The Path of the Fallen

by Dan O'Brien

  “So intent on leaving, are you?” he mocked.

  He spread his hand out and wiggled his fingers. The dark energy he commanded listened, forming into a globe. It became a vibrating sphere of shadow that danced in the palm of Fe’rein’s hands.

  M’iordi covered his face. “The war continues on, my lord. You said yourself that I was to lead when Kyien fell in battle,” he replied nervously, his hands shaking as he spoke.

  Fe’rein crushed the globe in his grip, shards of power dissipating and crackling into the air. He touched the door, drawing an archaic symbol; lines upon lines intersected as if they were eternal.

  “I think that I have confined myself to this prison long enough. It is time I made my presence known. Even in my weakened state, I am more powerful than anything walking on that battlefield,” growled Fe’rein as he plunged his fist through the door in one smooth motion.

  M’iordi merely stared.

  “If that is what you wish, my mion.”

  Fe’rein threw open the door, ripping the iron hinges from the stone frame. M’iordi and Pierce watched in silence as the door flew past and shattered against the far wall. The cold air blew through, knocking the tables aside, scattering fabrics that had been lying about.

  The driving snow plastered against Fe’rein as he stalked into the wintry air, looking over the Stone Tower with a renewed interest. “Gather the men, we march on Illigard immediately.”

  M’iordi shuffled into the cold, Pierce just at his side.

  They watched as the men below gathered at Fe’rein’s appearance. “Are you sure that is wise, Lord Fe’rein?” called Pierce as he pulled his cloak tighter, the biting cold scraping his face like a dull knife.

  Fe’rein chortled at the sound of the liaison’s voice. “This war is far from over. She will not hesitate, and neither shall we. We will roll over them as if they were there the dust beneath our boots.”

  Pierce nodded numbly as he shook from the cold.

  The stern look on M’iordi’s face painted him unconvinced. “My mion, don’t you think perhaps that running headlong into battle this quickly is foolhardy?” spoke M’iordi, reaching out and grasping Fe’rein’s shoulder without thought.

  Fe’rein looked at the placement of the councilman’s hand. “What is there to fear, M’iordi? You go into the battlefield following a god. What more do you wish?”

  M’iordi stared, his words trapped in his throat as Fe’rein watched him. The shadow eyes seemed to peer through him, peek at his soul. The councilman swallowed as he shook his head, his lips held tight. There were no words worth dying for.

  “Excuse my words.”

  Fe’rein smiled beneath his shadow fire.

  The edges of his face were spiky rails of blackened power.

  “I know our enemy, M’iordi. Illigard has aligned itself with the heathens from the north who worship a being of Light. Their faith is ill-placed. I have dominion over this world.”

  Pierce had disappeared back inside the keep, but M’iordi had stood his ground, watching as the sea of bodies below swelled. Light and darkness, good and evil, these were names over which perspective held influence. Time would be the deciding factor as to who the hero of the Final War was, and who would be the evil spirit that tried to cast Terra into perdition.

  Fe’rein was an agent of darkness, a bearer of a piece of the power of the Gagnion’Fe’rein. The men of Culouth saw him as a savior, a hero fighting against those who rose from the lands to the west. Sometimes belief and choice were at opposite ends of the same problem.

  ⱷ

  E’Malkai

  Just outside of the Outer Circle E’Malkai felt the wave of nausea that accompanied time resettling itself once more: a ripping pain that felt as if it was tearing him limb from limb, deep within the recess of his mind pulling at his sanity. He could see Arivene out ahead of him, walking slowly at first and then too fast for him to see.

  There was sudden motion and then stillness.

  The youth hunched as he walked. The weight of the air outside the protection of the Outer Circle felt heavier; even breathing felt like a chore. He rubbed at his eyes, watching as the colors of his world drained from black to red; the sky and everything around it bled from the inside.

