Chapter 48 Faylinn
Faylinn
Rohak looked so fragile sitting in the armchair, lit only by the light of the fire. It was late—much later than I intended on staying at the Academy—and my books and bed were calling me like a siren’s song. But nothing could pull me away from the enigmatic man who sat across from me.
He always seemed so strong, full of life.
Like nothing would topple him. But now, encased in the blanket he’d procured for me earlier today, it was like the spell of his strength unraveled.
There were deep circles under his eyes, so purple they were nearly black.
His normally tanned, olive skin was sallow and wan.
A slight sheen of sweat beaded at his brow while blood pooled under his nose and in his ears.
His hair was a chaotic mess, and his emerald eyes were duller—still full of deep intelligence and emotion but muted somehow.
But worse than his physical appearance was the light that seemed to leave him.
Gone was the confident, borderline cocky, second-in-command.
Gone was the grumpy General who could barely say two words to me.
In his place was a man completely drained—mentally, physically, emotionally, and I suspected, spiritually. He was fighting a losing battle with Mage Sickness and was losing his best friend in the process.
I couldn’t even imagine what was happening in the chaos of his mind.
Rohak sighed heavily as he ran a hand over the short stubble on his jaw.
“I won’t bore you with all of the minor details, but essentially, Alois is going to crown himself King of Elyria.”
“What?!” I practically jumped out of my chair at his declaration. “That’s—that’s—” Rohak held his palm up to halt my tirade and I clamped my jaw shut, settling back into my chair.
“Preposterous and a serious overreach of power, yes,” he agreed.
“But, in the eyes of the Northern Territories, he has justification. The gods are moving north, burning cities as they go. It’s rumored they’re heading here.
In an effort to stop them, Alois is going to consolidate power”—he sighed heavily—“I don’t think it’s going to work, but there really isn’t anything I can do to stop him, short of removing him. ”
“He’s going to warn the southernmost cities, right?” I asked, and Rohak rolled his lips, avoiding eye contact. “Right?”
He shook his head once, and I scoffed. “Figures.”
“Apparently that needs to be kept a secret for now.”
“It won’t be a secret much longer when a line of refugees a mile long starts traveling toward Vespera,” I snarked, and he nodded his head.
“Agreed. But he threatened to imprison anyone who leaks this information when I insinuated that the people needed to know so they could flee.”
I wrinkled my nose in disgust. “So he’s sacrificing his own people because? What? He read a vision.”
“More or less,” Rohak admitted quietly, and I shook my head.
“He’s repulsive.”
Rohak said nothing, but I saw a flash of agreement in his eyes.
At least I don’t have to be disgusted with him, too.
“So now what?” I asked, and Rohak shrugged.
“He’s taking the youngest cadets on a field mission to Cellia, where the gods first attacked.
I’ll be staying here to coordinate the refugee efforts.
Find them jobs, enroll some of the more promising Mages and Vessels in the Academy.
That sort of thing. And he insisted that I Bond a Vessel from the next exchange with Samyr. ”
The room buzzed, heavy with silence, the only noises the crackling of the now low-burning fireplace and the padding of the chairs as Rohak or I adjusted our position. There was nothing to say after Rohak’s story—no words of platitudes or comfort that I could offer.
To say I was incensed on Rohak’s behalf was an understatement. Lord d’Refan always claimed to love Rohak as a brother, but it was clear, now, that it was all lip service. Rohak—like everyone and everything else in Elyria—was a pawn in the Warlord’s games.
I couldn’t wrap my head around his threats and, if I was feeling this confused and frustrated, I could only imagine the competing emotions Rohak was experiencing.
“Tell me about your research,” he intoned in that emotionless voice again, clearly masking as deeply as possible.
But part of me needed his emotions. Needed to know that he was going to be okay—that he wasn’t going to do something drastic in response.
“Rohak,” I whispered, my voice cracking on his name. The General refused to look at me, just waved a hand shakily in my direction.
