"But back to the Aj. As Bubo returned with his tale, the Imminent pushed Ebon to seal the Gates." He paused here for long enough that his listeners grew restless, trying to decide which version of the story to tell. The One Tribes held Ebon as sacred and special as anyone in the Book so what he said next was crucial. When he finally decided, retelling the version that was told throughout the Book ever since left a bad taste in his mouth no amount of fruit wine could mask.
"Ebon finally relented and traveled from verse to verse, shattering the Gates even as the Aj flickered between them, killing indiscriminately. Several times the Aj nearly caught up to and killed her, but in the end she managed to close the last of the Gates. She ended up standing alone in the remote, desolate eternal twilight of the verse Sunset. For days she wept for the devastation visited on the Book she'd bound. Between the Kiss and the Aj, no verse was untouched and hundreds were lost or inaccessible. Beyond that, only a few Valeers existed and would always remain few for their slavanting kills nine of every ten it is attempted upon.
"Where menial and Dynast alike could once walk the Gates freely, the Vale would remain the path of but a few, easily controlled and out of reach for all but the most powerful, rich, or connected. Here, at the desperate tail end of the Saga, enter the Ascendant. Recognizing Ebon's deep sorrow and honoring her great sacrifices, the came upon her in the greatest of their churches in the verse of Sunset that would later become my own. From that church they took her to Ascend into their holy ranks."
He took a swig of wine and swished it around, hoping to cleanse the lie from his tongue. Even all these centuries later, the truth of what really happened there remained a bitter drought.
"Aj had tracked her to Sunset and trapped her inside the great temple of the Ascen. As she prepared to die in a final solo combat against it, the Ascendant are said to have descended on waves of golden sunlight riding carriages of pure gold pulled by chained gods, their faces too beautiful to look upon. Ebon protested, not wanting to leave her people, but they told her she could always talk to them through the Blind Priests who looked not upon the world but the fiery Heavens beyond the verses where the Ascendant dwelt. Thus she departed the Book forever."
The next bit he spoke with his eyes closed, unable to watch the tears of wonder and delight that the tale of their long-lost, sacred Ebon's finally reached completion. He would bring them more of the truth later, but for the moment the official tale would serve the purposes of their imminent crusade better.
"When Ebon departed, the Aj dropped to the lotus position and slept. In meditative slumber it remained in under the watchful care of myself and my legions. Then, after nearly six hundred years, it awoke mere months ago, destroyed my legions - over fifteen-thousand soldiers - in spite of all I'd done to prepare for it, and I barely escaped the carnage and made it here with my life."
That sank in hard. He watched a mix of horror, disbelief, and wonder slide across the One Tribe's faces. He could imagine what they were thinking: as potent a warrior as Inro had proved, what sort of being must the Aj be to single-handedly wipe out his legions and force him to flee?
"Yes. It is as terrible as you imagine. Its form shifts unexpectedly, one minute hard enough to chip steel and bend bronze, the next as insubstantial as smoke. When it moves it becomes a whisping blur, flickering among you and killing indiscriminately. There were no wounded for every blow pierced through to vitals or shattered the victim's spine or skull. Our first volley of a thousand arrows fell on it like rain, but not one shaft among those thousand found its mark. Half the initial charge of ten-thousand died in minutes and as the survivors fled it hunted them down one by one.
"No mortal weapons could touch it and those teams I'd equipped with weapons such as my shadowblade made from Night Geodes found only in the forbidden verse of Shade-" Arca leapt up at this to bring Inro his shadowblade along with his belt. Inro nodded, then continued as he belted it on "-all died in their attempts to assail it. I myself tried to approach but was once knocked away by a hurtling body, once half-buried in a building it collapsed with one shattering punch, and last yanked away right as I would have finally landed a killing-blow by one of my Ferals who feared I might die in the attempt.
"This tale must be told so you all know the sort of entity I strive to return to the Book to confront. I can only assume the Aj awoke again after all these years to finish what it started. If it acts as I believe it will, I it will not stop until the Book lies in ruins and everyone lies dead from the most broken slavant to the eldest Dynast. Though I ordered every known Thorn into Sunset to be severed, I can't know whether all the assigned teams succeeded or even if the Aj needs Thorns to travel. Before they existed, no one ever saw it use a Gate, so perhaps it knows the way through the Subterrrane, knows of Thorns we haven't discovered, or travels by some other means entirely."
Cairin stood, shaking her head. "This Aj seem like problem for Book, but One Tribe not in Book. Would Aj come here too?"
Stolen story; please report.
"We can't know," Inro said, shrugging. "No one knows why it started killing initially any more than why it stopped. Perhaps it seeks to destroy the Black Court and kill all the Dynasts. Perhaps is seeks genocide and won't rest until no human breathes. Perhaps it pursued some other end entirely and we would be safe remaining here."
