Chapter 38 #3
Exeros placed his filthy, scarred hand upon Sam’s brow and, swiftly and simply, she felt something ancient and precise slot into her mind, her spirit, her soul.
And then Exeros drew back, already fading, his expression at last turned kindly, holding Sam’s eyes with something akin to approval, to relief, to sorrow.
Or perhaps just the satisfaction of a warden who had passed his keys on to someone he trusted would use them well.
And then he was gone.
For a moment, all was still inside the cave.
And then her Angel Seed began to grow and blossom.
Sam found her consciousness dragged down to her Cosmos by forces beyond her control. Down she delved, flying into her own inner dark, until the Fallen Angel’s armature appeared below her, recumbent and asleep.
Before it, though, the Angel Seed was changing.
And Sam realized that her very vision had changed.
She could see more. Understand more. The last traces of power that had flowed through the Seed were fading away like a dying rainbow, chromatic and beautiful, connected, somehow, directly to Alabenthos.
His essence was around her, she now realized, saturating the air of her Cosmos.
But that aspect was dying, closing, folding itself away.
She was losing her connection to the arch angel.
Instead, the Angel Seed was mutating, growing, becoming something far more complex and powerful.
Then the Fallen Angel’s armature shifted, stirred, and came away.
And looked directly up at her.
Sam felt her very sense of self begin to dissolve before that regard, which was total, infinitely righteous, and as pitiless as the sun.
A light that was held in trust has been returned to you.
The Warden is spent. His vigil ends.
By the sacrifice of Exeros, Last Warden of the Celestial Thrones, the Seed within you is remade.
You are granted: Archon Numina.
The living essence from which all Thrones, all scales, all Classes descend.
Your Class remains: Netherwarden Knight.
Your Thrones remain.
Your Abilities remain.
These are the shape of who you are. Numina does not replace them. It is the light they were always casting shadows of.
You will know the Thrones as they are—not merely as symbols in your Cosmos, but as my living wounds. You will understand the war as I feel it. You will understand what I have sacrificed, and why.
Your power shall come from proximity.
Be gentle with it. No one else has stood this close and remained themselves.
Sam tore her gaze from the Fallen Angel to regard the Angel Seed, which had become convoluted, a nesting series of petals in whose depths constellations flickered. There was a potential there. A promise.
Sam reached for the Angel Flower.
The dungeon peeled back. Reality unfolded. Light flowed into her, and her Cosmos was reforged.
All was glory.
All was infinite.
And distantly, distantly, as Sam found herself being remade, she thought she could hear herself screaming.
* * *
“Tanya had the best tits.” Vic spoke this truth almost petulantly. “They were low-slung, sure, but came to wicked points, and when she dusted them with metallic powder, they looked like weapons of sweet destruction.”
“Uh-huh,” grunted Nessa, rummaging through her pack.
“Now.” Vic levered himself up onto one elbow.
“Little Sally had the foulest tongue. And I mean in terms of the absolute filth she would spout, I mean, the things she could say in the midst of a session, it would just about knock you out, you’d forget what you were doing and just stare at her, wondering: wait—had she actually just—”
A distant detonation cut him off.
Light was streaming out of a small cave high up in the cliff face. Pouring out in a horizontal torrent, a livid white gash against the amber sky.
Vic scrambled to his feet, Nessa rising more swiftly, more lithely, blade in hand.
“Eclavistra?” asked Vic, suddenly breathless. It didn’t feel like her, but then—
“That’s the cave Sam and Exeros entered,” said Kársek, rising with his hammer in hand.
The scream cut off abruptly.
The light slowly faded, the amber swimming back into the stream, and then was gone.
Vic licked his dry lips. Everything felt changed. He couldn’t pinpoint it—Kársek’s dark resignation, Nessa’s flinty resolve, those remained the same, though her annoyance had fled—but the air, the very atmosphere…
Brianna was beside him. Just like that, her cloak swirling about her feet, her massive blade held easily in one fist. “What’s going on?”
“Exeros and Sam,” said Nessa, pointing at the now dark cave. “I think it’s… I think it’s done.”
Harald came running up, climbed up the hill. “We should go to her. Something’s gone wrong.”
“No,” said Brianna. “Look.”
A figure floated out of the cave.
Slender, upright, arms by her sides. She turned and began flying toward them, her golden braid and cloak the only parts that moved, tossed about by the winds up on high.
Nobody spoke.
Vic licked his dry lips again. Where the hell had he placed his wineskin? But he couldn’t tear his eyes away from Sam.
She looked otherworldly. Everything was silent.
And it was only when she drew closer that he realized why: her eyes, even at this remove, were clearly burning with the purest of white fire.