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FIVE

Today, I have found my god.

She had strayed from me once,

“Follow me!” she commanded,

Then left me bleeding

On cold, slick tiles.

I had asked my family,

All that they knew.

“Love,” one said.

“Accountability,” nodded another.

Grace in all things, forgiveness in others.

Who is this god we seek?

And why

Hasn’t she been revealed to me?

I asked my lord of his god.

And he said, “I have none.”

For in his realm,

There is only blood.

I’ve lived long and hungry,

Awaiting the day,

I’d again know peace.

Today, I have found my god.

She had strayed from me once,

But this day,

Her grace reigns supreme.

Baptiste Fournier (b. -556, death unknown).

“Not Alone,” published Year 150, under a pseudonym.

I — Descending the Great Stair

Dysmorphia, ninth layer of Pandemonium

For the second time in my prolonged existence, I descended the steps hewn into the perfect pillar of obsidian driving through our world like a dagger thrust into the earth’s heart. I cannot say for how long I walked, for how long I felt the dull impact of every step eroding the bones of my knees and my ankles. But none of that mattered—this journey was my final trial, and the dissolution of all that I had become, my penance.

I owed the world, no, all of creation, an insurmountable debt for my complacency beneath Morgana’s command, for the countless atrocities I committed behind the mask of coercion and servitude. Though my mind had been a blank slate, wiped clean each morning before I set out upon my black errands, it was always my blade ending lives—wielded by my hand. My own eyes were the last things my victims saw before their souls departed to whatever black fate awaited them.

I did these things without question, without remorse.

As I descended the Stair, my guilt came upon me all at once, compounding tenfold.

I have never possessed agency over my own life, nor my afterlife. I have long been a pawn in the bloody games of gods and men. Once, I was but an orphan, a refugee, fleeing the war that shook the world. I was happy to serve any cause that saw me fed. I was satisfied to simply do as I was bid. Much of that changed when I met Anastasia, when I first gazed into those wide eyes encompassing the morning sky and countless leagues of windswept tundra. For a moment—just a moment—there was no duty great enough to take me from her. For one fleeting moment, I was hers. And she was mine.

Despite the love I held, so very dear and close to my heart, it was not enough to withstand the malice of the Goddess Corrupted. Morgana—not Dusk, they are different halves sired from a fractured whole—stole my love from me, and sentenced me to mindless servitude. I was torn between my life and my faith, mourning the loss of my worship, my will to choose. To reject the Goddess would have meant my soul’s end, or worse, my soul’s eternal torment; and so I bowed before her and served.

I am a coward.

With every agonizing step, my knees trembled, and tremors wracked my legs. I shed the weight of my armor, piece by piece, as my strength failed me. I carried the dwindling flame of Dusk in my vacuous chest, devoid of a heart. Despite the echo of her love I felt, despite our shared conviction to cleanse the world of the Dread Angel’s corruption, her divine spirit slowly destroyed me from within. This is the nature of such things.

A weight heavier still, a burden bound to my soul, was the shame I felt for my myriad failures, the contempt my family rightly claimed, and the rancorous self-loathing that enshrouded my head in a suffocating miasma. Covered in the blood of so many lives wasted, I withered away with every step I took toward redemption.

“I will never stop…” I whispered, my lungs shriveling with every word.

My oath.

“I will… never stop…”

My conviction.

“I will never stop loving.”

My faith.

When Dusk first spoke to me, I was a boy floating naked in a hot spring beneath the wartorn savannah of my home. The Goddess, in that moment, had meant those words as they should be taken—she bid I swear to find love, and to cherish it, to protect it, even if it cost me everything. Just as my blood father had done, charging to his death, all those years ago. When corruption took hold of Dusk, and Dusk morphed into Morgana, so too did the meaning of my oath liquefy into mud between my fingers.

As my bare feet touched the black, acidic soil of Dysmorphia, the stinging breeze cut through my exposed flesh and my manhood. I had become a walking tomb. The skin of my hands had decayed, clinging to my bones like a moldering cloth. I had stopped breathing, and had I possessed my heart, surely I would have collapsed at the base of the Stair, at the lowest depth I had ever tread. Surely, I would have fallen into the Abyss, to fall forever, my remains drifting in the endless void roiling beneath Dysmorphia.

I lingered there for a moment, lost in thought.

Shaking away my doubts, I took my first step, guided by Dusk. In the eddy of doubt whirling behind my eyes, I heard a faint echo of her voice as it once was, her dwindling spark guiding my dying body to where I had buried my beating heart.

This had been Morgana’s first command. We riders chose a burial ground, known only to us, for there, in the court of the Dread Angel, there is room for her alone. “I will never stop…” The words ripped my esophagus, a sandstorm abrading my vocal cords. But that was but a trifle—my body was my own for the first time. “Never stop…”

Soon, I came upon the barren grove where I had lain myself to rest. Throughout the entirety of Pandemonium, there exists a pulse like heartbeat rippling through the dense earth. I believe it is the beating of hearts lost and stolen, buried and hidden for some eldritch purpose.

If you have lost your heart, you are nothing; and I know this to be true, for as I knelt into the black soil, the bones of my legs splintering beneath my paltry weight. I dug with my fingers, the putrified flesh peeling from my hands. So too did I feel the rest of myself falling away. Bitter siroccos picked me apart piece by piece—condors feasting upon the dying doe.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

I lifted a rondure from the earth, writhing in my hands.

Thump, thump. Thump, thump.

Beads of damp soil fell from moist flesh.

Thump, thump. Thump, thump.

I pulled a worm from the central vessel, then slotted my heart into the exposed hole in my chest.

Thump, thump. Thump, thump.

“I will never stop loving…” I swore to the spark still attached to me, and I fell forward, overtaken by darkness.

Thump, thump. Thump…

* * *

When the spurious radiance of the underworld shone upon me for the first time, someone pulled me from the earth by my arms, as another dug away at the clinging soil. The earth birthed me, and this was my first memory: An old man knelt in front of me, his complexion sallow and pale, his sunken eyes glazed with cataracts. A gentle breeze tickled my face, bristled my eyelashes, tussled my hair.

For the first time, I breathed deep, filling my lungs. All at once, I was beset with emotions so far beyond my comprehension.

So I wept.

The old man held me in his arms, with a compassion I had never known. The thought confused me. How could I put a word to a sensation I had never known? Surely, I had known some semblance of it… in another life. That thought yet caused more tears to fall.

The old man’s companion lingered further down the blackened ridge. He was tall, covered with amethysts, and possessed the horned head of a beast, resembling the Elder Dragons of old—and he was distressed. I could feel the tension radiating from him as much as I could feel the heat burgeoning within the swollen glands inside his throat.

“By the gods, above and below...” my savior cooed in my ear, his warm breath tickling the hairs on my neck, “you’ve made it. I can’t believe you’ve made it.”

I did not understand; I could only weep, ululating with ecstasy and uncanny remorse. Something within me wanted to scream, “I’m alive! I’m alive!” over and over, bawling in a strange man’s arms, who held me as a father should. At first, I thought he was my father.

The old man gazed into my eyes with his milky, sightless portals. “My friend, I will tell you everything there is to know.”

He told me the tales of my life, my death, my afterlife, and rebirth. As he wove his words, images and scenes flashed before my mind’s eye, supporting the truth of what he claimed. By the end, my eyes had gone dry, arid like the desert that had claimed countless souls beneath my charge.

