Chapter 19: The Tears of Feos

Consciousness caught like embers in dry grass as Riley’s eyes snapped open.

“What happened?” With instinct alone driving her, she scanned around as her paws dug into the hard stone. The feeling of debris crunching beneath spread up through her toes as the world came into greater focus.

Tobias was lying prone on his back, laid out upon the stone. A long sigh escaped as a coughing fit seized him.

Sitting up, his eyes snapping open, he looked around.

“By the dead Gods...” The words dripped reverently from his lips as he rose as if movement was an afterthought, his eyes locked on the scene before him.

The cathedral-like space was a ruin, weathered by the ravages of time. The remnants of the stained glass windows littered the space and caught in the light of sheets of blue crystal, now exposed and pulsing dimly.

The lectern was gone, replaced by a broken throne-like chair, its wood decayed as if it had been a thousand years since it was whole.

Before them, in the center, a white crystal shaped like an 8-pointed star floated in the air, slowly lending light to the space, shining down like a spotlight over the skeleton of a man, surrounded by a strange yet now familiar geometric circle. At its center were the bony remains of a hawk, with a gray-bladed sword driven through it, puncturing the stone below.

“Holy shit, what did they do?” Riley shook her head, trying to clear the ringing in her ears as she dusted off her paws, alive with the feeling of pins and needles.

Slowly, her head tracked toward the center as if pulled by a strange gravity, her eyes going wide at the pulsing white crystal.

Something about it was compelling like it was a singularity for her interest, and she was caught well past its horizon.

The now familiar bracket appeared around it as words seemed to materialize in thin air beside it.

Tears of Feos, Deific Artifcat

Rank 0-0

The last vestiges of the knowledge and power of a murdered God, created by the sacrifice of their chosen, this crystal will allow you to transcend the Ashen school of magic and grow far beyond it, but not without cost.

Be warned that all knowledge comes at the death of all you think you know.

You will not escape its use unchanged.

“Don’t touch it!” Tobias shouted.

“Way ahead of you. Why’d they do that? Are they gone?” Riley looked up toward her sorcerer as anguish and confusion raced across their bond.

“I don’t know,” Tobias met her eyes, looking bewildered, “it was another desperate act.”

“I don’t know if it was desperate... exactly? I think I know where they were. When I was in our fight against Chadrick, he was trying to take me. There was a moment when everything suddenly got very clear and very simple. I knew what I had to do,” she replied, sitting on her haunches, regarding the floating crystal as if it was hanging in an art gallery.

“That kind of thinking led them here. Those are their bones; that’s his sword through her chest. Let’s all just take a minute,” Tobias said, holding up his hands and backing away.

As if mocking his prudence, the walls again shook, and dislodged bits of dust and sand fell from the ceiling as the subsonic growl returned.

Time Until Breach: 2 hrs, 6 minutes, 33 seconds.

“Well, we can’t take too long to decide,” Riley said, looking down at the stone.

“Decide? What is there to decide? I don’t want that to be us! We still don’t know if this is a trap! ” He pointed toward the skeletal remains as Riley wrenched her gaze from the floating artifact yet again.

Something in her spirit was singing of potential and possibility. Destiny sparked like electricity in the air.

“You’re afraid,” she said, her words distant. The words rang too true to be accusatory.

“Yes, I’d be a fool not to be. Spirits don’t just appear, have a hallmark moment, and then offer you forbidden power. Did you even read the prompt?” His chest was heaving, his emotions tense and panicked.

Riley felt it, surging like electricity across their bond, only enhancing the pins and needles that she felt at the tips of her paws.

“Huh...” She said, her voice a far-off echo.

“What’s come over you? You’re acting strange, ” Tobias stepped forward, going down on one knee, running a hand over her ears as he checked her over worriedly.

“I... I don’t know... There’s something here. There’s something going on inside of me. It’s singing to me. Here feel...” She pushed up into his hand and pushed everything within toward him, throwing open the doors of her thoughts.

A small, still voice drifted ephemerally between their bonded souls.

The path of fate is woven through this choice...

Riley, again with the choice of expending yourself for the benefit of others...

Tobias let out a long, ragged breath, “There’s a purpose to this, a path greater than we can know, and you can feel it, but do we trust that?”

