3 #2
“Fail,” I provided, my eyes boring into each of them. “You said they locked you here centuries ago, putting a hold on this place that could never be tampered with. We cannot risk that happening again.”
Erebus’s eyes darkened. “It won’t. And we will stop at nothing to get your brother back, Esmer. I swear it.”
My eyes stung. Beyond Erebus, Elliot was all I had left.
A small flicker of hope had embedded itself in my chest when we’d first purified the dreamers, extracting shadow like poison from their bodies.
I had looked around wildly, searching for the souls of Eden and my parents. But they never appeared.
They were never here.
My stomach soured. I needed to reframe my grief and reestablish my hope. If I didn’t, I’d lose my mind.
They were never here because their souls are already with the Maker.
The fire crackled, sending a swirl of purple sparks into the air. They mingled with the shadows that clung to the corners of the room, gleaming like violet stars. I took a deep sip from my mug, relishing the smooth undercurrent of berry and citrus.
After a time, Erebus said quietly, “Before tomorrow, I need you all to see firsthand what they did to me. How they damned me as a monster after years of devotion to their cause.” He cursed, dark and low.
“We will play the hospitable hosts because we must, but that doesn’t diminish their transgressions.
Or my rage, for that matter. You all deserve to see what happened that night. ”
Erebus took my hand in his; Ceveon and Sorren stood so that they could each place their hands on his shoulders. When we were all connected by touch, we each took a deep breath, steadying ourselves for what was to come. And then we closed our eyes.
Erebus’s castle had been built from shadows and starlight.
It towered over the hillside like a dark jewel, embraced by iridescent trees and an eternal sky rotating between purple twilight and deep, relentless night.
Its stone was the outer threads of dreams, its mortar the underbelly of shadow.
Erebus hadn’t intended for it to be beautiful; no, the castle was merely intended to be his haven.
A place to freely practice his abilities as a dreamer.
A place to create and imagine and be. All advanced scholars, like him, were given temporary pockets within the Dream Realm in which to practice their talents.
But the longer he’d worked, the more glorious it had become.
Its spires touched the heavens; its rooms overflowed with eldritch paintings and sumptuous furniture his imagination alone could produce.
Now it had none of those things.
He shuddered into awareness in his chambers, having thrown himself here immediately following the disaster at Lelantos’s Revel.
The Weavers were chasing him; he’d have to fight them all alone.
His chest was tight. An emotion he hadn’t felt in ages overcame him, flooded him, twisted his throat into a knot and his hands into loose, shaking things.
Fear.
The castle was a blur as Erebus raced through it, limbs disappearing and reappearing as his shadows pushed him forward.
They carried him past standing sculptures and reliefs, his library, a cavern pooling with liquid stardust, winding staircases, and strange passageways—and past demons who had breathed deep of the dark and become it themselves.
They did not understand him, nor could they communicate beyond shrieks and growls; they were mindless terrors, disturbing and cruel.
And they had ruined his castle. Made it a place of horror instead of beauty.
The castle’s entryway loomed in front of him, made from living carvings.
Tonight, they were spinning around in wide, looping circles, teeth gnawing open and shut in silent screams. He placed a hand upon the undulating doors, and the faces paused, quivered, then continued with their endless silent howls.
Clenching his teeth and ignoring his shivering hands, Erebus threw the door wide open.
Outside, the sky was a riot of midnight colors. Erebus raised his hands in a final desperate plea for protection.
There. He could do it. There was still time.
Lelantos descended first in a spiral of lightning. Marked by great tawny wings that framed his muscular body, he hovered over the forest that surrounded the castle. Watching, waiting. His half mask of bone was imposing—sinister, even—hiding the friendliness that usually emanated from his pale eyes.
There was still time.
As Erebus called forth the fullest weight of his power, his shadows curled up from the earth and down from the sky. They poured from the castle’s open doors and surrounded him, eager to protect him.
Fenrir and Nephthys announced themselves in a flurry of fire and water, mingling their powers in a dance of strength.
Nephthys’s clothing, a maze of jewel and pearls, coiled up to her headpiece, a mass of curved spires and dried oceanic skeletons.
Her clothing glistened, even in the eternal night, contrasting with Fenrir’s crimson robes.