No longer an infant, I was again that hard man who had failed so many times.

“But you will not fail this time,” vowed my savior. “You have come too far—and so have we.” He gestured to the dragon-man who had yet to introduce himself.

“There is one final errand,” I said, remembering Ibrahim’s prophesying chorus in his hut lodged within the threshold between Morgana and Grahtz—now, Lord Derrida. “I must retrieve the sword forged from the blood of a thousand heretics… and thrust its point into the heart of evil.”

“Yes…” The old man stroked his scraggly beard, which was so long the frayed edges of it tickled my exposed thighs. “I’ve been pondering that for some time.”

“Several leagues to the north,” said the dragon-man, his voice shockingly eloquent coming from such a savage maw, “there stands the Temple of Abandon. Within, you will find the custodian of the underworld—the Watcher of the Abyss. The Watcher will be your guide.”

The old man leapt to his feet and balled his fists. “How would you know?”

“I chanced upon a passage in my reading the morning we departed. ‘The Abyss Watcher knows no god nor faith, for it must stand vigil before the darkness in stalwart defiance of the encroaching Abyss.’”

“Astrofus! Argh, how dare you utter his purloined prose in my presence.”

“Like it or no,” the dragon-man tittered, “the man knew the cosmos well.” He turned, pointing to a gray rooftop peaking above the hills in the distance. “If your role in all this is truly prophesied, Lord Cain, then it is no coincidence that you buried your heart in the very demesne where lies your charge.”

“If the Watcher does not possess the weapon you seek,” said the blind man, “then it will know who does. Go now, my friend, and march into the darkness with renewed vigor. Set right the myriad wrongs. Restore the balance… for all our sakes.”

“Who are you? How do you know all this?” I shook my head, thoughts amuck. “We’ve never met—I’m sure of it—yet you both are so familiar.”

“Dreams, my friend, are powerful things.”

The dragon-man sighed. “I am Pascal Doon, Headmaster of the Citadel and Governor of Phrygia. I remember the day you were knighted and legitimized in the Valentine court, Lord Cain. We celebrated your ascension as a beacon of progress. In the days of the Old Empire, only the aristocracy were allowed to rise.”

I nodded, unsure what to say. Introductions felt like a petty waste of time beside the mountains standing before me.

“And I, my friend,” said the blind man, “have been dreaming of you for years. I wept the day I learned of your family’s cruel demise. It then became my obsession to find out what happened to you. I’ve witnessed much of your service to the Dread Angel, and I’ve lived in Monrovia in the flesh. I worked the docks with your daughter, raising the pilings against the unceasing rise of the sea.”

“You call yourself Fulcrum, don’t you?” He had never taken one of the stale loaves I raffled off to the starving Monrovians, even when his lot was drawn.

“An alias, as all wizards keep. To know one’s given name is to own them. My chosen name, with which I credit my numerous writings, is Phrygian Black. Pascal Doon and I raised the Citadel, and we tend to it still.”

My eyes widened, and again I was nearly overtaken with tears. These were great men before me, greater than I in every sense. I was not worthy of their respect nor their aid. I was not worthy, yet I had been given a chance. Shaking both their hands, I bid them farewell and swore to myself I would not squander it.

“We will await your triumphant return,” Phrygian Black said. “Once you recover the fabled blade and make your final ascent up the Stair, we shall stand with you against the Dread Angel.”

Thus, I strode with determination, with an alien sense of weightlessness in every step. Equipped with only my battered longsword and a spark in my heart, wearing nothing, not even a loincloth to hide my shame from the denizens of Hell, I made for the Temple of Abandon to seek audience with the Abyss Watcher, custodian of the underworld, where finally I would reclaim my honor.

II — On the bank of the River Acheron

Flowing into the Vale Betwixt

Kateryna’s eyes ached as she emerged from the darkness. The tender rays of the Mourning Sun shone on her fair skin, mild compared to the furnace heat of Grahtzildahn. Taking her first step from hard obsidian into wet sand, she wiggled her toes and stared out at the lapping waves of the shore. The water was viscous, silver—appearing as quicksilver.

Exhausted, Kateryna collapsed into the sand, holding her knees to her chest. Her journey had been uneventful, save for the countless hours of sightless ascent once the Stair incised the ceiling of the underworld, travelling leagues up through the earth’s crust.

Now, that was all behind her—beneath her. Morgana’s plague seemed to fade away, as if her unearthly powers bore no authority in the waking world, where her holy sister reigns supreme. For the first time, Kateryna breathed deep and tasted only sweet autumn air.

All around, birds chirped and insects droned. She recognized the vibrating shrill of a red-winged blackbird, the descending staccato of a northern cardinal, native to the boreal forests of the Wyse and the northern tip of Lake Valentine.

She dared not move for fear it was all an elaborate ruse, a cruel illusion woven by the Demon King meant to torment her, to drive her mad. But the scene before her did not dissipate as she observed the sway of every blade of emerald grass. A soothing breeze kissed her neck, carrying the sweetness of honeysuckle and jasmine.

It’s spring.

She repeated the words in her mind.

Such majesty…

Eventually, and only when she was ready, Kateryna rose and took a trepidatious step along the animal trail following the stream. Everything remained where it was. Material. Intact. This was neither fading dream nor cruel delusion.

This is real. This is life abounding.

Kateryna wandered, following the pull of the river. The terrain soon became rocky, covered in overgrown brambles that painfully scored her bare feet, blackened with the soil of Pandemonium—now falling away in favor of the red earth of the clay-rich riverbank.

The Sun Spear of Dawn had quelled its sorcerous emanations, the tip cooling and returning to ordinary, pock-marked iron. There was no need to shine any longer… not in the presence of the true celestial body suspended in time and space. She used the spear as a walking stick to traverse the jagged outcroppings. For that purpose, it served just as well as it had as a weapon.

The wind blew, carrying with it a voice calling her farther downstream. It bade she take her time. She did. She moseyed along, her eyes to the sky. What is this sensation? Could it be peace?—No, something greater, more profound. The word came to her mind unbidden: stillness.

Be still, she thought to herself, though the words were not her own. Be still, for the days are long and meant to be savored. Kateryna sat on a rock, stared across at the opposing bank. Deciduous trees stood sentinel, casting shade over the paths trodden by white-tailed deer and black bears, hanging avenues travelled by squirrels and martens.

Be still…

When she was a girl, the shadows within the thick canopies of the Valentine Kingswood were frightening, conjuring fear of grumpkins, beguiling scoundrels waiting to swallow you whole. Now, she saw the interlapping boughs for what they were: administrators of a complex web of life.

Kateryna had come to know darkness in truth. The forest was nothing to fear, for it was governed by nature—not by minds.

She bore witness to her father’s regicide, watched him morph, borrowing the guise of the Valkyrie to slay the Demon King with a single stroke. Then she ran, slicing her feet to ribbons on the sharp edges of the steps until her soles burned, slick with blood.

Despite everything, her father had paved the way for her. Just as she witnessed his countless atrocities, so too had she seen the fog flee his eyes, leaving behind a man she had never met. A man finally free of a lives-long captivity.

“I forgive you.”

Kateryna knew she would never have the chance to say it to his face, though part of her held hope that he had heard, wherever Fate had taken him. His actions since awakening from the Dread Angel’s fugue had forced her to reconcile with her own failings—and just like her father before her, her foibles were countless.

