Walter is empty, folks. One big flash, and almost everyone’s gone.

Let me tell you this. Talking with those who are left – figuring out who remained because we refuse to give up hope on Ruhum and who remained because they were spies the whole time?

Not a friendly conversation.

Buried two good men this morning, folks. Two good men, and five others besides.

There really isn’t much point in the run-around anymore. Walter’s gone. The Cathedral of Fire’s gone. Your damned Azure menace is gone.

We’ve got a choice. We can either take a hard look at ourselves…

Or we can butcher each other till there’s one man left, preaching to his pile of skulls.

Spring 62 (Valkyrie)

Valkyrie had tried to explain to the witches why they needed to turn back.

“What if there are more of those things? We need to regroup in Highbranch! Charter a ride south so we can fix this!”

Her witch minder brooked none of it. “The witchmoot is better for monsters. If there is wisdom to be found, it is among our peaks.”

She pointed to the purple shadows on the horizon with one hand. The other kept a hand on Valkyrie’s horse.

“I don’t think I’m making myself clear. That was not a normal monster!”

“There are no normal monsters.”

Valkyrie conjured faerie fire to explain with illustrations.

The witches listened, always happy to examine her fire. Yet they wanted to know how to teach this flickering illusion to their sylphs.

No sense worrying over slain enemies

One of the oldest opined, “This is always the way of it,” an old woman said. “New threats force us to grow. With every new monster, a new witchcraft comes forth. Thus do we grow.”

High prairie grasses snickered like jungle leaves against Valkyrie’s legs.

The girl glanced south. The weave glowed from the south, brilliant even at midday, creeping ever closer.

Inexorably reaching out to grasp the sky.

She tore her gaze away before the cracks in the sky offered another fatal present to their party.

“Please. I am begging you here. I don’t know how much time we have!”

But the witches assured her that they would reach the mountains by the middle of the day after tomorrow, and her minder kept a firm grip on the reigns.

It’s a moot point, Valkyrie sighed. What am I going to do? Even if I slip her grasp, I’d be on an uncooperative horse in the middle of a vast plain with no idea of how to navigate to either Highbranch or the Dragon.

Just what the hells is going on these days?

Spring 63 (As Briarwood provoked the Tempest)

In the saddle again, Valkyrie finally gathered her courage. She hated to be a bother, but the weave had spread overhead while she slept. When she looked up, she saw a thin mesh finishing its creep to the far horizons. Worse, from the south, the strands thickened by the hour…

What happened when the weave blotted out the entire sky?

“Ali…can you hear me?” she whispered under her breath.

At mention of the angel, the weave above throbbed. An echo resounded through Valkyrie’s skull, bitter as the tides.

What drives them to this self-destruction?!

They knew, dammit! They knew!

Yet still they chose suicide

How they crave the Gate

Sometimes I wonder why that should be my problem

Reeling before visions of a bloodied field, Valkyrie almost fell from her saddle.

Rie usurped her left hand and seized the saddle horn, stalling their descent long enough for the girl to recover.

My apologies. It would have been a bad fall.

Shaking her head, the girl glanced down. The prairie grass gave way to scrub and rock as they rose into the foothills; she would have hit hard stone.

“F-fair,” she mumbled. “Thanks, I guess…”

What are we going to do, Rie? Ali isn’t answering!

Her guardian shook her head. I do not know.

But surely you know something about this cancer! Or the Song knows something!

Flinching, the guardian retreated from her consciousness.

Leaving Valkyrie to wonder why Alisandra failed to answer her Spear.

Spring 64

True to Whistler word, Valkyrie arrived at the witch mountain mid-morning the next day. The village nestled at the top of a dozen switchbacks, tucked into the hump of a worn, grey mountain. Structures wood, thatch or rock carpeted every flat inch in the crevasse between the cliffs, and the witches here flew every flag of the known world.

Jungle shamans, Wave dancers, eastern men in robes with dotted hems…

“Everyone but Ruhum,” she muttered.

“Not for lack of invitation,” shrugged her minder. “They have always held themselves apart. They might hire a witch, but only as servant. Their souls must remain untainted, even as they hire your imps to steal for them or demand your alchemy to terminate the results of their tryst!”

Valkyrie’s party was met with indifference. Apprentices and helpers accepted their horses and unpacked their goods, but the bulk of the congregation savored more juicy news.

“Serves those ash-head bastards right, you know.”

“They were spoiling for a fight. About time they got cut down to size.”

“Tempest should have finished them off. She plays with her food.”

The Tempest had destroyed an army in Ruhum.

