Aethellin cursed as she parried another blade, this one sweeping in from her now unprotected left. The shield was gone, torn away in the blow that had shattered her arm, she mumbled curses through dry cracked lips as she pulled back and then thrust, taking her opponent in the centre of his chest.
The figure's eyes widened behind his helmet for a moment, blinking as if confused, before she twisted her spear and wrenched it free. For long moments she breathed heavily, feeling the weakness that had spread throughout her body, she was exhausted and wounded, and she knew she didn't have much left to give.
She grit her teeth and ran her eyes over the gathered soldiers, now warily keeping their distance from her after watching their leader go down. Too many of them to fight, she thought to herself even if she'd been at her very best. She was trapped here, and was probably going to die here she also realised. The rest of her forces were still trying to fight their way through to her in this narrow cleft, but they would never make it in time, she knew that and so she cursed.
Not at the fact that she would die on this battlefield, not even that she had been tricked into this ambush, but at the fact that now at a moment of paramount importance in the story of her life, she was unable to take rein of her future. She felt the threads of fate tightening around her with every ragged gasp, the chill, bone-deep, of the rain that had plastered her hair to her face, reminding her there was nothing in this moment she could do.
So she did the only thing she could do, she grinned, savagely with teeth stained with blood, "Right you little bastards, let us finish this" the words escaped her mouth with a hint of fury and madness. And with that, she charged the enemy, a battle cry screamed on bloody lips escaping as she closed the distance...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For a long time, she felt warm but devoid of anything else, no sight, no sound, or scent. Just an all-encompassing warmth, "Ah, so I DID die then" she mumbled into this nothingness.
Finding that the thought didn't upset her as much as it should have. It was a strange thought, she knew that normally in any other circumstances shed be furious, but she felt oddly disconnected from the feeling, as though it just didn't matter anymore.
So she simply ignored it, falling back into that warmth and letting it embrace her. She mulled over her memories, she'd led a good life, a difficult one, but a good one filled with pain and joy in unequal measure.
Fondness for her family at the forefront of her mind, their love not unlike the warmth that surrounded her now, the remembered pain when they had been forcefully taken away from her, and the burning desire for justice that had driven every action after that.
Other memories flooded into her head, Love denied in the pursuit of that justice, friends lost and homes destroyed. If there was a single emotion that broke through as she recalled the memories, she would name it regret.
Regret at not becoming the Knight she had wanted to be, one like her father, Regret at letting love slip through her fingers unable or unwilling to hold it, regret that the justice she had so desired in life, was now denied to her, eternally in death.
If a soul could sigh, that was the sound that escaped into the warmth, echoing and building and reverberating through this warm nothingness until it fed back on itself.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I am sorry child, sorrier than you will ever know." A new voice, a new presence, entered this nothingness, it was a voice filled with emotion, and she recognised it as sadness tinged with guilt.
"You were never meant to die on that battlefield, you should have led a happy life, a contented life long and filled with all the joys you deserved." She shifted her focus and identified the voice as belonging to a woman, she struggled to communicate, to say the words that were tumbling through her mind, but she managed it, barely, a single simple question: "Why?"
She felt the presence more keenly now that her sense of self was coming back to itself, fighting through the fugue that clouded her mind, and could feel the same emotions she had heard radiating from it like waves against her soul. "Another God my child, named Racai, he allowed the empire to summon a warrior from his world, an event that should never have taken place."
The presence paused heavily, the silence both seconds and aeons long before continuing: "That warrior is the one the empire placed in charge of their armies, blessed by God to be stronger and more powerful than any other mortal being. If he had not been there, the empire would never have declared war on your kingdom, and thus your path was shifted."
Aethellin as she remembered her name took stock of what the presence had said, and slowly but surely the remembered feelings began to surface, not as memories but as actual emotions, and at this point she was angry.
It filled her very core and radiated out from her being, she felt the presence shift slightly as it felt the emotions coming from her. "Your people worshipped me, and with their genocide, I am forgotten, a footnote in the history of our world. I am almost completely gone now. With no believers, I am cast adrift in my realm, together with the souls of my children."
Aethellin realised that she was feeling a lot more emotions and that the nothingness around her was shifting slowly, almost like it was coming into focus. She would have narrowed her eyes if she had them but instead focused her entire being on the presence beside her. It took a supreme effort to focus her being, but she forced the words out this time more clearly than before: "Revenge, How? What Justice? What next?" The effort of forming those words had been exhaustive, but the effect it had on the presence was profound.
"You are truly aware? Do you understand me? You are not simply resting and incapable of higher thought? I had thought you an odd Soul my child, you should have been drawn to the others in this realm, to family and loved ones, not drifting here alone." The presence turned contemplative for a moment, she could feel it thinking as she ran through her memories, trying to remember the name of her Goddess, it came to her as she fumbled the words into existence.
"Goddess, Theris. Remember. Revenge, Justice, How?" The words spilled out like a staccato of thought and words and emotion bundled into meaning and the Presence, the Goddess took stock of this vibrant little soul for eternity. "There is a way, my child, for vengeance, for justice. But it would leave me greatly weakened and unable to aid you on your quest, you would be alone, on a world not your own with no support. Even knowing this would you accept it?"
Her voice was curious as she addressed Aethellin, after all a Soul with enough agency to still maintain cohesion and refuse to enter the rest of her realm to reunite with others was a rare thing indeed.
Aethellin forced the next word out with a burst of emotion, a formless rendering of everything she was: "Yes!" it had taken no time to even consider. instantaneous acceptance as she listened to Theris's words. Whatever it took, she would seek Justice for her people as she once had for her family. However the next words caused her to pause "Then so be it, my child, I will send you to his world, raise my name that I may gain strength, seek justice for us all. But do not blindly follow Justice, as you once did. Do not deny yourself love and friends and happiness, for in so doing you have found no Justice for yourself, merely following a path of vengeance and hate, absent of all but destruction."
Aethellin radiated acknowledgement at Theris's words, they were after all a solemn commandment from the Goddess. She felt Theris smile beside her, "Then go my child, and tear down this god that you may find the justice you seek." At that, Aethellin felt a surge of power rushing into her expanding into infinity as she shifted and moved between realms, her presence followed by a ghostly whisper "Remember my words, child, remember them well..."
Aethellin felt the rush of air, and then the smell of burnt ozone, a sudden sense of falling and then cold stone underneath her. For long moments she lay there as her senses came back to her one by one, and then opened her eyes.