Ashen Rider — Part Three

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THREE

You have been robbed.

Of something.

You didn’t know.

Could be taken.

Syr Arthur Cain (-13 to 35)

“Awakening,” published Year 36.

I — A conversation, somewhere far away.

The Kaza’dur left a gross power vacuum in their wake. In the years following your knighthood, you rose through the ranks of Valentine Aristocracy.

Valencia was no longer a humble fortress, subservient to a crumbling empire. The Kaldean capital, the Great City of Baltaire, fell the instant the invasion began. Once the Lord Governor Vidoq perished of dysentery, Syr Laszlo Balderas the First put a crown upon his head and declared himself High King of “New Kaldea”—the name never stuck, as you know—elevating the Golden City to a superpower, as it was the sole producer of grain and wine to the surviving Kaldean cities.

High King Balderas financed the construction of three new fortresses along the southern borders of the Valentine Outlands. He had hoped these might prevent those wretched snakes from ever again approaching the white walls of Valencia.

On the first morning of spring, marked by dense cadres of daffodils bursting from every inch of soil and dancing robins courting in the open air, a ceremony was held in your honor.

Well, yours and two of your companions. Together, you and Syr Gabriel and Syr Derrida stood before the High King, who named each of you Lord Protector and bestowed upon you a border-keep. You swore an oath before the Dusk and Dawn, by light of the High Noon, to give your life if necessary in the fight against the invaders.

Dame Citha watched on from the front row, a grimace painted across her face, aimed unwaveringly at Derrida’s chest. When he felt her indignation, he deflated beneath the weight of his newly bequeathed golden badge. Derrida knew he was selected by merit of his cock—not for his ability to command.

Citha knew this, and so did you.

The slender man swallowed ash, on display for every Valentine Noble to scrutinize. He dreaded the dire responsibility that would come with his castle. Worse, he crumbled beneath the resentment of a woman he held overwhelming, unrequited love for.

Your keep was the closest to the city, so naturally, you all enjoyed a sumptuous dinner in your lavish dining hall. Centering the room was a great longtable made from four ancient sycamores. Lining the walls were stout pillars of polished limestone.

The High King had commissioned Astrofus, a renowned philosopher and sculptor—also a hack, but that’s beside the point—to festoon the entire room with hand-carved renders of Kaldean heroes in perfect marble. The affair had cost millions and stirred up quite the controversy among the nobility.

“Just think,” Gabriel cried out, raising an ivory tankard of spiced blueberry mead, “not long ago, we were filthy waifs shoved into fish barrels to serve as live bait on the walls!”

“Gods… how things can change,” said Derrida, running his hand across a marble woman’s bodice.

“Gods?” You shook your head in disbelief. “You borrow too much from these Valentines.”

Citha nodded agreement, muttering a quick prayer to Dusk under her breath.

Gabriel leaned forward, spilling mead on the new table. “Don’t tell me you still believe all that shite the monks went on about? Come now, Arthur! It’s all a bunch of superstitious rubbish!”

“We’ve been blessed—some of us well beyond what he deserves,” Citha said, glaring at Derrida, who ducked behind his marble woman. “And you dare to blaspheme by belittling our generous Goddess?”

“Blaspheme? Blaspheme!” Gabriel rose, throwing his tankard splashing to the floor. “What’s fucking blasphemy are the fucking snakes who just decided on a whim that our world belonged to them! Where was your ‘generous Goddess,’ then?”

“We have been knighted by Dusk’s holy decree! Given sacred names of renown and land to call our own!” Citha’s eyes went wide. “In what godless world would four orphans be given so much?”

“Damn it, woman. Again with the bloody hysterics!” Gabriel stormed out of the hall without another word.

You hadn’t known he felt that way. You had thought Dusk revealed herself to all her children. Now, you were beginning to doubt even that. Though the memory of that night in the hot spring was slowly eroding, you never questioned the certainty you felt at Dusk’s gentle touch.

“I’m sorry, Citha. That was uncalled for.”

She snorted, lips curled at the sound of Gabriel’s heavy footsteps echoing deeper in the keep. “You are not who need apologize.”

“I allowed him to disrespect you and our faith in my home. I should have intervened.”

“Arthur,” Citha sighed, dark eyes trained on yours, “there are other women in your life to worry over. I don’t need you to defend me.”

You looked to Derrida for support. Poking out from his hiding place, he only shrugged. You smiled, glad most of your companions remained your friends.

* * *

Anastasia sat in a patch of lilies and daffodils outside the walls. The hills, usually golden brown with dashes of red, were covered in waves of rolling green grass. She held her belly, swollen with child. You placed a gentle hand on her shoulder and watched proudly as your daughter played in the grass, hunting for beetles.

