The Great Beyond- the Vile Fate

by K M McGuire

  “Quite embittering,” Eigan said, grimacing at the mangled skin on Voden. Yael too, looked to her lover, her eyes red, lamenting the painful events. Vec was stone-faced, eyes staring unblinkingly at Eigan. Voden could tell his anger was beyond anything he had seen, so much so that not even his face could truly manifest it. Eigan turned sharply and stared bitterly at Koruza. “To think, Koruza, your race worshipped this being!”

  “I-I had not anticipated this outcome!” he screamed, tears forming around his slate eyes. “Truly, I cannot express how astronomically unpredictable this is!”

  “And if we are all honest, you have not seen any of these outcomes!” Eigan seethed, and his hand shook as he tried to compose himself again, softly touching Koruza’s face. “You have failed me. Again.”

  Vec looked at both of them, his expression darkening.

  “No, m-m-my lord, please,” Koruza whimpered. “I have not failed! I have given everything to your cause!” He looked at Vec who spit at him.

  “Perhaps,” Eigan said and gave the three a thoughtful look. “But that no longer matters. Your failures have set us back years! I have no time for disturbances like this!” He walked over to Voden. Koruza still pleaded weakly as he fell to his knees, whimpering incoherently. “You on the other hand,” Eigan considered, examining him curiously. Voden struggled with his breath. “You are quiet the thorn in my side.” His lips curled into a vicious smile. “I will amend that.”

  “Then take up a blade yourself, you coward,” Voden wheezed. “Let me die in peace.” He looked up at the man, his shadow draped over Voden’s head, and his smile gave him the inclination that even that symbolism was empowering to the vile priest.

  Eigan held his gaze, chewing over thoughts. His hand found its way inside his robe, and he pulled out the black Azucrepyh, staring at it intently. His eyes turned to Yael. His face always seemed to hold secrets that could never be read, and his eyes had a way of daring Voden to figure out what was going on behind the mind of this evil man. Quietly, he shoved the cube back inside his robe, as his head shook smugly.

  “That seems so boring,” Eigan said, looking dreamily at his captives. His stare was more torturing than any physical pain Voden had felt in his life. “You see, Voden, not everything is always about death. I am not nearly as morbid as you perceive me.” He stepped back, and his voice began to carry again throughout the crowd. His motions became more animated. The show had now begun, and the new plan, it seemed, was now set in motion. “You see, this is no longer about what must die and what must live. Andar was the symbol of what needed to die! Now it is about conformity! To see as is needed to see truly! You are not allowed to die yet, Voden, none of you! Your vision has not taken you down far enough to break you into seeing why Zigralime is the only way! There is still hope for you. I truly believe it!” He moved over to Yael, circling her as he spoke. “She is quite beautiful. I am thoroughly impressed you could enrapture such a marvelous creature.” He ran his finger along her cheek. She shuddered. Voden felt his body screaming to pull himself up, but his bones refused his desire. He grunted his discontent. Eigan smiled at his pain. “I have been in contact with some very powerful individuals overseas. A prize like you would fetch a small fortune! And funds will be rather important if I am to establish an empire.” His finger met the tiny diamond on her head.

  Yael pulled at the guards holding her, her fist clenched tight in her shackles. Eigan laughed and whispered something in her ear. “No,” she said, quivering, her eyes again filling with tears, ready to break, but her mouth seemed unable to speak another word. She dropped to the dirt as her hands buried her weeping eyes.

  “She is to be sold!” Eigan cried to the crowd who began to cheer wildly. “She would be of no use to our true agenda, but as a traitor to our cause, well, there are many ways to force one’s hand! Death will not leave them broken enough, but for her to be a concubine…” he smiled at Yael, whose body trembled, unable to dispel the thoughts of violation.

  “You can’t do that!” Voden cried, trying to stand, only to be hit in the back by one of the guards. He screamed and collapsed, coughing in pain. She would be taken away from him. Forever. He felt the world turn to pieces, watching them drift away from him, even the fragment of hope had no desire to comfort him.

