Year 8540. Salol - Veirn
GÍLA SENGHU
“And so, for the next year and a half, the Runemaster swept across the Vasileús’s lands and took over his armies and people, swaying them to his side with shows of force, indomitable od, and simply adhering to their weariness of a war of attrition,” the Bear Maiden said to the students as they cozied themselves by the fireplace of her room. It was time for the last part of the story that night, and their attention towards each word was unbreakable. Alden stood. “His undeniable resurrection from an undeniable death only added to his success. By the end of that period, he had taken the entirety of the Vasileús’s territories into his control.”
“What of Druyan?” Lu’Rorca asked.
“Through dignitary parties heralded by his most trusted advisors, no longer those under the employ of his mother, but those named Goka Tur and Demi Ney, his control extended east, and a good portion of the border territories belonged to him and him alone, including Terrebridge.”
“Why would Blackstone let him kill the Vasileús, though?” Pinnacle asked. “Was he not instrumental in the resurrection of the Gods, who they apparently needed as well?”
“The Vasileús was feeble, degraded, and no longer contributing to either war or plan towards the Gods’ rebirth. He was no longer needed, plain and simple.”
“And the Vasile?”
“Never found. Blackstone would not reveal where she had gone, despite the Runemaster’s insistence that they answer, and by year’s end, had given up the search for her in the territories that he controlled. For all he could tell, she had either fled into Tahrir, north in Veoris, or south in the Dioúksis’s lands. Eventually, with his army organized and disciplined under fear, awe, and compulsion, the Runemaster set his sights on Amphe and began to march. But that...is not the event we are covering just yet.”
“What is?” Conalath asked.
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Within the central chamber of the top floor of the Brass Tower did they stand, regal and infinite. Their face was impassive, hands crossed in front of their pelvis as they examined the decor, clothes resembling a Caicon aristocrat long at sea. Outside, a storm raged with the power of a thousand lost deities, ivory black lightning crackling between clouds of soot, ash, and timber from a hundred colonies in the wasteland now being erased by their very presence. “A Heaven lost—darkness filled, and rust covered,” they noted in a voice of timeless passage and immediate presence. “Failure is your masterpiece.”
“You...” a voice like rusted pipes cracked and wheezed from a shadowed corner of the room beneath piles of rusted spikes and dented metal plates. It shifted with the weight of something frail and small underneath it, hiding like an imp. “You...not you.”
They kept their gaze from that pile, focusing it instead on the desk just out of reach. On it rested journals, bronze-encased novels, and maps of lands that no longer existed. The parting words, memoirs, and resting places of those who wanted to live and had called on him. “Aedol, God of the Lost. Patron of Exiles. Joy, you must feel to speak to one that can comprehend your words.”
“I would rather speak to those who seize and die upon hearing me.”
Time chuckled and ran their palm over the surface of the table. Grainy texture greeted them in dust, a trail formed from their clearing of it. It had once been a very finely crafted piece of furniture. Now, it was reduced to a stand for memories no longer remembered. “Far has the spirit fallen then.”
“What do you know of fallen spirit?” the voice spat from the pile. It shifted again from the movement of the hidden form within, spikes and plates clattering to the ground. Lightning struck the chamber window, cracking it, and thunder boomed through the brass walls. “You have endured nothing of what I have, Lam Av’an. Less so, now that you are freed from the bonds the Locks of Entropy forged to keep you entrapped forever.”
Time roamed around the table and traced their finger on one of the maps. It pointed to a kingdom of silver far to the west of Khirn, on a large landmass known as Khadzí. “Not forever, Aedol. Infinite does mine power extend. This was assured.”
“And yet, locked away you were,” the pile stated matter-of-factly, more of its pieces falling apart until the shape was seen, at least, huddled and shrouded in a cloak of black and white. Stars made of blood shone in the distance of its surface. Its voice was a thing of horrors to mortals, driving them mad, for they could not know its depths. They were never meant to. “Dreaming your dreams again and again in hopes that you would be freed, only to see countless cycles build around your prison over and over again. Still nothing compared to what I endured!”
Time moved away from the table and approached the window, staring into the storm and gazing through its blockage. Hundreds of monstrosities died in agony out in the wasteland, confused as to what was happening. But this was necessary. They could not be here for when the Gods returned. Aedol could not be here for when the Gods returned. Weak were his powers to Time, inadequate his words, but risky was his existence. It would spark questions. Incite war too early if those that he had killed remembered what he had done. “Alone for generations. Left with Kar'ult outside, hounding every movement. Unfortunate fate.”
“Do not think to pity me, Lam Av’an. I will not take it. Your kin still live, sleeping, or now start to wake in response to your audacity of freedom. And when they do wake, they will forget their previous mercy and will cut you down, and you will die once and for all.”