Unforgivable.

“Be at peace, father…”

Reprehensible.

“Forgive me, too…”

For many were those words intended. She remembered the beautiful night beneath the plains of Grahtzildahn. The temperate waters, an impossible miracle.

“Forgive me.”

Kateryna could see Seth in her mind’s eye. He was beaten and torn, frail, starving. Yet he wore a smile. Perhaps all was healed in the end. Perhaps.

Something fell into her tangled hair. She brushed it free, sending a gnarled ball of burrs to roll into the water and float away. She looked up, found thick boughs hovering above her, branches forking so sunlight passed through them like a spotlight, leading her eye over her shoulder. Behind her, surrounded by long grass and chromatic wildflowers, stood the largest sycamore she had ever seen.

Kateryna collapsed before the tree’s splendor, entirely overcome. All at once, the grief she had been holding back for so long, clouded by ceaseless toil and mind-numbing smog, flooded over her and swallowed her in a blanket of regret and loss…

So much loss.

Writhing in the soil, Kateryna wailed, abandoning the old life, and screamed her nascent release from the womb of perdition.

And then, it was over. The tears ran dry, and all that remained was a woman who had seen the lowest depths of existence and survived to bathe in the sun. That simple truth, that the worst had passed, accompanied peace unimagined. She rose to her knees and hugged the trunk of the sycamore, her entire arm span naught but a fraction of the tree’s massive circumference. Ear to the bark, she heard a gentle pulse like heartbeat… and felt the warmth of her mother’s soul.

I found you.

* * *

Somewhere in the Wilderlands

West of Kuzolova, South of the North Sea

On the bank of the River Acheron, whose silver streams soon faded to pure azure, Kateryna lived off the land under the watchful protection of her mother’s soul tree. She spent the days listening to the wind and watching the birds, learning what the Wilderlands offered—and she found the land was generous.

With dead fallen limbs, she built a shelter, padding it with evergreen branches to shield against the wind. She subsisted on blueberries and soft bark. Some days harkened back to her majestic homecoming; others bemoaned rain and bitter memories, relived in restless dreams. Most days, thankfully, came and went without circumstance.

As weeks stretched into months, and months dissolved through the years, Kateryna’s garden grew and prospered. Once she required the comfort of a home beyond that of simple shelter, she crafted her tools and set to building that home. On the day she finished clearing ground to lay the foundation, a man carrying a pickaxe wandered into her sacred demesne. At first, she did not recognize him, but one look into his deep, brown eyes—now bordered by wrinkles and dark circles—revealed the man for who he was.

Kateryna confronted her love, supported by the ever-watchful gaze of her mother’s soul tree. Looking her in the eyes and saying not a word, Seth only smiled, showing her all his crooked, yellow teeth. She collapsed into his arms, and they sank together into the soil and wept their sweet refrain.

Together, they built their home.

Kateryna borrowed lumber from her forest. Seth freed stone from its tomb. Their home, like all homes, was a mess of incongruity and roundabout logic. Above all, it was a life-long work-in-progress. Keeping up with the grounds and living in harmony with the land they had once taken for granted presented a host of errands they were happy to endure.

In the light of the High Noon, on the anniversary of Kateryna’s twentieth year since arriving home—Seth’s tenth—Kateryna finally took his hands in hers and swore a vow heard only by the birds and the squirrels and the martens, the Dusk and the Dawn and High Noon, and most of all, their three young, ginger-headed girls.

Communities arose near their homestead. People oft visited the family, bringing goods in exchange for livestock and crops and herbal remedies for common ailments. Talk among the farmers told that the old woman and her daughters could see the dead and bring peace to the living. Thus, more people arrived from near and far seeking comfort and repose against the harsh realities of life. Tales trickled to faraway lands of a seer and her silent husband who had ascended the obsidian steps out of hell to return to life in the waking world.

Legends tell of the stair, but no one has found such a structure, even after myriad expeditions had launched upstream, foolishly seeking the gates of Pandemonium.

The family became known as the Shepherds, named after their flock of multicolored sheep. Their daughters grew up and left to see the wider world. Some went on to sire children of their own.

Seth passed away after his fortieth homecoming, his smile set deep into his thin face.

Kateryna Shepherd, a woman many believed had appeared from dust, tended her flock and her garden, teaching children the ways of the forest and the quandaries of the mortal soul. The night she passed into the Great Beyond, the day after her one-hundred-and-eleventh homecoming, an entire village mourned and celebrated her life. When the headman and his hands entered the empty house built beneath the massive sycamore to retrieve her body, they found no body.

Everything else was clean, organized, and just as it should be. A queer, but ultimately innocuous, detail was the rusty spear hanging above the lintel of the front door. The rotting haft fueled Old Kat’s symbolic funeral pyre in the square, but a young widow perched the pock-marked spear tip atop the grave marker at the foot of the Great Mother’s Sycamore—a silent testament to a story no one would ever be told.

III — From the collected journals of a mad wizard

And now, my dear, loyal reader, we return to where my chronicle began.

Mounted atop the back of Pascal Doon the Lavender, I surged through the squalor of Dysmorphia—a roiling mass of sparkling amethyst and shining splendor soaring high above the malformed victims skittering in the blackened fields below.

As you well know, there is but one way up and one way down. I leaned onto the dragon’s back, and Pascal Doon threaded the needle of time and space, darting through the hollow center of the Great Stair.

In mere moments, we thundered our way through Sloth and Dipherticuli—twisted landscapes warped by the desires of sinners, broiling in their eternal damnation. At least, ’twas how the universe worked before the Dread Angel sat upon the Scarlet Chair.

In the days of yore, Dusk was the benevolent adjudicator of Life and Death, shepherding the beloved, and the accursed, dead to their rightful homes in the afterlife.

Once, souls crossed Her bridge spanning the River Acheron and found peace in the Great Beyond. Once, only the wicked and complacent were thrust through Pandemonium’s black gates. Yet, since the Dread Angel’s corruption on the seat of her insatiable throne, she hoards every soul within her turgid demesne, feasting upon their souls’ blood and starving the Hellish Lords of their fair share.

As we exploded through the throne room of Grahtzildahn, I bemusedly imagined setting eyes upon a startled Derrida and his inherited legion, reluctantly scrambling to defend their new lord. Though I could not bear witness to the incredulous expressions flitting by, I offered a wave and sly wink—a likely unnoticed gesture of good fortune to a man I had come to know inside and out.

Continuing through the narrow aperture in the domed, hammered-brass roof, we emerged into the open, piquant air of the Burning City.

I whispered the coordinates of Monrovia into the dragon’s mind. Pascal Doon rotated gracefully and launched like a shooting star in the direction I had given. Approaching the spectral wall warding the encroaching wastes of Morgana, Pascal Doon roared, unleashing a stream of pure ionic sorcery from his great maw, opening a temporary fissure that we traversed harmlessly before the wall healed behind us.

I took in the familiar scent of decadent, moldering hope. I reveled in it. To me, it felt like a long-overdue homecoming. I could hear the desperate screams of lost souls in the distance, the moaning of those eaten alive by the wandering demons inhabiting the forsaken islands and the Screaming Fields.

The elder dragon spoke in my mind: “Your village lies beneath the waves, my friend.”