  “This is all for you, Voden all of it, just so you can learn the reality of it all,” Eigan muttered, and he clapped his hands.

  The guards quickly yanked her to her feet. She screamed for Voden, kicking for reprisal, shaking and thrashing, but the guards were undeterred. Voden tried to act. He really tried to move, but one of the half-men pressed his boot against his head, and with each squirm he made, the Azuchon pressed down harder. Voden breathed in the dust, tasting the grime with each exhausted inhale. She cried and screamed, trying to tear herself from their grips, unwilling to accept her fate. Her cries carried up to the star, the only eye from above watching it all transpire, but was unwilling to save them. And in moments, she was gone. Taken to unknown terrors, to be used as property at the whim of whoever paid the most for her. Her humanity was sold at the beat of the auction gavel. She was, in short, to be abused for as long as she could manage to live through it.

  “I suppose, too,” Eigan called out again, when her screams had faded from the air. “I wouldn’t want to waste these able men on merely anything. No,” he said, placing his hand on his chin with consideration. But Voden knew that sparkle in his eye. “I would think Alezel would know how to place them. Yes, I believe the mines would suit them rather nicely!”

  The crowd responded cheerfully. Vec and Voden’s fates were now sealed, and he knew, no matter how close he ended up being to Yael, he would never see her again, as though she had died. He would never gain that closure of saying goodbye. It no longer mattered what was to be done to him. He was broken beyond himself to come back to any real sense of life. The only comfort was knowing Vec would be with him, but that was not enough. His heart was elsewhere, torn from him when she was taken away. Eigan nodded to the guards and lifted Voden, Vec, and surprisingly, Koruza.

  “L-lord!” he shrieked. “Surely you have mistaken me! I-I could not possibly be given to such labor!”

  “Oh, no, you are quite fooled by the entitlement you thought you deserved.” Eigan placed his hand on his shoulder. “You deserve this as much, if not more, than they do. Be off with you. I wish I had not made such repulsive deals with you, lest I would have been done with you long ago!” The Azuchons snapped open their wrist, and the polygons collapsed around Koruza’s brittle wrists. In a moment, they began pushing the three away from the crowd. “Hold a second,” Eigan said to the Azuchon holding Voden. “A word with him.”

  Eigan stepped forward, glancing over the burns Voden had across his body. “I hope you will not soon forget me. I enjoyed much of our time together.”

  “Not until I have buried a knife in your brain,” Voden said vehemently. “I will search the Earth for your withering bones! I will break everything that stands in my way to you! I will never forget you, not until I can set steel through you.”

  “You are off to a very poor start,” Eigan said slyly. “Tell me, Voden, do you know how best to bring a nation to its knees?” Voden bore his eyes into the slimy man. Eigan nodded. “You wondered how I could take this city so easily. I figured I should explain better. It’s rather simple. You find them a belief, or slip into the one they have as it were. As long as it’s easy enough for them to stand behind and build them up enough to hold the value of the idea, you slowly tease them with fears that only loom over their head. The best are the farfetched that are a touch too far to believe, but you press it in. You ingrain the idea. Grind it in well enough to start rotting the brain, and it worsens to be the deepest thing they believe. You mold that fear into a shape of an enemy. The beauty of it is it only has to subtly represent the fear, and those you fooled are the first to slaughter the world! Without hesitation! Nationalism is a cult, my dear boy, hidden enough for the most intellectual to fal
l prey to it.” He gave Voden a wild smile. “Take him.” And the Azuchon obeyed. Voden’s eyes burned against the vile man. “Before you go,” he called, his eyes lighting up again, halting the half-man one last time. “I was wondering how astute you are to a woman’s body?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I see you don’t know.” He smiled. It twisted so dark, Voden had not known such discomfort before this moment. His eyes took the same darkness he had seen reflected in Kintza’s eyes, but they dove even deeper into a void that swirled tighter inside. In that moment, he felt he knew what was inside the black Azucrepyh. “I guess I must congratulate you then.”

