PROLOGUE
Squinting against the raging downpour, all Lyla can see in any direction is open water coupled with an overcast sky of towering dark clouds. She is blinded by the flashes of white lighting and deafened by the following rumbles of thunder. She struggles to see any sign of land or any signifier at all to indicate where she is or how she got here. She doubts a lake this large exists in the entire world, but that would mean she is somehow in the middle of the ocean, and that has to be nearly as implausible.
Two realizations come to her, the first being that Lyla is suspended high in the air by seemingly nothing, and by all rights should be plummeting to the sea below, which she imagines might as well be stone from this distance. The third realization that dawns on her is the most unnerving, which is pretty impressive considering her current situation. Lyla does not seem to really have any physical body. In fact she vaguely gets the perception that she is a cloud, but much smaller and less angry than the ones above her. She begins to accept that she must have died in her sleep and this is to be her eternal existence (whether she was in heaven or hell, she kind of expected more), when a small hole begins to form in the overcast sky. Light breaks the cloud line and she moves her gaze to its endpoint a ways in front of her. There she notices the lone obstruction in the otherwise uninterrupted ocean sight lines, a large rock jutting from the sea with a flat top. How had she missed that?
As she continues staring she feels herself moving closer to the rock, or perhaps it’s moving closer to her; it is hard to tell being a cloud like this. The movement stops as Lyla looks down onto the rocky pillar from above and sees a woman laying on the flat top. Light envelopes the woman and the rock, with no rain passing into it as though it is a shield from the outer elements. The woman is writhing and contorting her body in sickening jerky movements. Iron gauntlets cover her forearms and shins, each connected to multiple chains that wrap around the rock extending into the sea. Lyla can not see where or what the chains are secured to, it must be something, somewhere under the water. She supposes she could swim down following the chains, or maybe she can just break off a piece of the rock and use it to break the links near the gauntlets. But a cloud can’t swim and even if it could lift a rock, there is a low chance she could use a piece of stone to break iron as thick as that which binds the woman. So Lyla watches, she doesn’t see anything else to do.
The woman fights against the massive iron cuffs and chains that secure her to the rock. They rattle and she’s able to rise maybe a foot off the rock before the bindings hit the limit and she collapses back. She continues thrashing as fast and hard as she can manage, though she does not seem to be making any impact on her prison. The stream of light glows brighter in a flash that forces Lyla to turn her head and avert her eyes. As she blinks the scene back into view there is a large bird descending in slow loping circles from the opening in the clouds. She looks down at the woman who continues to struggle, a sickly dark crimson patch slowly growing beneath her as she fights. A piercing CAW-CAW fills the air as the bird approaches. Lyla’s stomach churns as wailing begins to accompany the screeching. Thunder claps, the air shakes, and Lyla wants to add her own screams to the mix, despite being quite utterly confused. The light grows brighter as the bird lands on the rock. Lyla finds herself moved, and the woman now a little over a meter away lies silent and still.
The dark brown raptor stands statue still behind the woman’s head, as though staring at something in the distance through Lyla. After a moment, the predator cocks its head quickly and then stands upright, like a soldier at attention. From here Lyla can see the woman trembling and the tears streaming down her face, but the wailing and thunder has been replaced with a roaring silence. With a whisper clear as the day, the woman lets out in a trembling voice, “I see you.” The bird gives a puncturing screech and plunges its head down at the restrained woman’s face. The hooked beak finds resistance as it wrenches her left eye from its socket one sickening pull after another. The woman grunts and sobs through the clearly agonizing pain as her body shudders up and down in protest. She gives a low guttural moan as her eye is excavated and tossed carelessly into the ocean below. Remarkably she fights back the sobs and regains her breath, the silence erupts again. Lyla suddenly feels very helpless and has a frantic urge to scream or cry or bash that bird against the rocks, or anything.
From the quiet there is laughter, a soft laugh that feels like it is being held in. The woman must be utterly broken.
She draws out each of the next words, almost singing each syllable, “I see you.”
The animal squawks and descends on the remaining eye. At nearly the moment of impact, the woman jerks to the side and (perhaps foolishly from Lyla’s perspective) up off the rock and toward the bird. The result is the bird firmly hooked, but not directly in her eye, it is in the space between her eye and temple. From Lyla’s vantage the creature could be frantically trying to free itself, or viciously digging and tearing deeper at the women’s skull. A hoarse howl escapes the woman as she violently whips her head and flips her body as far as the chains will allow. Astonishingly the woman pins the creature between herself and the rock using her arms and head. The woman pulls her head back, tearing herself free from the talons and beak, giving the beast a brief moment of respite, but before it can make any movements she whips her head back down meeting her tormenter and the rock with a repugnant crunch. With an equally repugnant strategy of gripping the animal with her teeth, she pulls her head back and again brings it down with all the force she can manage. Again and again. Until all there is of the bird is an indistinguishable red mass of feathers and bones. Desperate for air, she pants as she rolls again onto her back. The silence seeps back. The woman saved pieces of her right eye, but most of her face hangs in tatters. She pulls herself as far forward as she can and roars into the light.
