The Brilliant Dark

by S. M. Beiko

  Saskia closed her fist around the Onyx and commanded herself to stay conscious. It was getting harder and harder to close off the aperture that released the Onyx’s hungry need for darkness.

  She looked up into the golden glow at the centre of that hurricane, focusing on it. Piercing eyes, shifting like mercury, were shut with the same absolute anguish Eli had closed his with.

  Phyr opened them, stared at her sharp-taloned hands. Deon and Ryk started for her but she lifted a hand and they didn’t come any closer. Phyr turned her gaze on Roan and Eli. He was shaking, but he didn’t look away from Phyr.

  She turned and examined the vast emptiness of the Brilliant Dark. “What have you done?” she asked flatly. “What have you all done?”

  Roan let out a noise. “Saskia?”

  Saskia didn’t know what to feel. What could she do now? She was staring at Phyr, and a croaking noise was coming out of her throat, as she tried to make sense of it. Phyr regarded her with utter devastation.

  “The Brilliant Dark,” Saskia said finally. “It’s not a place. It’s a plan.”

  The silence was a pain they all had to bear. Phyr tipped her face up, and the hurricane faded into a broken sigh as she closed her eyes again, exhausted. “Heen,” she said quietly. “When you told me the first time, I should have known.”

  The Conceit of the Gods

  Owls take comfort in the sky because they feel closer to Phyr there. And so, when Phyr descended into the Warren to speak to Heen so long ago and was compelled to go deep beneath it to find her Wood Wife sister, she rippled with tense uncertainty. Only the thought of visiting her dear sibling offered any incentive to keep going.

  Phyr had come to the Warren many times before to seek Heen’s counsel. Heen, though not inclined to heights, had come similarly to the Roost. They were there for one another — the setting was meaningless. After all, the realms were subjective projections. Tangible in the way that a galaxy is tangible, in the eyes of a god.

  Phyr did not look forward to what she might find beneath the Warren. Namely, the truth about Ancient she had been avoiding.

  Even then, the Warren, like the other realms, teemed with the spirits of the deceased. Flickering bright spots that were the dead went out of Phyr’s path but were not afraid. She knelt to pass a hand over and through them. These spirits would linger for a time, then become part of the Warren — a tree. A rock. Something to pass an age. Then they might choose to return to the mortal realm in a new life. Or not. It was all a cycle. It was reliable. It was all about choice for them, but not for the gods.

  Heen was deep, burrowed down. Phyr could tell this dug-out tunnel was her sister’s handiwork; the pathway glowed as green as her heartstone. She was there, at the bottom, curled up. She had assumed the form of an enormous rabbit, ears made of roots, and growing into the earth above her head. Heen sometimes took this form in an effort to think. To feel connected again.

  “Sister?” Phyr’s voice was hollow in the burrow. The fear in it was soft, for she did not wish to wake Heen when she needed this time . . . but time, itself, was in sharp danger.

  “I am awake,” Heen said. “I am perhaps too awake. I am in pain.”

  Phyr knew precisely what she meant. “I am in pain also.”

  The great rabbit’s head was a slow arc of a nod, and the earth shifted around them, but her root ears seemed to grow further, plunging deep above her. “You are right to question. And you are right in another regard. These shadows, these Darklings. They did not come from nothing. They came from one of us.”

  Phyr pulled her nine wings around her, but she was the North Wind itself. Strong. Heen’s admission of fear and pain took the courage from her. “It cannot be true,” Phyr said. “These beings are an absolute end to Creation itself. How could one of us make such monsters?”

  One of Heen’s great eyes opened. “Is darkness a monster?” she asked. “There is no creation without destruction. There is no light without the dark. Everything comes from nothing. The darkness has its place.”

  These were not words that Heen might have said at the beginning of life; she was one of its sources, after all. “If we are meant to become nothing, then what is the point of living now?”

  Heen’s eye shut then. A sob came up from the Rabbit’s body, and she opened both eyes, fierce and full of love. “I know,” she said. “I know. I have asked it all. I have prayed for it not to be so. I should have done more.”