Despite the tranquility of the moment, your heart was steeped in worry.

The first pregnancy had been challenging for Anastasia; she nearly didn’t make it through. She was underweight then, and she was thinner now. She had become the Lady of a castle—she should have been comfortably plump and full-bodied. Irrational though it was, you blamed yourself for failing to provide, as if lack of food were the sole culprit behind her failing health.

She sensed your unease, danced her hand atop yours. Her touch had a way of quelling your anxieties. You bent down, pressed your chapped lips against hers. They were soft, tasting faintly of honey. Her mouth vibrated as she hummed a sigh of relief, as if your presence were as soothing as a cool cup of water on a summer’s midday.

“Only yesterday it seems she learned how to walk,” you said, admiring your little girl again. You could never keep your eyes off her for long. “Now she’s running through the grass, cherishing every life she comes across.”

“Isn’t she gorgeous, Cain?” Anastasia said, her voice the plucking of a harp to your ears. “This world isn’t ready for the gifts she’ll give.”

Kateryna bent down, offered her stubby finger to the Monarch butterfly. She screeched with delight when it instead landed atop her long, ginger curls.

“No…” You said, a smile set deep in your hard face. “The world isn’t ready.”

* * *

That day would live on in your dreams.

You didn’t know what Dusk’s afterlife might look like, but you hoped it meant reliving that afternoon on the hill, time and time again.

I’m so sorry that wasn’t what happened.

You were a soldier, you knew the risks you took, but you never thought your devotion would destroy your girls—your unborn child. The Dread Angel’s malice knew no bounds; she laid claim to your eternal soul and stole those of your family.

The days following that peaceful afternoon in the rolling, wheat-laden hills marked the rising swells that would grow into waves battering the tranquil shores of your life. You suffered the consequences of events that had occurred well before your time and, by right, had nothing to do with you. Is it your fault, Morgana’s Chosen, that the Goddess Corrupted marked you as her unyielding favorite amidst a sea of countless devotees? Did you invite her eye, tempt her to abandon the ways of godhood for the excess of mass consumption?

Do you remember the nightmare you had before you were called again to march upon the Kaza’dur? No?

It was a warm, late summer night, not four months since you’d moved into your holding. Sleep had found you easily, despite your anxieties of leaving Anastasia to give birth on her own, and her chronic condition that only seemed to worsen with each passing moon. Dreams found you easier—you opened your eyes to find yourself back in the hot spring, floating in the warm water.

At first, a memory—a reminder of the first time you felt the love of another. You were only a boy, then, and you had possessed no notion of what you had truly promised to the goddess all those years ago.

Then, you felt her warmth. Dusk was in the water with you. Something deep in the recesses of your soul stirred. The goddess bade you to repeat the oath you had recited when first you met.

“I will never stop loving…” Suddenly, you felt a tinge of dishonesty in the words that followed.

Finish the verse, my Chosen.

“I will devote myself—”

No. You couldn’t say it. You were devoted to another, now. You’d made a pact by light of the High Noon, and the world had been in attendance.

Say it, Arthur. You swore to me.

“I cannot...”

Your breath catches in your throat as your entire being is assaulted with overwhelming, otherworldly warmth and turgid desire. You beg for it to stop—painful delectation, agonizing ecstasy, a perverse multitude of sensations that numb your extremities.

Your folly is laid out before you, an argument of stimulation insisting that any promises you made after the goddess claimed your soul are null. You believe that for a moment, as the pleasure ascends to its fell climax, your stomach cramps and your legs shudder.

The temperature of the water rises; you’re feverish and powerless and captivated all at once. You do everything to resist, to reject the sensations beset upon you, to find no pleasure in what is happening to you. Your skin is clammy and raw, your muscles are aching, and you scream your protest.

All to no avail.

No one is listening. The goddess assaults you, uninhibited.

It’s too much, you are only human, you are only a mortal man—and men are not to be trusted. You give in to the shame, to the voices shouting at you from all directions, demanding you give yourself over. Over to her.

She commands you to repeat your oath. You obey.

Your reward is a world-shattering release unlike anything you could have imagined—yet it is fleeting, soon replaced by heavy guilt congealing in your innards, settling at the bottom of your heart where it will remain for the rest of your days.

Your muscles relax; all sensation flees from your body, and you have been robbed of something you did not know could be taken.

When you woke, the moon still hung low in the night sky. Your wife sat weeping on the edge of the bed, facing away from you. Confused, bleary-eyed from sleep, you moved to embrace her—but stopped when you felt the mess under the covers.

