by Jak Koke
Many of the pilgrims fell out of the line instantly, releasing hold of their neighbors’ hands and collapsing to the ground like a sack of burned bones. Others seemed to crystallize in place, standing like alabaster statues. Their skin ablated, all that remained of their flesh was the translucent blue of spellscar. From Duvan’s perspective, it seemed like the solid wall of blue fire gave way to a haphazard line of white shapes-jagged quartz teeth along the ground.
Abruptly, with the perimeter circuit broken, there came the sound of a snapping whip, only a hundred times louder. Duvan’s ears broke as the border veil crashed back to its previous location. He flinched from the thunderous impact of the sound.
In the wake of the veil shift, a multitude of spellplague pockets remained outside the curtain. Loosed from the change-lands, the blazes of blue fire burned through the charred grass. Duvan watched as these pockets of wild magic, now free of the Plaguewrought Land, created chaos as they scattered into the night.
Silence descended on Duvan and Slanya. Around them people lay scattered like crystallized corpses, some of them still partially alive. Some others seemed mostly whole physically, but wandered aimlessly, traumatized. Duvan could not see Tyrangal, and he hoped she had survived.
Above him, the lines of Slanya’s spellscar glowed blue white through her translucent flesh. Her wide, innocent eyes bulged with the growing activation of her spellscar. Blue lines traced her face, pulsing like magic along a web embedded into her flesh.
Ignoring the pain in his legs and chest, Duvan sat up next to her. “You did it,” he said. “You stopped them!”
Slanya’s spellscar was so pervasive that the natural flesh around the filaments lost its cohesion. Duvan watched in growing alarm as the muscles and skin of Slanya’s face sagged and started leaking fluid. He soon realized that she was bleeding from hundreds of tiny wounds all over her body.
Slanya gasped, and Duvan felt his heart lurch as she slumped to the ground in a growing puddle of her own fluids.
For a single, glorious moment, Vraith luxuriated in sublime achievement. The line of pilgrims-no longer individuals-formed a unified fabric, woven with the tendrils of their life force. These strands appeared in Vraith’s vision like black and blood-red filaments superimposed over physical reality.
The glory of the moment stretched on and on.
Standing at one end of the line of pilgrims, just next to where it intersected with the border veil, Vraith was surrounded by Order Peacekeepers and her personal guard. Renfod kept a close watch on her as well, knowing that she would be vulnerable during the ritual.
Vraith did not trust Renfod, but that was only because she trusted no one. Renfod had never actually done anything to merit distrust. In his own way, the cleric cared for her. And for that, she had taken him along on her rise to power.
Wild magic pulsed through Vraith’s sternum like blood through her heart. The threads of her soul formed a bridge between the huge, complex curtain that defined the border of the Plaguewrought Land and the new entity she had just created.
Red tendrils intertwined the veil with her core. Black strands weaved her spirit with the life patterns of the pilgrim entity. This fabric formed a foundation matrix for the border veil, which fluttered along the surface of Vraith’s tapestry of pilgrims’ souls. The border curtain would soon attach to the tapestry, Vraith knew, and become permanent.
Only then could she disentangle herself and the pilgrims. Success was mere moments away.
Already a flood of wild magic had rushed in to fill the new opening. Already the blue fire spread its spectacular chaos into the gap.
Gazing with blue-lit faces, the group of Peacekeepers and guards around her gasped in awe and wonder as the border veil settled along its new path. The prismatic curtain flickered and fluttered, still partially unstable, but solidifying by the moment. Renfod was saying, “Fantastic accomplishment! This will go down in history as a defining achievement of the Order.”
Abruptly and without warning, the moment of perfection and awe passed. Amidst the blinding blue-white fire, darkness sprouted.
Making the final loops and knots in her ritual weave, Vraith pondered the black spot in the fabric of her magic. What could be wrong? she wondered. How is this possible?
Too slowly, she realized everything was over. The darkness bloomed quickly like a fetid flower. Starting out as a small black spot, the anomaly grew like a rampant plague, sapping the power of the changelands and nullifying the foundation for the border veil.