  It became more and more clear what he was about to say. He could not bring himself to realize it until the words had fallen from Eigan’s lips. The syllables clashing coherently together, crisp as the winter’s air, dread seeping from the moisture on Eigan’s tongue. It echoed in Voden’s ears over the noise that would surround him as he slipped into unconsciousness from his anguish. The guards pulled his body further from the diabolical man.

  Voden could not pull the scene from his mind, that insidious gaze continued to look at him through his dreams with the same smile that curled across his face now. Eigan’s eyes gleamed with the final words he uttered, the final emotion he set against Voden’s ears, the piece of torture that tightened every ounce of pain further into his being. The echo rang louder than the bell that marked his grandfather’s death, or the stroke of a blade carving into Andar’s flesh. Eigan relished his ability to know so much more than all the rest, and seeing that knowledge break apart another was the terrible ecstasy that had long twinkled in Eigan’s eyes.

  “Yael is pregnant, Voden.”

  Blossum felt her axe nearly slip out of her hand, eyes unwilling to believe the shadows behind the heavy smoke. She had hoped it wasn’t true, but she knew better. Flashes of her past formed in the clouds billowing from the ground, fused to one another in an odd metamorphic stream, where the silhouettes helped to censor those who had been slaughtered by sword and Syphon. She could not prevent her heart from falling deeper into despair. In a despondent breeze, the smoke cleared the dark gestures of shapes that had covered the ruins of Septium, its buildings lay splintered and burnt, the smoke still singing to the cinders that were left, bubbling with fervent sizzles of a fading civilization. She had hoped the ruin in the grove did not reflect the city, but even as she and her scouts pushed their horses along the trail towards Septium, she already knew.

  “Great Beyond,” she whispered, allowing for her sentiments to flood her eyes, and her thoughts returned to the Zemilia, smashed and discarded like the rind of a fruit.

  She could not completely understand why she felt such pain when her eyes met the Zemilia. She had set out to kill it herself, but as she brushed the heavy, moist petal with her foot, she grimaced, staring at the colors turning to rot, examining the seared holes through its growth. She looked towards Jali’tez, who shook his head quietly, pushing one of the tentacle-like vines with the tip of his spear. Her eyes moved around the forest temple, shivering at the chill of cold air that blew through. She frowned at the vegetation succumbing to the whims of the region’s true climate. She felt the loneness corrupting the withering leaves, the bark on the trees curling like dying centipedes. There was no longer a source of energy to keep the grove in check. Everything was being divided up by the masters of decay. She turned back to Jali’tez while her other scouts searched for further clues, but she knew the dark grey, monochromatic landscape would bear no answers.

  “Whoever did this,” Jali’tez said, rubbing the tip of his spear in the grimy goo that oozed from the mouth of the flower, “wanted something more than to kill the Zemilia.”

  “What makes you think that?” Blossum asked, crossing her arms.

  Jali’tez climbed up onto the deteriorating petal and pointed towards a massive tear burned through it. “That’s from after it died. I can tell by the angle. It would have been hard to hit that spot if the Zemilia was putting up a fight, even more so if it was raised up in the air.”

  “I don’t think that verifies your claim,” Blossum said, tapping her chin. There was something compelling about the thought though. “What I find odd is that the grove is dying.”

  “Exactly!” Jali’tez said excitedly, jumping back down. “There are only two reasons for that to happen.”

  “Either from the Zemilia’s death, which could have been keeping it alive,” Blossum said quietly.

  “Or, there was a ward that maintained it that was destroyed as well!” Jali’tez finished.

  “I don’t think that was it,” Blossum said critically. “I hadn’t even considered a ward, to be honest, but…”

  “What is it?”

