by Heath Pfaff
"We should rest." I said, knowing the others would need it far more than I. I hated saying the words, but I couldn't run my friends into the ground. I owed them more than that.
"No." Snow replied. "We're too close now, and this place isn't safe. We need to finish what we've come here to do."
"I agree. Stopping now would be foolish. We don't want to be attacked while we're at rest. That would be worse than facing the enemy while tired." Silver added her opinion. I looked to Malice and Tower. They both nodded their agreement, also stating that they were ready to go on. As much as I knew they needed rest, their sentiment held true. Resting at the wrong time could be a worse tactical move than fighting tired. If the others felt they could go on, it was best to go on.
"Alright." I agreed. It was at that moment, that a faint white light filled the corridor. Everyone prepared for the worst, swords coming up, claws leveled, but it took us only a moment to realize that the source of the light was the walls around us. For the first time we could clearly see the corridor we were in. Every surface of the walls and ceiling was covered in minuscule carvings that were lightly aglow. The light was so slight that, had we not been in complete darkness for days, it might have gone unnoticed. However, to those who'd seen nothing but black for as long as we had, the strange stone halls around us almost seemed bright.
"Does anyone else find it strange that we were just attacked, and now they're lighting the welcoming torch?" Silver asked.
I had been thinking the exact same thing myself. They attacked us, and then they shone light on our path. The strangeness of their behavior did little to ease my mind. The light was a welcome change, but it also sat uneasily with me. Knowing one's enemy, could aid in a battle, but in the case of the Hungering, it was impossible to determine what motivated them. We were fighting an enemy that we knew nothing about.
"At least we won't have to stumble through the dark anymore." Malice said, and the others laughed uneasily. I wondered if we might not have been better off in the dark. The Fell Beast part of me sat with hackles at a rise. Danger, all around me was terrible danger.
The miles passed, and the corridors turned into expansive streets as a great underground city of ruins opened up before us. Of all the marvels I had seen in my life, no piece of construction compared to what lay deep beneath Tett O Sut. Much of it was in ruin, either from disuse, or some form of attack I couldn't be certain, but there was no denying the level of craftsmanship that had gone into what remained of what must have been one of the greatest artistic metropolises of all time. The buildings were made from an unfamiliar wood, though it was all incredibly well preserved. Every inch of timber bore intricately carved designs so that no two pieces looked exactly the same. To see it in ruins was heart breaking.
Who had created such art? Certainly no humans lived so far below ground. What did that leave? Had the Hungering been responsible? Were they capable of such levels of high art? If they were, why had they let it all fall to ruin? Why did they not carry any of that art or culture with them as they traveled? The underground world we'd stumbled into raised more questions, and served to answer none. If I had any expectations of what the Hungering's home might look like, what surrounded me did not meet them.
As we progressed further into the city, more and more often I saw red eyes peering out from the buildings. They glowed with fiery hostility, and I expected that at any minute an attack might come. My body was tense and ready, and I could tell by the stance of my companions that they felt much the same. All their faces wore a mixture of surprise, wonder, and resigned readiness. The further we progressed, the more the city seemed intact. Fewer buildings were collapsed, and more stood stretching up into the darkness of the cave high above. Human buildings fought the forces that drew them downward, and that is how they looked to the observer, like a structure fighting to stand. The buildings of that cave city seemed to be growing to the sky, as if they were effortlessly lifting their own weight towards the cave ceiling high above.
No two structures were exactly the same, but every building looked as though it had been inspired by the mind of the same artist. How many years, I wondered, had it taken to carry all that wood below ground, and carve all those buildings? The city below ground was the single greatest achievement I had ever witnessed. I was awed by its splendor. Had it really been the Hungering that built it? I wished that Telistera was there. If any of us would have known, it would have been the silver-eyed woman. Somehow, though, I thought the answers to that subterranean city would have been beyond even her.
I followed the pulling in my chest. It had become almost painful. I could tell my goal was near at hand. The closer I came to it, the less I noticed the buildings and wonders around me. Red eyes, thousands of them, watched our progression from all sides. They did not attack. I found myself running.
I wasn't sure at what point I'd broken into a full run, but the pulling was so insistent I couldn't resist it any longer. Side streets fell away as I charged forward. The other Knights ran hard to keep up, and I believe they sensed that we were drawing near the end as well. There was an excitement in the air born of our magical surroundings, and the impending end of our journey. Wherever we had been lead for years, we were nearly there. A wall stretched before me, and in the wall was a large, double doored gate. The gate stood open, and beyond it was a brighter area of light. That was where I was going. I ran harder. The Hungering began to pour out of the buildings.
They did not attack, but they were gathering up behind us, and all around us, massing in numbers so large that they were filling up all the alleys and adjoining roads. I ignored them. My goal lay in front of me. The end. I was nearly there. I charged through the open gates and into an area lit by ball of glowing light that hovered some fifty feet in the air. The light was giving off a warm sun-like glow, and the area around me was filled with grass and trees. There were plants of all kinds in full bloom, and a field of grass lead up to a white stone dais. There was a figure clad in a black dress lying atop the dais. My heart jumped in my chest.
