by S. J. Wist
“I told you that while I Dreamwalk I am a spirit,” Kas explained. “An inanimate object can be moved by most elements, including strong spiritual ones. But it takes a great deal of emotion to touch you.”
“So if I were dead, you would be able to touch me then?”
Kas didn’t like how she phrased the question, and turned away. “You are not going to die. This place has no intention to kill you from what I have seen of it so far.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right,” Sybl replied, as she sat up and hung her feet over the bed. “I’m supposed to slowly rot instead.”
“The Gate at the Sanctus will be fixed. I just need more time.”
“Time,” Sybl said as she picked up her clock and wound it up all the way. “Time is great to wait on when you have something to look forward to.”
Kas woke with a gasp, and quickly pulled his body that ached all over to a sit. The memory faded from his mind, and he looked around the white stone, cylinder-shaped cell that he was locked in. For whatever reason, he was submersed in water that reached his waist, while his arms and legs were tied to the floor in chains. He remembered something hitting him, and that was when he had blacked out.
The floor moved, and he tried to stand up, only to find that he couldn’t as the chains prevented him from doing so. Kas looked up as the floor moved upwards, and feared he would be crushed against the ceiling. But it cracked open as the water drained, and his red eyes were bombarded by rays of unnatural light. He remembered all the unnatural lighting Sybl had on Earth and feared he had been brought there. But it would be even worse as he looked around the giant assembly room he had ascended into. The Falls.
Kas peered over his shoulder as his senses were overtaken with everything griffin, confirmed by the several waterfalls that cascaded from the higher parts of the Falls over the window. How am I here…?
“How positively convenient that we stumbled on you at the same time we planned our extermination of Xirel’s Tribe. I thought it was only fitting that we let you die last, after we made the Efereal Mountains the Sanctus’ tomb.”
Extermination? Kas repeated in thought. To no surprise, the griffin somnus who walked across the polished white floor towards him was Mersael himself. “Your army is weak and could have never brought down my people, or the army of chimera that Nephena commands once again. You are lying.” He never would have thought that Sybl setting Nephena free might have saved them all. The Chimera Mother would have given the griffins the same death she gave anyone who had threatened her in the Last War. Quick and merciless.
“Accept the truth whichever way you want, it doesn’t matter to me. Welcome to the Falls, Lord Kas. Or do you still go by High Priest?”
“Why have you brought me here?” Kas asked, making sure to get the accents on the griffin’s language correct as he did. If this assembly of griffins was to serve as his jury for an execution, he would leave out no excuse to be heard by all of them.
Mersael smiled as if pleased that he would have a worthy challenge before him. “You are here, Fay, because my father seems to think that your immortal soul can save us all.”
“I am now High Lord of the Atrum, and I would like to speak to Exoir and not his wayward son.”
Mersael’s yellow eyes narrowed in a glare at him. “My father is not well and will not be joining us this evening. You see, while he thinks the Fay can save us, I would rather execute you to prove a point.”
“What point?”
“That your god is dead, and that in turn makes his servants less than irrelevant.”
The entire room went silent and looked to the doors as they slid open and an elderly griffin somnus was wheeled in on a chair. From his body, hung numerous wires and tubes that Kas couldn’t so much as begin to guess the purposes for.
Mersael walked over to his father, but Exoir’s guards quickly caught his arms and pulled him aside.
Kas tried to stand up, before remembering he was chained down, and a soak and wet mess to look at on top of it all. “Master Avian.” The wheelchair stopped before Kas, and he remained quite as the old griffin somnus, draped in long, dried-out strands of white hair pondered him.
“Fascinating… Both you and your soultwin look just as you did three hundred…years ago.” Exoir paused to cough. “So few remember my real name now. You would both be…immortality in its finest. I wish…I wish such a thing could be given to myself.”
“Immortality is not without its costs,” Kas said, fearing he might go from an execution to a test mouse in one of the Fall’s laboratories, instead.
“I wish to…apologize on behalf of the Falls, Erebus.”
Apologize? Kas gulped in worry.
“My son’s occupation of the Atrum was not with my consent. I was only well enough to pull back…our forces before the arrival of the dragons. I am sorry…that his disappointments are not limited to within this…crater.” Exoir slowly looked at one of his guards then, and the griffin somnus who was armored in white unlocked the shackles that held Kas.
Kas stood up and straightened out what he could of himself.
“Please, walk with me. I do not have much time left…to settle my peace with this world.”
Kas nodded, and then followed Exoir as he was wheeled out of the room by his attendant. He glanced back only momentarily to see the resentment on Mersael’s face.
18: TORIA
This was not how she wanted to see Toria for the first time. Sybl looked up to the light of the Ain Soph Aur from the outstretched gate of the white castle that she stood on. But its light only gave sight to death, as several bodies of griffin somnus lay around the gate that was stained with blood. The bodies of the dragoons had already been removed.
