Cassandra Pendragon
“And what’s that supposed to mean? Fancy words strung together to form a meaningless platitude? A master can set his people free, can he not?”
“Not this time. I… I transformed their souls and while they still exist, they won’t be able to join the cycle, ever again. There are only two options: destroy them, which will annihilate their existence for ever, or leave them be.” While she had been talking I had unconsciously inched away from her.
“That’s perverted. Tell me, was it worth it?” My voice had become icy. She truly was a monster.
“You tell me. Do you honestly think that you would have been living in the world you know if we hadn’t done what was necessary? Yes, we committed atrocities far worse than anything the gods had done but if we hadn’t stopped them, they’d have ruled forever and this world would have been a living hell. Grow a spine, Cassandra. Sometimes you have to get your hands dirty.”
“Bullshit. There must have been another way.”
“Is that so? Then tell me, why am I still alive? You know who I am and you won’t be able to change me. Sooner or later I’m going to kill, to prey on souls again. But yet here I am, even though the blood of each and every of my future victims is on your hands.” She rose while she spoke and approached me, forcing me back with every step she took.
“Because… I can’t… It’s not… I need you, damn it! I need that seed shut down, whatever the cost.”
“And there we are. Everything is acceptable in case the price is right. My standards are just different from yours. I don’t care if you loathe me or like me for what I’ve done, but if you want to stop the seed from activating, you’ll use my creations. Otherwise you’ll doom everyone on this island out of … vanity.” I stood my ground and allowed her to come closer. She had a point. The damage had already been done and my refusal would stem from a vain wish to not condone anything as despicable as those statuettes.
“You’re right,” I admitted through gritted teeth. “But just so we are clear, I’ll destroy them as soon as we’re safe.” She was standing less than a handspan away from me now and I saw her sharp teeth through her smirk. A faint smell of cherry blossoms still clung to her like a veil.
“We’ll see about that. Now then, what you have to do isn’t complicated, but it might turn out difficult. I can’t lift the seals, the gods would simply flee once they realise what you are. What I can do, is send you inside. Once you’re in, well, if you could kill them, it’d be perfect, but I highly doubt that’s even possible, they’re directly linked to the souls that make up the realm, after all.”
“Doesn’t that meant that they’d perish, once the statuettes are destroyed,” I interrupted.
“Quite the contrary, they’d be free again. If you find a way to prevent them from fleeing and kill them outside of the statuettes, they’ll be gone. We didn’t, though, and we looked, for a long time. And even if we could, it’d leave us just where we are now: without a way to stop the seed. No, once you’re in, you have to guard the exits, keep them inside the realm while I use the statuettes to absorb the energy from the seed. With a little luck I might be even able to drain the fragment of the heart that’s connected to them.” At first I thought she was trying to seal me as well, add an immortal to her magical engine. But honestly, I quite liked my chances of cutting through a dimensional space after my experiences in this tomb. One way or another I’d get out and I expected her to know that. If she was being honest, there’d be another problem, though.
“If you flush their prisons with the energy from the seed, won’t they be able to use it? Also, I can’t be in four places at once. We could only use one of the statuettes, couldn’t we?”
“First of, the realms I created are already linked. I guess, a single country with four castles, three of which are constantly waging war on the fourth, would be an apt metaphor. I intent to open a pathway to the country, not one of the castles. Secondly, you’re right. The fallen gods will gain tremendous power once the transfer starts, but the whole realm is made out of pure energy, an influx of even more magic won’t change that.” She took a step back and allowed me some breathing room. “You should be perfectly safe, don’t forget, Isis, Horus and Sobek are Seth’s mortal enemies. They’ll be fighting amongst themselves just as much as they’ll try to get past you.”
“So basically you want me to hold the door for as long as it takes to absorb one, possibly two artefacts that are powerful enough to generate sparks of transcendent energy. And then what? Suppose I manage to keep super powered thoughts at bay, how do I get out afterwards without setting them free? And why would I have to deal with the captured souls, in the first place? You said I’d have to become their master, why, how?”
