaking to her. She leaned down and pressed the girl’s face firmly against her foot that she would not speak again.

  “You are all dispensable,” she said. “If the Guardian family dies with him, I shall simply begin another.”

  It was an insult to all Poe had believed in, and all his younger self even now marched on in faith of. Poe the elder no longer carried such delusions, and drew the Dark Sword in a single deft motion, striking it clean through Cybel’s midsection. The anger had erupted so quickly that no manner of divine intervention could have saved her, were she actually there. But the blade passed harmlessly through a memory and Cybel, disgusted with the task to come, called to the servants who cowered in the curtains to service her in every perverse way imaginable first.

  Infuriated, Poe took his leave. It was raining outside, but it was not the fields of Heaven that met him. It was a modest town square, with a circular fountain and a gentle amount of human traffic. It was not a place that Poe recognized; great trees lined the streets like houses, and it was only with some examination that Poe realized these trees were houses, carved and hollowed to be made livable.

  Some of the people had features that reminded him of Chariska, and he realized then that he had come back to TseTsu.

  “I am near my intended destination,” he confirmed to himself. “But when and where have I come?”

  Poe did not need to walk far; he realized at first sight of them that memory had drawn him here, but it was not a memory he himself carried. It was embedded in the divinity he had very recently inherited, and might be the most important one of all.

  Three people were engaged in a heated discussion near a crossroad. The passersby all ignored them, much in the same way the memories Poe had encountered had treated him, though upon further observation it became fairer to say people were oblivious to the quarreling trio; after all, they truly were there, at this moment in time.

  Two of them, he knew: one was Airia Rousow, the goddess whose power he now wielded. She bore something on her back—large, but concealed in wrappings. The seco
nd was Taryl Renivar, looking no different than the man he’d witnessed chained in Borudust Castle on Terrias. The man Poe was intended to assassinate. He reached out, placing his hand near Taryl’s neck, wanting to strangle him. It passed through as though he were touching mist.

  One remained, and he concluded this woman to be Kayra Kwarla, the Mystik of Fate before their order collapsed. She was a fair woman, her long blue hair highlighted with traces of purples. She was hidden beneath simple travelers’ robes, but peeking out from her sleeves were a pair of gauntlets, and they shimmered even under the sunless skies.

  “The volume of human agony I’ve witnessed has become too great to bear,” Taryl pled to Airia. “Even as we stand in idle chatter, there are so many suffering in myriad, agonizing ways. We possess the means to end this needless pain—”

  “Suffering is part and parcel with life,” Kayra interrupted. “Despise it though I may, pain is how we grow. Weep for those who have died meaningful deaths, but do not forget that their bones may build a better tomorrow.”

  “As many already have,” Airia continued. “All were mortal once, and were forged by the same circumstances you now protest, Taryl.”

  Poe did not know how early or late he had come into the conversation, nor had he any desire to watch it to its conclusion. He already knew how it ended; he bore a symbol of it on his back. And so Poe turned away, with acceptance forming in his heart: he could not change the past.

  * * *

  As the days dragged on, Zella’s urge to leave the Isle of the Howling Moor continuously diminished. There was no peace to be found in the world beyond, for the actions of people shifted like bladed tides, every one threatening to cut her. There were thorns on this island, true, but she was safe from them so long as she did not seek them out. In joining Flynn’s party, she had brought danger to the very life she was trying to protect.

  The stillness of this place, and Zella’s heart, both broke when Poe finally emerged from the spire stairs, looking weary. There was something off about him, visibly, as though he were no longer entirely there.