by Ty Arthur
Throwing her arms around him, she heard the snarling and snapping of those double jaws nearing closer and closer, their deaths all but assured in moments. “I'm sorry,” she whispered, shoving down her mind's shield as forcefully as she could. In an instant, the maelstrom exited the realm of her mind with wild abandon and thundered into the shadowy realm of the obelisk.
The screaming hurricane tore out of her head and through her mouth, suddenly free of its enduring constraint. They ripped through her throat like a burning hot spear of light, gaining intensity as they all struggled to push through the veil and into reality. A brightness overtook the room then, smashing the darkness to pieces and turning the baying howls into piteous whimpers as a conflagration of brilliant radiance appeared in the midst of the void.
A sudden sensation of weightlessness overtook Tala as she floated into the air, a wondrous lightness of being overtaking her despite the screams flowing through her brain. Just a moment later, an equally terrible sinking feeling landed when the fall began, her body crashing into the ceiling above with an irresistible pulling force.
22 (High Ward, Market Square, Early Light Dawning)
The pain was indescribable when the darkness surrounded Casterly, heralded first by a snapping sound that somehow came from within as he felt his spine break and his guts rupture. The line of fiery pain bled throughout his abdomen and waist, suddenly intensifying in his extremities when his arms cracked in on themselves next. The third fracturing was the loudest when his neck smashed backward the wrong way, his vision suddenly upside down and looking backwards.
He couldn't understand what had happened as his bones rearranged into terrible new configurations, or why he wasn't dying with a clearly snapped neck and severed spine. He tried to scream, but found his crushed vocal chords would not respond. Everything was blurry as he blinked blood from his eye, the world behind him coming into focus when he caught sight of what caused this calamitous damage to his body.
The city's savior had his arm outstretched, as he had when tearing apart those soldiers outside the safe house, shock and guilt clearly penned across his face. Casterly waited for the black depths of death to finally rise up and consume him, but it remained beneath as he floated on a blinding sea of physical torment.
He saw Myrr stride forward with purpose then, whether to aid him or finish his betrayal was unclear, but he stopped mid-step, eyes wide with sudden fear. A moment later his former trio of companions turned and began running the opposite direction, leaving him to die alone at the edges of the mob still desperately trying to break through the line of soldiers to reach their loved ones.
Like his own family. He hadn't even made it far enough to die alongside Kina and Shan, cruelly nailed to a tree alongside Otta, doomed to burn, bleed, or starve.
The cause for the sudden flight of his former friends became apparent when massive dark forms passed by, five of the scuttlers bounding overhead, paying no mind to the dying, splattered form stuck below. Despite the unimaginable betrayal by one he had placed so much faith in, Casterly found himself hoping they would make good on their escape, but knowing there was no way to outrun the arachnid hounds.
Their fate remained a mystery as the mob broke behind him, scattering in all directions and obscuring his line of sight in the one direction he could still make out. A massive shuddering noise pierced the night then, and a rumbling shocked through the ground, with Casterly unable to hold fast against the tide in his broken and immobile position.
A moment later the crowd parted and he witnessed a terror that brought him back to that one awful night three years gone. The obelisk was no longer stationary, instead now rising up into the air, slowly rotating in a counter-clockwise pattern. As it rose, he could see the gigantic brownish green roots beneath pulling out of the ground. Their damp, writhing appearance gave the impression more of grasping, intelligent tentacles than of a plant's support system.
Finally high enough in the air to bypass the walls, it began slowly propelling away, this new horizontal movement again heralded by a shuddering sound and a shockwave pulsing through the air. A new frenzy of motion burst across the street, knights and civilians alike busy killing one another or rushing away from the violence.
Casterly desperately tried to keep focus on the black outline of the obelisk ahead, stark against the rising sun. While straining to keep sight, a line of light unexpectedly sliced through the tower's mid-section, piercing the morning like a second dawn. An explosive sound even louder than the destruction of the granary shot across the city as he watched the obelisk tear apart into two clean segments, each suddenly obeying the laws of gravity and falling down out of sight on the other side of the wall.
His savior had abandoned the city to flee, and likely just lost his life for the trouble. Casterly shut his eye then, refusing to see any more of the world, and hoping consciousness would finally leave him soon. Death would not obey his summons, no matter how insistently he tried to call for its embrace, and in the scorching torment riding across every conceivable inch of his body, Casterly felt an unfathomable hatred begin to rise.
23 (Cestian Foothills, Light Dawning)
The voices were quiet, swirling slowly back and forth almost lazily, as though they had been sated by their violent, cataclysmic outburst in the darkness. At first Tala thought herself still in that second sun that had eclipsed in the obelisk, but before long the blinding white faded and the world appeared around her, along with a dull throbbing in her back and neck.