“Well, I might have been exaggerating a bit. It again comes down to the statuettes. They are made from energy, in one way or the other, and the Fallen have had centuries to attune them selves to their prisons. They’ll wield the power the souls can offer as if it were their own. If you fight them, you’ll have to stand against it all, but admittedly, it’ll be enough if you can stop them from escaping, there won’t be a need to subjugate the souls and starve the Fallen of their power. That is, as long as you can hold your own. As for how you’re going to get out: the same way you’re going to get in. Me. I guess you simply have to trust that I won’t risk you setting free a calamity, I spent the better part of my years in freedom capturing, while you struggle to break out,” she said and rolled her eyes. “I thought we had already established that I don’t want you dead.”
“Sealed away is not dead.” I could probably get out of there, with a lot of brute force, but…
I wasn’t sure if I’d be willing to set free something an evil spider and the emperor himself had deemed to dangerous and vile to roam free. If she left me in there, I’d be in deep shit and I thought she’d know that. But then again, maybe there was another way. I was certain I could still reach Ahri through our tattoos, even across dimensions and if information could travel through the link, so could I, in theory. Yet another gamble… hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.
“Fine. One more question. What are you planning to do while I’m stuck fighting off shadows from the past and you have access to all that power? Make the sun shine and rainbows appear?” At least she chuckled, which made me feel just a tiny bit more confident that I wasn’t going to commit the worst mistake of my life… well, maybe the last seven years.
“I’m going to create a ring, powerful enough to rule the world and grant me dominion over all living things… honey, I’m going to have my hands full preventing my brain from melting. I know you’re built differently but us mortals can’t just play with the stuff of creation and walk away unscathed. Truthfully, I’m the one taking most of the risk here. I don’t expect you to pity me, or even to arrange a proper burial in case I won’t make it, but a little consideration would be much appreciated.”
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“Uh huh, sure. Let’s say I believe you. What happens now?’
“Hand over the statuettes. I’ll do the rest.” And there we were. I still felt bad when I thought about what I was actually going to give her but by now I had become quite proficient in ignoring that gnawing sensation in the pit of my stomach. With nothing more than a wish I activated the rune and the sturdy chest we had put the statuettes in appeared in front of us. Now that I knew what it contained, I thought I could feel the faint pulsing of stolen life from within and my tails curled up. But that had to be my imagination, I hadn’t felt it before, after all. Or maybe I now knew what to look out for and was more sensitive than I had been? I didn’t know, but the things definitely gave me the creeps.
I used two of my wings to open the lid and pull the chest closer until we could peer inside. Mephisto’s runes had held, the statuettes hadn’t moved and were still facing each other, frozen on the verge of a commencing battle but for the moment I was focused on Shassa. When she saw the, for the firs time again, a series of emotions crossed her face and in her human form I could even read some of them. I saw elation, fear, greed and a considerable amount of disgust, as if she was staring at a poisoned crown. A chance to rise to her former power but at the cost of something she wasn’t willing to sacrifice. I just couldn’t figure out what it could possibly be. It wasn’t her life, I already knew that she held it in low regard and it couldn’t be her soul based on everything I had heard from her. Maybe it was the chance to be someone else, to start anew? Whatever the reason, her expression finally convinced me trust her, at least for the moment. She wasn’t going to use the statuettes for her own gain, I was sure of it. She feared them.
Carefully I removed the surprisingly heavy pieces of crystallised souls from the chest and placed them before us. Four dark statuettes, rigid and still as if they were truly made from stone shimmered in the light from my wings. Three men with perfectly sculpted bodies and the heads of a hawk, a crocodile and a jackal faced each other, aggression rolling off of them in waves, even though they were completely frozen. The woman was the odd one out, beautiful with human features except for her butterfly wings that covered her back she seemed… sad, more than anything. “Who were they,” I whispered and even though my question had been more than vague, Shassa understood what I meant.
“It’s hard to tell, they have changed so much, but I think in the beginning they represented basic ideals of a society. Knowledge, courage and strength, beauty, kindness and death. Embedded in a vivid mythology, fleshed out with stories and personalities they still are, at their very core, nothing more than the concepts mortal minds associated with those aspects and the conflict between them. Don’t let that fool you into thinking they can be reasoned with, though. They are ideas and, if nothing else, they changed during the time they spent fighting against one another in a realm of corrupted souls. You won’t be able to recognise who or what they once were.”
She had crouched, her face mere centimetres from the statuettes, longing and weariness reflected in her eyes. “It’s fascinating, isn’t it? How something so small can be born from and contain so much hate. Ingrained hatred caused the gods to wage war which in return made people like Amon rise up against them. And now the wheel has turned and again we fight. What was that human saying again? The players change, but the game remains the same?”