  Driving winds carried hail and fat droplets of the rain that rung in his ears as they struck his body and matted back his long dark hair. The edge of the Kien’jedai was a steep path that wound between two walls of sharp rocks.

  Though smooth along the flat walls that surrounded the path, there were sharp crags along its top, like a thousand spines on the back of an ancient beast. Arivene walked out ahead of him, never looking back. It worried the youth that she walked so brazenly ahead of him. Her safety, despite the fact that she was his guide, was important to him. He once again felt as if he needed to protect and not follow.

  The lightning crawled across the angry skies overhead, prickling with pinkish bolts of electricity that seemed content to ride along the sides of the peaks of the Kien’jedai.

  The weight of timelessness was like a drug.

  The more he felt it, the greater he wished to succumb to it; allow it to flow over him without effort, without a fight. Each step was easier than the last as the thrall of the absence of time washed over him like a transparent fog.

  The path was stone and rock.

  There was darkness ahead of him just as there was darkness behind. The air around him was disturbed by the storm, humid and invasive. His mind receded as he pushed forward, struggling to keep pace with the girl. Her steps seemed never to touch the ground, as if she glided along without effort.

  The voices came to him from time to time as they had in Dok’Turmel; lingering, whispering voices that surged in earnest. Sometimes loud and abrasive; sometimes hushed commentaries of things he could not understand. They were the mumblings of another language, from another time.

  He turned his head at the sounds, seeing the trail of his energy ebb past. The air shimmered, glowing colors that had solidified into brilliant shards that the youth tried to reach out for as he fell. He could see the stages of himself as he fell, frozen images that layered atop one another like flashes of light.

  His heart thundered in his ears. He could hear his own ragged breathing, struggling to gasp for the air that did not truly exist. There was no existence here, as there had not been in the wastelands of the Dead Sands.

  He reached out with his hands, hearing the strange howl of his voice, the distant, abbreviated volume with which his words droned. He looked up to the sky, watching as it ruptured and split, dividing itself into rifts of amber energy that spilled upon one another like sap running down the trunk of a tree.

  “Breathe.”

  He knew the voice. As he saw Arivene’s features appear overhead, he knew that it had been her voice. He could see the curve of her cheek, the chalk-white dress that wrapped her so delicately.

  “I am breathing,” he called back, choking as he spoke.

  She smiled and he felt the world slow again, though not as abrasively as when his vision had turned upside down. She reached out with one of her slender hands until she was able to wrap her fingers around one of his hands. She pulled him up with an ease that betrayed her smaller frame.

  “You must be more careful, Lord E’Malkai.”

  E’Malkai dusted off his pants and looked around. They were some distance from the base of the path at the foot of the Kien’jedai. The trail seemed less dreadful from this height.

  “The pass was overwhelming. I cannot even remember walking as far as we did,” he murmured, rubbing his head as the rising stabs of pain flooded his mind.

  “You did not,” she replied.

  “What?” responded E’Malkai, his headache forgotten. “Then how did I get here?”

  She smiled again. The dazzling line of her teeth melted the youth. His apprehensions, his fears, were all forgotten in that moment. “The winding path that you see is not truly there. There is a gateway, a mirror of sorts, wh
ich separates the Outer Circle from the Kien’jedai. Had you been without a guide, then you would have become trapped within that mirror, pulled in so many directions that eventually you would have become nothing more than an immaterial consciousness without form.”

  E’Malkai stared at her.

  “Why would there be such a thing?”

  “You have heard of the Covenant of the Dark, yes?”

  E’Malkai nodded, folding his arms across his chest.

  She looked off into the distance, beyond the path and the Outer Circle to the dark fog to the east. “The Covenant of the Dark, though very much dead, continues to conspire. They would wish nothing more than to march upon the Outer Circle, and then the Kien’jedai to cultivate the wonders of the Grove. Even without the power of the Original Creator, there is so much more within that place. Wonders of an infinite number of worlds would be at the mercy of one who knew how to wield it.”