She recalled the impact against the ceiling, but nothing afterwards, now finding her head cradled in Myrr's lap, her back pressed against something slick with dew. She jerked her head to the side then, causing a spasm of pain down her spine, to see that they were huddled together on a grassy hillside. Not far behind them was the remains of the obelisk, listing at a dangerous angle where it had crashed.
The sight made no immediate sense, as it no longer sported its jet black planes of force, instead bearing the resemblance of a standard stone parapet, including a spiral staircase circling its edge. A jagged line of broken rock and earth sprouted from the bottom edge where it had collided with the ground while remaining upright. Turning her head to the other side she saw the cause of the catastrophe.
The bottom half of the tower had broken off, presumably mid-flight, and crashed all the way down to the base of the hill, colliding with the outer wall of the high ward. Anything that might have been in its path would have been obliterated, as even the ground itself bore massive gouges and cast off pieces of jagged stone where it had bounced on its downward trajectory.
That wasn't the worst of it though. From their vantage point above, it was clear the fires had spread out of control. The flames licked into the sky, burning brighter than the secondary source of light now beginning its slow rising above the horizon to the east.
It hit her then, that they were well and truly free of Cestia. Remaining on her back staring up at Myrr, she ran her hands through the damp grass, feeling the outside world for the first time since being cast out of the monastery and seeking asylum in a city that would shortly be conquered.
A smile grew then, but it immediately contorted as she was seized by wracking, uncontrollable sobs. When the fit passed, Myrr reached down to wipe her cheek clean, pulling away a hand stained with a thick crimson sludge. While staring at the bloody substance that had come from her eyes, Myrr's hand stopped moving unexpectedly.
Her gaze honed in on the line of bloody grime that bore no resemblance to sane tears, watching in disbelief while a horde of tiny piercings suddenly began pushing up out of the crimson bile. The protrusions pushed further forward, sprouting into dozens of stick-like legs.
To his credit, Myrr did not scream when the amorphous mass picked itself up on those insect protrusions and scurried across his hand to leap back to its mother, wrapping in on itself while resting on her chest.
They'd been let out twice now, and she had to get it under control. Even her tears betrayed her af
ter the latest escape, becoming things twisted by that place the voices hailed from. They had promised she would bear more progeny, and it would seem she no longer even needed a father to aid in the birthing.
Although content to remain quiet for the moment, she could feel that unleashing the screams inside the obelisk had empowered them more than ever. Every moment would now be an even greater struggle than before to keep the shield up after she had voluntarily shattered it to pieces. She thought of Myrr's great bouts of melancholia, wondering if perhaps it had been the wrong choice to save their lives in the obelisk, if perhaps the cost had been too high.
Composing herself and ensuring the shield remained strong, she finally spoke, steel resolve in her voice. “You've seen what happens when I lose control. I need your word. If the whispers gain the upper hand, I want you to kill me. Don't hesitate, not even for a moment.”
His eyes evenly met hers before he nodded heavily, then turned away to look down at what remained of their former prison, silence hanging heavily in the air.
24 (Cestian Foothills, Light Dawning)
Battered and bruised but still drawing breath, Erret keenly felt the shame of his moment of doubt in the cursed tower. Covered by damnable darkness, he had placed no trust in the god of light to save him, believing his journey to be at an end. When he'd feebly tried to summon the heat and light from his vision to cut through the blackness, it had resisted his call, unwilling to come to one without complete and unquestioning faith.
All of the self-loathing fading away in an instant, the missionary let go of his human weakness in the face of prophecy fulfilled and wonders unfolding. Having walked into the darkness itself and fled the city that he was meant to convert to the one true church's doctrine, all should have been lost. Until the light sprouted in the dark from an entirely unexpected source. Until the tower crashed on a hill overlooking Cestia. Until he clambered out of the wreckage and cast his gaze on a familiar sight.
Since taking his vows as a journeyman priest, the image had always filled his mind whenever he thought of the Farwalker's glory. It was the same every time, and focusing on it allowed him to channel power from the realm of unending light. Now it stood before him in the flesh rather than on the stage of his mind. As the light crested the horizon, burning Cestia came fully into view, filling him with a rapture he had never known existed.
The flaming city was the mirror image of the vision he received upon his ordination, and now he stood within arm's reach of a proper conduit that heard the voices of the Lord's angels and could apparently even birth them.
Gone were thoughts of the salvation of the roasting soldiers and civilians below. Even that multitude of lives paled in comparison to what could be wrought through the woman being held upright by a possessed apostate who walked without proper fear in the void. It was time to heal the land of darkness and bring cleansing light to all corners of the world, and no one than the missionary was better suited to bring on that transformation.
25 (Cestian Foothills, Late Light Dawning)
Standing on the hilltop and looking back towards the hell they'd barely escaped with their lives, Myrr wasn't surprised to see smoke choking the horizon, threading across earth and sky like hands around a throat. Everyone in that city was going to die, and all for something that wasn't even there anymore.
