The King of the Fallen

by David Dalglish

  “You could offer her your pointy hat,” Harruq said, slapping the morose wizard on the arm and chuckling despite the tears that ran down his cheeks. Tarlak stared at him, frozen in place with a mixture of sorrow and morbid humor etched on his face. At last he broke out into a laugh.

  “Gods damn it,” he said. “Tess was a daughter of balance, with power that rivaled the goddess herself. Her actions led to the deaths of so many. She ripped a hole in the world to let in Thulos’s war demons. She demanded Delysia’s death. And yet...and yet I feel no pleasure in her passing. Instead I look around, and my heart breaks. A woman whose decisions saved and destroyed cities, who unleashed armies, who made gods quake with fear...and now we stand at her funeral,” he gestured about the barren hill, “with a mere three people come to mourn her.

  “Is this the fate of us heroes and villains? To watch our friends and family fall one by one, with ever-dwindling survivors to mourn over us as the rest of the uncaring world moves on?” His lips quivered, and suddenly an entire dam of emotion broke free. He could barely manage the words fumbling from his mouth. “I shouldn’t have to give a speech, damn it. I’m so tired of giving these speeches. I’m so tired of standing over these graves. Haern, Brug, Aully, Mira, Qurrah, Tess, Lathaar, Delysia...when does it stop? Damn it all. Gods damn it all.”

  Aurelia rose to her feet, slipped past her husband, and went to the sobbing wizard. She had known him for so long now, and she knew how much of his joyful persona was an act he put on for others. In his every joke, every laugh, he sought to improve the lives of those who knew him. It was a drain, of course, but his personality and strength were incredible, even for a human. He gave, and he gave, and now she saw him convinced he had nothing left to give. It wasn’t true, of course, but it would become true if he believed it for long enough.

  “I’ve never forgotten the words you spoke,” she said. She recited them slowly, calmly, with none of his humor or cadence but all of his sincerity. “‘My hurt, I’m sure it pales, but it’s there, and Ashhur help me should such a day as this come to my heart.’ But it did come to your heart, Tarlak. It came again and again, to you, and to all of us.” She wrapped her arms around him, and he graciously accepted her embrace. She felt him trembling, some deep part of him long since broken now finally ripped open and exposed. “Tessanna is the reason some of that hurt befell us. Grieve not for her, if you must. But grieve for the hurt she felt, and the hurt she spread, and the life she might have lived if this world were not so cruel. Grieve for the guilt that broke her. Grieve for the hope that guided her to sacrifice everything. Her, and Qurrah, they’ve both given everything to make amends. I’ll shed my tears, and I’ll whisper my prayers, and I’ll do my best to ensure their sacrifices were not offered in vain.”

  “And when it comes for us?” Tarlak asked. “When it’s you I need to give a speech over? Or your husband? What then?”

  “Well, if it’s me, I’ll get a damn parade,” Harruq said. “I’m the Godslayer, after all.”

  Tarlak pulled away from Aurelia, shook his head, and laughed. “Harruq, you’re lucky I don’t turn you into a damn mudskipper for that. Leave the bad jokes to yours truly.”

  The wizard trudged down the hill. Aurelia and Harruq remained at Tessanna’s grave, she with her arms tucked around his waist. Her gaze fell to the freshly dug soil. It felt wrong to leave so quickly despite having nothing else to say, so they lingered, solemn and silent. Honestly, it was likely all Tessanna would have wanted. What she would not have wanted, however, was the arrival of Ahaesarus from the sky.

  “We move out with the dawn,” the angel said after he gently touched down on the opposite side of the gravestone. “With Azariah’s forces so decimated, we should have the advantage when we assault Mordeina.”

  “Interrupting a funeral to speak strategy is in ill taste,” Aurelia couldn’t help but snip.

  “What I find in ill taste is your mourning of this woman. She struck down my angels as well as Azariah’s, and her intrusion cost me the army of beast-men I labored to bring south. I know she was important to your history, but it was her hand that brought Thulos’s war demons into this world. Her legacy is one of death and chaos.”

  “So was Qurrah’s,” Harruq said, a dangerous edge to his voice. “He was forgiven, and made amends. Is the same not allowed of her?”