No! Ali wouldn’t do that!

“Ruhum radio bullocks!” she snapped. “Ali isn’t like the old Tempest! Her heart is kind!”

A forest of eyebrows raised to hear some fool girl praise the kindness of that ancient fury.

Scowling, Valkyrie shook free of her minders and marched up the paths for the most senior tents.

I guess it’s just you and me today, Rie. Glad you’re here with me.

Her guardian blinked in surprise. You…you are glad I’m here? Then, in defiance of a guardian’s somber mien, Rie giggled. You are so weird, Valkyrie!

Keep sassing me, and I’ll make you run this stupid body after three bowls of Jungle pepper stew! Really let you get the full fragrant wonder of the flesh!

They snickered together.

Spotting a prominent tent, she marched right up. Two guards leaped forward to block her way, and Valkyrie was forced to wait until her Whistler minders caught up.

As the adults conversed inside, Valkyrie glanced again at the spiderweb of Light above.

Thicker now, a third of the sky swallowed.

At this rate, it will swallow the sky in another two or three days.

She tried to focus on her arguments for the witches, but other thoughts butted in. Thoughts of her vision from the weave yesterday; thoughts of Ali’s voice and bloody fields…

She wouldn’t do that. Ruhum is slanting it like they always do.

“You will be seen now, Valkyrie.”

With one final breath, she ducked into the sumptuous tent and instantly picked up a small parade of ambient sylphs. She gagged against acrid incense, tried not to sneeze, and took stock.

Five Whistler men and women knelt on cushions around the central fire, adorned in their tribal colors. Every attendant sported at least one braid, several two or three, and the eldest man at the place of honor by the fire held his hair with a weave of pure silver.

She attempted another calming breath but gagged. “Hells, it stinks!”

Stinks! sang her sylph parade.

“If you’re going to sing, at least clear the air,” she told them tartly.

The nearest sylph inclined her head in thought, trilled, and flittered onto Valkyrie’s shoulder. The diminutive elemental beast hummed, and a bubble of pure air opened around the girl’s head.

“Thank you,” she said, wiping the tears from her eyes. It’s a miracle any witch has any wits left after an hour of this stuff!

The elder Whistler gestured to an open cushion around the fire. “Valkyrie Osh, you are welcomed among us as equal.”

She accepted, kneeling with butt on heels, and smiled wryly. “Thank you. I know it is a weird courtesy for somebody my age. But if you don’t mind, can we skip the chatter? We have bigger problems.”

Bristling, her neighbor shook his head. “Girl, you speak to the Greatest–”

May I? asked Rie.

Go for it, allowed Valkyrie, sensing her guardian’s intent.

“I speak to a man, no less or greater than another,” spoke Rie through her lips. “I speak of gods and calamity, and I would say the same to any king or Keeper.”

The assembled sylphs sang along.

To any king or Keeper

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

The witches stirred in consternation. Who was this girl that resonated with a flock only just met?!

“Would you steal the air from our lungs?!” one demanded, wrapping a protective hand over his elemental beast.

“One well-bonded sylph is worth a flock. You may count status by their number, but they will come and go with ease,” answered Rie. “One alone suffices for the wise; each contains their own Song. Listen. They know what comes.”

Though the sylphs sang out a different thought:

We see what you are

The elder crossed his arms. “Then what are you, Valkyrie Osh? Would you name yourself?”

“I am…” Here Rie paused, hesitant before the complexity of their existence.

“Valkyrie Osh, and that had better be enough for you,” Valkyrie finished, reasserting control.

Rie sighed in relief. Thank you. I risk too much, a river exceeding my banks.

Maybe next time bring your flaming sword? They’d get a kick out of it.

“We have heard otherwise,” the elder observed. “We have heard you are the Spear of the Tempest, anointed right hand to that Power.”

“Yeah, I guess. Wouldn’t make anything I have to say a lick more true or false.”

“She speaks with the glibness of a child,” a woman sighed.

“I see with the clear eyes of one too! I see the spiderweb being woven above our heads. What of your own seers? Do they dream of the encroaching Light?”

“My dreams reveal your path,” retorted one of the men. “I see your hands upon Conclave gold; I see your mischief alight throughout Ruhum. Where you go, trouble follows. Of this we are sure! We admit you here for one reason only: you defeated a new form of monster. Speak of this creature.”

Valkyrie blinked against the smoke. Was that a glimmer of gold like a blindfold across his eyes?

Rie, are you seeing this? Do you recognize that seercraft?

Tis none I know.

