Cassandra Pendragon
The moment I arrived I felt a faint but persistent pull, something in the very structure of the realm was stirring up my energy, trying to draw it out. I managed to resist easily enough but it was a constant reminder that this realm hadn’t been made for the living. I quickly glanced around, half expecting an army to suddenly surround me or a trap to trigger. After everything I had seen, I thought that there was chance, the energy from the seed would enable the inhabitants to mess with time, but everything remained quiet. Except for the unnerving whispers the winds carried with them, amplified several times, now that I had crossed over into this world.
Hot gusts of air rose from the ground and filled my nostrils with the smell of sulphur and heated glass while specks of soot and ash swirled around me and obscured my vision. I pushed energy from my core into my eyes to at least get an impression of where I was and turned slowly on the spot. The sky was covered in smoke, thick streams billowing form deep holes and trenches that crisscrossed the ground in every direction. Everything below me was made of black stone, or rather obsidian, judging from the smell, dark and foreboding for the most part but some areas were also hot enough to glow with a bright red, the only form of light that pierced the shadows of this place. With my enhanced vision I could see faint movement all around, heavy clouds of smoke raced across the sky and the stones below were seemingly filled with the echos of the souls that had been used to create this realm.
Distorted faces with open mouths appeared and vanished again, leaving behind nothing more than another wail that joined the chorus of the damned and from what I could see, those were the lucky ones. Wherever the ground was glowing with heat, gorges split the stone like torn wounds and the lifeblood of the realm itself seeped from them like tears. The souls in the vicinity were sucked dry, their essence nourishing the streams of energy that continuously flowed towards four huge, shadowy constructs at the edge of my vision. Those souls weren’t whispering, but screaming in pain, a tormented cadence that rose and fell with every pulse of power that was squeezed from them and channeled towards the looming towers on the horizon.
I couldn’t make out any details, they were much too far away, but it wasn’t too difficult to guess that I was looking at the representations of the four statuettes. How had Shassa put it? Four castles, constantly waging war on one another and the destroyed landscape was their battlefield as well as the source of their power. I exhaled deeply, pity for the poor creatures that had been bound to create this place formed a heavy lump in the pit of my stomach. I knew I couldn’t help them, not without destroying the statuettes and even then, I’d condemn them to oblivion. Maybe there was another way, maybe this realm could be changed into something beautiful, but for now there was nothing I could do. At least I wouldn’t have to listen to their screams for long, if everything went according to plan.
Speaking of which, I didn’t know if time passed at the same pace in here as it did on the outside but I expected Shassa to try and unseal the statuettes, soon. It’d probably be for the best if I got close to the centre beforehand so I’d be able to quickly get to wherever I’d have to go.
I extended my wings and silently soared through the gloom. I didn’t try to conceal myself, firstly, the polluted air was doing a perfect job in that regard already and secondly, there was no one around, well, no one who wasn’t part of the landscape. It was odd, I had expected to run head first into an ongoing battle between the rulers of this realm but apart from the ghastly nature of this place and the scars that remained of fights long concluded, it was surprisingly peaceful. Had the fallen gods given up? Or maybe they had formed an alliance during the untold years they had been imprisoned here?
If they had, I’d be forced to face a united front. Not that it should matter too much, if the spider had told the truth, but if she hadn’t, or if she had simply been mistaken, this might get ugly, really fast. Admittedly, since I was completely untouched, neither was I choking on the ash I should have breathed in by now, nor did the searing winds hurt me more than a warm breeze, I was inclined to believe her words. If this realm had been made from something more than the energy of souls, I would have suffered from the sheer inhospitality of the place by now, but I felt fine, physically at least. Mentally I was still reeling as soon as I focused on the screams that pierced the air and remembered where they were coming from.
The longer I listened to them, the harder it became to stay focused, the urge to free them, to do anything at all to make them stop was growing by the second. I struggled to remain airborne, a large part of me was aching to land and help, even though I knew that I couldn’t. I didn’t know how and I didn’t have the time. I wouldn’t risk the living for the sake of the dead, so on I flew.
Seconds turned into minutes but the scenery didn’t change. Flat and smooth bits of rock, their polished surface perfectly reflecting the twisted faces of the ghosts caught inside, stood like islands among the ravaged and destroyed parts that were bled dry to… to do what, exactly? There should be a war going on, a reason to harvest all that energy, but there wasn’t.