  Phyr’s wings fell behind her, and she strode forward, laying a hand on Heen’s head. “What do you mean?”

  The earth shuddered. “The Darklings came to me. They came to me for guidance.”

  Phyr resisted every urge to plunge her talons into her sister’s head. She was not a battle god. She needed to understand. “Show me.”

  Heen told her, and Phyr felt like she was there as she viewed her sister’s recounting within the Wood Wife’s mind.

  It was not a betrayal. It could not be. They were all sisters, yet they had hidden things from one another. When had they become so separate? Was it when Ancient made its plans absolute and turned away? Was it when Fia went into hiding?

  Perhaps this was Fia’s attempt at finding her way back to them all. Or perhaps it was a different kind of response. A retaliation.

  Fia had sent the Darklings. Fia had made them. And the three shadow creatures had not rained blood and destruction on Creation immediately. They had come to beg counsel from a creature that gave life.

  Three shining golden rings had appeared in the Warren, each occupied by one of these dark beings — Zabor, who made chaos. Kirkald, who made harm. Balaghast, who made silence.

  “Are we gods, as you are?” Zabor had asked. Her snake tail was coiled beneath her tightly. Heen remarked that on the monstrous face there was actual concern. Phyr realized she had never seen these beings up close. They were concepts made manifest. Phyr had dissected their existences and their influences, their potential powers, but she had been utterly one-dimensional in appraising them. Until now.

  Heen looked from each of them. Phyr imagined that her sister looked on these beings with love, and it hurt Phyr to imagine this. “I do not know,” Heen said to the Darklings. “But I welcome you, as I would my sisters.”

  “We were made. Were you made?” Kirkald asked. He leaned forward, hands tracing symbols in the air. There was a red afterglow with each of them. Phyr knew what these symbols could be, for each represented a potential. A choice and an equation that led to a conclusion. This creature could move time in a far less sophisticated way than Phyr. This may have been why she had been struggling with her Pendulum Rod during this conflict. Kirkald was passing harm through all of time.

  Heen frowned. “We are part of one whole. We are Ancient. We are outside Ancient. And also beneath it.”

  The one called Balaghast nodded but did not speak. They had no mouth, but only eyes. Deliberately sad ones. Silence meant utter nothingness. Silence was an unfortunate promise to bear.

  “We are also part of a whole,” Zabor said, chin dipped down as she considered her hands, her scales. “We have come to reset a balance. As you and your sister-gods have your purposes, so too do we. Our maker was adamant about this. But we also carry their message.”

  Heen’s back was straight. Heen had walked many millennia at Fia’s side and had taken on many of their aspects. If Deon and Ryk were twins, Fia and Heen might also have been, in spirit. Earth was delicate because of Spirit. Spirit had nothing unless Nature could contain it. Heen had suffered the most from Fia’s leaving.

  “What is Fia’s message?” Heen asked.

  Balaghast raised a hoofed hand, and the message passed through the golden rings, which had begun to shiver, and, suddenly, glow red.

  Ancient no longer has any use for life, Balaghast said. We have come to end it all, by Ancient’s order. But we do not wish to; we are touched by Fia, we feel their dis
tress. But still, we cannot deny our maker. We must do as we are bidden, as you do.

  The rings were once again golden. Heen was painfully still.

  When Heen was done relaying this memory, Phyr staggered backward from Heen. “No,” she said.

  “So you see,” Heen said sadly. “We have all been betrayed. Even the forces of the dark.”

  Phyr cradled her head, feeling more pain than she was created to bear. Inside her head was the universe. It was as if all of it was dying. It was as if it was made to die.

  “It isn’t true,” Phyr wished. But Heen wouldn’t be so distressed if it wasn’t true. Ancient had set out to end Creation. But why? Why?

  Phyr felt the anger changing her as she straightened, pointing at Heen. “If there is a traitor here, it is you. You should have destroyed the Darklings when they came to you.” Such a thing to say, but Phyr knew that if the roles had been reversed, if the Darklings had come to the Roost, she couldn’t have killed them. That terrified her more than Heen’s admission now.

