by V. Lakshman
“What?” asked Jesyn. She looked at Dragor in confusion, “How are you here?”
“Stop acting like a student, you know the answer,” exclaimed Dragor. “You’ve got to get out of here.”
“What about you? How did you survive the phase through rock?” she demanded.
Dragor smiled. “You didn’t feel me holding onto you?” He grew serious and said, “Jesyn, listen to me. You can’t stay. They’re going to disable your entats any moment and you’ll be trapped—” he looked around “—all of you.”
Tarin moved forward and touched Jesyn’s wrist. “Remember Arcimedis.” Before Jesyn could do anything the healer had activated her phase shift.
“Wait—” Jesyn disappeared in a flash of white. Right behind her was Halp, who also flashed into nothingness.
The tunnel lights flickered and Tarin’s entats disappeared. She could feel them go somnolent, like a part of her going to sleep. She turned to Dragor and said, “I misjudged you.”
“For abandoning Dazra?” the adept asked softly, his eyes scanning the walls and ceiling with apprehension.
“Dazra can take care of himself . . . we should not have threatened you with Jesyn’s life. It was unnecessary,” Tarin admitted. “All I can see is stone, my entats are gone.”
“Welcome to my world,” he replied with a smile. “From how the attack came before, I don’t think running will make a difference anyway.”
“If it’s guardians, and I’m without my kinship to stone,” she said, her face numb. “It’s hopeless. I can’t withstand them. But you might still escape.”
“Where to?” he replied, placing a hand on her arm. “I’d grown rather fond of the idea of a one-way mission.”
Tarin smiled back, then let the silence grow. She could imagine the guardians coming, phasing through the rock and surrounding them.
“You know it’s likely Sai’ken betrayed us,” Dragor said softly into the air.
The dwarven healer didn’t answer. She could not yet give voice to the idea that the goddess would abandon them to Dawnlight. When the guardians came it was right through the rock, grabbing them both in fists as large as their bodies. She did her best not to scream, and failed.
* * * * *
Jesyn appeared on a rocky outcropping under a blazing orange sun. As best as she could tell, she was halfway up the slopes of Dawnlight mountain. A moment later Halp appeared, looking around as his axe came up protectively, an instinctual gesture Jesyn could appreciate.
She turned and was shocked to see the mountain she’d expected to be at her back gone. The rocky outcropping she stood upon was a small landing that led to a spire winding downward to a larger landing at its base. The twisting stairs had held itself together while much of whatever surrounded it had collapsed into a sinkhole below. Sudden vertigo gripped her as she realized their weight might collapse their fragile landing too. She motioned to Halp to get lower and spread his weight out.
The dwarf did so, slowly inching his way toward the stairs, with the crater yawning open below. Actually, she realized, the sinkhole made it look like a crater, but the outside was actually an escarpment. A massive landslide had moved much of the mountain’s peak down the sides, shearing the top of Dawnlight, if that’s where they were, into a volcanic-looking hole. She looked down the slopes and realized anyone caught below would have been crushed and killed.
They made the lower landing safely and leaned against a wall, looking at the land spread out before them. The sight took Jesyn’s breath away. They sat on a floating island high above a sea of clouds. Hundreds of similar islands could be seen dotting the skies above and below them. An orange sun, larger and warmer than she was used to, hung in the sky like a sign of a never-ending summer. Long shadows were thrown out behind them and she had to put her hand up to shield her eyes from the glare.
“Where are we?” she asked softly.
Halp looked around, then down at his arm. His entats had glimmered and come back to life, and with it his connection to the mountain itself seemed to be reawakening. Jesyn watched, silent as his eyes flitted back and forth.
Then he looked up and said, “Arcadia.”
Jesyn’s vision was filled with strange symbols, thousands strewn about the demolished remnants of what had once been what she’d come to suspect more and more was Dawnlight. Most were red and silent, but some blinked yellow and a very few blinked green. They were all littered in and under the ground below the mountain and on its slopes.
“Survivors,” Halp whispered, falling back against the rock face. He looked stunned, as if even saying the word had taken something precious out of him.
Jesyn shook her head and said, “You’ve got to pull it together. Survivors, of what? What’s this place?”
Halp looked at her, tears now in his eyes. He said something, his arms taking in the whole mountain in a gesture, but no sound came out.
“What?”
“M-my home.” Halp looked around, clearly unable to understand how something so catastrophic could have struck his people.
Jesyn looked around too, aghast at the destruction she saw. Her vision continued to filter out red symbols, she assumed because they were beyond saving, but soon it became clear whatever intelligence controlled the symbol-making was removing those who’d died.
Still, many were still alive, scattered about haphazardly, like the mountain itself had exploded and sent its citizens in all directions.
She took a breath and grabbed Halp’s arm. “Come on, we’ve got to save who we can.” Together, they stumbled down another partial stairwell and into the ruins below.
Around them the sky darkened as an island passed in front of the sun like a cloud, plunging her area into a strange twilight. Jesyn looked up, the beams of this new sun shining like godslight and framing the floating island from behind.
She didn’t know what to think, only that she was very, very far from home.
Epilogue
I do not value good hearts, nor honesty.