I was tempted to have a peek at one of the shadowy constructs in the distance but I didn’t know when Shassa was going to open the realm and considering how lucky I usually was, it would probably happen the very minute I arrived. No, for now I’d just stick with my plan, get to a central location and wait for something, anything really, to change.
It took longer than I had expected, a not so subtle clue that time was flowing differently in here. I had made my way to a more or less undamaged outcropping somewhere smack down in the middle but I hadn’t landed. The idea of walking or standing on the essence of some poor fellow who had been stuck here after suffering through a war during the last few years of his life was appalling, like having a picnic on a grave. I had hovered in the air for what felt close to half an hour before the first lightning strike shattered the sky and as if it had been a fanfare to herald the apocalypse, all hell broke lose.
The first strike was quickly followed by several others, a cacophony of light and rumbling impacts that shook the ground and even drowned out the screams of the tormented souls and I was in the middle of it all. Raging winds blew away the smoke and left nothing behind but clean air, laden with the electric smell of ozone which intensified with every further flash of light that tore through the sky. From one second to the next I was surrounded by a storm of power that began to warp the very realm I was in. The reaction was immediate.
The streams of energy that flowed towards the four corners suddenly swelled, a creek that turned into a raging river, and the shadows, which had clung to the huge shapes I had spotted before, exploded outwards, transforming into all kinds of creatures, from immense, black hounds with red embers for eyes which glowed with the same fierce fire as the rivers of soul energy, to winged creatures with ebony feathers and long beaks that looked like they had crawled out of a nightmare. Behind the dispersing wall of darkness, four silhouettes came into view.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
Each of them looked different, monuments created to the liking of their masters, one was white and gold with graceful arches and high windows, a tower of ivory splendour in the middle of the abyss. Another looked like an ancient temple, hewn from a yellowish stone I hadn’t seen down here before. The other two were even more remarkable. A living verbena, larger than Boseiju had been, stretched its blossom towards the sky and if it hadn’t been for the flickering, reddish light that sent fleeting shadows across its surface, I’d have associated it with life, birth and growth, not the suffocating pit where I had actually found it. The last one was… intimidating. A twisted and chaotic mess of spires rose from a massive block of obsidian, its shape vaguely reminiscent of a crown. Sparks danced around each of the needle like peaks, adding shades of purple, green and an eerie white to the reddish glow. As soon as they appeared, mayhem followed.
The shadowy creatures, headed for me and the display of light, veered off course as if attached to hidden strings and raced towards one another with ear splitting howls full of bloodlust and hatred. Only a small group held back, the ones spawned from the giant verbena, lingered, keeping their distance from their rabid brethren.
The lightning strikes around me intensified, a rapid staccato that blew chunks of rock and dust into the sky and made my hair float in the charged air. The glow from the torrents of energy that burrowed their way through the plain dimmed, as if they were being consumed, and four figures emerged from their sanctuaries.
A resplendent warrior, clad in ivory and gold with the head of a hawk, a scholarly figure wearing flowing white robes with the head of a crocodile and an ethereal women with translucent butterfly wings on her back appeared nearly at the same moment. Not half a second later, the obsidian citadel exploded, literally, and a dark shape, hidden behind swirls of power which obscured even my vision, rose slowly form the rubble, like an awakened predator that got the first whiff of its prey. I could just barely make out the jackal head under the veil of pulsing energy but when it raised its head and let out an eerie howl, which froze the blood in my veins and made my tails curl up, I knew without a doubt that all four of the fallen gods had made their appearance.
As if on cue, the light show around me reached its peak, a final thunderclap, loud enough to even brush away Seth’s challenge reverberated across the plain. The lightning strikes had converged into a single point, close to where I was, turning into an archway of pure light that immediately started to suck in power from the realm.
