Chapter 8 - Objective

When he was young, Lazar used to experience a lot of nightmares. He would wake up thrashing and screaming, but he could never remember exactly what they were of. In the end it didn’t matter; his dreams had disturbed the manor too many times, and after enough corrections, he learned to sleep completely still. That didn’t stop his mind, though, nor did it prevent the faint whispers and images left lingering in the morning. Ghostly impressions of something just out of reach.

He blinked his eyes open.

Slowly, Lazar sat up. He felt a faint aching in his limbs, and as he made to stand and begin his morning regimen, a sharp sting in his leg forced him to pause. He pressed a hand against the wall to steady himself, feeling the dampness of rough stone against his bandaged hands, and remembered.

His grip on the wall loosened and he sank back down. His gaze wandered to the cave entrance, taking in the exterior numbly.

It was hard to tell time in the Abyss. The swirling red sky never changed, always a deep crimson, and the constancy of the surroundings made the place seem ephemeral in a different way than Elysium.

There would be no morning training regimen that day. No compiling assignments and tasks, no patrol rounds and no breakfast to deliver from the kitchens through white marble halls.

Lazar wondered if he was going insane.

He didn’t know how else to explain what had happened, how to justify it.

He forced himself to rise and study his wounds, just to give himself something to do. The ones on his hands were much better than the day before, he noted clinically, though they still weren’t fully healed. He rewrapped them and moved on.

The gash on his leg, similarly, had stopped bleeding. The skin around the wound remained tender, dried blood crusted over its surface. He cleaned the area and wound a freshly torn scrap of fabric around it. Based on what he knew about humans and the current state of his wounds, it seemed he still healed faster than ordinary humans did, but it was nowhere near as quickly as a true seraph.

Lazar’s hands fell around his halberd. He raised it experimentally and took a few swings as wide as he dared to in the enclosed space. The exhaustion was no longer as present, reduced to a dull constant ache rather than the all consuming force it had been the day before.

The halberd still felt too heavy.

He frowned and closed his eyes. That made sense, he reasoned. Part of his strength had come from essence manipulation, which was no longer possible for him to do. He set the weapon back down and took a deep breath. Slowly, he peeled back his collar to look at the marking.

It appeared the same as it had the day before, inky lines just as harsh and jagged. Lazar frowned. He remembered missions with Julius, seeing fallen who had similar markings running all along their bodies and climbing up their limbs as they were slowly consumed. He remembered one man, backed into a corner and shrinking away as they approached. He’d witnessed the dark lines climb up to his face, and then the tear had opened and he was dragged into the Void. That had been one of Julius’s first assignments, and after that one, he was much faster to cast fallen into the Abyss.

The speed of the mark’s progress seemed dependent on how damaged the soul was during the fall and what the nature of the damage was. The fact that the mark was the same size as the night before was, at least, a good sign. Lazar had heard stories of fallen reported to Elysium who were dragged into the Void almost immediately, a tear opening up in space long before a seraph could get to them and cast them into the Abyss in time.

Lazar straightened his clothes again and took a deep breath, inhaling and exhaling while he counted in his head. He slowed the pace of the numbers and matched his breaths to their speed. Someone had taught him the trick a long time ago, when he was young and seemed on the constant brink of panic. He couldn’t remember who it was. He wished he did.

It felt wrong, to sit there. His muscles thrummed with inactivity. He’d followed the same routine for almost his entire life, and in the span of a single day, they and everything else he’d ever known were gone.

A sudden thought rose unbidden to the surface. It was inevitable that he would be dragged into the Void like every other fallen, that he would come face to face with the Oblivion before his soul was erased from existence. Why had he bothered wrapping his wound, then? Why had he fought that demon so desperately?

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No, he couldn’t let himself walk further down that trail of thought. Think about actions, he reminded himself. Concentrate on what can be done in the present.

Lazar needed to give himself an objective, something he could throw himself at and work towards. He understood those. He knew how to handle them, how to act.

The fallen seraph glanced outside where, from his limited vantage point, the barren field and distant mountains looked the same as before. The clouds roiled just as violently, and he remembered the glimpse of light, that pillar extending towards the heavens to the higher realms.