“I’m fine, Faylinn. Just tired,” he said, eyes closing slightly with his words. “Tell me about your research. I need something to distract my thoughts.”
I chewed my lip in thought, the burns on my hand throbbing now that the healing balm was wearing off, before nodding my head reluctantly.
If a distraction was what he wanted, a distraction I would give him, starting with a secret that would literally shake the foundations of his beliefs.
I took a deep breath and held it before exhaling on a rush of words. “I have reason to believe there is—was—more than three gods. And that they created two others before they died.”
Rohak’s head slowly rose from where it was resting against the back of his chair, his emerald eyes were open and alert, clearer than I’d seen in hours.
He regarded me with an unreadable expression, blinking rapidly as he absorbed my statement.
“Say that again,” he said.
“Solace, Kaos, and the Bondsmith aren’t the only gods.”
He nodded his head once. “Right. There’s Fate, too.”
I was already shaking my head before he finished his rebuttal.
“Fate’s not really a god. He’s something .
. . more. Something outside time and space, outside reality.
At least, that’s what this says,” I pulled the old book the Librarian gave me back in Isrun, the cover tattered and disintegrating.
Gently, I placed it on the side table between our chairs.
Rohak simply bounced his gaze from the decaying journal to my face and back again, blinking rapidly.
“What is that.”
“It’s a journal that the Librarian gave me back before he was killed in Isrun.
” Rohak flinched slightly at my statement, clearly remembering how we met so many months ago, but never pulled his eyes from mine.
“He said that I would need the information inside of it. After everything that happened there and then, when we got to Vespera, I never found the time to read the books. But, eventually, it all became too much and I had to”—I left out the part that I drank myself silly because of how Rohak treated me, he didn’t need that stress or guilt right now—“and discovered that it’s a journal.
From a lover to a man—god—named Geb. She has a lot of very interesting things to say. ”
Rohak sat silently, still unmoving. “Like what?”
“That Kaos and Solace were halves of the same whole. And that there were other gods that represented each of the other powers—all opposite sides of the same coin.”
“Balance,” Rohak murmured, and I nodded my agreement.
“Exactly. One for each power.”
“So where’d they go? And why do Kaos and Solace possess each of those powers now? That shouldn’t be possible . . .” He trailed off, brow furrowed as he attempted to puzzle through the same problem that plagued me for months.
“They’re dead,” I supplied. “Their powers absorbed by the last two remaining gods.”
“But how? That shouldn’t be possible if they’re each a god for truths and lies, right?”
“That’s where this comes into play,” I said, procuring my journal from my belt. I flipped through it, knowing exactly where I’d recorded the information I needed. “The second book the Librarian gave me was a book of prophecies penned by the very first Matriarch to the Keepers.”
Rohak sucked in a breath, his eyebrows reaching his forehead at my admission.
“That knowledge was all lost when we . . . destroyed the Valley.”
“Not all of it,” I said proudly, showing him the passage in my journal. “Here. There are two prophecies that were rather interesting and particularly applicable. One about two rising so two others may fall, and another about a mountain cracking and the earth bleeding.”
“It’s like the Librarian wanted you to put it all together. Like he knew somehow that you would be able to see all the pieces and complete the puzzle,” Rohak said in awe, and my cheeks pinked at his praise.
“I don’t know if I’d go that far . . .” I hedged, and Rohak waved me away with a hand before handing me back my journal.
“There is so much surrounding the Keepers. So many secrets. It’s all becoming convoluted and more intricate the further I fall into the hole,” he muttered, pulling a hand through his hair. “So how does it all connect? What does it mean?”
“Well, according to the First Matriarch, something . . . big would happen once the gods returned to Elyria.” I let my statement hang in the air for a moment, carefully watching Rohak’s expression.
Silence hung between us, and I cleared my throat while shuffling my papers before continuing.
