Chapter 39 Calluna
CALLUNA
C alluna was very good at hiding when she desired to go unseen.
Avoiding the soldiers patrolling the Tower Majestic was child’s play.
Not even those born and raised within the ancient edifice could compare, for she had spent nearly five decades scouring the tower before discovering the underwater temple.
Only one person’s eye could find her, and he spotted her with ease as he walked the rafters toward the guarded lift near the center.
“It’s all right, Calluna,” Eder said, his back to her. “You’re welcome at my side.”
Calluna slipped out from behind one of the cranks. The liftmaster nearby startled, his eyes wide and his mouth dropping open. She’d been so close, she could have reached out and touched him if she so wished.
“If you don’t mind,” she said, and reluctantly joined Eder’s side. She’d hoped to watch from afar, as she had the past few weeks as Eder prepared. Those preparations, though, had finally reached their end.
For good or ill, Eder would activate the ancient machinery of the Tower Majestic.
“Of course I do not mind,” he said as the pair stepped onto the lift. “Without you, I’d have never discovered the key. It is only right that you accompany me.”
The Final Ascent was much the same as it had been, only now each and every runestone shimmered with a pale silver light.
Eder had spent the days and nights cutting his arm, dripping his blood into a small bowl, and then using a brush to paint across the swirls and lines.
Each rune. Each mark. It had taken him days, and a shocking amount of blood, but with every crimson brushstroke he brought life back to the ancient device.
It now hummed with power, deep and unpleasant. Calluna felt it in her teeth, and she hated it.
“Do you know what will happen?” she asked.
“I know what I believe will happen,” Eder said as they exited the lift. “This device was the grand achievement of the Etemen, and the entire purpose of this tower. At last, we pierce the veil. With everything set, I need only trigger the catalyst.”
“The key,” Calluna murmured.
“And my blood,” Eder confirmed.
Despite the confusing mess of runes, there was a single straight path piercing through them directly to the pedestal in the center.
Calluna followed Eder there, her fingers twitching and her nerves on edge.
She had never liked these runestones, and that was before they had been awakened.
Yet again she wondered if it had been a mistake to reveal their secrets to her brother.
This will be the end of their war , she thought as she watched Eder stand before the bowl. Any cost is worth having our family together again.
Eder withdrew a sharp, slender knife from a small pocket of his robe. He positioned his left arm over the bowl and then pressed the knife’s edge to his skin.
“Do you hear us, Father?” he asked, his eyes closed and his head tilted to the sun shining directly down upon him. “We are here.”
The knife cut. Blood flowed into the bowl.
“We are here .”
At first, there was nothing. The blood dripped, and the stones remained silent. Calluna watched, surprised by her deep desire for the ritual to fail. Maybe she had interpreted the mosaic wrong. Maybe Eder had reassembled the runestones incorrectly.
Drip. Drip. And then the blood from Eder’s arm coalesced into a solid cord not flowing from the cut but tearing out of it. Eder gasped, and he clutched the sides of the pedestal to hold himself aloft.
The light from the runes pulsed brighter, their color shifting from silver to crimson. The humming noise, so faint she sometimes thought she hallucinated it, became a roar.
“Eder!” she cried, but he would not move.
More blood ripped free of him and into the bowl.
Calluna’s eyes, so deeply attuned to radiance, saw its unmistakable shimmer flowing through the blood, and it was immense.
Everything that was her brother was pooling into that bowl, and within, it was consumed.
It burned. The fires of it flowed through unseen veins hidden beneath the reaching hardstone hands and into the runes surrounding them, empowering them further.
“Eder, stop!”
Perhaps he couldn’t. Perhaps he chose not to. She didn’t know. His body was rigid, his mouth locked in a silent scream. Panic overwhelmed her. This had to stop. It had to stop!
Calluna slammed into him with her shoulder, and she cried out as the impact snapped her collarbone.
Pain flashed through her, her vision swimming yellow and white.
Eder staggered away from the bowl, his knife dropping from his hand to clatter upon the stone.
The cord of blood snapped, and along with it, the silver vein of radiance.
The light on the runestones paled. Blood smeared across the floor, staining Calluna’s dress, but it was nothing compared to the great flow that had once been.
“Calluna,” Eder gasped, weak and delirious. “Why?”
“You were going to die,” she said, clutching her left arm to her chest. That entire side of her body pulsed with agony from the break.
“It would not be the first.”
“But it would be the last!”
Eder slowly pushed himself up to his knees. His eyes focused, the haziness of his speech and gaze replaced with a sudden hardness.
“Explain yourself.”
“I saw it,” she said. “I felt it. Everything that was you, it was being pulled into that bowl, and… and… burned by it.” She was crying and didn’t know if it was from the pain or from how frightened she’d been in those last moments.
“I almost lost you, Eder. I almost lost you forever. This… this awful device, this damned tower itself, it is our deaths. Our true, final deaths. You can’t do this.
Please, whatever you hope for, it isn’t worth the cost.”
Eder slid closer to her, still too weak to stand. His gentle hands surrounded her and pulled her into his lap. She cradled against him, enduring the waves of agony from her broken collarbone. Crying, she pressed her face to his chest.
“I know you want this more than anything, Eder, but I’m begging you, don’t leave me. Don’t make me say goodbye forever.”
He kissed the top of her head, his fingers gently stroking her hair.
“I promise,” he whispered softly. “And you are right, Calluna. You are right. The cost is too high. Much too high.”
She sniffled. “And your war?”
His touch hesitated.
“If I cannot use this tower to reach Father, then the slow-and-steady method must suffice. My church must endure. The cold cells must be spread to all corners of Kaus.”
A fresh wave of tears had her closing her eyes and clenching her teeth.
“I’m so sick of it, Eder. I love you, all of you. Must it always come to this?”
He tucked his fingers underneath her chin and forced her to look up at him. He was so handsome, his pale skin warmed by the light of the sun and his star-kissed eyes filled with determination.
“No crowns, no thrones,” he said softly.
“That was your vow, but it was not mine. I am the only one left who can save this burdened, asphyxiated world. And I will, Calluna. I will. One day, Father will look upon our lives, see our souls cleansed of sins, and he will tell me, ‘Good job, faithful servant, now welcome home.’”
“But how do you know?” she asked. “Father? Our sins? These lives? How do you know ?”
He kissed her forehead, slowly, gently. His answer was a whisper.
“Because in my deepest despair, lost in an endless sea of death and resurrection, I heard his voice .”