“The Falls attacked Toria while the High Guard were away. Seems whatever alliance Yri made with the griffins has dissolved at their best opportunity to attack us,” Loki said.
“Is everyone alright?”
“We lost a few, but it seems like a small sacrifice on having come so close to losing our home entirely.”
She looked back to take in the view of the Sylvan Woods. It was no longer a warm and green forest that she remembered, but one frozen in snow and ice. “It has spread this far…?”
“It would look that way. Fortunately I got here in time to help. The griffins didn’t come prepared to deal with an Awl,” Loki explained. “One can almost think that we can be left in peace now. If it wasn’t for the snowy view.”
“It is rather depressing,” Sybl said, looking to the Lunar Waters in the distance. It was now an ice rink that circled around Toria just outside the reach of the Sylvan Woods. It was hard to single out anything with everything blanketed in the same coating of white snow.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Loki said with a softer voice.
“Loki, stop it. I already told you—”
“I know. I just want you to know that I’m here for you, and I always will be. Everything just feels such a sickening kind of wrong when you’re not around.”
She smiled and shook her head. “Get out of my head before you find trouble.”
“I’m just looking,” Loki replied innocently. “Testing out the extent of my powers on the Caelestis herself.”
“Uh huh.” Sybl’s sights then fell on what looked like a brown feather. Pluma? Here?
“Princess,” Loki said, calling her attention back to him.
She turned around as the memory of the feather was lost to her.
“Welcome to the real Toria.”
“I don’t know… I think I still like your castle more,” she replied, picking up a panel that a fallen griffin soldier had dropped on the gate. She guessed that Gwa might be interested in it when she returned to the Suzerain Continent. But as she looked up at the Sylvan Aur, as dim as it glowed now, she wondered if there would be anything left by the time she got back to them.
19: GHOST IN THE MACHINE
Kas looked at the wall of the corridor they followed in the Falls as a cable sparked. Then th
e spark that was inside the wire began to glow, before moving back and forth in a steady rhythm. He didn’t know what to make of it, so he simply followed Exoir in hopes that he could both learn something and find a chance of getting out of this place.
They stopped before a room sealed by several locks. Locks that quickly came undone by whatever their spark of a guide had done to it. Kas cautiously went inside with Exoir and the guards, and when he did the lights came on all at once and the door slid shut behind him.
Kas looked at the spark that now headed to the back of the room, as he got the distinct feeling that the electricity that followed them could very well be Exoir’s somn.
Several panels came on in the room, and Kas looked around as Exoir was wheeled to where more wires hung. His two attendants began to hook the old griffin somnus up to them, and the screens began to play images. Images that Kas could see were of his soultwin and of her time on Earth.
“As you can see, we have been watching Asil for some time,” one of the female attendants spoke. “It would seem that the Asil part of her ego has remained asleep, thanks to the careful extraction of her memories when she was a baby born in Mer City. With an exception.”
Kas watched the screen, as the attendant continued to speak. He stepped forward by instinct on seeing her on the ledge of a tall building.
“Her suicide attempt was not just triggered by the Aeger and Daath’s push on her emotions as we originally thought, but by the Asil in her. We know for certain now that Damek would gain nothing in killing her but a longer wait for his vengeful objectives. But if the Aeger continues to grow unchecked, Sybl’s consciousness will be affected just like Nafury's.”
“You make my sister sound like a monster that she is not,” Kas said with a frown at Exoir’s attendant. “The Sylvan Aur is the cure for the Aeger.”
“The Aeger makes monsters of all it overtakes. The Sylvan Aur within her is light and dark energy fused as one. It has always been assumed that light was its more powerful driving force, but it simply depends on the circumstances. If Sybl loses to the darker side of herself, in this case Asil, then the cure can just as easily become our doom.”
Kas wasn’t believing any of it, even as he looked at Exoir who nodded silently behind his assistant.
“If Damek…has his way, then she will never be Sybl again, and this world will be lost…to eternal darkness,” Exoir said. “Her humanity isn’t her weakness…it is the only thing giving her a chance against Damek.”
“I do not understand how she can be more powerful against him as a human,” Kas said.
“Damek is still…a Sentry. He believes that he is more powerful. That he is separate from Hino, but there is still…one catch.”
“If Damek kills Sybl,” his attendant said and took over for Exoir, “he will lose the support he has gained from some of the Sentry of Earth, and he will lose the Aur. The simple fact that he can’t kill her makes Sybl his greatest enemy.”
“He clearly had his chance,” Kas said, looking at the screen where she lay on the rooftop. “So he has to break her hope.”
“She has you,” Exoir said, “she has Moon, and she has friends now. Emotional connections she did not have…before. If Damek were to kill all of them…”
“We are not that easy to kill.”