“At any rate, the First Matriarch was rather convinced—through no less than two dozen prophecies—that the gods returning to Elyria was the catalyst for something else . . .” I trailed off, unsure how to continue.
My conjectures about the First Matriarch’s musings were just that at this point—theories and conclusions drawn from reading her prophecies and the journal supplied by the Librarian.
“What else, Faylinn?”
I bit my lip before answering quietly. “A second Sundering.”
The crackle of the fire was deafeningly loud in the quiet following my statement.
“Excuse me?” Rohak deadpanned.
“A second Sundering,” I reiterated. “Like the one that happened—”
“Millenia ago, that nearly wiped out the human race. Yes, I know what the Sundering was, Faylinn. I’m just a little taken aback that you think that could happen again. We have more technology now, we’re better prepared, and not nearly as entrenched in the religion of the gods as our ancestors.”
“You said it yourself, Rohak. They’re already here. There’s already movement in the south—a rebellion that’s desecrating villages and forcing refugees to flee. And, yes, religion was an issue at that time. But even if they weren’t devout, fighting against the gods would have been futile.”
“In what regard?” Rohak’s brow was furrowed, deep in thought as if he was trying to see something that wasn’t there.
“The gods . . . they can’t be killed,” I admitted, and Rohak shook his head, leaning forward in his chair toward me so the blanket slid from his lap to the floor.
“But you just said there were more gods before Solace and Kaos. They didn’t all just disappear—you said they died.
Gods are immortal, so the only way for them to die is .
. .” He trailed off with a shrug of his shoulders, hands open and pointed to the ceiling.
It was evident that Rohak was growing frustrated.
“Because only a god can kill a god,” I rushed out, cutting off whatever he was going to say next. Rohak blinked slowly at me, processing my statement.
“How do you know that?” he asked, and I pointed to the prophecy from the First Matriarch.
“Here. She says, ‘two will rise when two fall.’ There are only two full-blooded gods left, right?”—Rohak nodded his head in agreement—“so it would make sense that in order for them to ‘fall’ from their power, from their godlihood, they would need to be killed by another of the same power. Humanity is growing weaker by the day—Mages are separated from their magic, but there aren’t enough Vessels for our Mages, so they rely too heavily on crystals, which is causing Mage Sickness to run rampant.
Think about it, Rohak. There’s no way even a Mage as strong as you could overpower a god—especially one that has command of more than one magic.
And how did they even get those magics? Two sides for every coin—they had to have taken them somehow.
My best guess is that whenever they killed the god or goddess, they absorbed their powers.
Magic has to have somewhere to go—it cannot just be absorbed into the ether.
So it latched onto the only living thing left powerful enough to contain it—Solace or Kaos.
I would be willing to bet that was the first Sundering—a war between the gods. ”
Rohak rubbed his face with both hands.
“So, let me get this straight. You believe that the first Sundering—the war that killed tens of thousands of people—was started because Solace and Kaos killed the other gods and goddesses for more power? And now those same two gods have returned to—what? Finish what they started? There are no gods left for them to kill!”
I bounced my head back and forth. “Yes and no. Remember that the First Matriarch said that two would rise so two could fall? Well, that means there are two other gods—godlings?—in Elyria.”
Rohak sat frozen in his chair, elbows resting on his knees, his body shaking either with the implications of what I was saying or from the trauma of the day.
“And let me guess, you know who they are?”
I chewed my lip and fiddled with the bandage on my hand, debating what to say.
“Faylinn,” Rohak practically barked, and I jumped at the command in his voice.
“Yes. I have a hunch for one of them.”
“And?”
I blew out a shaky breath, knowing my next words would change everything—the implications would be vast and far-reaching, potentially altering the course of Elyria’s history forever.
“I have good reason to believe that one of these godlings . . . is Ellowyn d’Aelius”—Rohak sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth—“and I think Alois is going to use her to start the second Sundering.”