“I. SEE.”
The air explodes. Hot white bolts of lightning, as numerous as the drops of rain, pour from the storm clouds covering everything. Lyla can see nothing but searing bright light and the air shakes and rumbles with continuous thunder that she is sure will tear herself and the world apart.
…
Lyla bolts upright in bed, she’s drenched in sweat and her head is pounding like it’s the anvil of some invisible blacksmith. The world spins and becomes a blurry fog, and then goes back clear. Oh the mistakes she made. Blurry. And then clear. With a loud groan her eyes take in the midday light shining through the flaps of her tent, or wait, this is not her tent. With a louder groan she leans over the edge of the bed and deposits her stomach directly on the floor.
—
Dana Velasquez wipes the sick from her mouth as she straightens her back and raises her eyes to the scene in front of her. The queasiness is replaced by anger, pure indignant rage. She remembers the forest prior, so serene and green. The morning light shone through the canopy, reflecting off of the dew. Coupled with the birds singing, the frogs croaking, the songs of nature, it was picturesque. Now the trees themselves bellow. They drip with blood, that of her people. The bodies are everywhere, far too many to count, but likely over half of their entire force. “The General has fallen” she hears passed between the troops, though she is not sure from whom, she is sure of its authenticity. The rage rises. They never should have tried this.
Though it is but a hill, the land in front of her climbs from the earth as steep as a mountain. As far as Dana is aware, they started this fight with the numbers advantage on the Constituency. Nevertheless the invaders had held them tightly and decisively. She had warned against the full assault, she wants to yell right in his face. She had known. Heis does not reward foolishness. But the General is gone and that leaves his second in command in charge, and she will be damned if she is going to let them die for nothing. They had pushed in the planned formation three times, it’s a nonstarter. They need to break into groups and spread out as much as possible. She thinks three or four groups will be enough. They cannot possibly completely surround the hill since the Constituency secured the town of Ravensburg on the far side, but they only need to get far enough apart to create an illusion of …
The forward trumpet sounds against all odds and sense. “Charge? CHARGE!” The yelling starts hesitantly, her soldiers are neither blind nor fools, but still eventually rolls into a triumphant thunder.
If tears were to ever come to Dana’s eyes, they would have come now. Her army, her people, marched into death. They cheered and rallied and put on their defiant faces, but they were truly running into their own ends’ whether they realized yet or not. She scanned and searched for the traitor who had given the call, who had usurped her authority at this critical and deadly moment. But she could not find them amongst the sea of bodies that stormed ahead, eyes down and spears up. She wants to collapse, throw her guts up some more, go home. But she knows she won’t. So Dana draws her sword and adorns her defiant face as she plunges towards death itself. She sprints.
She was always the fastest but she reaches the front of the pack quicker than expected. The bodies multiply with every step, the soldiers in the lead are using the mass amounts of fallen flesh as makeshift shields from the onslaught of arrows that rain on them. The hill gives the enemy such an inherent advantage, even the simplest of tactician’s should have been able to discern this is basically suicide. Dana figures it must have been nothing but arrogance that led the General into such a situation, she supposes everyone has their flaws. She approaches the line of soldiers pushing ahead via the cover of their own fallen comrade’s bodies. She won’t cower behind the bodies of the dead, she is the Beacon Forward and is going to act as such. When Dana reaches the front lines she waits for a volley of arrows to fall, then powers through her own soldiers, and embraces the enemy ahead of her.
The first soldier she meets has to be barely more than a boy, suited with a full deep jade green set of armor. The Enforcers outnumbered the true Constituency troops within her enemies’ ranks, and that troubles her more than she is willing to admit. The Enforcers are of New Soto, but turned to the enemy for money or out of fear, they are nearly worse than their silver armored counterparts, but only nearly. The boy falls before he realizes the fight has truly begun, the speed of the strike is a mercy to him but more importantly allows Dana to remain undetected. So she continues up the hellish slope, dodging between trees and the brush for cover. She moves with a singular determination, she identifies the next enemy, stalks into position, and then makes her move. One after the other they fall to her sword, she does not keep count.
