Chapter XXXV
XXXV
People think the world grew tame over time.
When humans built rail lines to carry them into uncharted territory and laid concrete wherever they could.
People think that because they can see the landscape, because they can draw it on a map and photograph it from a satellite, they can control it.
They think that humans know the nature of each creature that makes this world its home.
But they’re wrong. The world remains as wild as it always was.
When the untouched landscape shrank as humans ate the world around them, chaos evolved.
Instead of searching out Orcans in the dense forests surrounding communities, as they had in centuries past, the modern Order hunts them in sewers, in abandoned tunnels beneath civilization, in the wreckage humans leave behind.
The wild is not conquered at all. It is transformed.
Humans speak of the world as if they need to save it. But the earth will outlive them all. It will force roots through concrete and breed organisms capable of thriving in harsher and more inhospitable climates.
Humans think they understand the world around them, but they are wrong. They are always wrong. Their ignorance of the world they inhabit will provide precious little comfort when they realize the wild never had a use for them anyway. Humans are the only ones who need saving.
—From the archives of E. Maximus Shepherd (2025)
The thrum of the crowd as they took their places reminded Aren of his early days.
Before he learned the truth behind the teachings of the church, he had an assigned seat in the front row.
Every Sunday the Manns filtered into their pew before the service started.
Aren watched his father prepare his sermon at the lectern and dreamed that one day, hopefully not too far in the future, he would take that hallowed place.
Aren would be the one to stand tall before the congregation, to beat his palm against the ancient book, to hear the clamored concord of the crowd.
They would look to him, one of these days, and he would provide answers.
From his place on the polished oak came this sound as the flock prepared to sit and worship. Greetings, hallelujah.
Today was a good day.
The Brothers gathered somewhere new this morning. The Order’s attempt to keep the nearby location of their so-called secure annex from him had been doomed from the jump. He’d heard where they were within minutes of the recruits arriving.
The Order’s failure to anticipate Aren’s movements gave him the freedom to appear here in person. For the first time in ages, and for some of them the first time at all, Aren stood in front of his Brothers and smiled down at them.
They sat atop overturned logs on the forest floor, a pit fire melting the snow at their feet.
Aren loosed a sigh of relief. He had not expected it to work out quite this well.
Allying with Carver was a risk, he knew that.
Carver had paid a higher price for Aren’s success than he’d expected—the Elder’s body made food for Orcans before it went cold.
He called the crowd to order with a raise of his hands. Their numbers were growing. The Order’s ineptitude over the past weeks had been a boon to the Brotherhood.
“Welcome!” Aren called, and the hum fell low. “Tonight is dawn for our new order.” A shout from the crowd mirrored Aren’s enthusiasm. “Yes!” he echoed, pointing to the man who’d yelled. “This is exactly what I want to see. Today is a good day.”
Aren let a touch of his buried Southern accent slip into his speech.
He pulled his vowels up enough to convey ease, let the beats hit slow and rhythmic.
They loved it. As much as the Order scorned Aren’s common background, they flocked to the evidence of it.
His connection to the lowly man made Aren exotic.
Although he doubted they would appreciate the display half as much if he couldn’t turn it off.
Aren dabbled in normalcy, put it on like a well-loved coat and surrendered it when he wanted to pass among them as an equal.
He had donned the disguise for years, ever since he arrived at Avalon Castle more than two decades past. It wore like a second skin.
“As we gather and celebrate, the Acheron Order is floundering. The castle is overrun with Orcans. All their servants are dead. It will be days, weeks even, before they regain control of their fortress.”
Cheering cut through the empty forest. Young men turned to their friends and laughed.
Aren recognized each of them, of course.
He picked all his Brothers by hand—curated his collection in private before inviting them to a meeting.
He knew their names, backgrounds, habits, and hobbies.
He even knew most of their parents. Max might have succeeded in keeping Aren from physically entering Avalon, but Max’s coup failed to stifle Aren’s influence.
“You all understand why this happened, don’t you?
You understand, better than the Order does, what their problem is: They’ve made themselves weak.
First, by allowing entrance to those who do not deserve the honor.
And second, by shutting themselves off from the core of the ability that binds us all.
Those who call themselves Elders have kept Order members from their own abilities for so long they no longer remember how to exercise them.
They have forgotten the old ways. They see Orcans roaming their hallways, and they run!
