Halari waved to Asha Bellit and her family as she passed them on the way to her garage. There was a bit more respect in their eyes and postures, even some admiration to their calls of greeting. The twins mimicked their parents with same enthusiasm, although she figured that was more of a general happiness to see a friendly face.

Word had spread fast through Stargazer’s Quarry; it was hard to miss the carcass of a cragbeast being dragged through the streets while hitched to a trawler. She’d spent the rest of the day recounting her experience and fending off questions.

‘Lucky shot’ and ‘some good backup’ were a couple of phrases she never wanted to say again, at least for a while. The people also began talking about Callan more. She’d heard more than a few whispers, especially when he accidentally began to carry the massive beast into Bear’s shop on his own.

“Halari!” Asha called, waving her over. “Hold on a sec.”

“What’s going on?” Halari asked, stepping up to their fence and giving the shorter twin a pat on the head. Asha was a young, lean woman, fair but pinkened from her longer times in the sun-glare for her lot farm. Her hair, a pale brown with violet streaks, was tied back in a utility knot.

“You’re going to your garage right?” Asha asked, looking warily to the building. “That… man is in there. And uh, there’s some weird noises and lights coming from inside.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s nothing,” Halari said quickly with a disarming grin. “I’ve been showing him how to weld.”

“With a red torch?” Asha pressed. “And really loudly sometimes?”

What the hell are you doing in there, Callan? Halari thought, grimacing. “He’s… still getting the hang of it.”

“Halari,” Asha said softly. “The cragbeast, your Vault raid, the rumors. What’s really going on?”

Halari sighed quietly. “I can’t explain right now, but soon, I think. Trust me, please.”

Asha stared at her for an uncomfortably long moment. It was hard to really get anything by her due to her kids being a particularly mischievous duo, but she and Halari had always been on good terms. Would that hold now?

“It better be a damn good explanation,” Asha said with a light shake of her head.

“Bad word, mada!” the taller twin accused. “Put a bud in the jar!”

Halari giggled, then waved Asha goodbye and finished her trek to the garage. She leaned against the metal rolling door and listened. There was nothing for a moment, then a series of sharp crackles and other sounds of electricity going haywire, then harsh muttering and a loud thump.

She rolled the door up and open to see Callan standing over her worktable, fists planted on its surface as if he’d just struck it.

“You’re not wrecking my garage, are you?” Halari asked, stepping inside and rolling the door shut behind her. “I traded hard for this equipment.”

“I’ve got it contained,” Callan said, turning to her with a small, sad smirk. “Only cosmetic damage, I swear.”

She arched a brow at him. “And what exactly are you doing that’s making this cosmetic damage to my garage?”

Callan held out both hands in front of him, palms facing each other, then stared at the empty space between them. Halari watched curiously as his eyes began to glow faintly, but steadily.

“Whoa!” she yelped, flinching back as the first couple arcs of crimson-purple lightning flicked from his fingertips to the center of the gap between his hands. “What’re you doing?”

Callan said nothing, just focused on his task. The lightning sparked and flashed, hissed and crackled. And at the center, a small, dark mass began to form. Halari squinted at the shape.

Is that a cloud? She took another step back. The storm cloud swirled as it grew like it was pinched at both vertical ends and stretched until Callan had a bar of stormy matter hovering between his palms. His lightning intensified, sparking more frequently, building a charge in the air that grew and grew, surrounding her and making her hair fray with static power.

Then it imploded.

With a burst of arcing sparks, the storming pillar at the center of his hands collapsed on itself and the red-amethyst lightning stopped shooting from his fingers.

“And that…” Callan said, deflating, “is as much as I can get.”

“What was that?” Halari asked, stepping closer now that the tempest had died away.

“During the fight with the cragbeast,” Callan said, “I tried to summon my weapon to fight. Only I couldn’t. The Stormspace wouldn’t open for me.” He slumped against the worktable.

“Stormspace?” Halari asked.

“A type of… storage for the Flames,” Callan explained. “Part of Melokon’s being where we can put the icons of our power. My weapon, armor, and some other possessions are all trapped there because I’m…” He grimaced and trailed off with an uncomfortable look in his serpentine eyes.

“You’re what?” Halari pressed, coming to lean on the table beside him.

He didn’t look at her, instead he stared at some point far away, head cocked as if hearing something that only spoke to him.

He’s spacing out, Halari realized. She prepared herself to snap him out of his own mind again; it had been pretty easy to realize that without some kind of rope back to reality, Callan might fall back into the emotional void she’d found him in. She raised one hand to shake him gently, but he came back just before she made contact.

“I’ve been diminished, Halari,” he said, blinking back to her and the real world. “You’ve managed to unearth a broken demigod. I don’t know how much help I’ll actually be.”

