by Silas Post
“You were never here in earnest,” Redelia said. “You came for your own aggrandizement, as all infernals do. I came to serve. I came to lift life on its righteous pedestal. I came to evict the forces of death and pain.”
Araine’s eyes fell once more on the skull in her servant’s hands. She dove toward it, but her face was held back by an invisible barrier erected around Redelia’s new temple.
“Our mistress will never leave,” the sirens said.
“No,” Redelia said. “And neither will you.”
Redelia lifted her arms and spun in a tight circle. The ring of light that formed her temple’s outer wall strummed in pulses of blazing white. Each eruption came faster than the last, bathing us in brilliance and warmth. The faster she twirled, and the hotter that light became, the darker the sky grew in every direction.
Here, at this height, Redelia could capture light for miles to come. The wispy white clouds that hung on the horizon dimmed and vanished against the encroaching darkness. The blue sky became black. The only light left was the small circle of firmament above Redelia’s new temple, and through that narrow tunnel came all the light of the world.
She harnessed it, collected it, and fed her mystic power though it, but what she captured she would not keep to herself.
A pulse erupted so blinding the backs of my eyes stung from it. The sirens groaned in three-part voices and covered their eyes with their sand-carved hands, stepping away from Redelia and toward the outer edge of the glowing ring that encircled us. The two who held Rikki released her and she ran to my side.
The third siren dropped Okkor’s skull. Free from my part in the ritual, I wanted to reach for it but I was forced to shut my own eyes as another pulse of ineffable brightness crested within Redelia’s outer circle.
My eyes were closed, but my skin told the story of the world around me. Pellets of sand struck like bombs from a cannon’s mouth. Howling winds drowned out all sensible sound. Rikki’s fingers dug into my arm, clutching me for assurance that we were still on solid ground and the world was still real around us.
I wrapped my arms around her, pressing her cheek against my chest to block her delicate face from the onslaught of air and sand.
Redelia’s holy summoning accelerated around us. What began as pulses of light and warmth were now a constant beam of sweltering heat. My vision was awash in red as the brightness outside my closed eyelids forced its way through and illuminated the small vessels that carried blood to those thin patches of skin.
With a throaty shriek from a defeated infernal and a wave of searing fire, it ended. My eyelids went black again. The wind ceased all at once. My ears still clung to the phantom howl of Araine’s abrasive wind, but the world around us had gone silent.
The swirling storm of sand that was Araine’s final form had come to rest, not as a million particles strewn across a beach, but as a cone of glass, melted by Redelia’s light into a roof and walls to shelter and protect the wellspring of her holy energy.
A face, faint in its features, was discernable high on that conical wall. Araine’s mouth was twisted in anguish, her eyes pressed firmly closed.
Against the outer wall, spaced apart at even intervals, were the glassy bodies of the infernal’s acolytes. Three sand sirens stood as perfect copies of each other, arms crossed over their eyes in an “X.” In their effort to escape the light, they appeared as they were blind, a fitting set of statues for Redelia’s holy abode.
“You did it,” I said, marveling at the tranquil blue that returned to the sky. “Behold the glory of Redelia, whose light freed the island from darkness.”
“My success was never my own,” she said. “Rikki, come to me.”
I loosened my hold on the satyress and she walked to Redelia. Her knee bent slightly, the start of a bow, but Redelia grasped her by the shoulders and held her up.
“Rikki Silena,” she said. “You have been a brave and stalwart companion. I thank you for your sacrifices and your strength.” With a curled finger, she tilted Rikki’s chin upward and leaned down to kiss her gently on the mouth.
“Victor?” Redelia asked next. I approached the same way, standing just an inch before my goddess.
“Destiny and luck are twin sides of the same coin,” she said. “And you, Victor, are the coin to harness their power. It was fated that our paths would intertwine, and it pleases me greatly that you choose to stay by my side. There are powers that would prey on your loyalty and seek to lure you from my company. I thank you for your virtue and your honor.”