  E’Malkai waved a hand toward the distance where she looked.

  “So the Covenant of the Dark and the Emperor Me’Cheng…”

  Arivene flashed him a hard scowl.

  “Where did you hear that name?”

  E’Malkai drew back from her tone.

  “When Darien told me about his time as a Creator.”

  Arivene watched him suspiciously, as a mother would watch a child who had been caught stealing candy. “You would be wise to not speak that name here, or anywhere else, again. The monster you speak of is not a trifling matter,” she scolded.

  E’Malkai nodded, though he did not wholly understand.

  Arivene turned to a sound that the youth could not hear. The scowl that spread across her features was one of sudden apprehension. “We have to be going, Lord E’Malkai.” She turned back to him, her dark eyes distant. “We are being followed.”

  The girl turned toward the darkened cavern that was spread out before them that delved deeper into the Kien’jedai. He looked around, taking in the silent, foreboding reaches of the peaks. The bruised purple clouds that hung overhead flashed with tendrils of electricity and power.

  He grabbed her with an urgent squeeze, turning her despite her progression forward. “You said that nothing could follow us,” he urged.

  She allowed herself to be turned. “There are creatures of this dimension that can transcend the rules of this place. You have encountered one of them in the past.”

  “Shadow panther,” whispered the youth, mystified once more. She nodded and turned again toward the darkness of the tunnel. “Why would it pursue me again? I thought that it served as a test,” growled E’Malkai as he pounded his fist against the flat palm of his other hand. “This place is pure madness. How am I to believe any of this when not one piece of it makes any sense?” He whisked the dark hairs from his face with his fingers.

  “Because you are a champion. You have been chosen.”

  E’Malkai shook his head in defiance.

  “No, this was not my choice.”

  She laughed at him. “You cannot seem to make up your mind, can you? First, you want nothing to do with this power, crying about how you did not ask for what you received. And now that you are here, you want it to be your choice. As if you knew enough to stumble around blindly across dimensions,” she snapped. Her hair whipped around her as she leaned closer to E’Malkai.

  E’Malkai felt the sting of her words. His flippant attitude was not unapparent to him, but he could not help but feel raw from her tongue lashing. “I only meant…”

  She moved back toward the tunnels. “This is not my concern, Lord E’Malkai. I am your guide, not of spirit, but of direction through the Kien’jedai. Your toils of the mind are for you to right.”

  E’Malkai wanted to stop her, to try and explain what he had meant; the stress and burden of what he had been presented with was ever-present. “Arivene, please listen.”

  She continued to walk out ahead.

  Whatever her response, it was whisked away by the cold pockets of air as they poured from atop the peaks of the Kien’jedai. The open mouth of the cavern swallowed her frail figure and left the youth alone.

  His clothes blew around him; the strange colors of the winds drew his attention. The hair that rose on the back of his neck betrayed the wonder before his eyes. He looked to each side and then stepped into the cold shadows of the Kien’jedai.

  *

  The interior of the cavern was not as dark as it appeared from the outside. Stalactites and stalagmites cascaded from the glimmering stone of the walls. Bright blues and deep reds shone as one, reflecting off of the crystals that were embedded within the walls. A thin mist hung just along the roof, giving it the appearance that it might extend into the sky above.

  The sound of their footfalls told the youth otherwise.

  The stone path wound without real aim for what seemed like forever. Arivene stalked out ahead of him, her feet clicking against the stone in a simplistic, rhythmic pattern. Her hair bounced as she walked and her hand shot up to her face every so often and brushed away loose strands. They had not spoken since their tryst outside the Kien’jedai cavern. She had not tried to, and he had not pressed the issue.

  E’Malkai ran his hand idly over his planedge. He felt at ease running his fingers over the ridged edge of the hilt. The acoustics of the caverns were such that each step sounded like some phantom in pursuit. E’Malkai wanted to talk to Arivene, but he knew that she had changed. She was driven and poignant, now a being of this strange dimension in which he found himself. He stepped forward, his head bowed down as he watched his own feet as he walked. That was the precise moment when he heard the echo of footfalls once more.