A deafening crack shattered Vraith’s ears, and the ground shook under her feet.
Vraith could not move to maintain her balance, and she started to tip backward. Renfod rushed with reactive urgency to stabilize her, putting his arms around her to hold her up. She silently thanked him, noticing that many of the Peacekeepers did not fare as well. Armed men and women tumbled around her like dolls.
Doubling over as though she’d been kicked in the gut, Vraith watched in red and black as the border veil snapped back to its original position. Only the presence of Renfod’s strong arms allowed her to keep her feet.
Vraith gasped as the darkness erased the glorious creation she had built. In an instant, her dreams of imminent rapture blackened and vanished into the dark. She could not believe it at first. Stunned, she reacted too slowly to avoid the collapse of the pilgrim wall tapestry she had created.
“I’ve got you,” Renfod said.
Screams of shock and pain met her bleeding ears. Everything-and everyone-connected to the border veil split asunder as it snapped back. Vraith had woven the souls of every pilgrim through herself and into the fabric of the border curtain. All of those threads tore.
Many of the pilgrims died instantly, leaving only statues of crumbling white chalk. Others seemed to have survived, but Vraith could see that their minds and hearts had unhinged as the border veil claimed sections of their life essence.
Vraith smelled burning flesh and ashes-the odor of death and failure. She had the briefest of moments to wonder whether she would be able to survive this catastrophe. If anything, she was more interconnected with the magical fabric of the border veil than any of the pilgrims.
She was grateful, suddenly, for Renfod. He was possibly her only friend. If she could count on anyone, it was him. And she knew with certainty that if she died tonight, Renfod would not hesitate to resurrect her.
This failure would prove a huge setback, and it would no doubt be very painful. But she would be back to try it again. She would figure out what had gone wrong and what would rectify it. Eventually, she would succeed. It was just a matter of time.
Vraith felt a sharp tug. The tendrils of her own spirit, intricately intertwined with the border veil, yanked her spirit out of her flesh. A ripple of the border curtain plucked her soul from her body, leaving her lifeless corpse suddenly slumped in the hands of the faithful Renfod.
It happened so fast that Vraith hardly had time to process the tidal wave of excruciating pain. So she was going to die after all. Vraith felt her consciousness stretch and spread as the threads of her spirit dispersed across the surface of the border veil. She felt herself grow thinner and thinner.
Was she dying? She did not think so.
Neither was this the rapture she had dreamed about, the ascension into the consciousness of the sharn that she had wanted for almost all her life. Merging with the sharn, those wondrous night black creatures of wild magic, would give her eternal life and supreme knowledge. Incredible power.
This felt different. Vastly different.
With her last coherent thought, Vraith recognized the horror of her mistake. So interwoven with the border curtain, her spirit was irrevocably caught in its matrix. And as the border jerked back into its normal spot, Vraith’s soul stretched across its surface-impossibly thin, she spread over the vast expanse of the border veil like a droplet of oil on a still lake.
There could be no resurrection if she was not actually dead. Renfod would no doubt try to bring h
er back, but she knew it would not work. She had not died, but she had failed. She had failed so utterly that the Order would never attempt such a ritual again. Her plan to expand the Plaguewrought Land was dead even if she was not, her dream to join the sharn forever gone.
For Vraith, trapped and lost across the border curtain, failure was worse than death.
A blazing halo of light shone in the darkness around Slanya. The deep rumbling of a multitude of indistinct voices murmured in the spaces beyond the light. She stood naked on a featureless, gray surface. If she stood in the center, the light gave off no heat.
Come to me, my child. And she knew it was the voice of Kelemvor.
Blink.
A shock of pain rocketed through her, and she was alive again. Sounds filtered through to her. The rumble of voices faded, replaced by screams of the dying and the clomp of hooves.
The border veil stretched up into the sky. It was back to its previous position-where it had been for a hundred years if historians were correct. The veil cast a ghostly light over the field, making the dying pilgrims look like spirits.