The girl frowned. “The monster emerged from the weave of Light across the sky. It was drawn to me, for I beheld it and it wished to be seen. It was born in the realm of shadows – that same place where imps and Father Panther tread – but yearned for the waking world and sacrifices for its altar.”

“A failed echo of the Panther?” mused the assembled wise.

“Perhaps some stillborn remnant of a Jungle precursor?”

“You speak of sacrifice. Do you know this altar?”

Valkyrie shook her head. “I do not…but the weave originates from the south.”

That last comment found no purchase. The moot discussed amongst themselves now.

“Troublesome. Do we have enough imps?”

“Sentries or bait?”

“Both!”

“For what does it hunt?”

“The thing did not hunger!” Valkyrie corrected, “Save for the fuel to its pyre!”

Seizing initiative, she launched into the full story.

Here, she held the witchmoot’s undivided attention. They asked dozens of questions: its birth, its appearance, its mannerisms. They watched her demonstrate her faerie fire and explain the interplay of her power and its own.

To her distress, however, the council reacted with relief.

“Ah, the Jungle at play!”

“The monster and its nemesis, revealed together!”

“And what of the weave?!” Valkyrie demanded, slapping her thigh. “The doom of the south?!”

“You are young in the ways of the seer yet, Spear,” answered the man behind his blindfold of gold.

“Alright, hot shot, how about the dawn before the sun?!”

The room fell silent at her challenge.

But his answer chilled her blood.

“It is a beautiful dawn.”

His words flickered across the fire in filaments of gold as thin and regal as silk. Flickers of gold played across the tent – from face to face, strand to strand, slowly weaving tighter.

“The only doom is that of Ruhum; the fools that oppose the Tempest,” continued the man behind his blindfold of Light. “This they have inflicted on themselves.”

“Since when do Whistlers bow to the Tempest?” Valkyrie wondered.

“To oppose the Tempest is folly. Leave the monsters to her watch,” the blind answered.

We are not fool enough to provoke that wrath

We will be safe

Valkyrie turned to the elder witch. The Light yet failed to fully blind him! “Give me some help! I’ll head south to the heart of the matter!”

The elder tapped the tail of his braid against his side. “And how shall you pay for this?”

Seriously!?

Her expression betrayed that thought, though, and he continued, “I accept that your power is new and needed. Would it not make more sense, then, that you should stay with us and trade secrets? You are clearly attuned to the sylphs; we will teach you whistle-songs never written in your Care of Creation. You, in turn, will teach this fire that reaches even the shadowed realm of Father Panther.”

And the Tempest will deal with monsters and betrayers

As she has always done

“We need to–” Valkyrie squeaked, tone rising in frustration.

“Did you happen to bring a wagon of Ruhum gold?” interjected the most blinded one, smiling placidly.

“No,” she begrudgingly admitted.

“Then you must intend to pay as witches do. Secrets and sorcery. A fine currency among seers, but a poor one to send our hunters chasing mere flashes of the Dawnstar.”

The sylphs sang:

The Dawnstar!

Rie perked. Even the deceived might attune to truth. Listen to the echoes!

Busy with material matters, Valkyrie objected, “The Tempest can pay you!”

The moot laughed, and the elder shook his head. “This moot is a free assembly, not a bank.”

“Then you would ignore doom unless payment is rendered in advance?!”

He smiled sympathetically. “There is nothing free in this world, young Spear.”

“Not even the good of your fellow men?”

Tolerantly, he shook his head. “A payment in good will and accolades is a payment nonetheless.”

Valkyrie fought the frustrated urge to cry. How – after all this way – could she hit a wall against such petty complaints?!

Against wisemen that considered only the debits and credits of the soul.

Her minder laid a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Come now. The council will consider all you have said.”

Valkyrie was dismissed.

***

The angel of Witness surveyed their labor and remarked, “It is a good Work, Archangel.”

The flowers of Light had bloomed; interlinked; formed arches and high cathedral peaks. Here stood a new Cathedral, its frescos the story of this world. Arrival from the stars, the time of the Covenant, its wars, the Stormmother adrift, the Tempest and Wyrm, and the Tempest ascendant…

Sebastian stood in the nave of this church – at the cusp of a new dawn.

Instead of an altar to Aure, this church held a high plinth marked by channels waiting to funnel sacrifice into the foundations below.

As Mirielle and Thea had given themselves in Lumia, two more would give themselves here.

“Good is not enough,” the Archangel answered. She roved from pillar to pillar, inspecting with a rap of her knuckles against the alabaster Light. “It must bind the Wyrm for an age.”

