Spring 66 – The Day of Reckoning
At the fifth bell in the morning, the Deacons made their final mistake.
By their order, a phalanx of constables arrived at the Conclave square to arrest Father Maxwell. They hoped to confront Maxwell in the quiet hours; unfortunately, they found the man surrounded by a throng of his faithful.
Everyone on both sides wore a black armband, but the lines drew up the same.
Meanwhile, Father Maxwell straightened from his prayer, his scrawny arms shaking. He had neither eaten nor slept in days now in his fervor, and he regarded the constables with the bravery of fever.
“What have I done?” he demanded.
“Incitement of the public, disorderly conduct, resisting a lawful summons, and…” Here the constable sergeant with the charges swallowed.
The missive in the sergeant’s hands continued: heresy in the name of our one true God.
Compelled by his duty, the sergeant read the last charge in sotto voce.
Unfortunately, the crowd repeated it at a shout.
“Heresy?!”
“Father Maxwell is an upstanding deacon!”
“What nonsense is this? Who sent you!”
The constables drew their guns, but they were not the only ones armed.
Bullets flew.
When the smoke cleared, the surviving constables had fled, and the dead lay across the Conclave square.
Father Maxwell shook with the grief of it. The blind grasping of the Deacons! Had they not gained their wish? Look how they supplanted the Houses in every aspect of life!
“What is this purpose of this suffering?!” he cried. “Why must we live like this?!”
And the cooling blood that now stained the Conclave stairs answered:
Because you are weak
“Yes!” Maxwell exclaimed. “We are weak! Blind! Impure!”
Ah, good to see you understand
And you wish it was otherwise…
Don’t you?
That blood began to boil and churn.
Maxwell stepped forward, arms to the sky. “God! Deliver us!”
Just call my name
“May the Black Wyrm of Judgement come! May we be set free!”
Blood churned, boiled, and erupted. A terrible serpent roared from the cobblestones, coil after coil spilling into the sky, and Jörmungandr the Wyrm grinned with broken teeth at the assembled crowd.
“It is such a relief, don’t you think?” the serpent purred, ignoring the screams. “When you admit where you stand in the pecking order.”
The Penitent deacon trembled with joy. His vision filled the sky at last! “Great Wyrm, we have called you in a time of great peril! We beseech you to…”
As he preached, the Wyrm tasted the air with his black tongue and cast his blunt head side to side. “Something has changed…” he murmured to himself. Louder, he interrupted the preacher, “Where is the tempest? She usually punches me in the face by now.”
“Y-yes, Great Lord! Free us from the tempest!”
“Why? She taxing you?” Jörmungandr chuckled. Floating lower, the snake tilted his head to stare down at the bleached Conclave.
Then he grinned.
“You’re no Keeper, priest.”
Knocked off script, Maxwell admitted, “There is no Keeper, Great Lord! The position has been profaned!”
The Wyrm considered.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
An empty seat at the table
Tempting to take it
Waltz to Ali’s throne with her childhood at my back
“Ah, but the two of us don’t need that kind of foreplay,” Jörmungandr hummed, popping his neck. “No, I get the gist of what’s going on here.”
Murder and terror in the streets. Azure versus Crimson, a matter of life and death.
All the usual.
But the air still tasted different.
A new Rule?
No, I know my chains
Something is missing…
Mulling that mystery, he surveyed the sky and tapped his tail against the Conclave’s bleached bones and mused, “The angel of Oceans has released her grip, I see, and left a bauble in the basement.”
His idle tap crushed the western edge of the Conclave. That former gold now crumpled like a cheap tin can.
Left you that bauble, and already it turns to rot
Might as well have just pitched it over the side, Lynne
The Wyrm laughed. “Very well! Such freedom you have found, mortals! Tell me what you desire and it shall be yours. Riches! Fame! Power! I’m game for anything!”
Maxwell knit his hands together in prayer. “Purify us, holy Wyrm! Weed the true from the faithless!”
The Serpent shrugged his vast coils.
Not very imaginative
But as you wish
The sky tore asunder, a bleeding wound from horizon to horizon, as Jörmungandr blinked to the west. His coils swelled, crowding out the clouds, as he stared down into the bubbling caldera of the unquiet wound into the earth.
He drew in a breath, letting his echoes ring clear.
Fire and death and the end of all things come!