  “I speak of actions she wrought earlier today,” Ahaesarus said. “Not atoned-for crimes made in years past.”

  “And now she lies within a grave, to be judged by the gods and goddess who lorded over her life,” Aurelia said. “Do not come here and tell me how to grieve, angel. It will not end well for you.”

  Ahaesarus sighed over-dramatically and shrugged.

  “If you so insist, elf. Her damage was great, but we shall prevail. In that, I promise.”

  He flew off, and Aurelia was glad to be free of his presence. She had never truly been comfortable around the angels, not because of their otherworldly nature, but of how similar they were to other humans despite their physical differences. It was unnerving, like wood dolls come to life with human souls.

  “We should get back to Aubby,” Harruq said after a time. They’d left Aubrienna in Jerico’s care. The paladin had confessed himself too conflicted to attend the meager funeral. Aurelia, while disappointed, did not blame him. After Veldaren’s fall, Jerico had been captured by Velixar, and been subjected to torture both physical and mental in an attempt to break his faith in Ashhur. The paladin never talked of it, but she knew Tessanna had played a key part in that suffering.

  “I will follow later.” She planted a kiss on Harruq’s cheek. “Possibly several hours later. Do not worry.”

  “All right, I won’t,” he said, despite him obviously starting to worry immediately. “Stay safe.”

  He left, following the same path Tarlak had taken, back toward the army encampment. Finally alone, Aurelia knelt above the grave and dipped her hands into the dark earth. She let the soil cake across her hands, let it prepare her mind in a way she knew she needed. Tonight would be difficult, but it was an act she had put off long enough. She was the daughter of Kindren and Aullienna Thyne, and arguably the strongest elf left alive carrying the gift of magic within her blood. She would not be ignored. Her prayer would not go unheeded.

  Tessanna, like Mira before her, had been a daughter of balance. In Aurelia’s heart, she knew it was time to speak with their Mother.

  To travel the distance took a few portals cast in succession, but having to transport solely herself made the burden an easy one for her to bear. Aurelia crossed hundreds of miles within minutes. She passed the grasslands south of Mordeina with a single step. Another portal took her to the edge of Lake Cor. The final portal was the hardest, but not due to the magical effort required. It was the memories that held her back. It’d been so long since she’d been there. So long, but return she would. If there was any one place Celestia would hear her prayer, it would be in the ruins of the fallen elven city of Dezerea.

  The world shifted as she exited, the sparkling lake replaced with towering trees.

  “I’m home,” Aurelia whispered.

  In the earliest days of her childhood, Dezerea had been a wondrous city. The trees that grew in its forest were the tallest in all the world, and from those branches the elves had built interlocking homes and a dizzying array of bridges. It wasn’t only trees, though, for all of nature had been used with reverence. Stone towers had been pulled from the earth and carved with magic into edifices far more flowing and delicate than any human construction. The grandest of all had been the emerald tower, Palace Thyne, in the very heart of the city.

  Then came the fires. King Baedan’s campaign had been one of complete and utter cruelty, harnessing the prejudices of his people to blame the elves for every single ill that befell the kingdom of man. He didn’t send his soldiers, not at first. He sent the poor, the desperate, even prisoners from his jails. He armed them with oil, torches, and a simple com
mand to burn. And burn they did, from every possible edge of the forest, without ceasing. The elves posted guards, but how did one protect miles of forest from something as simple as a torch? Aurelia’s parents had conjured rainstorms to combat the spread. They’d opened chasms in the ground to form control lines. It was never enough.

  Aurelia knelt in a patch of tall grass, and a sparkling glint reflecting the setting sun caught her eye. A necklace of elven construction, the gold molded not by hands but by the touch of magic, the sapphires between the chains each carved into crescent moons. Aurelia held the necklace in hand, wondering at the fate of its former owner. Had they died in the fires? Beneath the cavalry that chased after them? Perhaps this had been dropped by one of the ten spellcasters who made their final stand at the Corinth Bridge, whose destruction and slaughter had led to its renaming as the Bloodbrick.

  “So much hatred,” Aurelia whispered. “So much suffering and death. Will you answer for none of it, Celestia?”