“It will hold him, every bit as strong as the Tyrant’s gaol,” Sebastian agreed.

He knew what her follow-up question would be, of course.

Right on queue, the Archangel asked, “How much longer will his Edenward hold?”

How long until she marched to a new field of battle…

“Seven thousand four hundred twelve years, eleven months, three days, six hours, and thirty seconds,” he answered. “As measured by this star.”

She nodded. “He will be a difficult foe.”

One worthy of my father

Her halo spun, singing already the next war.

Sebastian bowed his head to cover his despair. “Yes, Archangel.”

Thankfully, absorbed with her inspection, Alisandra missed his anguished echoes for a future that marched every closer.

Before Sebastian, her next war juxtaposed against the fateful hour before Gabriel and his heroes had met the Tyrant upon his throne.

Old, dear friends hurling themselves one after the other against the Tyrant. To buy a few seconds, just as the elemental beasts had done for Alisandra.

To benight the Edenward with their angelic blood.

Yet even that victory mocked them. That traitorous Blade! Oh, they had thought themselves the owners of the Tyrant’s undoing!

It had only hungered to find its way across the gulf of Time to its true owner.

In the end, none would defy Blade and Halo.

The Archangel would claim her throne.

“I will break him too,” Alisandra whispered to herself.

I will grasp the reins

And never again will these Terrors blacken mankind’s sky

The cathedral pulsed, singing of hope and triumph, as the gold web crept a little further across the sky.

She turned to the Witness. “Your service is appreciated.”

Only one more duty remained.

The altar waited.

“Thank you, Archangel. If I may, I would beg leave before the final day.”

Alisandra paused. Like all good nobles, she asked her most suspicious questions with perfect civility. “…why?”

She fears I will yet defect or betray her. That I might flinch from the fate she has decided for me.

Yet another cosmic joke; to think that she had decided at all.

That anyone did.

“I would travel north and fetch your Spear. She should be here for your triumph.”

“Valkyrie? Is Highbranch inadequate?”

“She has traveled east to the Whistler’s witchmoot, but her words find no purchase. They only care for their trade in secrets.”

The Archangel sighed. “Unfortunate, but hardly the top of my list of priorities.”

Correct. It will be twenty-two years before you turn your gaze to their minor misdeeds.

“May I adjourn?”

She offered a palatable lie. “Sebastian, you do not require my permission.”

He bowed, spun on a heel, and flickered away to the north.

***

“What was it called again? Right, ‘collective action problem’,” the Spear murmured into her bowl of rabbit stew, perched on the edge of a cliff looking out over the Whistler plains at noon. “The tribes are scattered, and there’s no one to enforce agreement or justice when they fracture. Mirielle had plans, I think, for how to knit them together…”

But then Lumia happened, of course.

“What do you think, Rie?”

The dawnstar …

“A true echo?”

Yes.

“We both feel it.”

Dread by the light of day.

“Those blind ones should go hang out with the deacons,” she huffed. “At least the elder never contradicted me to my face!”

The wise often listen more than they speak.

“Do they now, She Who Listens?” Valkyrie teased.

Surprised, Rie laughed.

Valkyrie wondered for them both. ‘Nothing free in this world’. Is that really the way of it? Your pack guards you while you sleep; your lovers shepherd your lineage. Charity is merely the social currency of your network.

When she thought of the old Valkyrie, she saw someone like that. All caught up with impressing Katherine and Lyla and thumbing her nose at Mother…

She took a few brooding bites of her stew and winced at the gamey taste of field hare.

Halfway through her meal, the ever-present sylphs flittered away.

Oh, what now?

Moments later, the angel of Witness crested the path to her retreat. “Good morrow, Valkyrie Osh.”

“You scared my audience away,” she replied. “Shouldn’t you be delivering mail?”

“My apologies,” he answered, perfect butler as always.

“You know, when the elemental beasts flee your presence…”

“One must wonder why?” he finished. “The sylph senses in your heart a fertile field. In mine, there is only sorrow.”

Valkyrie narrowed her eyes. “Are you here on Ali’s behalf?” Here to tell me why the damned sky is being swallowed?

“Ostensibly.”

“Then what do you want, Mister Ostensibly?”

He spread his hands. “I ask you to come south with me, Valkyrie. To the Bones, the Archangel, and the completion of the Edenward.”

Edenward? Nothing sprang to mind from Mirielle’s vocabulary.

“The Archangel has all but completed this Great Work,” he explained. “An Edenward is the very magic that binds the Tyrant. It is a vice primed for the Wyrm himself ere Jörmungandr awakens in two days.”