"Kaylien!" I called out as I dashed forward. I covered the last stretch of ground between myself and the stone slab in a flash, blurring forward with speed. There upon the stone was the same girl I'd seen in the woods a few nights before. Her face was calm and peaceful, and I could see her chest rising and falling, as though she were breathing deeply in sleep. Something was wrong though. Her breath was too slight, each spaced too far apart.
"Kay?" I called, and placed a hand on her arm. She did not wake, but I felt a stirring in my mind and a twitter in my chest. "What?" I asked aloud, surprised by the sensation.
"She's sleeping." A voice said. Actually, it was two voices speaking in perfect harmony. I didn't move, but I looked up. Standing at the other side of the garden, just a few feet from where my daughter lay, were two human looking figures. I recognized one of them immediately. She was a woman of average height, with short dark hair, and eyes of gray that brimmed with smoke. I had only seen that face once before, but I recognized it for what it was. It was the woman who had been aboard the Hungering ship that had rescued us after our vessel was destroyed by the red streaks.
The man next to her I did not recognize at all, but his he had two sets of eyes, both of them were gray and smoky, like the woman's. One stood in place of his normal eyes, the others were on his forehead, in the same place that Ethaniel had worn his. I knew those creatures for what they were. Shadowlyn. How many such monsters existed? What were there ties to the Hungering? Both of the figures before me were dressed in finery, the clothes of nobles. The man wore a crown of bright silver metal that shone in the light cast by the false sun that hovered above the subterranean garden.
I ran my fingers across Kay's face, feeling her skin against mine for the first time in far too long, and then I let my attention fall away from her, so that it might once again come to center upon the figures that stood before me. Every fiber of my being was yelling a warning. They were deadly, those two.
"Why won't she wake up?" I asked, my voice was low and dangerous.
"She sleeps because I am keeping her asleep." The two answered, again speaking perfectly in sync. "Besides, you wouldn't want her to waste more energy than she already has, would you? It took you so long to get here that I'm afraid her time is running short."
Anger flared in me, held at bay only through considerable will. "What have you done to her? The Hungering said she wouldn't be hurt!" I demanded.
". . . and she hasn't been hurt, not by me certainly. It is you who pose the greatest threat to her right now. Even as we speak, you're eating into her life force like a starving wolf eats at a dead animal." The two replied.
"What do you mean?" My confusion and surprise was such that the facts lying bare before me were impossible to put together on my own.
"Who did you think you've been bound to this entire time? Didn't you find it the least bit strange that the bond took hold so fast, and has been filling you with power so quickly? Even I did not anticipate that you would steal her life with such an insatiable hunger. You are remarkable. We knew, when we discovered she had the Uliona power, that she would bond well with you, but how could we anticipate such an unprecedented event?" The two spoke as one.
I heard gasps of shock from behind me. The reality of what had been said struck me like a war hammer. I felt my knees go weak. I looked down at Kaylien, her pale features, and her tightly closed eyes. She was the Uliona girl whose life I was bound to. I was stealing the life out of my own daughter. She looked so fragile, and so alone. It all made sense to me in that moment. That was how I'd seen her in the woods. The bond between us, already strong from being parent and child, had been made stronger by the binding process. Through that, Kay had been able to project herself to me. It was the same way Kye had always known when I was in serious danger, and had come running. That pulling I'd felt, drawing me into the cave, and down into the earth, had been my parasitic bond with Kaylien. Had she been calling for help, or just unwittingly drawing ever nearer the man who was killing her?
"Why would you do something so terrible?" I growled across my daughter's sleeping body.
"Terrible? TERRIBLE!?" The two figures both yelled angrily in reply. "Do you think you can understand what terrible really means?" The hate in their eyes smoldered. "You have seen my city, human? I know that there is nothing so terrible in this world as humanity and their offspring.
"You want your daughter's life. I want something as well. You will listen to what I have to say, and then you will agree to my terms. If you do not, I kill everyone in this room, and then devour the world. Let me tell you about your people, Lowin Fenly." Hungering were streaming into the garden room as the two spoke, crawling over the walls, and filing in through the gate. We were surrounded. The two shadowlyn creatures, which I was beginning to think of as one entity, stood in front of us, and thousands of the Hungering surrounded us. The shadowlyn was the king of the Hungering I realized only too late. I had traveled for years in the company of my greatest enemy.
I had no choice but to stand and listen, though I wanted nothing more than to leap across the distance between myself and the shadowlyn and rip their throats out. I took my daughter's hand in mine, and stood my ground.
"Say what you will, but be quick. I have something I need to do." With the blue crystal in my pack, I could give my daughter back her life. I just needed to assure that she could be gotten to safety after I'd done so. I only needed an opening. Kaylien, I thought, I'm sorry that your life has been so terrible. I hope you can forgive your father some day.