There he paused a moment, waiting for the others with their declarations of justice, while the inferno dancing between his teeth.
…
“Tch, rude. Where is everyone?”
Might as well rattle the cage until someone showed!
Jörmungandr spat.
***
In Harrowgrove, choked with ash at the base of the mountains, Father Lucas was reading the Catechisms to a young boy beside the window of the Father’s tiny hut. The child coughed incessantly, spitting up black phlegm, one of the many victims of this noxious air.
For Lucas, the boy’s education took priority over his normal ecclesiastic duties. The boy was too old for the veil of innocence, and his soul must be prepared for the way ahead.
Then the sky above rumbled.
Terrible coils rolling and twisting behind the clouds, wreathed in lightning and fire.
Staring out the foggy window, Lucas knew.
Everyone who had survived Lumia knew.
Their borrowed time was at its end.
Father Lucas pulled the child close, blocking the boy’s view of the sky.
“Pray with me,” he whispered, his voice tight and dry. “Our Father, who art in heaven…”
The very skies crackled with power as the Wyrm drew in his breath.
“Thy kingdom come…”
The roar cast down into the beating heart of the world.
“…and forgive us our trespasses…”
The earth began to quake.
“…and lead us not into temptation…”
A terrible roaring drowned out their words…
And then a moment of agony and fire snapped their strings free of this living dream.
***
In a little resistance camp, the radio jockey felt the earth tremble with portent.
“Just my luck…”
Truth be told, he regretted staying. In that moment when all Walter vanished around him, he had thought, Ruhum is still my home. It's worth fighting for!
The Azure magic had passed him by.
Now he regretted ignoring that ride.
Guess I really am Fire-born. Mule-headed as all the rest!
Well, there was one upside. He could speak as freely as he damn well pleased. Who was going to call him on it?!
Well, folks
I guess we’re at the end
Some of you are heroes
Took in those with nowhere to go
For those friends, hug someone you love
The rest of you?
This is the bed you made
See you in the icy Hells
***
“N-no!” Maxwell moaned. “No! This was not what we wanted!”
In his ear, the Serpent scoffed.
Don’t give me that bullshit
In your heart of hearts, you knew exactly what you sought
Clumsy copycat of that Redeemer
Praying it won’t hurt and too scared to do it yourself
Behold your savior – here to free you from your bindings
Run home, little priest
Run home and let Them know I won’t be far behind!
***
Ruhum looked to the west.
From the foulest Deacon, drunk on House wine and newfound power.
To the youngest child, innocent of all this.
They watched as the clouds fled before a growing plume.
The sky bled red, the clouds fled, and the horizon burst open.
Between one thought and the next, the earth peeled away…
And the Fire they had so yearned for claimed them all at last.
Interlude: The First Flight of the Sapphire
The Wyrm’s fire tore through the eggshell mantle of that world. It punched straight through rock and core, both rendered thin as tissue paper, and fell into a weave of sutures.
Over sixteen painstaking years, the Stormmother had woven those sutures with care.
Not to save this planet. Even Lynne’s arts were not enough to heal the rot of a wound where Time no longer held firm.
That was why the angel of Oceans had chosen another path.
As Jormungandr’s fire hurtled through the mantle, the weave drank and shaped that destructive force. The mantle cleaved, not like a shattered plate but across careful seams…
His Wyrmfire burst free from the opposite end of the planet, the first seismic ripples began to crack the abandoned deserts of far lands, and one precious landmass tore free.
A continent rose.
Three million square miles of land, sea, and sky were scooped into a bed of shimmering gold and Azure blue.
A seed that flowered as it soared free of catastrophe; petals that stretched like Spring and then cupped inwards around the jewel cupped at the center.
The Sapphire emerged from its chrysalis.
***
Gritting her teeth, Lynne of Oceans shoved hard on the throttle and shouted, “Verdandi! You’re up!”
Try not to miss!
***
The petals parted, revealing a core that lived and breathed like a wimba tree.
Which in turn spat out a spec of gravity back into the remnants of the world.
Here came the Jungle angel’s Seer-sight gambit: that Time loathed the blight upon her Foundation and would aid in its removal with all her tremendous power.
Verdandi foresaw truly.
The Foundations rang out in unified Will against the blight and its maker. Against their most ancient nemesis, those who walked the endless path would bring their all!
A black hole burst into being, swallowing the wound – and the Wyrm – in an instant.