I cannot explain why this summoned a tear to my eye. I accepted his news in silence, black memories of unceasing toil lapping on the shores of my pathos. For most, discovering the ruins of their pestilence-ridden prison might provide a sense of closure. Though logic told me so, I had difficulty accepting that the sinking of the wretched town had indeed been a mercy.

“It is no matter…” I said, wiping my eye clean, flinging my handkerchief into the waves. “The Goddess dwells in a keep to the north.”

“I will bring you to the water’s edge,” said Pascal Doon. “Then, I must retreat to the waking world to rest. You know how to call me, should you require my assistance again.”

“Thank you, friend…” I gasped. “Know that I will only call if it’s absolutely necessary.”

“Don’t make promises, Phrygian. We both know how those have turned out for you.”

I looked into the distance, my visuospatial perception naught but blurred, brief jolts of light. My imagination painted a lush landscape—a valley devoid of festering waters—restored to the glory the Vale once boasted. I saw evergreens standing stolid vigil, saw squirrels and martens chasing one another through gnarled boughs—I even heard the sweet calls of cardinals, blackbirds, and mother robins; the sounds of spring in a land long deceased.

Have you wondered why Morgana’s demesne lies horizontally, adjacent to that of Grahtz?

Each layer of the underworld is stacked atop the last like a twisted ladder—or a brutal stairwell—yet the Vale Betwixt was crafted with subversive intention, which had since been butchered by the Dread Angel’s ambitions… And it was the Scarlet Chair that forged the Dread Angel from the nigh indestructible ore of Dusk.

“I swear to you,” I cried atop the dragon, to no one in particular, “I will see these crimes answered for! Even if it claims my very soul!”

“The cycle is broken,” my friend said.

“No one helms the ferry,” I agreed. “Yet all will be reforged.”

Pascal Doon landed, and I alighted by the water’s edge, just a few leagues' hike from Morgana’s Great Hall. Shifting back to his bipedal form, we embraced. I knew he lamented sending me alone, but even an elder dragon and grandmaster sorcerer must seek repose after opening a portal to the depths of hell before flying all the way back to the waking world. My reserves were thus still untapped, my potential brimming with anticipation as my sorcery begged me to unleash its fury upon the defilers of reality. We bid each other farewell, and my friend faded from sight, embarking on the long trek home, where I prayed I might soon join him for another few centuries of quiet contemplation.

Steeling myself for the final dregs of my journey, I recalled my walking stick and donned my hood, taking the first step of the most grueling walk of my ancient life. I will spare you the details, for nothing material befell me during my wistful sojourn—nothing aside from the pastiche woven by a lifetime of regrets.

Before long, I stood at the precipice of a great bridge, spanning a ravine that fell into the edge of the Screaming Fields. Towering on the near horizon were the looming ebon doors of Morgana’s Great Hall, where she, in her infinite glory, surveilled over the damned, whether they had earned their internment or no.

I felt a heartbeat resounding through the land, pulsing in the soil.

It was I, dear reader, who entered those wretched halls as a herald of what was to pass. It was I, dear reader, who told the goddess of her impending downfall—praying all the while for her resurrection.

IV — On the road

Dysmorphia, ninth layer of Pandemonium

Within the mutating landscape of Dysmorphia, paths expand and contract, twist and straighten, at will. Like the serpentine gantlet of intestines filling my restored body, the road was long and fraught with peril. And though the Temple appeared to rise but a short journey ahead, in truth, it stood much farther than linear sight implied.

The execrable demons that wandered Dysmorphia’s blackened fields accosted me at every turn. I did not fear them; I possessed a beating heart that fueled my spark. When a flabby, pink gremlin was foolish enough to step in my path, I drew my blade and smote it down with ease. But drones are naught but fodder. More troublesome was the pit fiend tailing me, skulking in the shadows, weaving infernal sorcery to traverse the land as dust. I had nigh reached the temple by the time I wizened to its presence, after the behemoth materialized and barreled into me with six arms and the combined strength of a herd of oxen. The ground stolen from my feet, I soared down a ravine before crashing painfully into a rocky crag.

Undaunted, I rose and drew my blade. A cloud of dust twisted into a cyclone, and the pit fiend materialized once again, now standing three times my height. The earth quaked as it rumbled its deep, guttural laughter. Where most demons were wretched, incongruous things, this one boasted proportional girth and bulk—in other words, it was fit to offer me somewhat of a challenge—enough to put myself to the test.

“I have heard of you, Cain—hugh, hugh, hugh!” Its stomach convulsed as its chortles fumed like steam from twisted mouths dotting its shoulders and flabby pectorals. “And now—hugh, hugh—I will feast upon your precious soul.”

I shook my head. There was no time for such trifles. “Stand aside, demon. This warning is the only kindness I offer you.”

“You? Warning me?” the demon cried incredulously. “Do you know who I am?”

I turned from the foul beast, disinterested in its maddened tirade.

“I am the Earl of Sundicar—hugh, hugh, hugh—third inheritor of Gluttony! I have travelled too far to be ignored!”

I felt its many heavy hands thud to the ground. I rolled, narrowly avoiding the beast’s reckless charge. Pit fiends are arrogance made manifest, and thus the Earl of Sundicar did not expect my anticipating its clumsy ambush. It thundered by like a carriage pulled by a dozen sprinting horses and collided with the hard wall of the crevasse.

Dazed by the collision, the beast recoiled—I lunged, burying my notched blade to the crossguard in its back, piercing both of its hearts. My old sword snapped at the hilt as I tried to pull it free, and the blade melted away with the screaming—dying—hellish lord as its physical form dissolved into a bubbling slop.

Unclothed and unarmed I was, yet after such a display, none dared interrupt my errand again. Drones and soldiers alike shriveled in the radiance of the light emanating from my chest. I was a lighthouse standing vigil in the night, battered by waves that dwarfed my stature, but the old man tending the signal fire performed his duty with unrelenting resilience. So too was I a man scorned by his own actions, his own impotence.

I would not accept failure again—not this time.

* * *

The Temple of Abandon

Dysmorphia, ninth layer of Pandemonium

The Temple of Abandon stood tall. Taller, even, than the great cathedral wherein I was knighted and my life was thrown to the wolves. Built of gray stones of compacted ash, the only semblance of color in the entirety of Dysmorphia lay within the brilliant stained-glass windows. In sweeping arcs of orange, yellow, red, blue, and indigo, they depicted myth beyond my comprehension. Prismatic angels stood in formation, watching over their new world. Each image shone peace, harmony, as if murder and destruction and tyranny were unnatural things birthed by humanity, rather than thrust upon us.

As I pushed open the heavy doors, I was overcome by the aroma of frankincense and lavender. I crossed the threshold and was swallowed by shadows, subsumed by void. I called out, answered only by the echo of my own voice. For as long as I could stand, I waited. For years, or for hours, I cannot know. As I lingered, I questioned everything I had accomplished until this point. When I could wait no longer, I turned around to find the door had vanished, replaced by a hunch-backed Skanu wearing a bloody rag wrapped around his eyes.

“You’ve made it, my son,” said Ibrahim, Oracle of Dusk… my mentor… my closest friend. “In truth, I had my doubts.”

“You were right to doubt,” I said, looking down at my extremities, my shame revealed entirely to this man I loved. His eyes were covered, but Ibrahim saw all, down to the most depraved profundity of a man’s soul—and surely mine was carved more deeply than the trenches of the sea.

“No…” Ibrahim grasped my shoulders with hard, splintered hands, then caressed my cheek. “You are a son to me. Your failures are mine to share.”

