Chapter 38 #2
Not with violence, but with melancholy gentleness.
Like the sun on frost, it caused patterns to fray and fall apart.
It melted bonds. It undid resolve. Where Khazadrok was all fire and fury, bursting the world apart with crude force, Thurak was sorrowful parting.
The last words whispered by a dying wife to her grieving husband by her bed.
The last letter sent by a dear friend to their childhood companion before life pulled them apart.
The wilting of flowers in fall, the fading of memory in senescence.
The world willed that patterns end.
Thurak made it so at Kársek’s discretion.
But there was a cost.
A terrible cost.
The young dwarf sat with that knowledge, his heart heavy, his gaze trained stoically on the approach into their stone clearing.
A terrible cost that only a DreadRune could pay.
The severance that he willed manifest in the world would be mirrored in his own self. Against normal foes, the price might be nominal. Against mighty enemies, the price could undo a DreadRune.
Against one such as Eclavistra?
Kársek couldn’t fathom the price. His body chilled at the thought. His breath caught. But he breathed through the fear.
From the moment Harald had brought him out of the dungeon, shown him kindness, made him part of his clan, and made it clear that his vendetta against Vorakhar was honorable, Kársek had known that he lived on borrowed time.
Time gifted to him by Harald.
A debt that had to be repaid.
It had been a precious few months since then. Good times had been had. Hard battles won. Dear friends made. They had fought together, feasted together, won through against impossible odds, and forged such deeds as deserved to be sung in the halls of Dumr?n.
Ah, well.
It had been a fine life.
His only regret was not kissing Freyka the night before their ill-fated raid. Ah, but she had been a spirited dwarven girl. She had leaned in, that night, her breath close, her eyes afire with mischief, and he—he had thought the moment overhasty, and turned away.
Kársek smiled.
The folly of youth.
The great lie that even dwarves told themselves: you think you have time.
Well, his hour was come.
When the moment came, he would not hold back. He would give his all to defeat Eclavistra and aid his thark?n in battle.
His honor demanded no less.
His steadfast gaze grew misty and, with an impatient gesture, he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
“All right there, Karsy-baby?” asked Vic from where he lay, head on his pack.
“Yes,” called back Kársek. “All is well.”
“Minus the fact that we’re about to fight a demon queen.”
“Minus that, yes.”
A pause, then Vic asked again, tone subtly softer, more concerned. “You sure you’re all right?”
Kársek twisted about to flash a fierce smile at the Rapier Regent. “Just getting a little tired of waiting, is all.”
“Ah!” Vic grinned. “You dwarves. Bloodthirsty monsters, the lot of you. I declare.”
Kársek forced a chuckle, then turned back to the empty cleft. No monster had dared approach. It was as if they knew the scale of the battle that was to come, and wanted no part of it.
Kársek resumed layering Earthblood in his spirit.
Wise monsters, those.
* * *
Sam followed Exeros through the surging bronze flames. The Seraph floated ahead in silence, moving toward a cave high in the surrounding cliff face. When they drew close, she found herself levitating up behind him, and together they entered the shadowed hollow.
Exeros turned, drifted back a few yards, then folded his legs so that he hovered, cross-legged, before her.
Sam stared at the filthy, scarred child. Her heart was pounding. She wanted to protest. To not let him kill himself for her.
But he wasn’t dying for her.
He was dying for the Fallen Angel.
“Listen well, Samantha Tuppins.” His voice was hollow in the darkness.
“I was a Warden of the Seven Thrones. That meant that I alone truly understood the ecology of power that played out across the entirety of the dungeon. How the Fallen Angel’s Archon Numina flowed from her infinitely inward folding horizons into the substrate of her physical form.
How each celestial being, whether an arch angel or an arch demon drank from that font of power, and how it concentrated in the seven manifestations of her Thrones.
I understood and oversaw the system by which her Numina distributed itself across the tens of thousands of dungeon denizens, each an echo sustained and summoned by her love of real monsters that once walked the surface.
How it was allowed to flow, diminished, through arch angels into their angel-kin, beings who carried Angel Seeds.
I understood how it filtered down at long last into the very scales you mortals reap, and how it flows, vastly diluted, into your Cosmos to fuel your whelp-like powers via the Thrones. ”
Exeros reached out as if to take an invisible object from the air. “I beheld and understood her entire cosmology like no other. It allowed me to drink of her power with a directness that made me near unstoppable in battle. My intuitive understanding of true might was unequalled.”
Sam’s mouth had dried out. Her hand was pressed to her throat. She stared at the scarred child and thought she saw a burning shadow looming behind him, a vast and terrible six-winged warrior that made her mind recoil.
“I can no longer access that power. My conduits were closed by the arch angels. I am now but a mote of spite and cynicism, and thought I would remain thus until the end of the war. But you. I have watched you stay gentle in the face of endless provocation. I have watched you hold on to your faith in Harald, and witnessed how that faith became self-fulfilling. I have waited for you to reach for the Mote of Humility you carry to wield against Harald, to coerce him—yet you have never even thought of it. And as a result, I have decided to gift you with my intuitive knowledge and power.”
Exeros’ expression turned bitter. “Not because I have found in you a new source of faith and enlightenment. But you are a Netherwarden Knight, and in you, in your… gentle yet strong nature, I have found something worthy of my investment. By giving myself to you, I am admitting that the Celestial War might be won—not by the cowardly angels, nor by the avaricious demons—but by a mortal woman who received an angel’s grace, and by a demon-touched boy whose love for you may keep him from breaking the world. ”
Sam’s throat closed, her eyes prickled, and she couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. It was too much, his words, they echoed like hammer blows in her mind—
“Receive my power, mortal woman.” Exeros floated closer. “Receive what little I have left, but know that it is but the beginning of your true journey. With the Fallen Angel’s Archon Numina at your fingertips, you may change the very fabric of the world.”