“How did it happen?” she asked. “Did you get hurt when they imprisoned you?"

Callan shook his head. “My abilities… they’re like a muscle I have to exercise. So centuries, millennia of disuse plus the power passively burning itself to keep me alive in that airless cage… I’ve atrophied. Badly.”

“Is there any way to fix the damage?” Halari asked, putting her hand on his shoulder anyways. No need for him to slide if she could help it.

“They might return to me over time,” Callan said, meeting her eyes. “But without a massive intake of the Great Dragon's power, I doubt I’ll ever fully recover.”

“Well maybe the priests will know how to help,” Halari said. “That’s why I came to get you, actually. Their presentation is ready.”

“I doubt they can help,” Callan said, standing up straight. “But it’ll be good to catch up on what I missed. Oh, and just how much should I discomfort them for you?”

“As much as possible,” Halari said with a soft grin. The thought of them cowering just for the sake of groveling was already really funny. “They deserve to get some of what they gave to us for years.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Before the main gate of the Center, the Melokide priests stood primly at the foot of the steps, waiting like whipped little dogs for their lord to speak to them.

Look at the little wasterats, Halari mused. Begging the smoghawk not to eat them. She tried not to take pleasure in seeing them so abashed after years of dealing with their pompous bullshit.

She failed, letting a little smirk slip onto her mouth as she and Callan stopped before them. Even a couple steps below them, his presence towered over the priests.

“O G-great Flame,” Kelot greeted, bowing so low that Halari hoped his spine would snap. “We w-welcome you to our grand temple.”

Callan looked the building up and down. “My prison… was an observatory.”

A what? Halari wondered, eyeing the structure as well.

“Y-yes, Great Flame.” The priest hurried to agree, and Halari’s smirk was joined by an eye roll. “This sacred site was built by the daughter of King Jomen and Queen Bayola as a way to study potential paths for the Departure.”

Callan’s eyebrows rose. “James and Byeol… had a kid?”

Are those their real names? Halari recorded those to memory, pleased to already be off to such a fruitful start. In just a single question, she learned more than the entire Quarry had in a thousand years.

“My lord, please.” The priest clasped his hands together like he did when chastising a rowdy child during a public gathering. “The true names of your brethren are a sensitive piece of legendary history…” His slithery eyes flicked to her. “Not for the ears of some so… mundane.”

Callan stepped up to be level with the priest, who shrunk immediately. His black-robed goons flinched away as well.

Halari restrained a giggle at their fear. It really was so sickly entertaining to watch them grovel.

“Do you have something for me?” Callan asked, staring intensely down at the lead priest. Those snakelike pupils of his were a bit menacing when he wanted them to be.

“Y-yes, Great Flame,” the priest said, waving towards the temple. “Inside, we have a presentation of assorted historical events that deserve your scrutiny. If we could humbly petition you to leave your…” Again, he glanced at her. “…aide outside we can begin.”

“No,” Callan said. “My liberator will be coming will be with me to see the truth about her history.”

“My lord, I have to protest!” The priest, in a move that Halari gave him credit for bravery, actually took on an indignant posture in front of his religion’s Antagonist character. “The last order of King James was that the history of the world be kept under the most dedicated guard.”

“You were ordered to lie,” Callan said, leaning forward, “out of selfish fear of retribution.” He stepped closer and clasped his hands behind his back. “And as the First Blessed of Melokon, I relinquish you of responsibility. Under my authority, I will decide what the people get to know.”

Halari felt a thrill. She was going to get real answers about the past. Not religious bullshit or platitudes, or vague proverbs from the gods.

Real history.

The lead priest balked under Callan’s weighted stare. “Of course, Great Flame, of course. Please, you and your liberator honor us with your attention.”

Callan turned to Halari. “Are you ready to learn the truth about your world?”

“Hell yeah,” Halari said, walking up the steps. She patted the priest on the shoulder as she passed and gave him a shit-eating grin. He visibly grimaced, which made it all the more satisfying to her.

The priests led them inside. Only Halari saw Callan eye the secret elevator to his prison. Only she saw him take a single shuffling step away from it as they went around.

Five days of freedom isn’t nearly enough to recover. Halari offered him a reassuring grin. “You alright?”

“Yeah,” he said softy, only so she could hear. “Just…” He trailed off.

“I understand,” she said. “You’ll never be trapped in there again.”

Callan nodded but said nothing, eyes shadowed and distant.

In the dark, she thought sadly. He was still in that dark hole where they left him for centuries. He wasn’t seeing her, or the building interior. He was seeing the chain connecting him to hundreds of lifetimes in that tomb.

“Right this way, honored guests.” The lead priest pulled them into a larger room filled with a couple rows of chairs in front of a wide screen. “Please, pick a seat for your comfort.”