The dimmed, but still glowing rivers were wrenched from their beds and pulled towards the gate, forming a halo of circling energy around it as they were slowly consumed, a perverted sun to illuminate a nightmarish scene that became even worse when the dark waves of beasts finally crashed. Shadows or not, their claws and teeth found purchase and in an cacophony of movement, sound and severed limbs they fell upon each other. Bloodthirsty howls gave way to screams of pain and fear that were much too similar to the cries of the living. Bile rose in my throat when I remembered that everything I saw was made from the souls of the damned, the abominations that tore each other to shreds were just another extension of the realm itself. I was actually watching warped and chained essences of mortals rip each other apart in a living hell. They most likely couldn’t even die in here and would return to the stone only to be harvested again and again, fuel for a pointless war. Pity and fury were raging through my chest and I was on the verge of abandoning all caution and descend upon the grizzly scene as an angel of wrath but the jackal head, Seth, suddenly spoke.
A deep, masculine voice sounded across the hellish spectacle and with it went my last spark of hope that I might get out of here without a fight to the death, slim as it had been:
“Come then, brothers, mother, the reckoning is neigh. Today will see one of us free.”
The swirls of energy that circled around Seth vanished to reveal a man underneath, clothed in a blood red robe and larger than life. He towered over the chaos and his words were filled with enough menace to give even the mindless creatures spawned form the shadows pause.
“Even though you will die in here when I absorb our prison, the world will remember your names. I’ll carve them into its visage in bloody letters, so make the last chapter of your story one worth telling! Let us dance one more time.” Ancient, powerful and still bantering. Some things just never changed.
As if they had heard my thoughts, the others didn’t bother with a reply. They vanished into thin air and just as their creatures reached each other, tearing, ripping and biting, they appeared again, surrounding Seth in a constellation that seemed awfully familiar. Horus and Sobek ready to attack while Isis remained a step behind, regret and worry clearly written all over her beautiful face.
For the moment no one was paying attention to me, the monsters the citadels had spawned where busy killing one another and the Fallen were engaged in their own little piece of melodrama. Adrenaline pulsed through me with every beat of my heart, demanding that I should join the fray and finally have an outlet for the repressed anger that had been building up since I had entered this place. But I wouldn’t. The longer they were busy fighting against each other, the less time they’d have to get past me and through the gate. Frustrated and anxious I resigned myself to waiting but then an idea struck me. I assumed they hadn’t seen me yet, at first I had been hidden by the blinding lights and now they were much to occupied to pay attention to their surroundings.
Presumably they had spent centuries fighting, the scars they had left on the landscape still clearly visible, and had reached some kind of stalemate, unable to permanently harm each other in a realm that had become their dominion. Maybe, just maybe, Isis didn’t want that to change, the reason for her worries a future where her children would finally be able to kill each other. I had no clue how their relationships actually worked, considering that they hadn’t been born in the literal sense and that the legend Viyara had told me painted a slightly different picture, but Seth had called them brothers and mother. To them, at least, they were one big, happy family.
If there was one thing I was sure of, it’d be that a mother would always do anything in her power to protect her children, whatever the cost. Admittedly, considering who they were and Shassa’s warning that they couldn’t be reasoned with, I might just as well be dead wrong, but that’d just mean that I’d have to fight them sooner, rather than later. If I could reach out to Isis, there’d be two possibilities. One, she’d point in my direction and say something along the lines of “kill the intruder”, or two, she’d actually listen. There were three problems, though. I didn’t have a clue how I could reach her without being spotted, I wasn’t exactly inconspicuous, I hadn’t the foggiest what I could actually offer that would be enticing enough to help me and I would be gambling with the time their conflict gained me.
Every instinct screamed at me that the risk was worth it, that I could reach her now, at this very moment. Her sons were making ready to fight before her eyes, their intention clear: who ever got out first would make sure the other side wasn’t going to leave, ever. But what would I even want her to do? Fight by my side while I prevented her family from leaving? If I was right, she’d possibly be inclined to do so to save all of them. I just had to make her see it that way and I had to hurry. If my conjectures were right, Seth, Horus and Sobek would soon make a dash for the archway, determined to get through first. And there it was, a chance.
Assuming they fought each other tooth and nail on the way here, I could maybe use that to reach Isis. With my teleportation I could move incredibly fast, even across larger distances, and hopefully they’d be too busy to slip through the gate before I could return. Otherwise I’d be in a whole new world of trouble. The ringing cry of a hawk cut my deliberations short, Horus was taking to the air, a deadly, golden copis in his hand. I had to make a decision. Now.