“My sins are mine alone.”

The man who had become my father smiled. “Yet, here I stand.”

I felt a sickness in my gut, my head grew heavy, and I collapsed into his arms. He held me close to his heart, beating in rhythm with mine.

“I’ve…” I rasped through unbidden tears. “I’ve missed you—so much.”

“And I you, my son. Welcome home.”

Shadows gave way to warm, scintillating light spilling through the stained glass. The walls were adorned with a polished maple veneer; a bed stood in one corner beneath intersecting planks, a cauldron hovering above a humble hearth in the other. If I had not known better, there would be no telling that this abode existed at the lowest depth of the underworld. The Temple of Abandon was no temple at all—instead, it was a home. Though I had never set foot there before, I knew it was my home, too. If only because Ibrahim had been there waiting.

“I don’t understand how you’re here.”

“Our mortal eyes cannot perceive all that lies before us,” he said, squatting on the floor and folding his bony legs. He picked up a steaming cup he seemed to have plucked from the ether and held it out. I sat in kind and gladly took the cup, pleased to smell the earthy aroma of chamomile tea.

“I am the Oracle of Dawn,” he continued. “So too, am I the Watcher of the Abyss, custodian of Dysmorphia. I make my haunt at the threshold between Morgana and Grahtzildahn, and also do I reside here.”

“I will not pretend to understand,” I said, sipping my tea. “You have always been marked by paradox. Nonetheless, I am glad to see you.”

“This is the first time we’ve met properly, since you were a boy.”

I tilted my head. “No… That can’t be right.”

“You’ve visited me a number of times, in my hovel on the threshold, but you were not you. You were Arthur, Morgana’s Chosen. Sitting here before me now, is Cain. The boy I raised. The boy I taught to speak so eloquently.”

“Do you still write, Ibrahim?” I asked, remembering the cascading scrolls flooding from the countless shelves in his scant quarters at the monastery in Skan’basan. “I imagine you have the time.”

“Indeed. But is this really what you wish to discuss?”

I inhaled, a sharp breath caught in my throat. For a moment, I had forgotten my purpose for being here. Overwhelmed with the bliss and relief offered by my dear friend’s presence—by the love I felt for him, the man who had accepted me as his own—I had grown complacent in my fleeting dance with comfort. I thanked the spark inside my heart for the moment of respite.

Take a breath… Now, carry on.

“From your lips, your matron commanded, I claim the sword forged from the blood of a thousand heretics.” My words shattered my delusions of repose. Ibrahim’s expression hardened. The room dimmed. “Do you have this blade, Ibrahim?”

“Yes.” Ibrahim said, his voice strained.

“What must I do?”

The old man loosened the bandages around his head, revealing to me a vast field of stars and dust. Grasping my cheeks, he blew redolent smoke in my face. The world upended as his eyes became consumed by expanding vastnesses. As he whispered instructions, his words curled around me, then folded me in two. His voice was music—harmonious yet discordant, immediate yet distant.

I had left my body behind, my soul hurtling through a tunnel woven of nothing and everything. Stars shimmered all around, affixed in place as I traveled the cosmos at impossible speed. Leave it all behind. Take your pain and thank it for the work it’s done. Then—let it scatter to the winds. Be free, my love…

Be free.

I felt soil beneath my feet. I opened my eyes. I was standing in a lush grove at dusk. A sycamore towered over me, taller than all others. The air was cool and sweet beneath its shade, like lingering mist after a morning rain. I fell to my knees when I realized this tree had eyes—pale, blue eyes, wind-scarred, the color of winter. They stared back at me with wry contemplation. I had waited so long to look into their splendor once more, to wither beneath their incandescence. Stasia emerged from the bark, manifesting before me in the flesh as would a dryad of myth.

Perhaps that was what she had become.

We stared at one another, my heart pounding. Thump, thump. Thump, thump. I mulled over a hundred scripts in my head, searching for enchanted words that might mend the damage wrought by so many cold, restless nights. Her love had been so warm, so vulnerable. It made me whole. I stared into those deep eyes, mirroring the tall mountains of her Motherland. And I wept.

My love had only driven her mad, stealing everything from her.

Stasia watched. Her gaze was not callous, but justly indifferent. She made no move to comfort me, for I have not once earned her comfort. When my last tear dissolved into the rich soil hugging my feet, I again gazed into her beautiful eyes in earnest—my heart, at peace. Thump, thump. Thump, thump. Around us, all fell silent. The world stilled.

I breathed deep.

“I’ve always put you last,” I said, finally. “I’ve placed every duty above our family. My actions destroyed us. What I’ve done is reprehensible…” I choked, swallowing ash. “I am sorry, Anastasia, for betraying your trust—for abandoning you and our daughter… for leaving you to grieve the son we never met—alone. I have barred myself from forgiveness—and yet, I have come to you, asking for it.”

Another eternity seemed to slip by. Her expression, unmoving. Unyielding. My insides battered by the frigid gusts of the Wyse, I had no hint of her thoughts, nor could I hope to understand the extent of her suffering at my hands.

I felt her hand fold into mine. Her bright, blue eyes had shed their cold indifference, warming to touch with a relief only she had the power to bestow. A tear rolled down her cheek—her perfect, smooth cheek, her face just as gorgeous as it was that night on the balcony, overlooking the whole of Valencia. Her dark tresses glowed, wreathing her form in a golden shroud, and she took me in her arms, inviting me in, that we may at last grieve together.

And we wept. Together. Mourning a life wasted… An eternity of pain, soon at an end.

How is it that my road has led me here? I am not worthy…

We severed our embrace. Her expression told me, “You will be.”

I absorbed her features, layering them upon my fragile, long-molested memory. I’ll not forget you again—never again.

I blinked. Anastasia was gone.

Ibrahim stood before me in his humble home in the lowest depths of Pandemonium. He held an unremarkable longsword, forged of iron, pock-marked from rust, polished clean. “My son…” the old man said. “You have come far.”

I nodded. I have. And now, I was free of my sins.

The old man did not redress his bandages. Instead, he looked at me with his bright, bleeding eyes. With a flick of the wrist, darkness fell away in favor of warm, iridescent light. “Kneel, Cain, and be knighted once more by the light of the Sun!”

Reluctant, I fell to one knee, bowing my head before my father. My heart bounded with anticipation. Thump, thump. Thump, thump. He laid the flat of the blade on my right shoulder. “By the power of Dawn,” he cried, the room echoing a chorus of souls, watching from the shadows. He lifted the sword, setting it upon my left shoulder. “I name you anew—rise in the light of Mourning, Syr Cain the Redeemer!”

I rose, and my father presented the sword to me. I grasped the hilt with a tremulous hand. I am not worthy…

Ibrahim wore peace on his face, free of the shame that had long poisoned every mask I wore. “You are worthy, my son. Dawn has willed it. You have earned it.”

“Thank you, father.”

“You know what must be done.”

My heart was adamant, cold with righteous judgment, and set with the fury of ages. Doom tolled in the Abyss, rang along the edges of my soul-haunted blade, singing in dread tones for the time of repentance—for retribution.

“I do.”

* * *

Thus, I departed the Temple of Abandon with renewed vigor, striding through the desiccated valleys and demolished ruins of Dysmorphia, following the pulse of corruption seeping down from Morgana. I walked towards the hellish sea, once an entry to living earth. No demon dared to cross my path; my way was lit by Dawn, Her light travelling through unseen realms to reach me in the depths.