She kissed me then, her dark, full lips touching softly against mine. My body thrilled at her touch, a weightlessness taking root in my bones and sending a euphoric calm through my soul. Her touch was hope, and love, and bliss. Her touch was the light of the heavens made flesh.
Redelia dipped to one knee before myself and Rikki, though only to reach into her new well and lift a palmful of silvery essence from its depths. She sipped it, replenishing her energy in the smallest way.
I bent down as well, to lift Okkor’s skull. It still glowed with the electric blue light of the energy he had saved. “Redelia,” I said. “This is a gift from the god of gods, who trusts you alone to protect his legacy.”
Redelia took the holy remnant in her hands. As the light drained from the hollows where Okkor’s eyes must once have been, the skull disintegrated into dust and vanished. Redelia’s dark skin built a radiant sheen from the sudden influx of energy.
“I owe this island’s creator to make good on promises made,” she said. “And I owe this island’s people the protection all lives are due.”
With her arms raised high, she changed the world around us.
I took Rikki’s hand and squeezed it while we watched the glass walls of Redelia’s sanctuary shift through her holy guidance. With the melted face of Araine engraved in the temple’s north wall, Redelia opened an archway in the glass to the east and the west, drawing a gentle breeze across our faces.
The glass, once clear on all sides, grew opaque toward the conical tip of the temple’s ceiling. That clouded glass caught the sun’s light and returned a prismatic display as it began to generate a light of its own.
“And now,” Redelia said, “a looking stone.”
“You can do that?” Rikki asked. “Turn the entire temple into a gem through which to see?”
“Without it, I am entirely blind,” she said. “With it, I will capture the memory of every sentiment large and small, and I will keep those moments close to draw strength from, for all my time.”
The pointed tower on the mountain’s top was a lighthouse beacon to rival the sun, casting a brilliant glow over the whole island.
With another wave of her hand, Redelia summoned an image on the south wall of her temple. The glass became a mirror through which to watch what Redelia herself observed, to display the light she captured and play it back for our faithful eyes to see.
All over the island, we watched Jarah’s people shed joyful cheers as the infernal tempest subsided and the mountain transformed into a symbol of peace and calm. The island was safe once more, home to a goddess whose benevolence matched Okkor’s own. One by one, then ten by ten, their shackles cracked and released.
“And now,” Redelia said. “Some housekeeping.”
The sprinkling of sand that remained at our feet wafted upward from the ground, shifting hues as it rose. Each grain released an audible pop and spray of color before vanishing altogether.
Like the shackles formed by an infernal’s lust for pain — and like the sunstone born of Redelia’s promise to protect the creatures of the vulnerable forest — the sand was a figment of Araine’s mystic powers. As her life came to an end, so too ended her control over these vile artifacts. Each granule of sand was a blight on this island for its new owner to cleanse.
All across the island, an infinite cloud of glittering specks evaporated and drifted upward as they lost their weight, their form, their substance. A vibrant display filled the space ar
ound us, pinpricks of light in every color the spectrum could allow.
As the sand popped and fizzled in a radiant display, Abra’s shape cut through the glittering mist. She landed under the western arch and bowed to the goddess of captured light.
The leaves of every plant below us, once straining under the weight of that sand, sprang upward in relief. The beaches, once piled higher than nature should allow, were released from their unearthly burdens. They were left shallow and welcoming to the waves that rolled in from the east.
“Your power astounds me,” I said. “You wield it with equal parts strength and beauty.”
“I have witnessed the liberation of a people enslaved,” Redelia said. “Theirs is a profound release of fear and confinement. It is the rebirth of the freedom that dwells in their souls and an inspiring swell of optimism renewed. They have accepted the gift of dreams for their future, and the light that shines back from their faces carries a profundity of beautiful emotion. It empowers me. It reminds me the importance of my very being.
“This runs much deeper than the first task I set you to.”