Lazar paused, considering, and he instinctively focused on his fractured soul, so much more hollow with its layers stripped away and unable to house the already limited essence of the Abyss.

He gripped his cloak. Seraphs were naturally born with strong souls. They could perform magic innately and pass between planes with ease. But for beings born to the lower realms like humans and demons, ascension required more effort. They had to build up the strength of their soul until they were strong enough to step into that pillar of light. If they failed, if they tried to ascend prematurely, then the increased density of essence in the higher realms would crush them, and the damage was often enough for them to fall.

The study of magic was a common means to that end. Magic involved essence manipulation, drawing it temporarily into the soul before casting it out as a spell. Consistent practice with magic would naturally build up the soul’s strength and resistance to essence. Many great human mages had dedicated themselves to the craft, often with the purpose of ascending.

Lazar focused on his own soul again. The rite had reduced it down to only its core layer, and even now it felt weak and exposed. Before, he’d constantly been able to feel essence around it, to feel the wind flowing around. It was silent now. His soul was currently probably around the strength of an average native demon’s who hadn’t developed their soul at all, perhaps a little stronger.

He’d never heard of it being done before. He didn’t know if it was possible. But if demons could build up the strength of their soul to the point of ascending up the realms, then why, he wondered, couldn’t a fallen do the same?

It would be difficult, he knew. He was on a time limit, and he’d heard from the few humans who’d made it to Elysium that the process of ascension often took a lifetime. He didn’t have a lifetime, but he did still have the instincts and knowledge from his time as a seraph.

The stillness of the air was more prominent than ever. Humans didn’t perform magic the same way that the beings of Elysium did. He was now closer to them than he was to seraphs, and he, too, would have to start from the ground up.

If any of the other seraphs were there, they would surely ridicule him. A seraph having to learn how to use magic? The idea was ridiculous. Lazar suddenly wondered if anyone else knew about him falling. Had Julius and the other guardians announced it? Would anyone care?

The longer he thought about the potential answer to that question, the more uncomfortable he grew. Lazar shifted his weight and shook the thoughts away. Focus, he told himself, and the voice sounded an awful lot like Lord Andire’s.

Lazar didn’t know if it would be enough. He didn’t make it a habit to hope for things. But it was something, a tangible goal to aim towards and carry him forward. A promise, however unlikely, at closure, to finally receive answers, for things to make sense.

A chance to return home.

A chance, a small voice in his head whispered, to learn the truth of why Julius had betrayed him.

Lazar grabbed his halberd and rose. He carefully made his way to the cave entrance, crouching down and taking a moment to assess the surroundings.

The landscape remained barren and sharp, those odd rock formations rising in harsh, crooked silhouettes that gleamed like blades when the stormy red sky shifted enough for some of the realm gate’s light to hit them. His eyes shifted, and he paused. It was subtle, but some of the quivering mounds dotting the field now glowed faintly, several emitting a soft, icy light. Lazar’s grip on his halberd tightened.

The realm gate was located just on the other side of the mountain range, so he would have to cross the field. Getting there would be his first objective. Once he was closer to the realm gate, he could work on building up his soul’s strength again. The Abyss was mostly barren of essence, but the little that was available would be around the gate.

Lazar leaned a little further out of the cave entrance, peering at the distant cavern walls. Even his vision had diminished from the fall. Every color looked a little duller, and the world appeared flatter. As a seraph, he would’ve had no issue seeing far ahead, but currently, he could only make out what looked like a few different narrow paths winding up the steep cliff faces. Besides the cave entrances, many of which would likely lead to dead ends, they looked like the most clear way over the mountain range and closer to the center of the realm. He would have to be careful. It would probably be more and more densely populated the closer to the gate he went.

In the corner of his eye, another one of the mounds began to glow. Coming to a decision, Lazar dug the end of his halberd into the ground, using it to support his weight. His leg still stung a little, but it was easy to ignore compared to some of the injuries he’d received in the past. Especially now that he had a clear goal.

From here, it was more apparent than ever how narrow the cliff paths were. He’d never been afraid of heights before, but the lightness of his back was a reminder that things were different now.

Another mass began to glow, and Lazar could see its pulsing surface begin to vibrate more rapidly. He shook his head and hurried forward.

He had no interest in seeing what those quivering chunks became.