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A volley of arrows fills the sky and she hits the dirt, the projectiles land far behind her, they don’t realize how close she is. Pushing herself up into a crouch, her mind is racing, how is she alive, what is she doing, what is her plan? She exhales and dismisses it all as ridiculous, she knows what she is doing, she is going to stop them. Heis be with her. They have hurt so many and now they have to stop, she will stop them. She has taken down a handful of Silvers and miraculously bears no marks as she approaches the archer line, at the top of the hill. They each stand less than a meter apart, taking cover next to various trees and newly built fortifications, and the line extends deeper into the forest as far as Dana can see. There could be dozens or hundreds of these archers she can’t tell. They are in a solid position to defend against a force coming straight on. They really should have no issue holding this line.
It is odd how warm Dana feels as she steps out from hiding. She feels light bathing her, despite being underneath the thick forest canopy. It almost feels unfair as she begins to work, and she wonders if that is how the archers felt mere moments ago. There are too many too close together, the element of surprise does not last long.
They are screaming and sounding horns and bells, all of the archer line is scrambling trying to find the ambushing forces. When they start converging on her, she feels confident she has already crippled them. They try taking shots at her, but they don’t have the high ground anymore and the soldiers are clearly less adept at these quick short distance attacks. As she hacks and moves she begins to realize there are far too many coming in her direction, even if they were all unarmed they would overwhelm her. An arrow strikes her in the middle of the chest.
Dana stares down at the end protruding from her, and then looks up and sees the archer who fired it staring at her, mouth open and eyes wide. As he reaches for his quiver she realizes she feels no pain, she’s not even bleeding. She grabs the butt of the arrow as the archer notches another. She effortlessly and painlessly pulls it out, while the archer lets his arrow fly. At the same time the light Dana feels begins to glow around her in a soft white, like a spotlight from the earth to the sky. When the tip of the arrow pierces the spotlight it is not illuminated like Dana, instead it seems to break apart. It’s Him. As it turns into a harmless dust that blows past her in the breeze, she considers remaining still in the Light in the hope it might protect her from more attacks. But after only a brief hesitation she tightens her grip and gets to moving, it doesn’t help that they seem to be bearing down on her regardless of what she does.
Against all hope, the Light moves with her, and against all hope of hope it continues to protect her from the onslaught of arrows. She feels giddy as she strikes them down, there is nothing they can do to stop her! She feels a little queasy. This is too much. No, there is more to do. Dana groans. The killing becomes mundane in its ease, they start to yell in fear and flee from her. Tears and sobs are broken up by the occasional outburst of laughter as Dana finishes the last of them she can get her hands on. She tries to slow down and steel herself, she needs to be prepared for what’s to come. He needs her. She needs to do… something.
Suddenly the light vanishes from around her. Dana feels the energy leaving her body, as if the light had been all that was keeping her going, which she supposes it had. But it is more than that, she feels all the wounds she should have taken, all the cuts and scrapes the light had shielded her from. Each one reopens and she falls to her knees lightheaded from the loss of blood. She leans on her sword as the world fades. Dana does not feel regret, she only wishes she had more time.
—
Lasan’s eyes open wide, and he dimly regrets the fading of a pleasant dream. He feels confusion and anxiety for the first time in lifetimes, formless he is peering down at the land where he commanded those gloryseekers so long ago. Or not so long ago? Time is warping more and more recently for him. Lasan’s divine being is flooded with nausea, and it increases the closer he travels to the so-called Southern Outpost. He expected some queasiness but not this gut-wrenching lurch, there has to be a mistake. If he could tremble he would, out of anger not fear, there has to be nearly twenty. That must not be right.
It only takes a moment of searching, before he has located all of them, eighteen it seems. They’re lumbering amongst the dense forests, lazily leveling sections of trees in brush with wide sweeps of their massive arms. Each one a hulking mass of radiating darkness, they make him wish he could retch. They are humanoid in as far as they have a torso, two legs, and two arms. Though they have no semblance of a neck, with the torso simply extending past the shoulders and slightly sloping into a rounded top, or head. Twice as large and wide as any warrior, they looked as though they were completely wrapped in layers of interlocked black coiled rope. The binds are swollen as though they have taken on water, and Lasan has to add more horrified confusion to his emotional melting pot. Now that he knows they are too full to disperse safely, he has to make the hard decisions, as always. The curse and responsibility of saving the lesser ones.
In part to relieve his pent up frustration, but also out of practicality Lasan begins creating deep crevices throughout the woods, around the Nimrods. The cracks spread and spindle like tree branches on the ground, from his perspective he sees the ground shudder and the warriors totter and wobble like children with the brush around them shifting and uprooting.. The created ravines seem unfathomably deep, even for Lasan. The cracks separate and herd the dark figures into three groups of eight, six, and four. He sighs, math was never his favorite. For the middle group he leaves a path northward with no obstructions, he figures six should clean up that pesky, rogue army easily enough..