  If it were possible, it seemed Heen became more and more Rabbit-like before Phyr’s eyes. “You know I could not harm them. You know I am sorry for it.”

  Phyr stabbed the Pendulum Rod down, pulling her nine wings over her. “I will stop this. I will make sure of it.” Secure in her knowledge, in the recklessness of patching her broken faith, Phyr folded herself out of the Warren, knowing she would not see Heen again.

  * * *

  Ancient only ever endured as an absolute because the sisters were always together. That bond made Ancient strong.

  The bond broke when Fia left them. Fia had done all of this, had made these Darklings that plagued both the gods and the peoples they protected. Now returned to the Roost, Phyr was smashing the Pendulum Rod again and again into the floating rock of her white realm, having become a god made not of wind but of pain. Beneath the rod, the floating rock splintered, the gold rings there flickering but not going out.

  “Why would you do this?” Phyr shouted into oblivion. “Ancient could not have willed it. Ancient needed us.”

  Spooling outward, in its endless message in a spiral that always came back to itself, was the Narrative. Constant and knowable. Phyr, or her sisters, did not read the Narrative, because they were born knowing to obey it absolutely. The gods were only to trust it. The Narrative’s sigils and symbols contained the design of countless lives, layered and layered. A perfect system and a reliable equation, they’d believed. Phyr could fly to the top of the universe, and still she wouldn’t find the end of the Narrative. She shouldn’t be able to.

  When she did look, the sigils began to bleed red, and she screamed.

  She fell to her great knees. She stared into the golden rings, Fia’s rings, and saw the time-stopped human world as if the circles were windows. The world Ancient had made and had given to the gods to manage. This world was young, with so much potential. The Darklings had tried to undo it in small measures, but now that dark smudge hung in the humans’ sky, about to detonate it all in one swoop at Ancient’s word. Beneath the Roost were the realms of Phyr’s sisters, unified. Beneath those realms was Ancient itself, content to see all it had made be destroyed, not moving to stop it.

  Ancient’s plan or not, Phyr would not allow it. And this broken ruin inside of Phyr, in the space where her heart had been — she would not wish this pain on her other sisters, Ryk and Deon.

  Fia had been right, going away. Fia had gone so as to protect the others from their sorrow. Phyr must do the same now. Ancient’s strength came from the unity of Phyr and her sisters. If they were separated, then Ancient could be weakened. The sisters could manage the world. They had been doing so, all this time. Now they just had to keep doing it — apart.

  Phyr looked above her at the Narrative that she’d tried to make sense of, the sigils glowing in the sky above the Roost. Then she dismissed the sigils and the golden rings below her feet with a wave of her hand. Both things meant unity. Not anymore.

  “It’s only a story,” Phyr told herself. Then she composed her mind, wiping it clean, and called her sisters to her.

  “What is this?” Ryk had demanded. Ryk felt things more intensely than the rest of them.

  Deon flared when she looked closely at Phyr. “Sister? Are you well?” She tilted her flaming head. “Have you been to Heen?”

  Phyr turned her back to the Battle Twins. The platform of stone beneath her feet had resolved to pure, unblemished white, as if she hadn’t just been trying to break it in half. The Pendulum Rod was standing on its own, tracing out a picture of the Realms of Ancient, and her sisters’ territories in them.

  “I am glad you’ve come,” Phyr said. “We have been betrayed.”

  Deon hissed. Phyr felt the fire jolt at her back. “How? By whom?”

  Phyr did not move, hands clenched at her back, beneath her wings. The rod did not move, either. It stood straight up. The golden rings returned, framing this elegant map of everything she and her sisters had known.

  “By me.”

  Silence. Perhaps an age went by.

  Ryk moved forward with her great harpoon. “What have you done?”

  Phyr took the rod and stepped into the golden circles. “Ancient’s will,” she said. “This world is in peril because of the gods. Because the rest of you are weak. I am the authority now. The only authority. Believe in that.” Phyr figured that, in as much pain as she was, it wouldn’t hurt too much more to do this to them.

  It did.