Beside her, Arca rose, his expression grave. "Inro spend centuries in Sunset away from rest of Book. Why Inro and One Tribe return to protect if Black Court turn back on Inro? What if other Dynast kill Aj? Or hurt so when Aj come to One Tribe, fight comes against weakened foe?"
"Because it's not just about protecting the Book and its people. Because the end of Ebon's story I told you and what has been told for half-a-millennia in the Book is a lie. I was there so I know. I saw her last moments." Inro's breathing grew heavy and he began to sweat and shake as the still-vivid image rocked him.
The perpetual sunset that spilled through the cathedral's shattered doors. The uncountable bodies that lay sprawled lifelessly in the streets of the burning city as Aj had approached in that slow, inexorable way it had when it wasn't moving faster than the eye could follow. The refugees streaming from the temporary safety of the cathedral, their mouths wrapped in cloth to keep smoke and the White Kiss away. And the almost-casual way it had flickered from one to another, smiting them as remorselessly and trivially as if they were pesky insects.
Inro had hidden and watched as it slew the last remnant of Ebon's Feral Legion, watched as Ebon faced it with the last Aze Blade. Childish stories of the hero slaying the evil foe at the moment when all seemed lost had swelled inside him as she, for a moment, seemed to match its inhuman speed. Their fight had flashed and surged across the cathedral, bringing half of it down with the force and fury of their battle. But then, when it seemed like she might somehow prevail, Ebon had staggered, coughing a mist of white flecks fine as snow.
That moment had been all the Aj needed and, between heartbeats, it was there, the featureless, inky black substance of its hand driving like a spear into Ebon's chest. She had seemed to somehow spot the child Inro as she had collapsed, the eyes of the Mother of Dynasts meeting his in a silent plea.
As her eyes fluttered and her labored breaths ceased, the Aj had dropped down beside her. The radiant, piercing white of its eyes had dimmed as it sank into the lotus position in which it remained for centuries, immovable and indestructible against any mancer's art. Immune too against any artifact his half-brother Ocyl had been able find on his constant travels to the furthest reaches of the All while Inro had waged the Reconquest to rebind the scattered, scarred pages of the Book. All the while, the Aj had slept, unreachable by any slightest hint of justice or vengeance. Deep in his heart, Inro had spoken a reply to Ebon's final plea, a vow of vengeance that had steered his entire life since.
He came out of his reverie to someone gently shaking him.
As the past fell away, he struggled to remember where he was, even the woman's face and name before him become a flicker amid tens-of-thousands of life fires he'd walked among and watched die. Cairin was her name. Cairin his love, and Arca his brother-in-battle beyond. His people, the One Tribe, filling the amphitheater about them with worry and concern etched into every face.
After a few deep breaths, he found the end to his retelling. "Ebon wasn't carried into the Heavens by the Ascen, she was murdered by Aj. I watched it kill her; its final act of the time we call the Kiss before it settled down to sleep in Sunset. We go to the Book not just for conquest, but for vengeance."
The One Tribe rose up in an roar of rage and outrage, shouting vengeful vows of their own. Inro's eyes drifted to the Cave Dwellers where they conferred with Izbali. Apparently they'd heard enough, for they motioned for him to follow as they turned towards the wide cave mouth cracking the mountain face. To Ebon's first city. To the Gates.
He followed numbly, feeling strangely out of time; stuck halfway between the far past and the urgent present.
One element he left out of it all, as did the Ebon Saga itself. One part he'd kept as a secret even from Ocyl who still trusted them so implicitly; a trust which had driven a wedge between the brothers and eventually led Inro to his self-imposed isolation and exile on Sunset.
The Imminent had guided Ebon through all of it. Every step from Ebon's literal first steps as a child to her ascension as warchief and on as she united the people here in Origin all those thousands of years ago. They'd led her from her first step into the Subterrane through the crafting of the Gates and the discovery of immortality in the ever-shrouded dark of the Black Court. Walked before, beside, behind her until the end when they lured her to that shattered cathedral in Sunset to meet her doom.
Guided from birth to betrayal.
He hadn't walled himself off in Sunset merely to guard the Aj, but out of mistrust for the Imminent who steered the Dynasty to their every whim. He'd been certain the Imminent would betray them again as they had Ebon, his Sunset Legions held ready as much to fight back against them when they finally showed their hand as to fight the Aj when it awakened.
Ebon's gaze had met Inro's, but from there it turned to the blue-clad, unruffled Imminent advisor who had promised her mere hours before that she would triumph against the Aj there in Sunset. He would not, could not forget the look of hopelessness and shock on Ebon's face as she lay dying and met the Imminent's pale blue eyes. She'd reached for his hand as he had approached, but he had stepped over her to collect the Aze Blade, return it to is tarry sheath, and walked out into the burning, corpse-thick city outside without the slightest glance back to where Ebon - Inro's mother - lay dying.
After he found a way to stop the Aj, he'd purge whatever was left of the long-dwindling Imminent order to ensure they couldn't betray the Dynasty again.