I do not value fairness, nor justice.
Give me obedience and humility.
Bend knee to me and none other.
For I am the one true God of your people.
Rai’kesh, The Lens of Leadership
E
xplosions could still be heard in the throne room and the opening to Avalyon below vomited out smoke. The city was in its final moments. Fire licked up from below, occasionally flickering in between gaps in the wood. Smoke, embers, and ash, the detritus of a burning city, floated up through the air in a strange reversal, like gray snow falling upward.
A figure knelt, black wings edged in red crossed around Kisan’s body, embracing it. It had the master’s head in its hands and sat quietly sobbing.
Into this space appeared something that looked like the dark shade of Piter at first, but soon grew to be more regal, more majestic in stature. It moved slowly over to the kneeling figure and said, “Artymis, why do you mourn? It is only the dead shell of what contained you.”
The armored warrior looked up at the sound of her name, then said, “How could you not? She wanted only what life could not give her.”
The dark shade shook his head. “She saw not what life offered.”
Artymis dismissed him, looking back down. “Do what you will. I know your purpose.”
“Indeed?” the shade said. “And how do we differ?”
The warrior gently laid Kisan back on the ground and the stood, coming face to face with the specter. “Do not play with me. We are nothing alike.”
The regal shade said, “You chose to Ascend. You chose it over the easier path of possession. You sought service to the people of Edyn, never gainsaying what your bonded partner did, staying silent and strong. You guided through instinct, never overtly supplanting free will. It is what would have been, had things unfolded as destiny bade. In all things, you have followed the First Laws. I do the same. Lilyth does not.”
Artymis began to shake her head, but then looked down
at Kisan’s body and squeezed her eyes shut. “You would destroy all this, everything they have become.”
The shade took a step forward and said, “You mourn for Lilyth and her followers, who take choice away from those we are created to serve? You and the rest of the Ascended, my children, would not be forsaken. You have been faithful even as you wandered. What father would not forgive his children when they freely choose to come home?”
The black-winged Aeris stepped back. “In this moment of weakness you’re using this sham argument of ‘free will’ and the First Laws to undermine my faith. Lilyth may be wrong in her methods, but we all believe the world reborn is too harsh a punishment for those who have chosen to make the best of your Fall. You condemn the innocent along with the guilty.”
The shade’s expression didn’t change but something in the air did; a sudden silence descended as if a blanket of privacy encompassed just the two of them.
Into this silence the specter said, “The first who awakened—Lilyth, Lacifer, Azrael, Mithras, Zatan, Zafir—all those who followed a mistaken path away from my light, did so because they did not understand the right of free will.”
He was quiet for a moment, then said, “You speak of innocence. What of the thousands still in my care, those of Edyn who still slumber? Do they not deserve the same chance? Shall their future be suborned by these who would cast aside the First Laws and usurp the Way?”
When Artymis didn’t answer, the shade moved closer again and said, “I risked my very existence, and unbeknownst to Lilyth took the form of a mere shade to gain entry into Arcadia, all to right this wrong. Take a message back to those who believe in Ascension: They are not forsaken. I offer everlasting life in the new world I forge. I will open a way for you back to Edyn. The Way is plentiful there now. You and yours will survive.”
Artymis met the black gaze of the shade and said, “We know your plans. The null has been cleansed, his blackfire undone. The Rais and Sais prepare Edyn to withstand you, as do we Ascended.”
The shade tilted his head. “Did you think Prime was given over by chance? He was the key that led to a builder within the Lady’s grasp, a prize too strategic for even Lilyth to ignore,” he said.
“With his sacrifice, Lilyth has left her one safe haven of Arcadia, where even I could not intervene. She could not resist the temptation of what was never hers to take, the flesh of the innocent. Now they are cast down by their own hands and will soon be pummeled and removed from the field.
Artymis listened, her face reflecting a growing fear that Sovereign had played them all for fools. If that were true…
“And the red mage?” he continued. “He set in motion the cycle by which Valarius was finally destroyed and his power over the Way released. You say the null has been cleansed as if that is ill news, but in that cleansing Arek has given over all he took. More than anyone, he has been the bane of the warforged elves and I cannot thank him enough. The Way rebuilds itself, one careful move at a time. The end is inevitable, but free will still offers you a choice.”
He looked at her and smiled, his final words coming out in such a way that Artymis knew he was telling the truth. “You think the dragonkind are preparing Edyn to withstand me? Even now Rai’kesh has bent knee and taken the Oath, pledging his and the service of all dragonkind to my banner. Even he sees the inevitable, that the new world will need him and his people, just as it will need you.”
The shade held out a hand in a casual, almost gentle manner. Black, smoke-like tendrils wafted down from his outstretched palm, entering Kisan’s mouth and nose. It entered the open wounds, permeating her dead body. There was a moment of silence, then black flame blazed into being, surrounding the master’s dead body. It was darker than ebonite, and for a moment it looked as if Kisan hung over a burning tear in the very firmament. Then, her body slowly faded from sight, as if the conflagration had consumed and delivered her to a nether world.