“I don’t believe that we’re running in circles. We can change, learn, adapt every minute of the day. Look at us, an angel and a devil working hand in hand, because we have to, because we chose to. And who knows, maybe we can change the world, just a little, before this night is over. That is, if we finally get started. What do you need me to do?” She straightened and began to pace around the statuettes, her fingers moving in the same arcane gestures I had seen her use before.
“Nothing for now. Amazeroth left me with enough energy to open a pathway. Once it appears you’ll have to hurry, I don’t know how long I can keep it active. I’ll unseal the realms once you’re through, so be ready. I don’t know what you’ll find inside, but you’ll definitely be able to tell where and when the gate will open. All you have to do is defend it until it closes again. Not that there is much of an alternative, but do you feel up to it?”
“Piece of cake,” I mumbled, not really believing my own words. It wasn’t death I was afraid of, not exactly. Over the last few days I had faced the man with the scythe more often than I could count, and I was still around. By now the Reaper simply didn’t scare me anymore. No, I was terrified of failing, like I had failed on Boseiju. I hadn’t been able to save my people back then and now, they were again depending on me. Would I let them down again? Would I damn everyone on this island? The idea of crawling out of another dimension, only to find that there was nothing left to live for, sent cold shivers down my spine. This time at least I had a pretty good idea of whom I needed to beat up to prevent that from happening.
“How long do you need,” I asked Shassa.
“Nearly there,” she answered, her voice strained while sparks of energy slowly flowed together to form burning sigils in the air around the statuettes. “This isn’t exactly the same as opening a door. If I’m not careful, I’ll create a pathway that can be crossed in either direction and they’ll escape.”
Huh… that meant she’d have to do exactly that to let me back out. Had she just let slip that she wasn’t going to?
“Oh, come on. I’m not going to leave you there. Once I have access to the statuettes, even if it’s just for a moment, I’ll be easily able to pull you out, without a risk. There’s no need to scowl, though… you look quite cute when your grimacing, did anyone ever tell you that?” One of these days I was going to get a fake moustache or an eyepatch. And work on my poker face. As much as I loved my looks, getting compliments in a situation like this was just as bothersome as being read like an open book. Damn it, I was about to fight against gods of a bygone era and Shassa made me feel like an idiot, or a cute pet. And now she was laughing, for crying out loud!
“What’s so funny,” I asked icily.
“You. You really are young, aren’t you? We’ve fought, we’ve talked about a battle against ancient gods and my remarks now, of all things, got you riled up and you can’t even hide it. It’s refreshing. I’m done, by the way. Ready to save this island and meddle with Amon’s plans, cutie?”
With a sweeping gesture she combined the floating glyphs into a single construct. They swirled around one another, glowing lines left behind in the wake of their dance. After a few seconds, a shimmering portal appeared, Shassa’s magic still circling around it, keeping it open. Her warning that she wouldn’t be able to build the magic for long rang in my ears. I swallowed down my reply and quickly approached the portal.
The closer I got the warmer it became, heat brushed against my skin and I thought I heard the echo of an untold number of tormented whispers in the searing wind. Whatever laid on the other side, if I felt like this behind a supposedly one way portal, I wasn’t looking forward to get there.
“Good luck, Cassandra. Believe it or not, I’ve quite enjoyed meeting you. Hopefully it wasn’t for the last time.” I stopped, not even a metre away from the yawning gap in reality and turned around. The scorching currents of air picked up my hair and made it float around me like a veil.
“Whatever happens, it won’t. You’ll see me again, Shassa. Never doubt it.” I thought that sounded ominous enough to convey that I’d come back to haunt her, if I’d have to. My wings uncurled from around my body and I held her gaze for a second longer before I gracefully took a step backwards and vanished into the void.
The transition was smooth and far quicker than I had expected. One moment I was eye to eye with a beautiful woman and the next I soared high above a nightmarish landscape filled with fire and the laments of twisted souls. It was dark, neither the sun nor the stars illuminated the endless night below me. Veins of red hot energy burrowed their way like lava through a scarred, ravaged plain that was dominated by four enormous, shadowy constructs, I could glimpse in the distance.