Halari sat next to Callan in the center of the array of chairs. They were cushioned and comfortable, allowing her to relax deeper than she could in her own bed.

The lead priest walked towards the front to stand just under the large screen. He waved to somebody behind them, and thescreen lit up as blank white screen except for the black dragon icon of the Melokide sect.

“These records,” the lead priest began, “are the sacred histories ordered by King James of the Southern Dominion to be protected by our sect for as long as the world stands.”

“Why?” Halari asked. “Why can’t you just tell us this stuff?”

The priest just stared at her blankly.

“Answer her, priest.” Callan propped his head on his fist. He already looked bored from all this inconvenient religious politicking. “I absolve you of your sins.”

“King James ordered it,” he said. “It was his last order. He didn’t tell the Sect why.”

“So that the people he abandoned wouldn’t chase him,” Callan said. “Keep the truth locked away, make the Flames out to be all-benign, and the people won’t pursue them for revenge. He always was clever like that."

“Why not just destroy the histories?” That felt like the safest option to her. Just get rid of them all and never risk the people discovering it.

“So the Sect never forgets,” Kelot said, smiling proudly. “Recorded history provides the foundation for truth. Each new member is shown the records so that they understand the exact mission and desires of the old Flames. Because of this, our principles and devotion have not deviated in two millennia.”

“Fantastic,” Halari sighed with an even heavier roll of her eyes. “So you’ve always been frustrating pricks.”

Callan chuckled. “Begin the presentation, priest.” He impatiently waved for him to get on with the show.

“We’ll begin with right after your death— or imprisonment,” Kelot began, lips pulled in an unpleasant grin. He snapped his fingers and the screen flipped to show a selection of newspaper headlines. All read something like ‘Traitor King Defeated’ or ‘Tyrant Callan Brought Down.’ “King James began a series of misinformation to announce your death and took over the Northern Dominion. Due to overextension and potent dissidence, he quickly pulled out of the North. Leaderless and economically destroyed, the Dominion fell apart.”

“Wait.” Callan sat up and glared at the screen. “James just up and pulled out of the North?”

“Yes,” Kelot said flatly. “For thirty years, it became a disorganized warzone which became a collection of warring city-states.”

The screen flicked to an old map of the region and showed dots depicting centers of civilization. Halari spotted Atara, or Atlanta as Callan called it, near the bottom right corner just above the strangely inappropriate-looking landmass that extended downward.

“What’s that thing?” Halari pointed to the area.

“Florida,” Callan said.

That meant absolutely nothing to her.

“The Northern Dominion was saved,” Kelot continued, “by the daughter of James, Queen Kalia.” Another screen, this time showing a beautiful woman standing before a cheering crowd. “She collected the city-states under one flag…”

Halari sat engrossed for the rest of the speech. It was long, but as the screen turned black, she felt completely satisfied.

Enlightened.

Enraged.

The ruined sky? An after effect of hundreds of nuclear warheads during the Obsidian Empire’s first, and last, Civil War. It started when the Twin Flames Cheramin and Kelerel tried to take over the whole planet, only relenting for an effort to fix their mistakes when it was already far, far too late.

The Departure of the Flames? An emergency evacuation as the world began to die. There was even footage of the Visionary, James himself, giving the order to an unknown cameraman to keep the duties of the Sect true. He was not as glorious as the statues depicted, more of a pale, aquiline man with tired eyes.

The people left behind? Halari ground her teeth at the revelation that King James really had taken the best, the richest, the brightest and left the rest behind to die in nuclear fire or radiation poisoning or live in the wastes that remained. She watched the selected peoples pile into massive skyboats straight from legend, which then took off, never to return.

“And those, Great Flame,” Kelon finished, dropping his third bottle of water into a waste bin, “are the highlights of your absence.”

Halari glanced at Callan, keeping her anger in check for his sake.

He looked dead inside.

He’d went through a range of expressions through the presentation from despaired to downright horrified until landing on this empty, forsaken look.

Is he hiding his wrath too? she wondered. For my sake? “Callan?” She tapped him gently on the elbow. His empty eyes flicked to her and grew sad, as if she reminded him exactly how much been ruined. “Are you okay?”

“No,” he said, not looking away from her. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. They did everything wrong.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “This has gotta be painful to see.”

They sat together in silence for a moment, Halari stewing with the context of her new world of truths, Callan looking like somebody just ran over his favorite pet with a trawler.

“We need to discuss what to tell your people,” Callan said.

It’s time, she realized. For everything. Despite it all, even Callan being diminished in power, Halari believed. He could make it right, he had to. All the people needed was a person to rally behind, to look up to who in the fights to come, and who better to do that than a returned Blessed Flame? They would need convincing of course, seeing as how they would think him the Villain...

Halari nodded vigorously in agreement with Callan’s words. “I might have an idea.”