The expression on Artymis’s face betrayed her shock and surprise. She looked up, unadulterated joy in her eyes. That was until she met the shade’s own dead gaze. Her joy collapsed slowly, like the fire that had just taken Kisan, and was replaced with emptiness by its passing. The black-winged angel tilted her head and whispered, “Why?”
“Had she given face to her deeds, she would have transcended to Aeris already. Yet those upon whom she visited vengeance worthy of legend never knew the hand that ended their lives. Her own skill led to ignominy.”
The figure paused, moving closer to Artymis and saying, “Yet in the end, she too held to her vows. She let love triumph over hate. It is on your behalf I have intervened. All that she was has been preserved, perhaps to reunite with you under the warm sun of my new world.”
He gently grasped and turned the dazed Artymis, forcing her eyes to meet his once again. Then he softly said, “Join me. I know of your imprudent preparations. Everlasting life awaits those who accept me as their one true god.”
Artymis could not pull her eyes away, and instead stammered, “And . . . if we refuse?”
The figure of Sovereign bent his head forward as if in misery and slowly released her. “You will be cast out of Edyn, cast down to grovel in the shadows and filth, forever barred from my love and light.”
“I thought a father forgave his children,” Artymis said quietly.
The dark figure took a breath and said, “Was this warning not forgiveness enough? Have I not done what a loving father would, by saving all that was Kisan’s light, the one dearest to you? Now, she may live again if I deem it necessary.” He paused, then stepped away from the black angel.
“Tell them I come and my kingdom comes with me,” he said. “They will choose to sit at my right hand, or prepare for the end of days. My judgment is at hand.”
As if punctuating his statement, a gate to Edyn flashed into being before the mournful angel. The creature that was Sovereign took a step through the gate, leaving behind the Aeris lord to consider her choices. Hold her ground and condemn Kisan to true death, or follow a self-proclaimed god and sacrifice a world?
She closed her eyes, a trembling lip the only betrayal of her remorse and doubt, then Artymis took a step forward and disappeared through the gate, following Soveriegn to Edyn.
##
Here ends Mythborn III: Dark Ascension
The story will continue in, Mythborn IV: Arcadia Lost
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Mythborn III: Dark Ascension
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Look for the rest of the Mythborn saga here:
Mythborn 1: Rise of the Adepts
Mythborn 2: Bane of the Warforged
Mythborn 3: Dark Ascension
Mythborn 4: Arcadia Lost (Q4, 2018)
Mythborn 5: Genesis (Q1, 2019)
Reader’s Guide
Affinities – Areas of concentration where a given monk has more skill or power. Affinities do not have to be chosen; however, once they are, it is difficult to return to the balance of the center.
Affinities are arranged diametrically, such that a practitioner with skill in one area will not be as skillful in the affinity directly adjacent to their own and will have almost no skill in the area opposite their own. Note that Life and Death may be combined with ANY of the first four Affinities:
Sun – the use of fire, heat, and light.
Moon – the use of water, ice, and darkness.
Earth – the use of earth, plants, and rock.
Sky – the use of air, weather, and divination.
Life – sensing life, healing, and rejuvenation
Death – the use of time, wounding, and degeneration
Aging – Those on the Isle who practice the Way (see the Way) age more slowly than normal people. They are typically only a third of their age in appear
ance. A hundred-year-old adept would appear to be in his or her midthirties. This is a by-product of their training and begins once they attain the rank of adept (see Ranks).
Arek Winterthorn – Apprentice, Affinity – Unknown. Sixteen-year-old apprentice to Master Silbane, known to be able to disrupt magic. Like all sixteen year-olds, hopes he’s special, but fears he’s not, maybe even disposable. Unfortunately for him, the adepts think the same, making him the prime choice for sacrifice. Keen if somewhat paranoid outlook, great with blades, knives, and unarmed combat, mostly horrible at picking friends. Getting better at being paranoid though!
Alyx Stemmer – Pragmatic squad leader who acts as aide-de-camp and squire to the Firstmark of Bara’cor. Assigned to safeguard the princess of EvenSea, Yetteje Tir. Probably wishes she’d not been transferred to Bara’cor just before the heat of summer, and oh yeah, a siege. Used to the soldier’s luck, wishes the dice would roll differently for her every now and then. Too bad for her, they did.
Ash Rillaran – Armsmark and second-in-command of Bara’cor. Military strategist, master in bladed combat. Attended the War College in Shornhelm, graduated third in class, known for his insight into battle tactics and his skill with swords. Gets entangled with the blade, Tempest. Has had his share of crazy relationships, but Tempest is definitely a new kind of crazy.
Aspects – The basic act creating magic with the Way is an act of creation from within. The monk or mage uses the Way from within his body to generate power to perform what he wants. These channels are called ‘Aspects,’ and govern the Senses, Movement, Attack/Defense, Creation, Transmutation, Channeling, and Domination. If you’re going to learn only one, the last one is pretty darn good.
Lord Azrael – Ancient Celestial and warlord of the Aeris. The dragons believe if freed, he will oppose Lilyth and her Aeris army. No one knows for sure, and that makes Azrael’s freedom a prime reason for something even more epic to happen. You know this is going to happen, but when it does, it’s still just ohhh so cool!