“Time cannot die, Aedol,” they said with a grin, turning away from the window.
Aedol rose from the corner, blood stars cascading larger to the surface like clots. “But my kin did. Is that fair, Lam Av’an? That I had to watch my brethren perish?”
Time pointed to Aedol and wagged their finger like a professor lecturing a student. A crack of lightning for emphasis, highlighting their right side with an absence of color. “A choice of the hands you were born with.”
The Patron of Exiles rushed with a flurry of shadows and clotted stars for Time, letting loose a screech of the most unholy make, shattering gizmos and gadgets he had stolen from the other in the Forge. Five feeble, bony fists that would have eradicated the flesh of a mortal connected with the jaw and chin of the being beyond all, shockwaves of power booming from each point of connection. Time sighed at the end of the series, tucking their arms behind their back and awaiting more. Aedol was glad to deliver, his cloak bursting like blood cells until all expanse of shadow was dripping red with crimson. Strike after strike beat down upon Time, one after the other, until the Patron was left on his knees choking and hacking, his burst of strength spent from the flurry.
“A choice...by your hands,” Time repeated, cocking their head to the side—smiling with sick glee at the pitiful sight. Emotion at last.
Aedol crawled away from the Lam Av’an, blood trailing after him from cloak and face as he willed himself toward his desk. Time trailed after him with a saunter. “No. No, your choice. Your machinations,” Aedol accused. “Deceiving me. Turning me against them and pulling the veil as the last of them died in that wasteland out there. You are why the world suffers.”
Time shook their head and looked away, lips parted in annoyance and grievance at that which they held absurd. A hand of incorporeal nature reached down from their mind, gripping Aedol by his leg and lifting him into the air. A waterfall of blood fell from him, and a lake pooled under him. “Held in a prison, one has no control over events,” Time declared in a hissing whisper of effeminate voice. “The death of the Gods, an event over which you had control.”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Aedol spat in their face, his own now on full display for them to see. Needle teeth gnashing with hate; eyes sunken and black; skin of antique brass ruined with scars and patches of sick and boils. “Typical of you. Refusing to accept the blame for your actions. Refusing to see that the pointless carnage wrought was by your hand. Now, after corrupting the humans into wanting to bring back my brethren that you killed, you bring back that beast to inflict more damage upon the surviving races of this world?”
The incorporeal hand threw Aedol across the room, crashing him down into a pile of blades, axes, and hammers from the time of the Puidoux Stek. Time giggled, lifting Aedol to throw him again, and again, and again. “Order shall he bring, as champion of a new Pantheon,” they said with a content clap of their hands as Aedol rolled to their feet.
The Patron sputtered, mouth half-toothless and nose crooked from the punishment. Black tears ran from his eyes to mingle with the red. “You could do the same if you knew your kin wouldn’t stop you,” he choked out. “But they would because they know you are insane.”
Time physically reached down and gripped Aedol by his neck, the smoke emanating from their face intensifying to a volcanic black. “Insane?”
Aedol cackled as he was lifted to meet Time’s gaze. “That you are just a marauder hell-bent on taking over this world, the pinnacle of your people, before moving on to the rest of the universe.”
Time spun around and threw Aedol to the ground, slamming him onto his back—not relinquishing the hold. They lifted him again. “You-”
Aedol spat once more in their face, the fluid chunky and grotesque and green. “You are just a barbarian, Lam Av’an.”
Another slam, and then another, repeated until Aedol’s echoing laugh stopped. The Lam Av’an stepped on the Patron’s arm as they held his throat and ripped. Aedol was silent in their grasp, left arm missing—stump pouring blood. “My charge is that of Time, and what happens is as is written in mine eyes. Including your death.”
No laughter. No fighting. Only the hate of his words and the accusations of crime. “Time. Time. You are not Time. No one controls Time, not even you! You are just the end of it—the destructor. No facet of Time would stand before me and not already be victorious.”
The Lam Av’an gripped Aedol’s right leg and tore it at the knee, leaving a shard of bone sticking and dangling tendons. The Patron refused to scream.
“You would already be at the end of the story, having won. No figure of Time would have been imprisoned for as long as you were; you would have broken free immediately.”
The same was done to the left leg. Blood spewed onto the Lam Av’an like geysers, coating them in its viscous promise.
Still no scream. “No figure of Time would have remained incapacitated and now rely on the actions of a human. No figure of Time would grant the Lam Na’hal to that human. You are a charlatan, a bully, a fake, a coward—a tyrant.”