Instead, you laid an uncertain hand on her shoulder. She shook it away, turned on you with the eyes of a stranger—eyes that had once enraptured your very soul, which now seemed to condemn it.

She opened her mouth, choked down a sob. Then, in a calm, even tone she asked: “Who is Morgana?”

II — In the sky, escaping Morgana’s demesne

The Vale Betwixt, first layer of Pandemonium

Atop Montauk’s back, soaring over the gray and dying lands that made up the Screaming Fields, the silver valley did not seem so dismal. Rushing by the ground looked like a canvas, covered with a dark base of oils, yet to be rendered further. Pandemonium had no expression, no harmony, as the land of the living above. Monrovia had been a hovel, everything beyond its limits a deathtrap. Aside from the nauseating swell of waves and failing support pillars, all was still and lifeless in Morgana’s demesne.

Ancient myths, stories Kateryna had heard as a child off the mouths of travelling raconteurs, told of the Vale Betwixt and the cool color of its perpetual sunset, of the brittle sway of the leaves dancing in the languid breeze. Fulcrum had once told Kateryna that the sea they lived on was the flooded River Acheron, which Morgana had laid waste to, separating the borderlands between life and death.

So much waste. Soil, once carefully cultivated, now overwatered to drown out any and all life. Why—for what?

Kateryna felt Cain’s slow breath on the back of her neck. She was on edge with him being so close, not yet accustomed to the notion that he was no longer her enemy—that he suddenly cared about his role as her father.

How is it we were pulled down with you, father? Did you sell our souls for your gain? Or was this all an unfortunate accident?

She shivered, shifted uncomfortably in the saddle, eyes trained again on the meager bloodstain besmirching the saddle-horn. How long had it been there? To whom did it belong? How many people had this man cut down between his two lives?

She buried all that—pushed it way down. None of those questions yielded helpful answers, nor did they help Kateryna to feel right about her new direction. All that mattered was that she found her mother. One way or another.

“Someone had gone ahead of me,” Kateryna said, if only to distract herself from her worries. “He had a day’s lead on me. He might be down below.”

Cain grunted. “I’ve not seen another boat. Nor has Montauk.”

“We haven’t searched for one.”

“No—but we’d have seen it. If it still sailed.”

If it still sailed… Kateryna had come to the same conclusion the moment she laid eyes on the leviathan. Where have you gone, Seth? Can I find you, too? Probably not. That hurt.

“He would have perished if he stayed behind…” Cain said through clenched teeth. “The Goddess took them all.”

Kateryna winced. Because of me… I taunted her, drew her ire.

“Where are we going?”

“I don’t know yet. Pandemonium is massive. Not even I have seen all its corners.”

“We need a map.”

“There are no maps. At least, not ones we can read. I know someone who might give us direction, should his mood allow it.” Cain pointed to a dark spot in the distance, hovering high in front of a gargantuan wall of light on the horizon. “He lives on the border of Morgana and Grahtzildahn.”

She glanced back at him. “The Burning City…”

Cain nodded.

Kateryna watched as the threshold drew closer. Soon, she could make out the mosaic pattern of sea foam and shattered glass, barring the fogs of The Screaming Fields from mixing with the black soot clouds pressing in from the other side. The two underworlds warred for territory against unwavering borders, pressing them into a bitter, eternal stalemate. The undulating hills beyond the threshold reminded Kateryna of home—not as they were throughout her childhood, but as they had lain barren the day she returned to find her family had long since perished.

“Can this someone be trusted?”

Cain forced a curt laugh. “No one can be trusted, Kat. But he may help us yet. We fly to the Oracle of Dawn, the only man who can still commune with the gods above.”

More hours passed by, mostly spent in tense silence, interrupted by an occasional question from Kateryna and Cain’s unsavory, honest answer. She was beginning to doze when they came upon a ramshackle hut lodged within the middle of the border threshold.

On one side, the hut was rotten, the wood panels swollen from the humidity of Morgana’s demesne, and sickly grass wept from between the decaying thatch covering the roof. On the other side, the thatch was blackened, cooked by the blazing heat of Grahtzildahn radiating throughout the Demon King’s realm. Some force of sorcery suspended the structure high in the air—perhaps it was the threshold that held it aloft, perhaps something else entirely. The sight pained Kateryna. For so long, she had toiled to raise her sagging village away from the encroaching tides, yet here was the solution to all their problems, not three days' journey away.

Montauk landed gracefully on the small porch, hardly big enough to hold her. Floorboards bemoaned their protest as Cain dismounted.