  Click.

  It was the sound of talon against stone.

  He froze in place, his hand falling to the planedge.

  His eyes bulged as he continued to stare forward.

  “Arivene,” he whispered.

  She stopped in her tracks. Wheeling around suddenly, her face was flushed in anger as she regarded him with a cold stare. She placed her balled fists on her hips and glared at the youth. “What is it now?” she snapped in annoyance.

  E’Malkai turned toward the shadows slowly. His eyes squinted as he tried to make out shapes in the relative darkness of the place. The jagged outcropping and various rock structures could easily hide as many shadows as they produced. He squatted down as he looked, feeling the fatigue in his legs, the soreness of his muscles as he flexed them.

  “There is something out there.”

  She stalked toward him, her scolding glare unrestrained as she did so. “I told you that a creature was following us. It is a familiar that comes and goes as it pleases. There is no need for the theatrics you are choosing to employ,” she returned.

  E’Malkai frowned, but ignored her words as he concentrated on the darkness. He could feel something, and it was not a shadow panther.

  This was different.

  The youth did not look back at her as he spoke. The sound of a dislodged rock glancing off of other stones drew his attention as the words emptied from his mouth. “You don’t understand, Arivene. This is something else. I know what you think it is, but I have encountered one before. This feels like something else altogether.”

  She crossed her arms underneath her breasts.

  “How can you know that?”

  He stood from his crouch, the hair on the back of his neck taut as he could not shake the feeling of being followed. His muscles were coiled just beneath the surface, like a predator ready to pounce.

  “I just feel it. My tsang might not yet be completely matured, but I can feel some things, a disharmony in the surroundings. That is what I feel now,” he responded without looking back at her.

  She was not so easily convinced.

  “Then it could be nothing for all you know.”

  He sighed in frustration and turned back to her.

  “No.”

  “That is your only explanation? That is all you have to say?”

  He pushed the loose en
ds of his hair away from his face, accenting the deep blue recesses of his eyes as he did so. “I know what the panther felt like, just as much as I know what you and every other person I have come into contact with feels like. What I am feeling now is something foreign, something I have never felt before,” he explained, terribly vexed by her inability to trust his intuition.

  Her arms fell back down to her sides as she looked at him as an adult looks at a child when they speak of monsters underneath their beds. “We are very close to our destination. It would be unfortunate if you had an emotional breakdown before reaching the gateway.”

  He felt the anger boil in his veins as he clenched his fists, a rebuttal ready to spring from his mouth. This fell short as Arivene’s eyes opened wide in a strange sort of panic as she raised her arm. Her finger shook as she pointed into the darkness, her other hand covering her mouth, stifling a silent scream.

  E’Malkai turned at her fear and saw the glowing green eyes deeper in the darkness. He heard the throaty rumble of a growl as it echoed through the rocky tunnels. Stepping back slowly, he reached out with his hands until Arivene grasped them. With her behind him, he backed away in the direction that they had been heading. “Try not to make any sudden movements,” he spoke in a low voice over his shoulder.

  The eyes grew closer, wider.

  Arivene nodded in understanding, fear having captured her words. He continued to push her back as the eyes began to take shape. The dark silhouette of a figure emerged from the darkness.

  “How much farther is the gateway to the Grove?”

  Arivene whimpered as the creature out from the shadow, beginning to take shape in the light. She had dropped the torch she had been carrying upon seeing the eyes. It walked on two legs, but was hunched over. Arms dragged out in front of it like an ape. It was completely hairless and its skin was a dark purple, as if it were bruised all over. The muscles were sinewy along the arms and back. Its robust midline was like many a cook the youth had encountered in Culouth, vast and full of mighty girth.

  “Arivene?”