They run and they hide and they wait for someone to come and clean up the mess. ”
It was a tricky business, working the insiders.
Aren toed a fine line between making each of them feel included in the Brotherhood’s vision and sharing so much information that he made himself vulnerable.
His one-on-one visits were the bread and butter of Aren’s leadership.
People valued those who reminded them of their own importance.
Remember their names, reassure them of their significance.
Assemblies such as these functioned more as opportunities for the Brothers to feel connected than to further any strategic goal.
He would visit a few of them tonight. Tell them a detail he withheld from the group. Bid them not to tell the others. They would feel important, selected, respected recipients of coveted knowledge. It would work marvelously. It always did.
“The Order is weak. They cannot protect you.
They cannot protect anyone. How could you expect them to protect the people you love when they cannot guard their own home?
The Order is frightened. They fear what they ought to control.
If they knew—as we know—how to summon the ways of old, they would not turn and run.
No, they would fight—as you would fight—to protect that which is theirs.
They would cast out the undeserving and rebuild.
They would forge a new legacy on the foundations of the old.
They would recapture the greatness the Order once possessed, before it fell to the inclinations of humans.
“One day,” Aren promised, “the Order will recognize its folly. They will see the harm in what they have done, and they will beg us for forgiveness. And what will we say when they are on their knees before us?”
“No!” came the crowd’s resounding answer.
“No,” Aren repeated softly. “We will not forgive them.
Because what they have done is unforgivable.
The Acheron Order reduced a millennium of power to rubble in a single generation.
They allowed humans—frail, hapless humans—into the sacred Order simply because they had stumbled upon access to the Veil.
Because they had fallen into magic they could not control, magic they could never hope to harness.
Humans are not made for it. Their bodies cannot contain it, and the attempt can only hurt them.
Only we who have it in our blood understand the power that it holds.
“The Order’s mistake, so long in coming, will be its undoing. Everything that happens now is a result of that failure, and the Order are the only ones to blame. They brought themselves low, and they will know soon enough what the consequences will be for such a mistake.”
The air grew quiet as Aren’s voice dropped.
“You all understand that this is not a permanent setback. We have won the battle, but the war is only now on the horizon. The Order will recover from this blow. They will gather their soldiers and seek us out. Now that we have acted against them, they will strike back at us with force. They will redouble their efforts to find those within their midst who remain loyal to our cause.”
Aren’s gaze swept over the members of the crowd in question.
The Brothers who stayed hidden within the Order’s ranks nodded back to him.
They knew their roles in all of this. Informants, some of them, while others were tasked with more direct action against the Order.
They knew their positions were the most at risk.
Traitors within the Order’s ranks walked a dangerous path now that open war had begun.
“They will come for us, and we will be ready when they do. We will not allow their weakness to infect us. And we will not allow it to spread. For all that the Order has prepared for war, we know better than they do what is coming, and we will not stop. We will not rest until the Order is gone, until the new order is built and the undeserving are cast out for the final time.”
Some of them smiled at Aren’s vision of the future.
“When they strike at us, we will strike back. And when they hide from us, we will find them. We will not rest, we will not wait, we will not stop, until we have won. And we will win.”
Like worshippers awaiting a benediction, they perched on the edge of their seats.
“Rise, Brothers, and prepare. War is here.”
Aren watched with satisfaction as they stood. His gaze hung on a single face, shining up at him from the crowd.
“For the glorious dead shall rise,” Aren called.
“And we shall meet them!” the crowd responded in unison.
All the pieces had fallen into place; history would repeat itself.
Balance, the way of all things, had returned to the world.
If Aren valued balance at all, he would have found it beautiful.
He would have marveled at the universe’s talent for symmetry, if he had cared enough to notice it.
But Aren only saw a kind of poetic justice in it.
Nothing was ever truly new, was it? They would play the same game, over and over, until one of them won.
Max remained at Avalon, as he always would.
Aren sought his own legacy away from the Order, as they had known he would from the beginning.
And Meredith, well, Meredith remained only in the children she had left behind, so they would play their mother’s part on her behalf.
Torn, as she always had been, between the two men who sought the fate of the world.
“From the gates of hell, we will march,” Aren called.
Max had won the daughter, for now. But Aren had the son, and he planned to keep him.
When Henry Wood caught him watching, Aren smiled, and the boy joined in the chorus as it replied.
“And reclaim what they have stolen from us!”
Yes, this would do nicely.