I wore nothing, naked, but for the bare, unnamed blade I carried, forged of the soul’s blood of one thousand men and women. Their foibles mirrored my own, and with stolid solidarity, I carried along their wretched souls on my holy errand. I carried their sins upon my shoulders. I listened to their tales and to their regrets, a legion of voices ringing in my ears, reverberating the walls of my thoughts.

Such a burden was naught but a trifle. Baptized in the light of the Mourning Sun, I was reborn. Keeper of lost souls. Guide, carving the way to salvation. I wielded a nameless sword forged from sin…

And I would use it to pierce the very heart of sin.

For the final time, I gazed up at the towering obsidian pillar of the Great Stair. The wounds on my feet reopened as I took my first step, and the sharp edges of its surface bit into my soles. But my way was lit and I chose every footfall with a decisive certainty I had never before known. Blood wept from my footprints, trickling down the way I had come—a bitter testament to my journey, forever etched into the ebon stone. My path was no secret.

The Goddess Corrupted knew of my impending arrival, and she was powerless to stop me. The Dread Angel would know her sister’s divine light… and would taste the bitter tang of my blade.

* * *

The Burning City

Grahtzildahn, second layer of Pandemonium

As I emerged into the throne room of the Burning City, my old friend stared down at me with a blend of shock and elation, his vigilant bald-headed mount coiled around him. I stood before him, bleeding on the floor I had won for him, tarnishing the polished quartz that scintillated like red dwarfs in the night sky. His legionnaires moved to intercept me for fear I would dispatch their new lord as I had his predecessor.

“Leave him!” commanded Derrida from his throne. “This man marches to subdue our greatest enemy.” He rose—a powerful gesture in this court—and approached me. The lines in his face went deep, and I wondered how many years had passed in my absence. “Arthur…”

I shook my head. “I am Cain. This be the name given me at birth—it is the name I carry to redeem our matron.”

“Cain. Right. You walked all this way?”

I nodded.

“Well,” he sighed, “you ain’t walking the plains, nor the sea.”

“Where is Montauk?”

Derrida grimaced. “She was shot down before you and I first arrived here.”

“Her soul?”

“I captured it.” He looked away. “At first, I thought to remake her old form, but Morgana’s designs are well beyond my ken.”

“Tell me you didn’t put her in armor,” I said at length, eyeing the legionnaires standing on either side of me.

“No, of course not! A cruel fate for such a magnificent creature. I had no clue what to do with her until I received this.” Derrida handed me a round stone, etched with incomprehensible characters. Though I could not grasp the artifact’s significance, it was clearly crafted in Old Kaldea, during the days of the First Empire. “I don’t know who left it—or how they slipped in unnoticed—but I awoke one morning to find this sitting on the empty pillow beside me. My linguists and engineers decoded it; within, they found blueprints. After that, I knew exactly this gift’s purpose.”

The doors burst open, the air thrumming with a syncopation like a hundred iron staves striking the floor. A pure white stallion entered the throne room, presenting itself proudly before me, unfurling the great pearlescent wings of an egret that spanned the height of three men. The beast’s elegance stole my breath, and I reverently offered it my hand so it may honor me with its touch.

“Cain… My dear friend.”

“You have changed,” I whispered in awe.

“I am unbound,” said Montauk, nudging my head with her snout, her fur softer than silk. “I am free.”

Looking into her golden, equine eyes, I silently asked: You would ride with me?

“Yes. One last time.”

I smiled when I saw the old saddle I had fashioned when I first arrived in Pandemonium. One good memory in a malaise of shadow. I turned to Derrida, his face hardened by years of command.

“Thank you.”

“Consider my debt to you paid. Just don’t come back for my throne. I’ve grown comfortable here.”

“Swear to me,” I said grimly, “that you will maintain the balance. Your duty as Lord of Grahtzildahn is to stem the bleeding of Pandemonium into the waking world.”

“Don’t make demands in my court, Arthur—Cain—whoever the fuck you are. We’ve been doing fine without your prying.”

I nodded, then mounted Montauk. Perhaps we will know the taste of mortal skies, I thought loud enough for Montauk to hear. But first, we must earn our peace.

Atop the back of Montauk, Dawn’s sacred Pegasus, I again took to the skies of Pandemonium. The empty space between jagged ceiling and sparse, parched clouds was my haunt. My domain. For the first time, I prowled my territory of my own accord, for my own reasons. Carrying the sins of a thousand others who had not the chance to right their wrongs, I had become the Keeper of Lost Souls, Cain the Redeemer, unbound and unburdened, free to soar the skies.

We passed through the threshold barrier with ease, emerging into a raging thunderstorm unlike any display of wrath I had before witnessed of my fallen matron. As we neared the edge of the Congealed Sea, Montauk landed on a jagged rock jutting from the tempestuous waves. She whinnied and reared as I roared into the hurricane. Lightning struck the waters behind us in bitter protest. I drew my fabled sword, pointing the blade skyward. Dawn’s rays burst from the tip to pierce Morgana’s umbral canopy; the dark clouds scattered like shadows fleeing the light, silver waters parting for the ferrier’s skiff. Thus, the heretical sword in my grip would be remade, and I named it Scapha.

The balance must be restored—nothing less would suffice. We had come too far.

* * *

Morgana’s Keep

The Vale Betwixt, first layer of Pandemonium

“I will devour him,” cried the Goddess atop her glorious throne, her voice a discordant chorus of man, woman, and child. She cast her withering glare upon the frail old man who had dared to trespass upon her sacred hall. By some miracle—rather, miraculous mercy—the Goddess did not set him ablaze right then and there.

Any reasonable man would have bowed and begged forgiveness for such an insolent transgression. Instead, the man burst into a fit of manic laughter. He hooted and hollered and slapped his knobby knees. Then he shimmied a boyish jig, all but clicking together his heels.

We courtiers in attendance gasped, whispering our speculation as to what affliction devoured his mind.

“The mystic must die,” one of us said.

“Surely, he has a death wish,” concurred another.

“Mad! Must be!”

We went on like this for a moment, quieting as our matron rose from her throne—a seat of power, an ancient artifact that fed us, that kept us young and beautiful. The Goddess only vacated her seat in times most dire. This was why she kept a retainer of her favored Chosen. That is, of course, until each of them abandoned their oaths.

Now, she had no one to fight her battles.

The old man leaned heavily on his gnarled stave, grinning like a damned imbecile. His teeth were foul, yellow, and misaligned. We could almost smell his malodorous breath, even from where we watched captivated in the gallery. He spewed one final guffaw before a grim veil descended over the Goddess’s refined countenance, dimming the room.

“Dear heavenly matron,” said he, his voice dripping with sardonic toxins. “What follows has long been prophesied. Smite me down! Shatter my soul into tiny fragments! Nothing you do will stop what is to come.”

Expressionless, the Goddess said, “Your rambling is unbecoming. Your filth, untoward. I will not abide one so wretched in my court.” With a careless wave of her porcelain hand, her thirty-six housecarls drew their blades. “Be gone.”

Facing certain mutilation, the man’s mirth remained alive and well. Miming the Goddess, he gave a foppish swing of his stave, sending a gentle ripple dancing through the air. When the wave struck the housecarls’ armor, a metallic tumult rang out as all our matron’s soldiers crumpled into naught but reflective cubes.