He tried to dig deep and draw forth sorrow for their fate, but found that emotional well was completely empty. Something told him the parasite hiding inside himself wasn't the cause for that emptiness. When his unwanted companion didn't even bother to mock him or create an awful sensation to punish the thought, Myrr wondered if he should have stayed behind and died along with all the rest.
Despite his position outside the city's walls, something that would have been unthinkable only days before, the ever-present specter of death felt no further away. Tala's request still echoed in his head, and he was disquieted when the thing inside him offered up its clear approval at the thought of ending her before her whispers could free themselves again.
His mind drifting, Myrr couldn't shake the image of Casterly's shattered body folding in on itself, the shock of betrayal so obvious in his pleading eye. He thought to bring a similar oath of mutual destruction from Tala as he aided her in shuffling across the hill, the pair a mirror image of their predicament while skulking through the city streets the night before.
The words wouldn't come though, and soon there was a more pressing matter, as the dawning light brought the horizon into view. Leagues to the south, a smoky haze was rising that clearly didn't originate from the flaming city below. A huge plume of dust was obscuring the skyline, indicating a force of some size was traveling at speed.
Erret answered the question before it could be asked, also noticing the phenomena. “If the Knights of the Black Gauntlet were the tip of the empire's spear, what approaches is the thrust behind it. The Empress' main invasion force arrives to clean up Brant's failure. They will not be pleased to find their conquered city in ruins and their blasphemous tower torn in half, praise be unto the light.”
Trying his hand at prophesying the future, the priest continued on, “That army will easily push ahead and conquer these petty neighboring kingdoms, but be rebuffed by the holy force of the Farwalker in Desh.”
No quip came to his tongue this time, only more questions as Myrr realized the insane priest was one of the few people in all the world who cared if he lived or died, and the only source of stability to draw from now that his home was burning to the ground. To the north the wide dirt road leading away from Cestia's western gate could be seen, winding its way through the surrounding hills and heading away from the Deep Fell behind them.
He hadn't laid eyes on that road in years, and the knights had not been kind to it. Giant trenches had been dug across its length, with more of the wood bulwarks constructed, as though they expected an army to arrive and route them from Cestia's walled defenses. Those defenses couldn't go on forever though, and if they moved across the hills far enough, eventually they'd have to find clear road for quicker travel far away from the burning nightmare.
Myrr offered up a plan then, hoping for swift agreement so they could be away from the sight below. “With those bulwarks still on the road, it's doubtful the soldiers pushed any further than Cestia. If we start now, we might reach Hrask before the approaching army. We could get supplies there, and horses, and never look back at this place.”
That condescending tone was back when Erret replied, “The darkness inside you has addled your brain. Reaching Hrask by foot would take four days, assuming the road isn't blocked. If we don't starve along the way, we'd be put to the sword when we arrived.”
The truth of that statement sunk in, deflating hopes of reaching the safety of civilization anytime soon. If the Knights of the Black Gauntlet had held position here, with further conquest assumed to follow at any moment, no settlement to the immediate north would be friendly to anyone coming from Cestia. He gently squeezed Tala's shoulder then, asking “What of your monastery? Would they offer us shelter if you returned?”
Her pause was longer than normal, and he knew the finality of the answer before it arrived. “They made clear the cost of returning. It would be a fight for our lives as soon as they recognized me, and we are in no shape to take them all on.”
He sighed, feeling a rising anxiousness from his internal companion. “We'll die if we go north, and we'll die if we go south. These hills quickly turn to wilderness, and there's slim chances of survival wandering alone with no supplies. There's a river to the southeast where merchants would transport goods by boat, but it's unlikely we'll find any using it now.”
The conviction of blind faith rang through Erret's next proclamation, finding a means to lecture even as the world closed off around them. “Always distracted by the temporary falsehoods of the physical, when you should be looking to the truth of pure light for guidance. The Farwalker's edict of traversing the length and breadth of existence is clear, and for good reason
. While you stumble about hoping to find a trail in the darkness, I hold high a lantern shining at a path wide enough for all of us to walk.”
His patience straining, Myrr prepared to tear apart the nonsense pouring from the missionary's mouth when Tala intervened by saying, “Speak plainly, priest. If you have a destination, make it known.”
Myrr caught a strange look pass across Erret's face then, almost disappointed that he would have to stop the brewing war of words and instead provide a clear answer. “Just over a day's journey west through the woods lies an ancient chapel sacred to my faith. I made pilgrimage there before entering Cestia's gates. The priesthood maintaining the shrine is small, but dedicated. They will shelter us and illuminate the situation, offering guidance as to the next bend in our journey.”
With a last glance to the city below and the rising cloud of dust to the south, Myrr nodded his agreement to the only option available. Clutching Tala's shoulder, he helped her begin the trek down the opposite side of the hill into the treeline, following after the priest, who was busy singing hymns and holding his arms up towards the sky.