“I don’t know, but I’ve felt like I’ve stood here ten thousand times and made the same choice every time. Something deep is telling me to go forward, ” Riley’s words came slowly as she scrutinized the stone, only for her focus to again lock onto the floating crystal.

“You’re acting strangely. I sense an odd kind of peace. Riley, what’s going on? Are you being manipulated?” Tobias worried, his gaze falling accusingly on the crystal.

“No, feel… You know I’m not holding anything back from you, but something is happening. I don’t feel hungry; it’s like there's a power to the crystal and more. Like, all of it, Venosimoor, the evil holodeck, this is just the aftermath, I think. Something is settling in like a knowing and understanding of things, of… of…” Her words caught.

“Of what? I can’t make sense of it, but I feel the pull,” Tobias wondered.

“Of me, like I know who I am deep down, even if I don’t remember everything. When I look at that thing, I don’t know how I know it, but I see the next step for both of us. Every particle of me says it’s the next step,” she explained, gleaning from his thoughts while sounding like an oracle.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Tobias scoffed.

Gently, she set a paw on his hand. "When has the truth ever done that? I love you, nerd boy. If we use it, we use it together. No unilateral choice, no greater good bullshit, no noble sacrifices. We know where that path leads, and I don’t want that for you,” Riley said as they both looked on at the remains of Utred and Mavora.

How had they gotten here? Underneath her misgivings, the sass, and the '80s pop culture references that echoed through her brain on repeat, Riley could feel something new growing, like the light of the crystal, was pushing her soul to bloom.

Riley shivered, “I don’t know what’s happening to me. Venosicipher was pounding on me, ya know? He kept reminding me I couldn’t remember the human girl’s name... I still can’t... but maybe I don’t need to. I’m not her, or OG Riley, or the Erkrandir. I’m me... I’m my own Riley. I don’t need my old life to define this one; it’s just a piece of who I’ve become.”

“And this is just coming up now?” Tobias challenged, his fear evident.

“Well, we just had this whole Hallmark movie thing going on distracting me, but no, this is not just coming up now. This has kind of been the whole thing since I got here, hasn’t it? Utred and Mavora, though, they knew who they were, and they chased it to the bitter end,” Riley said.

“And that’s exactly the problem; they died,” Tobias said, pointing out the truck-sized hole in her logic.

“And we’re going to die too, someday. Willa never expected that the day she met the Erkrandir was her last day, and neither did Riley. Run or stand, but one day, this life is going to end,” she replied.

Tobias’ eyes widened, “Willa?”

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“The human girl... Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Where did that come from?” Riley exclaimed, her ears reaching up like they were trying to hit the ceiling. “How do I just know that now?”

Tobias’ eyes fell on the crystal now, staring intently, “It’s helping you. "Somehow, you’re feeding off of it even now, but part of me wants to run from it.”

“It’s a valid choice. Take it from me; running from shit is one of my weird nature things,” Riley joked.

“Valid it may be, but it’s a coward's path that leads to a coward's fate,” Tobias turned, looking toward Riley, as Riley looked up at him.

“Together?” He asked.

“Until the end and beyond. I don’t think Utred and Mavora are gone; they're just no longer here. They burnt their anchor, but they’re free now because they chased their truth to the end. They lived it and died for it. Don’t ask me how I know, but I know,” Riley intoned.

“May we be so lucky,” he replied as he reached out and grabbed the Tears of Feos, kneeling down, holding it out, as Riley placed her paws upon it as well.

The prompt flared to life as a cacophonous boom, like a bomb dropping on the ruined cathedral, caused a small earthquake.

Time remaining toward breach has accelerated: 45 minutes 13 seconds remaining.

“Ooh, somebody’s pissed,” inwardly Riley grinned, sounding more like herself.

“Which could be a trap,” Tobias warned.

Do you wish to absorb the Tears of Feos? Y/N

“No matter what, I’m with you,” Riley said.

“It’s somehow helping you understand. Maybe it can help me, too,” Tobias replied.

Each projecting two boxes, one inside of the other, framed the “Y” as there was another explosion of white light.

“Oh God!” Riley screamed as tinnitus rocketed across, and the pain roared between their bond.