  “Fia was right,” Phyr went on. “We could not manage this world together. And so it is better that we do it apart.”

  Ryk advanced, saw the image drawn out in the white stone. “Please, sister,” she begged. “We have only ever been together. We can save this world together.”

  Deon raged, racing forward, garnet blade blazing. Phyr raised the Pendulum Rod and Ryk grabbed hold of Deon, who howled.

  “It’s too late,” Phyr said. “It is my choice to make.”

  “It should be all of ours!” Deon bellowed.

  Through the golden rings, Phyr felt it. Felt Fia, felt Ancient. Ancient pulled the Darkling Moon to it. Fia touched Phyr with her spirit and urged her to act.

  The rod came down. It did not take much force — only the force of love. And the realms were separated, and Deon and Ryk were banished from the Roost and sent to their respective planes. Time itself was still stopped.

  Phyr shook with the effort of holding it all together. Of pushing Ancient, the furnace of Creation, down and down and down, though it wanted to rise and destroy. Sleep, Phyr thought, and it was done.

  She looked down into the rings, and she was surprised to see Fia there, their triple-horned head dipped down sadly. It helped, only a little, that Phyr wasn’t completely alone in this.

  “It had to be done,” Fia said from the rings. This connection, too, would snap shut forever, and the siblings would be parted until the end of everything. Phyr held on as long as she could, but the rings winked out, and Fia was gone.

  Heen came out of the depths of the Warren, surrounded by her ancestral dead, and let them comfort her for a time.

  The Realms of Ancient split to five, then, with perfect, sharp boundaries. In the dark spaces between the realms, and beneath them, was a new land built from tears and blood, a burned land that reflected the gods’ pain. They called this place the Bloodlands, and into it went the Darklings and all their malicious brood.

  And while the Darklings did not wish to destroy, it was still their purpose. Not even a god can deny its purpose. Heen, despite her sorrow, dug their prison in the Bloodlands, and Phyr pulled them out of the sky where they had joined together, splitting the three dark siblings apart as she had done with her own. The Darklings, weakened, were condemned to their hold. The walls of the prison were strong, but the Darklings’ desire to fulfill what they were made for was stronger. It would only be a ma
tter of time. And eternity to an eternal is as certain as the purpose they were made for.

  The Darklings sang. They waited. They never forgot.

  Fia provided the locks — the targes. They knew they would only remain in place for so long. They told their children that Ancient forged the locks, for Ancient loved them. They hoped that their conceit would spare the world.

  And, when all of this was done, the sisters mitigated their pain by watching life continue. Time ticked onwards. The world was saved, and humanity was allowed its chance to grow. Darkness, however, couldn’t be banished from the world entirely. Heen had been right; creation could not exist without destruction, a balance now to be maintained by Denizens by believing that what the gods had given up was for a greater good. The gods’ hearts were on Earth, with their descendants. It was enough to love through them.

  And as millennia passed, the longer the gods were apart from one another, the more their sister-love faded. Separation had to become strength. Their Denizen children began to believe this was also true.

  Even gods make choices. Even gods make mistakes. And in the deepest dark was Ancient itself, pushed down, made to sleep, made silenced, by what Phyr had done, by the bonds that she had broken.

  But nothing remains in a cage for too long. And eventually, in the way of conceits, it would be misconstrued. The lie would be undone.

  But nothing can be caged forever. All Ancient had to do was wait.

  “And if we are brought back together?” Phyr had asked Fia through the rings, just before the connection had closed.

  “Then it will no longer be in our hands,” Fia said. “Humans will have to make the last choice. Unity may save them in a way it could not save us.”

  The Narrative endured. This fragment of the story went unheard. But stories, like gods, don’t ever really die.

  Once upon a time, Creation dreamed, and called itself Ancient. It had five aspects, calling them its children. Gods. These gods managed Creation’s great work — humanity and the world they inhabited. But Creation was unhappy with it, with the creatures it called Denizens and all else that had sprung from them — humanity failed Ancient’s expectations, and so it wanted to see the work undone. It wanted to set it back to what it had been at the beginning.