Two days

Valkyrie’s heart skipped a beat. “He can come back that fast?!”

“I am afraid that Powers and Principalities exceed even Reverie.”

“Hells…” She fought the urge to bury her head between her knees.

“His return will be the worst calamity yet,” Sebastian continued, “for he has now the antithesis he so craved. Together, they will exceed even the first-born.”

He knows he is close

How the walls groan at their war

“To that end, he will destroy everything she cherishes. Waves. The Maiden. The Stormmother. You.”

“H-hold up! Ali won’t sit there and take it!”

“No, she will not, but her own Power is no safer for mortals.”

When the very Rules crack around them

“What about the damned Stormmother?! Or Verdandi?!”

“They will save who they can and mourn the rest.”

Above them, the golden weave pulsed.

It will not be

No matter the price

The Wyrm will yield

“I come not to cause despair, Valkyrie, but hope. By our deeds, this evil will be avoided. By our deeds, Malkuth will usher forth an age of peace.”

“An age of peace?” she mumbled. “And…h-how long is that?”

“Sixteen million years,” the angel of Witness answered evenly. “All the years that remain until the breaking of the dusk.”

Her mind ached with the thought. Sixteen million years! She sometimes felt exhausted by her own sixteen!

“But an Edenward can’t last that long, can it? Ali’s father set down a Rule…”

“Correct. The Edenward will endure only a dozen millennia. However, by its end, the Archangel will have traveled the length and breadth of Malkuth. She will have found the secrets of Eden and beyond. Even Eleos will pale before her ter–”

He cleared his throat.

“Before her Works.”

Though he smiled in reassurance, his eyes begged her otherwise.

Aghast, Valkyrie jabbed a finger skyward. “Look up! The weave tightens! It spawned a monster out of nothing but spare thoughts! Plus the radio claims that Ali leveled Briarwood’s army! What do you think you are bloody well doing with your hands tucked in your pockets giving another stupid lecture?!”

Hands tucked in his pockets, he answered, “The best for the most.”

Simple math in the end

The only road where most survive

Most but never all

“We thought we left the Mighty behind when we escaped to the stars,” the angel sighed. “But there is no escape from our sins.”

No future beyond war for the lesser throne

Ah, and nothing will be left but ash and spite on that road

Our only choice – the only choice! – to crown our brilliant victor

“N-no way!”

“I am here to ask you to come,” the angel of Witness stated. “I cannot demand this. I cannot compel you to gift what is only yours to give.”

Not her life; that was easy enough to take.

But her sacrifice…

Martyr

Martyr

Martyr

Valkyrie paled.

Trembling, she finally understood his intent from the start. Hers was the wedding veil, virgin purity, and a bowed head atop the pyre.

The Fire caught up to her, even here.

“Esmerelda. Oliver. Belle. Every child you passed on the way to school. Every fool on the streets of Ruhum. All their lives are in your hand, Valkyrie. Yours and yours alone.”

“Sixteen million,” she repeated, numb.

“Across all the diaspora worlds and every child ever born. Would you like to know the total number of lives?”

“Sod off!” she snapped. “Just go lick a toad!”

“I understand that you require time to process this.”

“Require?! I require you to tell me you’re lying!” Panic raw in her own ears.

“That I cannot. The Truth spares none.”

“Then what’s the catch?! What’s the secret clever twist of phrase you’re waiting on?!”

“There is none,” Sebastian said. “There is no other path but ruin. The death of everyone you love, and the Wyrm in his benevolence will ensure you live to witness it.”

To know what it is to see your mother’s empty eyes

And to know that you could have chosen otherwise

“And thus there is no other path,” he whispered.

“Bloody well bugger off!” she shouted.

The angel of Witness sighed. “I…I apologize, Valkyrie. In utmost sincerity. The weight of sin demands its wergild, and it will be paid. If not by you and I, then by those we treasure.”

She scooped up a rock and hurled it at him.

His white gaze tracked the arc, but he never moved.

The stone caught him just above the eye. Though it was just a stone, and he an angel, it drew blood. A thin, gleaming trickle of red-gold Light that dribbled down his cheek and dripped to the ground…

“I…I won’t accept this.”

Sebastian nodded. “I have no right to ask, but I must.”

Sixteen million years of mothers and daughters and fathers and sons…

The angel of Witness bowed, blood dripping across the stones before her feet.

“Give me your answer on the morrow. I will find you at the morning bell.”

He took his leave.

Above, the weave tightened.