Of Moths and Stone (The Towers of Bordoroth #1)
Prologue
Centuries ago…
They would be calling her the Oracle by this time tomorrow eve, and forever after.
Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be long before Endellion forgot she wasn’t anything of the sort.
Perched like a wraith on the highest mountaintop, she cast her gaze into the basin below. An earthen pedestal of rock and diamond held the Palace of Argoph above the heavy fog blanketing the Weeping City—the names of both twisting inside her.
That beacon of ivory and gold glittered as moonlight skimmed its surfaces between tendrils of the shifting haze, the Fountain of All Life springing forth from its uppermost level and infinitely feeding the waterfalls tumbling over the cliff edge.
Blanketed as the city was in mist and darkness, she could barely make out the five rivers they formed—cutting across the land through forest and peak before spilling into the realms they fed—but no matter.
She’d seen this sight before and what followed.
The circumstances of the next few minutes had been her constant companion of late, her true life’s purpose both ending and beginning in this infinitesimal snippet of time.
She would never truly be ready for what awaited her, but there was no real choice.
Blistering wind whistled through the gargantuan passes around her, raking its icy fingers across her cheeks and snapping at her robes. She drew in a harsh breath, then another, and turned her eyes towards the cosmos for one, last look at her beloved stars.
Even seeing it so many times through her Sight that she’d lost count, Endellion hadn’t expected the reality to be quite so spectacular.
Still staring upwards, she wished for the thousandth time that she was able to share her visions in a more helpful way, but the laws of her power and people forbade it. Instead, she was forced to speak in loathsome riddles and ludicrous rhymes.
Once—and only once—she’d tried to divulge a vision plainly. The agony afterwards was not something one easily forgets. And the captain had still drowned in the storm she’d foreseen, pinned beneath the mast of his own damned ship.
Never again, she’d sworn, preferring those hated rhymes and riddles to her own pain and the death of innocents.
“Ah, but how easily vows can be broken,” she sighed to the sky.
She would be doing a lot of that before the end.
Not today, though.
No, she had to use her convoluted gift in its intended fashion this time. It was the only way this world and its people might be saved from utter destruction.
With barely a thought, particles of energy solidified as a cyclone of sparks in the air, before clinging to her golden skin. She closed her eyes, enveloped by the comforting celestial warmth, and leapt into the ether with a blazing flash.
Endellion appeared above Argoph’s Seat with a sudden, quaking burst, held aloft on her feathered wings.
She’d seen herself arrive from the view of every soul below, terror in their hearts as they beheld her—a creature from songbooks and legend, little more than a myth, her blinding starfire pouring from within her in massive waves to bathe every crack and crevice of the vaulted court.
She summoned a maelstrom of wind, the snow-white curls that framed her face and body barely teased by the tempest she was creating.
Just because she could.
The drama of her calling had always been Endellion’s favorite part, and she’d relished the shock and awe of creatures worlds over. If the situation weren’t so serious, she might have even giggled at the whole thing.
It would be nice to laugh one, last, genuine time.
Instead, her shining eyes locked onto Stennyx, Emperor of Bordoroth.
The colossal ruler towered over his subjects, black horns curling and skin blazing with the marks of his Blessing as he dug his feet into the quartz tiles and snarled at her.
Even to one such as her, his strength was astonishing, and a drop of sadness trickled its way into her heart at knowing his fate.
“I come to warn you, Emperor Stennyx, that you might ready your progeny.” Her voice boomed with an eerie, crackling energy—a woven medium for countless others, unseen and funneling through her.
With a deep breath, Endellion gathered the wisdom of the ages unto herself, channeling the sorcery that would filter her phrasing.
A blink and her eyes lost focus as she stared into the abyss of all time, their light multiplying, and the words she’d traveled galaxies to deliver finally left her with a wrenching force.
“A shadow, once living, abides in bleak places
A vengeance, once loving, on five towers gazes
Their hate is consuming, biting and bruising
Eating and rotting and writhing and oozing
“When twilight merges with stone’s crowned dawn
And something most precious is suddenly gone
It waits in the rafters, the corridors, the rooms
The fourth now a feast for malevolent doom
“Come fangs and mist, come balance and majesty
Follow the moth with its bonded ferocity
Thus starts the ending, the middle, and beginning
Of five towers falling, the darkness yet winning
“Come springtime and dreaming, come fire and madness
The towers need mortar to smooth shattered edges
They war for the breaking, they bleed for the broken
They still violent scales and grin while they’re choking
“A beacon, once sleeping, awakes in high places
A consort, once clawing, no longer encases
Their hate is consuming, biting and bruising
Gleaming and blotting and fighting and losing
“When nightmares are banished, no dark looming reign
And something is mended with gifts of white flame
It waits in the heartbeats, the landscapes, the ease
The realms cry their peace beneath star-blessed wings.”
With another great, cracking shudder, her power exploded from the center of her, sweeping all in attendance across the floors. All except Stennyx, fierce as he was.
“And now, I offer you one truth, Your Majesty. A way to test what I have said and take it to heart. It will be only Imperial Sons that you sire, and no female babe shall be born into the line of Bordoroth until this tribulation has passed. Prepare yourselves.”
There. The one honest moment she was allowed—eventual proof of her credibility, for all it would someday break him.
Endellion vanished as suddenly as she had appeared, returning to her vantage point on the frigid mountain peak, to the blessed sight of the shimmering mist below.
The last beautiful thing she would see for a very long time.
Panic threatened to devour her as she gulped the thin air, and Endellion cursed her knowing. The rest of her vision played out from his perspective, and she watched him tear through the invisible space of the world to get to her. A monster, coming to take her to her ruin.
The land shook with his fury when he arrived, his hot, scathing breath stirring the hair at her nape and spiking the blood in her veins. She blinked away the stirring tears, steeling herself for what was to come, and whispered a soft goodbye to her sisters.
With her hands clenched into shaking fists, Endellion turned and faced her destiny.