"Humanity created me, Lowin. Long ago they practiced magics different than those you use now, and they had reached a pinnacle of mastery, by their own judgment. They believed that through power, they could obtain absolute mastery over every element of their lives. Perhaps they were correct, but they did not understand their own flaws. I was a result of their fooling with powers they did not fully comprehend. Back then, I was a single entity, small and bewildered by the world I found myself suddenly born into. I was so weak that I could barely maintain my own existence. They considered me a failure, and so I was released, and left to my own devices. They were careless with magic."
As the shadowlyn spoke, both of its bodies gestured and inflected in exact harmony. "I did not hate them for that. In fact, I did not hate at all. I didn't understand human emotions, or human ambitions. I was a pure being. I knew nothing of violence, and war, of death and torment. I wanted to learn what the world would teach me, so I drifted through it, watching and taking in everything I could. Everywhere I went I found mankind fighting one another, killing one another, over things I didn't understand, for reasons that seemed to make no sense, yet still I did not learn anything of war and death, though I saw it everywhere. I drifted further from my creators, looking for purpose in myself, and in the world. That is when I found my children."
The eyes of Hungering around us flashed from red to blue, and then back to red again, as though in answer to the story being told.
"They were almost entirely blank, but in them I saw such incredible potential. They had strength, and power, and were open to be molded by whoever was willing to give a pattern to them. By this time, I had wandered the world for thousands of years, and I had many stories and visions in my mind. I wanted to paint them all. I wanted to create something that would last, and so I reached to these empty children, these Hungering, these Cave Fay, and I connected. I began to build two cities; one above ground, and one below. I connected them with magics that had been bestowed upon me by my creators. I think, at that time, I understood something of pride, and I wanted for my creators to feel that pride in what I had learned. I wanted them to look upon my works, and see that I was not a failure.
"I sent an emissary from my people to the humans, but it did not return. I felt the moment it stopped, though at that time I had not the power to see what it saw. I sent another, and another, and then a hundred more, but each time they vanished, cut off from me forever. I felt each loss, and wondered what had happened. That is when humanity came to see my creations.
"They came not with artists and researchers, but with generals, and armies. I didn't know what war was. I didn't understand death. They taught me. They destroyed my city above, and then they destroyed my city below, and killed my children, every one of them that they could find. I tried to hide them. I tried to fight back, but they kept coming."
"'Why,' I asked, 'Why are you doing this?'" They did not have any answers. They came to take what was mine because they wanted it for themselves. They came to take, yet they destroyed. What would be left to take after everything was destroyed? They killed almost all of my children, and I fled deep into the rock, in shock and dismay. I understood war. I understood death. I had learned.
"I spent millennia in hiding, trying to gather what was left of my children together. We tried to rebuild my city. That is when something amazing happened. A human child stumbled into my caves, and fell deep into a vent. He was injured, dying, when I found him, but not yet gone. He reached out to me and said, 'Please, help me.'
"I was going to finish him. I was going to snap his fragile spine and leave him to die, as his kind had left so many of mine, but as I drew close to him I felt myself being drawn into him. On impulse, I let it happen, and suddenly I discovered something I didn't think possible. I had a body, and with that body came power. What was more; I knew everything the child had known in life. I knew of his family, his friends, the turmoil of existence. I knew it all. Humanity had changed in the time I'd been away from them, but their plague still existed upon the land. Suddenly I found myself filled with an unquenchable lust for revenge. I could see deep into the world below ground, and there I found more children, like the Hungering. I called to them, and they answered. There were other things sleeping there too, but they were too deep to reach. I took what I could find. We surged up from the earth, and fought to take back what was ours. Nothing could stop us. I learned only too soon that an army must fe
ed, and that no food is more abundant than that created by war. I let my children feast.
"Then came Orthisius and Reamis, and I learned the folly of keeping so weak a host. My power had been increased, but when those two reached me, they killed me easily, though not before I had nearly destroyed them and all their followers. They cut my body into three pieces, crafted boxes from the remains of my beautiful city, and cast them in three different directions. They thought I was dead. I thought I had finally learned of death. However, those three pieces of me were not dead.
"It took me a long time to learn how to separate myself from a body, far longer than it had taken me to learn how to join with one, but I pulled free of that dead flesh. I found myself in three separate places, and in need of new hosts. I discovered, through trial and error, that a host must be willing or I could not properly form a connection. These two bodies were willing." Each of the shadowlyn's bodies pointed at itself. "For the power I offered, they had no problem with playing host. The third body, Ethaniel, he was different. I thought I had him, but he used a bonding ritual that was archaic and brutal. It left me weak. It took me a long time to overcome his will, and he never stopped fighting. When he was killed by the silver-eyed witch, I was able to easily leave his body since it had never been fully mine to begin with, but his hesitance and his personality were a constant battle to control. I nearly lost him multiple times. When he was killed, I was almost glad to be free of him."
All those terrible eyes settled on me. "That brings me to what I want from you, Lowin Fenly."
"You are a being unlike others of your kind. Your potential for power is nearly unlimited. When I first learned of your existence, I knew that you were possessed of something I wanted. Just being near you, I can feel the energy, and the potential to create, and destroy. I want your existence. I want you to give yourself to me, freely. I want to bring the three parts of myself back together in one place." The two speaking as one said. A cold chill ran down my back.