“Oh, beautiful Goddess, imprisoned so far below your rightful station,” said the old, ugly man, his face obscured by the scintillating refractions of the skylight. “I cannot fault you for failing to recognize me—or perhaps you simply cannot remember, your memory shrouded by the crimson allure of your corruption…” He looked up, meeting Her obsidian gaze, his eyes alight with emerald flames. “I’ve cheated you time and time again! Back in the days of yore, when Dusk ferried souls down the River Acheron. Before Morgana shamed her divine sister and claimed the underworld for herself....

“Your judgement has come!” The old man slammed his stave on the floor, shattering the marble at his feet. The walls shook, the foundation quaked, sending us courtiers sprawling to our backs.

The Goddess screamed and lunged at the old man. Her ebon sword collided with a barrier of blinding sorcery, blade and spell shattering into shards of dusky glass. She raised her inky claws to clasp his throat, but something stilled her. A shadow crept across her pale face, darkening her visage like gathering storm clouds. The skylight burst open, raining lethal shards upon us courtiers. The last sight we beheld was an ashen rider diving into the throne room, atop an alabaster pegasus, pock-marked sword in hand.

As our souls evaporated, our screams joined the chorus.

* * *

Chaos reigned. Ceaseless screaming devoured my senses—whether they were the screams of my lost souls or of the gluttonous courtiers, I could not know.

Morgana unfurled her great ebon wings. She summoned a howling gale, which itself summoned a cadre of cyclones. Phrygian Black rose into the air, enwreathed in raw arcane energy nearly strong enough to contest even the Dread Angel’s divine will.

The walls buckled, and the keep crumbled around us.

My spark, the lingering fragment of Dusk’s soul, pulsed in time with the swollen corruption invisibly strangling the reality surrounding it. The wizard launched spell after spell, cascades of sweeping sorceries passed harmlessly through Morgana as she let out an ululating cry and charged me.

I issued my silent commands to Montauk, spinning and evading Morgana’s relentless, personal assault. The Dread Angel fought not with honor nor blade, but with grotesque talons that cut into the very fabric of the ether. Storm clouds gathered; thunder shook the air, and rain plummeted like volleys of arrows.

Yanking the reins, I dodged Morgana’s grasping talons, their tips grazing my throat. She feinted and instantaneously repositioned, sent a crushing knee into Montauk’s chest. She laughed as my dear stallion fell gasping to the tremulous earth below, and I lay pinned beneath my mount.

Montauk!

I felt her labored breaths, the rattling of her punctured lungs.

Not again. Please.

“Worry not for me, Cain… Succeed, and we will all be saved.”

My heart skipped a beat as Montauk’s ceased.

Thump, thump.

My chest burned; my skin ignited. My restored body had been shattered, and I invited Dusk’s destructive avatar to suffuse my form, to wield Scapha. When she had taken me before, all that followed was a blur, misremembered and dreamlike. Borrowing her strength now, of my own will, I was in control, supported rather than dominated. I freed myself from Montauk’s limp form, and unfurled my own wings—black as night, gleaming like onyx in the flashes of unyielding lightning.

The remaining foundation of the keep burst outward, leaving us stranded on a sinking island. The Congealed Sea swelled, tidal waves battering our shrinking battleground, joined by legions of leviathans.

I felt some energy—a wicked vitality—pulsing through the ground. With divine eyes, I witnessed for the first time the network of bulging veins spread throughout the earth like the roots of a demonic tree, siphoning the soul’s blood from the whole of Pandemonium—all of it coalescing at the heart of evil: The Scarlet Chair.

Thump, thump. Thump, thump.

Morgana made a cage of her jagged fingers, dripping with black ichor. Chanting unknowable words, weaving eldritch sorcery, the Goddess Corrupted called upon her armies of simpering demons that prowled the fields. Drones and soldiers manifested around the boundaries of our holy battle, swimming like lurking sharks in the surrounding waters.

Phrygian Black chanted in measured verse, invoking legendary words of myth. Pascal Doon roared in the distance as he emerged through a rent in the sky. Hordes of waterborne drones converged, crashing into a sorcerous barrier surrounding us—a shimmering orb, much like the wall barring Morgana from consuming Grahtzildahn. The wizard leapt atop the back of the elder dragon. Chanting in unison, they expended the entirety of their combined potential to keep Morgana’s armies at bay.

I ascended to meet her. I raised Scapha, the blade thrumming as the lost souls demanded vengeance, singing their profane hopes and wailing their disdain. Morgana, wielding no weapon with which to parry, lifted her arms as I thrust, the blade cutting through the flesh of her forearms, the point sliding through her left eye.

The Dread Angel screamed as her eye burst in a crimson mist and the shredded remains shriveled into dust. She reared, slashing like an enraged falcon. With wings of my own, I evaded her savage onslaught with ease. The crack of her wings was thunder as Morgana launched upward, wheeled about, and swooped from on high, her lone eye glinting with chthonic finality. I shifted to the side as she came down upon me, and I took from her a gorgeous, ebon wing with a back-handed slash.

Morgana sank to the ground below. I landed in front of her, consumed by a forlorn longing—the same that comes to a man when he realizes his parents were not the models of perfection he had thought them to be, but normal people bearing flaws and foibles and failures.

I leveled my blade, writhing in my grip, thirsting for Morgana’s soul to join its congregation. Morgana gazed into my divine eyes for the first time. Her bleeding arms fell limp, hanging languid at her sides, her expression lifeless—lost. Beholding her hands, she saw for the first time, the blood crusted beneath her monstrous claws.

“Have I fallen so far, my love?” Morgana said, her voice singular, like that of a widow. “Have I fallen so? Even you would seek to destroy me?”

I nodded. “We both have.”

Morgana’s hard mask fell away, replaced with the mournful sorrow of a drunk waking after a night of blind carnage. I saw centuries flash behind her unfeeling eye, set like a cracked gem in the tarnished structure of her pallid face.

“Do what I could not,” commanded the Goddess Defeated. “End me.”

With a single, decisive thrust, I lunged past the fallen angel at my feet and plunged my fabled blade into the seat of the Scarlet Chair.

Thump, thump. Thump, thump.

The beating heart struggled to pump its precious fuel.

Thump, thump. Thump, thump.

Morgana wailed, writhing on the ground.

Thump, thump. Thump, thump.

I bared my teeth, twisting my blade as I pushed it deeper.

Thump, thump. Thump...

The hungry pulse of the spoiled land ceased.

The clouds parted and dispersed.

The waves and hordes retreated.

The light of the Mourning Sun touched the Silver Valley’s dead soil once more, and I was the Avatar of Dusk no longer.

Finally, I was absolved of my sins.

V — From the collected journals of a mad wizard

Thus ends our tale, dear reader. With the conclusion of Syr Cain the Redeemer’s valiant crusade through the warped hellscapes of Pandemonium, the Scarlet Chair’s gluttonous feast of countless dead had finally come to an overdue end.

As Cain’s sword, Scapha, forged from the blood of a thousand lost souls, bit into the unnatural flesh of the Chair’s heart, the surveilling rains abated. The turgid waters of the Congealed Sea drained through the underworld and into the Abyss, making way for the River Acheron to once again flow through the Valley of Death.

Dusk’s avatar severed her bond with her noble host and approached the Goddess Corrupted, lying twisted and malformed on the ground. Touching the cracked porcelain of her dark mirror, Dusk at last reclaimed her errant shadow.