  She walked what had once been the road through the heart of the city. The smooth stone was cracked throughout, grass and weeds occupying each and every exposed crevice. Most of the trees were still barren, their lives claimed by the fire even if they still towered overhead. The buildings and bridges were long gone but for a few scattered remnants clinging on with stubborn nails and weathered ropes. The stone structures remained, albeit blackened from the tremendous fire and stripped of any former decorations. Still, there were signs of life returning. New trees grew about the old, and the forest floor was as lush with life as ever.

  Aurelia tried to take hope from the regrowth as she approached the emerald palace which bore her family name. Within its shadow she knelt, and waited as the sun set. She held the necklace in her hands, twirling Celestia’s symbol of the moon slowly as she pondered what to pray. Even for an elf, she had witnessed far too much death and destruction. While most of her kin had avoided humanity, and been dragged into the second Gods’ War reluctantly, she had witnessed it at its very beginnings when Karak’s prophet, Velixar, recruited the two half-orc brothers to aid him in sparking the battle at Woodhaven. It was appropriate, she thought, so very appropriate.

  Elves suffered so the human gods could fight their war. Was that not the way of Dezrel?

  Night fell, and the moon rose. Aurelia felt a change come over her, like a gust of cool night air chasing away a hot summer day. The hooting and chirps of the night birds that sang for her during her wait suddenly ceased. No wolf or coyote dared howl. She closed her eyes and stood. Despite all her preparation, she knew not what to say, so she spoke her heart’s most painful truth.

  “I know you awaken, Celestia. And I know you watch with keen eyes. Speak with me, goddess. I demand that right.”

  “Demand?” asked a soft, feminine voice. “Who are you to make demands?”

  Aurelia opened her eyes to witness the presence of her goddess. She was beautiful, with features as delicate as crystal. Divine radiance shimmered about her form in tiny twinkling lights like fireflies. Her dress, while smooth as silk, looked as if carved from the moon itself. Yes the most striking thing about her was how familiar she appeared. Her eyes were pools of night. Her skin was pale as moonlight. Her long dark hair trailed all the way to her ankles, bound with silver thread every two feet. If Tessanna or Mira had been born of elven blood, this was the form Aurelia would have imagined.

  “The child of Kindren and Aullienna Thyne,” Aurelia said. She pulled back her shoulders and stood to her full height, needing the pause to gather her strength. To stand before Celestia took an incredible force of will. Even now, the urge to kneel and avert her eyes was extreme.

  “And your birthright guarantees presence with a goddess?” Celestia asked.

  “Not my birthright, but the deeds I have accomplished, in both my name and yours. With each passing day our world slides closer toward a nameless destruction. Is it wrong of me to speak with the goddess who raised the mountains, planted the forests, and crafted the sand-swept shores?”

  Celestia crossed her arms. Her moon-dress rippled like calm water now disturbed.

  “Your demand may be prideful and lacking, but I grace you with my presence nonetheless. What do you seek, child? What need brings you here, to these ruins?”

  “What need?” Aurelia thought of the tremendous bolt of lightning that crashed down upon Tessanna, the retribution brought against her for banishing the beast-men and tearing apart angels both loyal and fallen. “The last of your daughters of balance, Tessanna Delone Tun, lies in a grave. You ask what need brings me here? I come to see if you watch us, my goddess. I come to see if you still cast your eyes upon our meager souls, or if you have abandoned us completely.”

  Celestia stepped closer. Her feet hovered an inch above the ground, yet the grass buckled as if crushed underneath a tremendous weight.

  “Abandoned?” she asked. “How have I abandoned you? Do I not send my own flesh and blood to guide the balance?”

  Aurelia knew she walked a dangerous road, but she would not temper her words with caution. That just wasn’t her. She was the rebellious elf who lived among the humans and married a half-orc. She would not hold her tongue, not even to a goddess.

  “That balance you so preciously guard? That is their balance, between their gods, and their war. What of your children? Where were you when Dezerea burned and her people were chased east? Where were you when my mother and father sacrificed their lives upon the Bloodbrick? What balance do you cherish when you watch our numbers dwindle, our cities fall to ruin, and our people hide in forests watching humanity steadily destroy all that was once majestic and grand?”