Pressure built to bursting as searing pain surged, as if roasting them both from the inside. A cacophonous wailing, like Hell's own choir, surged around them as her health bar began to blink, like a flickering lightning bug in a greater hurricane of pain and pulsing light.

Feelings of being torn apart and slammed back together echoed with ghoulish familiarity.

Warning: a deific shard is being incorporated... please stand by...

The prompt floated like an island of stability amidst a sea of tumbling chaos as she screeched and wailed in concert with Tobias.

Sudden numbness came with it a feeling of growing terror, swallowing her in an abyss of despair as all notions of time, place, or even being seemed further and further away, existence being compressed down until a tiny speck of a singularity.

A thought, drifting across the universe of their shared pain, echoed between them both.

Shard Incorporation 5 percent... Beginning upgrade...

A new bar, floating like a planet, appeared below the one showing Health, Mana, and Stamina, but it remained strangely empty, brimming with possibility, framed by a silver bar.

Its name flashed in under the other.

Mana Charge

“Tobias...” Riley's mental projection burned; the very thought of being a single being, of reaching that level of concentrated awareness, was torture as it rocketed across their bond.

“Riley...” a panicked, gasping punctuated his words like drumbeats.

Please stand by... Incorporation 40%.

A series of multicolored flashes, and then...

Blackness...

Whole, dark, and complete. Mutations of colors surged in strange nebula across the infinite dark until lights came up on a scene as if all of reality was a stage play.

The rose window reappeared, but Galdor on the left moved as the sound of shattering glass punctuated through their shared universe. Shards flew like missiles, whistling as they ripped through the infinite dark, as the pane for the God of Justice immolated just before the whole mosaic detonated.

Brother, what have you done? What have you done?!?

The words echoed like thunder across eternity as the shards coalesced and became molten, glowing like a new sun, giving light to the endless dark, while the sound of charging beasts and swords clanging competed with the screams of the victorious and the dying.

Slowly, the image began to reform into a wide rectangle...

Update... Incorporation of shard now at 85%

Their shared health bar ticked lower and lower still, but all was abstraction... Beyond fear and pain, there was the barest flicker of existence within the searing heat and endless cold.

There in the balance, as if their souls were on a forge, all was being made and unmade. Life and death, a mere triviality in the face of a wide-spanning eternity...

As the glass cooled, a new image appeared of Thirteen Gods, with one in a crystal torc at the center.

“Tobias...” She cried.

He remembered that name... It had been his once, long ago.

“Riley!” He replied.

She remembered that name. It had been hers once, long ago.

Their eyes snapped open; blood streaked down Riley’s fur, staining it black and slick. Her health bar was blinking so brightly it was practically screaming. The wetness seemed to come from everywhere: nose, ears, mouth...

Tobias was gasping, pale as a ghost, caked in his own blood, spread out in a mingled pool around him.

Riley, almost as if by instinct, reached for her power.

Celestial medic.

The healing spell rocketed out from around her as the bar blessedly stopped blinking, and her headache began to fade, only for the pain to rip back through her, stealing away half of what she had gained.

“Oh, that was stupid,” she groaned as her world pulsed.

“Potion…” Tobias pulled at their inventory, only for it to drop again. Still, two appeared before them.

Pulling himself up to a sitting position, he pulled Riley into his lap, her form lip and her breathing ragged, “Easy, easy,”

He wrenched out the cork with his teeth. It tumbled from his lips. Some spilled over her fur as he worked it into her mouth beside her front teeth.

She coughed and sputtered as her eyes flitted open as he downed his own.

Gradually, the world came back to sense.

The skeletons of Utred and Mavora were still there. The sword still stuck up from the stone floor, but the space was otherwise reforged.

It was again the quiet sanctuary, but now the windows above showed scenes from their own life. There was Cid, leading them through the forests, and in the next pane, their battle with the antlions.

“All of our greatest hits... but wow! Tobias, look at that!” Riley pointed her paw, which still dripped with blood, flinging droplets across the stone.

“Riley... Ow... I... Just a minute...” He gasped as her focus drew his own.

The central window now showed the 13 gods, with Galdor at the center.

Beneath it was a black dragon, its eyes red with rage and its maw open, ready to devour all of them, with Calaria dangling like a Christmas ornament between the two.