Finally. Blackstone. Their veneer cracked to showcase a grave and grim smile that stretched from ear to ear. The smoke of black from the lines in their face shifted red and bleeding, fire crackling between the clouds in the air that it formed. Droplets of burning crimson fell to the old, metal floor. Suddenly, their form seemed much bulkier and made the room much more claustrophobic. “Oh, Aedol. A fool you are, a fool you always have been. Time is mine and always will be. I am infinite. Endless. I am all-encompassing.”
The laugh returned, broken with sorrow. “You are mad.”
Blackstone dropped Aedol onto the floor with uncaring lax, kicking the Patron in the side and stomach five times for good measure. Vomit spurted from the God’s swollen, split mouth. “I am serenity—the only one with the vision to see what must be done. My kin created a universe with me yet chose to do nothing of the chaos they brought!” The window shattered, fire and brimstone filling the room to scorch the Patron’s flesh crisp, sticking him with the shards of debris from those destroyed colonies. “We slept and dreamt and left our creations alone to swim against the current. I am the only one who remained awake, and they locked me away for it!”
Aedol tried to prop himself on his arms, but no amount of effort could surpass the damage done to his body. His time was coming to an end. And still did hate fall from his lips, refusing to beg. “They locked you away for what you did! What you proposed! What you were and what you are now!”
Blackstone snarled, sending another hard kick into Aedol that sent the Patron crashing into the desk. “What I was and what I am are no different! That has not changed. I am the one that will bring this universe to heel and stop the pointless carnage while my kin do nothing but sleep.”
“Do you not see that you will destroy countless in doing so?” Aedol questioned as he struggled to do anything from the wreckage of the desk crushed beneath his body. “Kill countless? Is that not pointless? You use Erik Apa for this goal.”
The tower's roof was sliced, completely removing it and baring the central chamber entirely to the elements of the wasteland engulfed in the ending storm. “It will bring ORDER to my kin’s indolence.”
Aedol had found the strength to crawl from the wreckage, his skin melted to muscle and bone, voice reduced to little more than a carried cry in the whipping winds as it echoed from the essence of his mind. “I should have killed the Runemaster when I saw him. I should have tried harder. I should have said more; broke his mind more. But this damned Tower...your damned influence...that never could have happened, could it? Just enough to get him where you needed him.”
Blackstone extended his arms out. From the grounds of flesh outside, a magma of void black burst to melt and burn. The tower began to crumble and lean from its base. “I needed him ready, and you readied him.”
Aedol’s body was little more than charcoal and bone, leaving trails of ash. “I weakened him to die. For you to bring him back.”
Blackstone gripped the Patron by his skull, lifting him into the air. “It was as written in the Time that I control.”
A whimper of fear. “You cannot do this, Lam Av’an. You will...the destruction-”
“Is nothing compared to what the universe suffers now.”
His body was broken and carried into the winds as the tower was destroyed in the heat of the magma. “You are not a savior, Lam Av’an. You are not your brethren.”
“You know nothing of them, God. You speak of that as if you know who they are. You are a relic, a mad dog hiding in scrap. What could you know of your creators who sleep and hide? Nothing.”
“I know enough that they will not agree with your plans. They never did, and they will fight you. They will not allow this. Even if you destroy this tower, the Heartforge roared one last time at their behest...you face Kin-chosen.”
“Perhaps...perhaps. And that is something I will have to live with when I kill them too...” Aedol’s skull was reduced to shards in Blackstone’s palm. “But you will not be around to see it.”
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“Blackstone killed Aedol?” Or’Demp squawked. “But...but what about...what?”
The Bear Maiden stoked the fire with a poker.
“No!” Pinnacle shouted, standing from the floor with a flush of red on her cheeks and anger in her voice. “Lady Senghu, I respect your word above all others, but this entire story has been...contradiction and misdirections!”
Conalath joined her in standing, arms crossed and eyes narrowed. “Yeah! Aedol cannot be dead yet because the Bishop killed him! He was instrumental to the plan by the Dioúksis, the Vasile, and the...the rest! Was that not true?”
“Children-” Gíla laughed softly.
“What the hell is going on, Lady Senghu?” Dracraes pressed, his question repeated by Kuragis and Mordo Skold.
“What about Jira and Orlantha and the rest seeing Aedol in the tower?” Nina Aulffe added. “He was a raging lunatic.”
Soon, the entire room was filled with incessant questions, refusing to let the Bear Maiden answer. Only Revenant remained quiet.
“Children!” Gíla shouted, suddenly quieting the room. “Please, let me answer in my way. If I just told you what happened as it happened, it wouldn’t be enjoyable, would it? Everything will make sense soon. Just wait. Sit down and enjoy the answers that you are given.”