Flames burned in Fenrir’s eyes, reflecting into Nephthys’s.
Erebus spread his hands wider, bracing himself against the immense power rolling off and around him.
Ceres came separately from her elemental brothers and sister, exploding from the ground in a cocoon of roots. She unfurled like a beast born anew, stepping barefoot upon the ground. Her horned headpiece, curled tightly around her scalp, was tangled with spiderwebs, roses, and decay.
Erebus was running out of time.
He growled as he struggled to maintain the wall of shadow around him.
The final three Weavers manifested. Past, present, and future.
Somnus, with his bone-white face glowing from under a curtain of black hair.
Xander, armored in iron and shielded by seven floating swords.
Theia, ever more a spirit than a physical, living being, draped in translucent fabric that mirrored her silvery hair, skin, and eyes.
Crowns adorned each of their brows: for Somnus, a crown of bone; for Xander, a crown of iron; for Theia, a crown of diamond.
There was no time.
The Weavers moved to surround him, rush him, destroy him—but his wall of shadow, his last hope, his last thread of power, stopped them from advancing.
They eddied around it, thrashing with bursts of their own magic.
The sky was a maelstrom, a firestorm, a tornado, a masterful display of the Weavers’ indomitable might.
Never before had he seen their abilities used in such a reckless, wild manner.
Erebus dropped to a knee, sweat sliding down his brow as he fought against their fury.
“Erebus! You have forsaken the Weavers and our holy Maker,” Xander cried, swinging each of his seven blades against the shadow barrier. Every blow was impossibly powerful, shaking the ground. “Your betrayal cannot be forgiven.”
“No, it cannot,” Nephthys said, amethyst eyes flashing.
Raging tides swirled against the barrier; they were a vortex of water darker than tar.
“Do you know what it is you have done?” She was screaming now, her teeth sharpening into feral points.
“Do you feel the blood of the innocents? Do you feel it staining your skin, pooling in the depths of your soul?”
Erebus’s throat closed. His limbs deadened, numb.
Still, he fought.
“Traitor!” Fenrir howled, his flames exploding across the forest. They razed every meadow and twisted trees into corpses. “I will burn you and the demons you harbor. By the Maker, I swear it—you all will burn!”
A stray drag of wind, threaded with sharp feathers and ice, cracked his barrier and lanced open his cheek. Fire fought through the breach, following the wind, and grabbed his neck, burning him. Dark, shadowlike blood dripped from his skin, staining the stone below.
Still, he did not fall.
Theia rose above the Weavers, skirts trailing behind her in a cloud. She clasped her hands together and the earth shook, rumbling with an unseen power from far below.
“Weavers, summon your strength,” Theia called, her words echoing over the landscape. Her voice was a choir of maidens, brimming with light and promise.
The Weavers surrounded her, sacrificing their power to feed her growing light. Together, their united power was beyond words—it was glorious, reverent, indescribable. A testament to the Maker and the responsibility He had bestowed upon each of them.
And before them all stood Mithras, golden eyes grim.
Had the circumstances been different, Erebus would have wept in veneration.
“Together,” Theia said, “we will banish this wicked place and your demons into the Beyond.”
The Beyond—or hell, as mortals knew it to be. The indomitable space that clung to the underbelly of the Realm, bleeding into nightmares and harboring demons with their false gods. The Beyond was where wicked souls were sent to rot, putrefying in an eternity of madness.
“You will not,” Erebus snarled, raising his hands higher.
A bolt of Ceres’s rock broke through, deadly in its swiftness, raining down on his defenseless body as his barrier stretched.
“You will not take my soul.” Rock crushed his outstretched arms; his left dropped, fractured and useless.
But even mangled and broken, trembling and bloody, his right hand held steady, commanding the dark as he fought to survive.
“You will not take my soul!” Erebus roared again.
And the Realm roared back.
With a swift crack, the dream ended.
Overwhelmed with horror, I wiped away the errant tears sliding down my face.
As a child, I had been told that the Light Bringer and the Weavers warred against the Shadow Bringer in a bloody, terrible fight, but the Shadow Bringer had won.
And after his victory, he and his legions of demons were said to have descended upon the Dream Realm, forcing Corruption upon Noctis like a festering poison only the Light Bringer could salve.
But reality was painfully different.