“To spy on the spark of new lovers,” I said. “Yes. You have matured.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” she said, tilting her head and offering a sly smile while her eyelids leisured in their closed position. “My tastes have expanded, not contracted.”
Every image that played across Redelia’s wall was a different cyclops in the throes of celebration, until the image of Merla appeared. She stood in the village center with her hands and feet still shackled.
“Held captive aboard a slaver’s ship, and yet this freedom was not a deep enough relief,” I said. “Her grief for Ketson’s loss is too severe.”
“Ah, Ketson,” Abra said. “The boy Araine buried deep beneath her sands. I’ll fetch him now.”
“In the hope that a proper funeral would bring her mind a modicum of ease?” Rikki asked.
“There’s no need,” Abra said. “Okkor provided for the boy as best he could. He built this island, after all. What difficulty is it to build a fort beneath the sand?”
The sphinx leapt and flapped her wings, then swooped toward the coast several miles out. As the sands continued to recede, a small building revealed itself, a fort built not of sand but stone. When a door emerged at the building’s front, a small boy climbed himself toward the surface of the drifting sands.
“Her delight will know no limits,” Redelia said. “I cannot wait to see her face. Yet, she is not the only cyclops whose heart waits for its burdens to lift.”
Redelia’s wall showed a new image now.
“Inside Merla’s kitchen,” she said, “where Jarah thinks you will not see, she weeps. Of the ships that escaped this island, one was a vessel that carried her parents to Greenloft’s realm. For all her efforts, she did not save them.”
“Not yet,” I said. “But we will. She will.”
“I believe that,” Redelia said. “But Prince Wick will not make that easy.”
“He survived?” I asked.
“His crew retrieved him from the water above his sinking ship,” she replied. “They carry my pendant now across the open sea. I view their journey’s progress and will convey their destination when the time arrives. I believe they seek an audience with the infernal who crafted their swords and absorbs power from the vile deeds they do in his name.”
“Araine mentioned such a man,” I said. “Whoever he is, he conscripts other infernals as well.”
“The power orchestrating this war used her and abandoned her,” Redelia said. “Araine sought power and found only desolation. This is what happens to those who ally with infernals. Even other infernals are not immune to it.
“Come home to the forest,” she continued. “I wait for you there. Together, we will prepare to meet Wick and his army head-on. It is the only way to discern the infernal truly behind Greenloft’s hostility.
“I have one final act before I rest, a spell of protection to shield this island in a way unique to me. I cannot hold away the elements in the nature of Okkor’s power, but I can capture the light that touches this island and bend its reflection back, folding it onto itself so that the island’s contours vanish against the sea. No one will find their way to this isle without my explicit blessing.”
Just as Redelia had once used the last of her dwindling energy to cloak Rikki, Jarah, and myself from Wick’s forces at the center of Jarah’s village, now she channeled the immense energy bequeathed to her by the island’s maker to wrap the island in a reflective shield. Every inch of the terrain within her view; every person and every plant; every animal and every stone — it flashed in a swirling prism of elegant color before the effect dissipated and the island was cloaked in her protective promise.
“It is done,” she said. “And now, I must rest.”
“Praise be to Redelia, the savior of Okkor’s Isle,” I said.
“Come on,” Rikki said, tugging my arm. “It’s time to go home.”
I stood at the mountain’s edge, peering down the sharp slope that dropped a sheer mile down. “Should we wait for Abra?”
“No,” Rikki said. “I’ll carry you. As it turns out, I’m one hell of a climber.”
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About the Author
Silas Post lives and breathes tales of passion and wonder.
Where gods and beasts seek comfort in human flesh? He’s there. Where myth and magic clash with savage brilliance? Here’s there too. Where the gentle touch of monster maidens arouses darker desires? Oh yeah. He’s definitely there.
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Other Works by Silas Post
The Divine Monsters Trilogy
Emissary: Of God and Monster (Book 1)
Emissary: Beasts of Burden (Book 2)
Emissary: Gods and Ends (Book 3)