He accepts the spirit, feeling the invigorating heat throughout his veins, and Pulls from half of the largest group, draining them completely of their stored light like the batteries they are. He is surprised at their intensity, with each one the flood of light is so intense he can not stop once he starts, the dam is broken with a single Pull. His body immediately starts burning the excess spirit, fighting the overwhelming heated ecstasy. The flame kicks through him as he fights to calm himself and let it run its course. As the convulsions overtake his formless self, he is glad to at least see the half dozen Nimrods he did not box have already fled north. Their long lumbering strides are quite effective in making distances fast, when properly motivated.
He looks at the remaining trapped Nimrods, he can’t imagine he can possibly drain and contain all of them. It would be dumb to tempt fate at this point, maybe it was dumb at any point, but they also must be dealt with properly. He Pulls from one of the remaining from the original group of eight and Lasan feels the stinging sensation renewed, threatening to burst from behind his eyes, where the pain and pressure are the greatest. Groaning, he realizes he has nearly reached a limit. He pulsates against the last barriers of this form, he can feel his own spider web of cracks growing across his exterior, it could only take a drop more of spirit to shatter this shell.
Lasan shifts the ground around one of the Nimrods, sloping it steeply towards one of the deep pits. The creature grabs at the dirt and grass desperately, but ultimately loses hold as its weight rips the grass and dirt free, and the hulking mass plummets into the ravine. He flinches as it skims off the rocky walls once, and slightly relaxes as it disappears into the blackness below. He’s sure that it has erupted as the air begins to vibrate, and then increases to a violent shudder. Panic overtakes Lasan as he feels heat growing below him, it’s so much larger than he expected, he looks for anywhere to flee. A piercing wall of white bursts from the cavern, protruding high into the sky. Lasan moves well out of range in the same instant, with relief of escape mixing alongside awe and disbelief. The potency of each single one… What have these gloryseekers done?
With mounting disbelief, he sees the remaining three Nimrods pulsating with absorbed light. Each one claws at themselves, but when they tear a single hole light erupts, and the searing pain of the escaping spirit overwhelms them. The mindless beasts start ripping away at the earth and smashing anything in the nearby vicinity with their balled fists. Lasan is gripped with sheer panic, he can tell they are going to erupt just like the other. He strongly considers running far and fast, but laments that it would be disastrous to do so. First his own plans could be ruined, but more importantly the impact of multiple dispersals at that level could shatter it all. He looks to the sky and studies a lone, wispy cloud and resolves to make the most of the situation.
He searches for the one that seems the closest to bursting, and begins to Pull, bracing his being for the incoming onslaught. The surge of spirit enters and for a moment he is in complete control. Then abruptly the nausea hits, and the dam breaks. He can’t stop the flow and he feels the spindly cracks of his shell reopen and grow deeper. Another miscalculation on his part, he curses to himself, they continue to test his patience. He expunges the spirit as a blast, the light has a bluish tint after filtering through him, he aims for the intersection of nowhere and nothing.
The last two Nimrods are writhing on the ground, each slowly expanding in size and then receding, as though the black coils are close to being ruptured from the inside. He considers escaping to safety one more time, but he knows it could only be temporary if he does not handle this man, and settles himself. He blankly looks to the horizon, not searching for anything with his eyes but trying to sense for his far off targets. He can’t pin down the one he is looking for, where could she have gone? He notices a rising plume of grey smoke in the corner of his eye, and when he turns in its direction he is pleasantly surprised. There she is. He regrets that her unexpected day trip will cost him a test of the new Nimrods, but so blows the winds.
With much more ease than the attempted absorption from before, he Pulls from one, creating a head sized hole of escaping light, that soon grows as the inky coils around it give way. When the hole grows large enough, the bulk of the spirit lurches from containment, launching itself towards Lasan. He seizes it, and for a single breath thinks about what it would feel to call it to him, to bathe in the fiery power. The intrusive thought is pushed from his mind, as he launches the mass of spirit towards the heavens. The blast streaks away, cutting through the sky as it arcs towards the target. He chuckles to himself, well after that maybe those six Nimrod were a bit too much.
Lasan guides the final burst of light even further north, an even more impressive arc. He flinches a bit as it leaves his control, that was a bit direct. He looks down at the ravaged landscape, as the past moments settle on him. He tries to imagine what the King would say, this was exactly his liking. Lasan tries to relax, and look at the bright side, this was quite productive. He focuses on the indignity of his careful plans being upstaged by bumbling foolishness, as he tries to refuel his anger. If he really focuses, he can sense each of the heartbeats in the nearby outpost, frantically thumping along.