  If Celestia struck her dead right then and there, Aurelia would not have been surprised, so great was the anger upon the goddess’s face.

  “My heart has wept for you with every step you take,” Celestia said. “But I made a promise to the human gods, and I shall keep it until the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.”

  “Damn your promises,” Aurelia seethed. “Your eyes and heart should have been upon us, but they are not, and have not been since you first laid with Ashhur in the earliest days of creation. The brother gods and their human children would break the world you built. The balance you strove to maintain is beyond repair, and the daughters you birthed to save it are dead. Give me their gift. Let me at least complete one facet of their impossible task.”

  “And what would you do with that gift?” Celestia asked. Strangely, the divine being seemed curious. At this, Aurelia smiled darkly.

  “I would slay her murderers, my goddess. The edifices of power throughout Dezrel are crumbling. Jerico tells me the Citadel has fallen. Veldaren is in ruins. Avlimar crashed to the dirt, and tomorrow we march upon Devlimar. Yet a pillar of human arrogance remains. This may not be our final war, but I would still rid us of a sickness that has infected Dezrel for far too many centuries.”

  She’d been afraid to voice her concern since the battle, for to give it words risked confessing to Harruq her plan to solve it. But the members of the Council of Mages proved themselves too dangerous to allow to go on unchecked. They had aided Azariah in bringing Avlimar down, destroyed Antonil’s army, and sent assassins to kill Aubrienna and Gregory. All the power in the world to do good, and they sought only to lurk safely away from the people of Dezrel in their twin towers, secretly manipulating events as they saw fit.

  And then when Tessanna sought to do the most good she could for all of Dezrel, to throw the course of fate back into the hands of humans...the members of that council had taken her life with a bolt of lightning from the heavens.

  “For whose benefit do you ask this gift?” Celestia asked after a moment of silence. “Is it for elven-kind? Or is it your own revenge?”

  There was no lying to a goddess, so she admitted the truth.

  “Not so long ago, Tessanna told me husband that she wished nothing more than to tear the world down to its foundation. I would honor her memory. Let it be rev
enge. Let it be for a better world. Let it be many things that fate may one day decide. I do not care. My course is set. My path is chosen. All that matters is if I walk it alone, or with your blessing.”

  Aurelia bowed her head, closed her eyes, and waited. This was it. The final judgment. Would her goddess uplift her, or condemn her? Seconds dragged long, and it seemed a great debate raged within Celestia. At last she spoke, and though Aurelia braced herself for pain and thunder, she received only tired words.

  “I cherish all life, Aurelia, daughter of Kindren and Aullienna. Yet I have watched the slaughter go unabated since the very first grains of sand fell through Dezrel’s hourglass. You bear our lessons. You know our teachings. Our wisdom has been passed down through stories and scripture, yet do we witness its fruition? No, meager elf, we do not. We watch as brother murders brother. We watch as mankind labels a stranger inhuman, and sacrifices him upon twin altars of greed and power. Elf, orc, human, and beast, all murdering one another without ceasing. And as you stand in pools of blood you yourselves have spilled, you scream up at us in the heavens that same maddening question: why?”

  Celestia rose higher off the ground. The leaves of the trees about her withered, the trunks blackened and burst into flame. The moon in the sky melted as the stars streaked by like comets. Aurelia stood within an indescribable maelstrom of magic and creation and felt the very rules of existence start to tremble, yet she knew this was but a fraction of the power that once founded Dezrel.

  Aurelia fell to her knees and bowed her head to the divine being who had blessed their world with life.

  “Am I cruel to let humanity suffer the fruits of its own labors?” said the goddess. “Am I cruel to diminish slaughter and bloodshed, and seek to guide with the softest hand through my chosen daughters instead of the great floods and fires you mortals so richly deserve? What path do I take when all lead to death, despite my heart’s desire being nothing more than to create life and happiness? I tire of this, little elf. The prayers of joy, and the laughter of my children, pales in comparison to the suffering I am expected to excise. Days pass, each an eternity to one of my nature, and throughout every sprawling century these nails pound into my flesh, these selfish wants masquerading as heartfelt prayers poison my blood. I tire, Aurelia. I tire, so greatly I tire, yet to slumber while Dezrel languishes would be an even greater crime.”