  Blossum wasn’t entirely sure what she was thinking, struggling to repress the rising discomfort she felt. Her mind began thinking about the strange cube she had spit up when Andar had saved her, the one Eigan had years ago, that obsidian cube that made her stomach churn. It was then she realized that anytime she or the Zemilia used any form of Syphon, it never drew off their surroundings. Even when Eigan teleported, she had found it strange there was not a hint of evidence that he even used Syphon. The thought of the cube spun through her mind. “I think you’re right, Jali’tez,” she said finally, with a slight dismissive tone. “There is much more to this than we realize.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  She wiped the tear from her eye as she stared at the desolation, her eyes fixed on the Eternal Tree, once her home, bound in pillars of flames that could have been burning for days. She had no concept of what could bring the city to such destruction. Ralus and Jali’tez approached her, face as somber as the night that surrounded them, eyes as glazed over as the moon above. Blossum could only watch the flames, groping for an answer to manifest out of the dancing jeers that devoured the fallen city. The smoke was the eulogy that not even the crows were able to sing—that sorrow so profound.

  Blossum fiddled the handle of her axe, Estra’s axe. She thought about the day she had retrieved it from the Tastin who found it. What choice did he really have in handing it over to her? In those days there was no refusing her wishes. She eventually had her highest commander, the one whom she’d trusted most, take it when she was unable, to keep it near her as a reminder.

  Remember your innocence.

  She contemplated the words, perplexed by their meaning. Everything was not so stark in the world to build a foundation on that sentiment. She touched the blade, and it reminded her that she could bleed. She stared at the symbol of life (yes, it was still in her), and a sudden inspiration filled her chest. “Do you trust me?” she asked her companions, unable to give them her eyes.

  “Of course,” Jali’tez said. Blossum only nodded at the response.

  “I need you to lead our people, then,” she said, finally giving them her thoughtful gaze. “I have something to attend to.”

  “My lady?”

  “Promise me, you will lead our people north,” she said. “I need you to trust me! Meet me at the city of Volimijud, where the Zaztak mountains crown the world. I will meet you there.”

  Ralus turned to Jali’tez who did not take his eyes from her. “We will honor your wishes, my queen.”

  “Thank you.” Blossum sighed. “And please, I am not your queen any longer. We must establish a new sort of rule.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  With a smile, Eigan remembered the story of the Towers of Knowledge, as his eyes drifted along the massive war table. In that moment, he felt the spite the Keepers must have, trapped away in the Collapsing Plane. He laughed as if they knew he was mocking the Watchers, and Eigan glanced slyly up at the ceiling as his finger curled against his thumb. He set his hand near the wooden token, shaped like a tree, and mindfully flicked it, toppling the carved symbol of Septium on its side. He would show the Scales how powerful he was. His lord was powerful enough to prove his divinity.

  Eigan sat back in his chair, finger and thumb cupping hi
s chin, enjoying the levity of his plan finally coming to pass. It wasn’t more than four months since Kintza’s death, but even with that set back, things were moving efficiently. He expected more of the Scales to back him, offering them power that they could not imagine, but they had little vision. Now, their homes lay in cinder. It was a minor setback, and he expected that the Zemilia had further influence than it provided. No, the beast was at its end. It’s Azucrepyh was suited better in his hands. Besides, this could provide a doorway to intimidate the rest of the western world to bend the knee. Perhaps it was for the best.

  Of course, it was, the cube whispered to him. Eigan turned his head listlessly towards the heavy cube, nearly forgetting it resting next to his elbow. The proper course is always lain in example. Proof is always at the tip of the sword. It must be thrust through to find what’s inside. We need to hold the west and prove our dominion. If we are to take the eastern world, we must take it by other means. Here, force was wise. Septium was only to be the bastion of currency, but this fear we created may work much better than protecting the potential assets. We proved that it could fall, a message few will not quiver from!

  “Then I shall think little more of it,” Eigan responded, grabbing the cube. “But without the Scales, we may struggle to maintain funds.”

  The mines provide, the cube assured him. Have you brokered a deal with Alezel?

  “Yes,” Eigan said. “He responded rather enthusiastically. He agreed to share the profits, but not at the price I asked. He believed in our pursuit but could not justify more than thirty. He has other patrons that are as vivacious as we are to fulfill our desires. He has stakes in whatever the Konera of Tasso is building. He claims waiting may be in our best interest.”