Slanya caught sight of Gregor’s cauldron, lying overturned just beyond what had been the line of pilgrims. The ritual had left half of the pilgrims as towers of blue-tinged salt, crumbling crystalline statues whose entire beings had been dried up by Vraith’s ritual. Some of the monks lay injured among the pilgrims, and others tended to the wounded and sick.
Of Gregor himself, there was no sign.
Pain rocketed through her, burning up her skin. And in the spaces between the pulses of pain, she could feel Duvan’s arms cradling her. She watched him with a distant curiosity. Chunks of his long, dark hair had been pulled out, giving him the look of an abused doll.
He seemed alarmed. “Help!” he yelled. “She needs help! Cleric!” There was panic in his voice, and deep concern.
But she was wet and falling apart. Dying, she knew. Finally stepping into the fire.
Blink.
Aunt Ewesia’s paddle came down hard on the backs of little Slanya’s thighs. She deserved it and worse for what she had done, Aunt said. Moving the cups in the kitchen to a new cupboard was one thing, but forgetting the lye in the laundry basin was inexcusable. She’d been told more than once.
The paddle came down again. Pain radiated out from the point of impact. Despite the calluses, this beating would leave marks. Later, she was thinking. Later she will be asleep and I can have peace.
Blink.
Duvan’s usual three-day beard had been stripped away, leaving exposed and bleeding skin on his face. But when he spoke, his voice was calm, showing no evidence of the pain he must be in. “Help is coming,” Duvan said. “Hang on.”
She shook her head. The lie in his voice was sweet, but unnecessary. “No,” she mouthed. “Don’t lie to me.”
In response, Duvan gave a solemn nod, but she saw deep sadness in his eyes. He did not want to accept the truth of matters.
Her back itched as though a thousand beetles crawled across her skin. Then the itch turned to pain as the beetles all burrowed into her flesh simultaneously. Each gurgling breath came with great exertion, great agony.
“Duvan,” she said, gritting her teeth from the pain incurred by just speaking. “I need your help to die.”
“No,” he said. “No. No.” His head was shaking. “Kaylinn is sure to be here soon, right? Or another cleric? You just have to hang on.”
He still doesn’t understand, she thought. But she would try to make him. “But it is my time,” she said. “Kelemvor is calling me to him.”
Fear made Duvan’s eyes grow wide as shook his head. Poor, dear friend, Slanya thought.
“I achieved greatness,” Slanya whispered. “We achieved it together, and for that I am proud.” A pulse of agony caused her to spasm and arch her back.
Blink.
Aunt Ewesia’s snores resonated through the room, and Slanya knew it was safe now. Drunk and unconscious, Aunt would be out until morning. Hatred rose up inside Slanya, and despair. Why did she end up with this woman who didn’t want her? She couldn’t run away; everyone in the small town knew her and would return her to Aunt.
Little Slanya was practical enough to know that she’d never make it far enough away, and that the punishment for trying to escape would be severe. No, that wouldn’t work. She must destroy her life. She might die trying, but she might escape. She might be reborn.
Very deliberately, little Slanya scooted the grate out from its place in front of the fire. Moving quietly, she leaned the grate up against the wall. Then she dragged the basket of laundry to a spot just in front of the fire, setting it way too close.
It took far longer than it should have, but little Slanya was patient. Crouching in the shadows by the door, she watched with detachment and pragmatic calculation as the fire finally jumped into the laundry. She stayed at her vigil, breathing through laced fingers, until the room had ignited and Aunt was on fire too. She felt nothing inside at the sight.
Blink.
“Slanya?” Duvan said, wiping at his eyes with an angry, hurried motion.
She couldn’t feel her legs now. “My time has come,” she said flatly. “I can never be put back together. I will die here tonight, but how I die is important.”
Through blurred vision, she watched the devastating realization of her seriousness wreak havoc across Duvan’s face. Underneath the rough, prickly surface, he was a sweet, generous man who kept his word and would do anything for his friends. He had been so very badly mistreated for much of his life; he didn’t deserve more pain.