I cannot describe what immediately followed, for I had tapped the entirety of my arcane potential and beyond—the fabric of my lifeforce was fraying at the seams. The good headmaster Pascal Doon cast one final spell, pulling us out of the afterlife and back into my quarters within the protective walls of the Citadel.

For days afterward, we awaited ill tidings, fearing the consequences such a shift in cosmic power might bring. Our fears were not… unwarranted. Word came that Mount Vragognev, in the heart of Kuzolova, had erupted, razing the Eastern Kingdom’s capital in an instant. The aftershocks were felt around the world, toppling structures throughout each of the Great Kaldean Cities and causing political and civil turmoil that took the greater part of a generation to recover from.

Shortly after the eruption, black storm clouds—not unlike those that supplied Morgana’s surveilling rains—spawned in the region that was the prosperous Eastern Kingdom, one of the last vestiges of the Old Empire.

Though Pascal Doon and I scaled the Great Stair, we had not the will to gamble another trek into the underworld to see where the final steps emerged. Many have speculated that the Stair has no true outlet in the waking world; a position supported by my long-anticipated visit with Kateryna Shepherd.

I’ll not forget the day I first visited my dear Kateryna—only six months after the destruction of the Scarlet Chair. I found her humble cottage near what remained of Kuzolova’s western borders, a popular route for refugees fleeing the fallen kingdom to begin anew in Wystra, which had granted land to nearly twenty thousand Kuzolovii.

But time folds in strange ways, cruel ways… and I soon discovered that much more time had passed for her than it had for me.

Kateryna did not recognize me. That, dear reader, caused me profound grief. Yet, she did believe me when I told her that I had known her in another life. She had just celebrated her fiftieth year free of Pandemonium, which would have put her well into her seventies, had she lived a linear life. Her husband had recently passed away, but her home was full of spry young grandchildren enjoying their innocent youth.

As I entered, I took note of the plethora of herbal aromas. I could hear a cauldron bubbling away, releasing a comforting scent of purple deadnettle tea, which brought back memories of my mother’s home in the days of the First Empire. The wood floor thrummed with the pitter-patter of scurrying children, giggling as they chased one another into the far corners of the cottage. I felt a tug on my sleeve, a tiny hand tapping my thigh. I bent down to meet my host, smiling wide to show her my teeth—all nine of them!

The little girl’s face pinched. “Gross!” Lord Derrida, upon his throne, could not have issued a judgment more absolute. “Nonie! There’s a jester in the mud room!” She ran off somewhere, probably into some hidden alcove to hide from her siblings. I’ve never been good with children, if only for my troubling appearance.

As you already know, dear reader, I’ve never been a vain man.

The rhythmic click of a walking stick approached. At first, I had thought myself mistaken, but I knew Kateryna the instant she spoke. “Can I help you, stranger? Headed to the fortress, eh?”

I pulled off my travelling cap and pressed it to my chest. I could hardly contain my excitement for the opportunity to finally speak with my friend in earnest—to share in solidarity all the pain I had felt alongside her.

And to tell her that she was not, and had never been, alone.

“Dear Kateryna…” I bowed, feeling foolish and utterly unworthy. “I am at your service.”

The old woman’s chuckle came out as a series of coughs, raspy with years of smoking. “I’m not hiring. Nor am I interested in remarrying. So, you’d best be on your way.”

“No!” I laughed. “You misunderstand me—my days of courtship lie long behind. Besides, you’re much too young…” I could not see what expression my words conjured, but I like to think it was one of curious bemusement. Judging by looks alone, she might have thought me a few years her junior. “I am Phrygian Black, high sorcerer and Architecton of the Citadel. I’m here because you and I were friends. In another life.”

“Another life, eh?” she said at length. “Care to elaborate?”

“You knew me once by the name of Fulcrum. We worked together on the docks of Monrovia.”

A shadow spread over her face on ebon wings. For a silent moment that felt like a lifetime, Kateryna looked at the rusted spear mounted above the door. She grunted, then shuffled across the room, scooting out two chairs at a dining table and lit a tallow candle. “Sit. Tell me what you know of Monrovia.”

And so I sat. And I told. I recited to her much of what I shared with you, and more besides. Truth be told, I did love her. My dear Kateryna, I understood her in ways I was not convinced she understood herself… ’Tis the unfortunate foreknowledge granted to oneiromancers living vicariously through the dreams of others. I loved her, but because I understood her, I knew my love would forever go unrequited. I was no stranger to the sensation; I had fallen in love countless times in my sorcerously extended life, and I remain a hopeless romantic in my own way.

Kateryna listened with rapt attention, adding details to my stories where she could. We talked through the night, and by the time Dawn graced the sky, she was the one recounting tales. I scribbled down everything I could, recording her words as quickly and accurately as a blind man can write with an enchanted quill—which is to say, quite fast, but not as much as a seeing man with the same stationery.

In the morning, we walked her pastures and fed her flock. I scratched the chin of an elder sheep, the tenth to be named Montauk.

Together, we talked to the ancient sycamore Kateryna claimed contained the bright soul of Anastasia Cain. To my delight, she was correct—the tree was very much alive and full of conversation. Anastasia told me much, dear reader, but our conversations must remain private. That much, I promised her.

I made it a tradition to visit Kateryna every year during the summer solstice, when we would spend the nights drinking tea and wine as we talked ceaselessly. In those days, we herded her flock and gardened. Admittedly, I asked her for her hand—more than once, but no more than thrice—and each time she declined, for Seth was her only mate. There would never be another. I then offered to take her to the Citadel to receive the Sorcerer’s Gift so that she could live another millennium. But that offer too she declined.

“My only desire,” she told me one humid summer night, after thirteen years of splendid friendship, “is to die peacefully, surrounded by family, who will bury me in the shade of my mother’s tree. I want to rest, Phrygian. One day, I want only to rest.”

When the day came, I received a letter from Edwinna Shepherd, Kateryna’s eldest great-granddaughter. I locked myself in my chambers and sobbed for a fortnight, with grief for myself, and with bittersweet relief that my dear friend was finally granted the peace she deserved.

During those grief-stricken days, locked in my chambers, I cast one more desperate incantation as I drifted into a fitful sleep, consumed with breathtaking loss. I whispered the words, keeping in mind the conversation Anastasia and I had shared that sweet morning, now so long ago. I summoned a dream but saw nothing. Kateryna was forever beyond my sight.

I think of her still, and the pain remains as fierce as it was on the first night I learned of her passing. Yet, when I remember my beloved Kateryna, I can only smile my crooked smile at the fond memories of our time together. You see, dearest reader, it is the unique power of the human soul to constantly seek the good, and to live, for the sake of that good, with all the strength of the human heart…

I returned to her home and aided her grandchildren in chasing off the townsfolk, who insisted upon burning her remains in accordance with northern tradition. So too, I helped them lay their nonie to rest beneath the shade of their ancestral soul tree. Still, I cannot erase from my memory the smile locked on Kateryna’s sleeping face.

When Dusk darkened the sky, shepherding home her child for the final time, and I stood alone before her simple grave, I wiped a single tear from my eye and pressed my hand against the cool bark of the tree. My vision came back to me for a moment, and I saw only light, harmony made real. Three bright souls inhabited the roots of the tallest sycamore to ever grace the earth.

And they were at peace.