“I hope…for your sake, you are right, Erebus.”
They turned around and looked at the door as Mersael walked in with several guards.
“Still praying that the gods will save us, father? I’m afraid that you will find no place for gods here, for this Fay is very much alone and helpless without Sybl or Aragmoth to help him.”
“What is the meaning of this? Leave at once, this discussion does not include you,” Exoir shouted at his son.
“Oh I think it does. The responsibility of the Falls goes to me once you have been put down.”
Kas looked for his somn as the soldiers took aim at him with their guns, but it was nowhere to be seen. What estus energy he might have to defend himself from the attack was solely what was left in his body. His body that had already begun to grow weak without the estus energy of Aragmoth to sustain it.
When Mersael aimed his gun at Kas, he realized at this moment he was very easy to kill.
20: STORMLESS
Sybl didn’t know what to expect as she stood before the door to the Room of Light in Toria. There were no guards posted yet as the attack from the griffins had killed many of the High Guard left behind. But something was drawing her inside, and she wanted to know what. She pushed open the door and went in. From the center of the room, the Ain Soph Aur’s glow brightly lit the walls that were decorated in gold paint and Torian lettering.
“You have her weak eyes.”
Sybl turned around and looked to where a tall woman with long, blond hair that reached her feet stood watching her. From her grey eyes, she guessed she was the High Priestess, Yri.
“Weak eyes that deceive,” Yri said, walking closer to her. “So you would be the all-saving Caelestis, reincarnated to save the world from itself. Where was all your great power when my brother died? Where was it while our kind withered to the point the griffins could conquer us? Where is it now on this dying world that is covered in the harsh sting of ice and snow?”
“I only do what I can,” Sybl replied.
“I see that. I see how you do nothing,” she finished in a hiss, stopping a foot away from Sybl’s face. “You are as useless as your own mother. I was there, you know, when they found Serena dead in her room. I never remember being so happy.”
“My mother was a good person. You would have to be a witch to wish for death for her.”
“Witch? Oh yes, those magic-casters you once had on Earth. No, Sybl. We are not of magic and tricks. We are very real and very full of emotions. To think that I was once so close to what I am now, stalled only by Serena. After Alexia had died, all that was left was to find the right Novaist for Simera’s bed. It feels so long ago that I was the one he looked at. The one his eyes watched when we sung. The one who everyone believed would soon be his Bond and Queen. A Bond who would give Toria an heir and a future. But no, your mother had to take his heart and leave not one demon behind, but you as well.”
“I know what you’re trying to do and it won’t work,” Sybl replied, forcing the anger within her away.
“As the High Priestess, I merely wish to see the great Asil for myself. I want to see that glow in your eyes and murderous intent that nearly conquered the whole world three hundred years ago. I could be executed with my soul in peace then, knowing that there remained behind some hope of saving this world. But I don’t see any hope. You’re just a pathetic human like your mother who has no right to be here.”
“I feel sorry for you, Yri. Just when did you heart turn into black ice? Do you so much as feel anything?” Sybl asked.
“When all the world turns its back and faith on you, you too will understand. Your heart will become the same ice that mine has, and it is then that my spirit will rest knowing that there is some justice in this life. For now, there is no hope of survival for anyone. The griffins have betrayed us, and they alone have the last door to escape oblivion.”
The last door? Sybl pondered. So that’s what she was given in turn for betraying Toria to the Falls; a chance to escape to Earth. “What were you hoping for? To escape to Earth and live out the rest of your days hiding from the sunlight?” Sybl almost laughed. “Do you know what Earth’s scientists would do with something like you? They would cut you apart piece by piece like a lab rat, until the only magic left of your kind was the way your blood burned on the floor when the rays of light reached it through the window. Or they would lock you in a cage fit for a dinosaur, you know, those giant, ugly lizard-like things? And all day kids would walk by and admire the magical creature that isn’t supposed to exist. They could make a fortune like that.”
Yri’s eyes narrowed with her hate.
“Whatever the griffins promised you is nothing but lies. They
don’t die from sunlight, and if I were them, I sure as hell wouldn’t keep you around for your company.”
“Do you really think that I would die so easily? Or give into your threats? You are not Queen, yet. Have you so much as told Cirrus that you cannot have his heir?”
“You can’t see if I can or not.”
Yri laughed, and Sybl felt like strangling her with her bare hands. “You would have to have the senses of a daoran to be able to see for yourself. Such a waste. But you were born as nothing and once your usefulness passes with Cirrus, you will become nothing once again.”
“Goodbye, Yri.” Sybl turned and left the Room of Light, shutting the door behind her as she did. While she held onto its handles, she willed the tears, hate, and the sheer emotion that made her eyes glow to calm back down. She had to be strong for hope to stay alive. There was so little of it left now.