She loved Duvan, she had come to realize, and hated to hurt him. But she needed him to do this one last difficult thing for her.
“I … don’t know if I can,” Duvan’s voice broke. “It may be selfish, but I want you to stay.”
“I want to stay too,” Slanya said. “But that is not among the choices I now have. I can die slowly in a great deal of pain and anguish. Or-” She gurgled fluid in her throat, struggling to breathe. She spat up bloody phlegm.
Tears streamed down Duvan’s dark face now, turning red in the dim light as they mingled with his bloody skin.
“Please do this, Duvan,” she said, coughing. “You are a true friend. I know this is hard for you, but I’m imploring you. I have already lived a meaningful life.”
“That’s more than I can say,” Duvan said. “I’ve cheated death so many times without even knowing or caring about life.”
Duvan’s black eyes hardened above her, his face set in stone as he accepted what she said. “I can take …” His voice wavered. “Take the pain away,” he said. “And you will pass quickly.”
“Do it,” Slanya begged. “Now.”
Moments passed, and she hardly noticed Duvan moving. His arms still held her to his own broken and battered body. She could not think of anywhere else she’d rather die. Slanya barely felt the dagger prick in her shoulder. But the numbing poison spread its paralytic quickly. Anesthetic chased the pain like water chasing away thirst, rapidly washing over her body and cleansing it. Calming her.
“Thank you, my good friend,” she whispered with her last words.
Duvan’s voice was soft and punctuated by sobs. “Good night, friend,” came his words from far, far way.
Blink.
Standing naked again on the featureless, gray plane, Slanya stood encircled by the halo of fire. The deep, resonating rumble of voices murmuring in the distance felt reassuring and comforting.
Slanya forgave herself for setting the fire that had killed Aunt Ewesia. She forgave herself for wanting her aunt dead, for knowing that her aunt would probably die. It had been her only way out of an abusive and horrifying childhood, her only way to take control in a situation where she had no power.
Come to me, child. Kelemvor’s voice resonated through her entire soul. And I will calculate the balance of your spirit and set you on your next path.
Slanya found that she could move now. She stepped out of the center
of the halo of flames and felt the infernal heat purge her as she walked into the fire. Flames consumed her, but they did not hurt.
And as she passed through, she was cleansed. Her material burdens were lifted from her. This is what she wanted, to be erased and purged, reinvented and incarnated anew.
Slanya found peace.
Sitting on the hard ground with Slanya’s perforated and leaking body slumped in his lap, Duvan stared at the tip of his dagger as he pulled it slowly out of her shoulder. He had killed her to take away her pain. She’d asked him to, and she had been of sound mind. What he had done was a good thing, right?
Knowing all of that didn’t make him feel any better. A deep aching pain filled his chest, making it hard to breathe.
His dagger was still in his hand, its blade glimmering oily green from the sheen of paralytic poison that coated it-the very same blade that he’d used to hasten Slanya’s journey to her death.
Duvan’s blade held plenty more poison to speed him along with Slanya. It would be so fast, so easy. Just a momentary jab and in moments he’d be dead too. No muss, no fuss. Painless and quick.
But she was already gone, he knew. She’d left him and passed to whatever lay beyond. He could die, but he could not follow. Kelemvor would not send him to where she had gone.
Duvan set his blade down. If he could not follow, then he would live. At least for today. For this moment in time, he would live.
Around him, the night was in pandemonium. Dead and dying pilgrims lay everywhere, scattered and bleeding, some screaming, some moaning, others passing beyond the pale in quiet anonymity. Those still alive and mobile fled the area by the hundreds, scattering as far away from the border as they could get. There was no way to know for certain that the Plaguewrought Land would stay secure behind the veil.
Duvan noticed that the only people staying to help were the clerics and monks from the monastery. The Order of Blue Fire members had fled with the others. Vraith and her inner circle of accordants seem to have disappeared. Even Tyrangal was not to be found, and her Copper Guard had dispersed.