“Worry not,” he said. “This place cannot be damaged—not by the likes of us, at least.”

Cain opened the door, not bothering to knock, then strode into the inky darkness beyond.

Kateryna followed, her eyes widening as she saw the massive chamber within, much larger than the meager exterior structure implied. She wiped tears from her eyes as a thick aroma of smoldering frankincense and lavender battered her senses. This is high sorcery, the stuff of dreams… or nightmares.

It took some time for her eyes to adjust to the dim light, sourced from one hanging iron lantern, dancing with viscous shadow, pushing ever inward to snuff out what little light remained. Bamboo wind chimes hung motionless about the chamber, which seemed to expand endlessly into the void surrounding them. The door evaporated with a suppurating pop! as it settled shut behind them of its own accord.

A black man—a native of Northern Skan’basan, by his dress and complexion—sat cross-legged beneath the lantern. A bloodied bandage covered his face, save for his mouth. Patches of his skin had been flayed, leaving plots of gnarled, twisted pink quilting across what little skin was revealed. He wore a ring on each finger of his right hand—one of tarnished gold, two of silver, one of oxidized copper, and the last of rusted iron. His rings were all missing their stones, sockets barren.

“You’ve returned…” the old man said, mildly amused. His voice rang out, deep and clear, unlike anything Kateryna had expected. “I was beginning to think you were forever lost.”

Cain removed his boots, then sat on the floor across him. Kateryna did the same.

“And here I am.”

“Yes… But you are not whole.”

Cain was expressionless. “I’m not.”

The old man flashed his large, ivory teeth, then turned as if to address Kateryna—as if he could see her. “Kateryna Cain of Undton, the would-be governess of Daizton. It is a pleasure to finally meet you.”

Kateryna swallowed ash.

She had forgotten about that, and now that aspect of her life, long since passed, poured into the basin of her memory as an overeager cupbearer overfills a lord’s chalice. Oh gods… An image of a freshly carved tombstone consumed her vision. “Here lies the lord’s eldest son,” the stone had read. He should have never looked twice at me.

“And you, as well—” Kateryna was overtaken by a series of hollow coughs. She cleared her throat and finished: “And you, Oracle.”

The old man chortled, threw an exasperated hand at Cain. “This is how you’ve introduced me? I am insulted!” He spat into a golden cup at his side, which rang like a bell. “My name, dear Kateryna, is Ibrahim, Prophet of Dawn, the Great Mother Birth, known to your ancestors as Bridget and known to mine as Umi’al-jamise! You can call her whatever you like; she is not a picky goddess… unlike her sister, the Lady of the Chair.” He shot a sidelong glance at Cain, who shrank beneath the old man’s scrutiny like a child scolded. Cain looked away and did not say anything to defend himself.

Kateryna was also at a loss for words, then beset by another fit of coughing, mucus streaming down her face. Her awareness rolled in and out, her vision wavered.

A firm hand grasped her shoulder. “Sit up, child,” Ibrahim said, not unkindly, “swallow this, and be still.”

The rim of a bottle touched her lips. Bitter, viscous fluid seeped down her tattered throat. A cool wind touched the inside of her chest, and when it touched her stomach, the nausea and coughing ceased.

“Gods…” Kateryna whispered, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. “What is that?”

“Lilac and gooseberries, with a touch of honey.” Ibrahim pinched the air to demonstrate.

She stared at him.

The old man guffawed and slapped his knees, his deep voice reverberating through the floorboards. “I am joking, of course. I must maintain some secrets, don’t you think?”

“Enough!” Cain roared, startling Kateryna. “There isn’t time for games. Where is my wife?”

A pall fell over Ibrahim’s face. “You have a lot of nerve to demand anything of me, boy. What do you offer in return, hmm?”

Cain opened his mouth but had no answer.

“Nothing! It is the only gift you’re capable of giving!” The old man spat again into his golden cup.

“What of me?” Kateryna said. “Surely, I have something to offer.”

Ibrahim smiled, but it was a mournful expression. “Yes, child… You do.”

“Tell me, then. To save my mother, there is no price too high.”

“As you can see,” Ibrahim gestured about the vast oblivion surrounding them, “I do not have much to keep me occupied. I yearn for a story, a memory, something to ponder and archive until my next guest arrives. I know all of Cain’s—he has nothing more to hide from me, but you, dear Kateryna…”

“I am new to you.”

“Yes—you are new.”

“Take care in what you give to him,” Cain said. “You might unearth more than you meant to. What follows can be painful. Sometimes opening the flood gates is just so—a flood.”

“Okay.” Kateryna nodded, surprised by the clarity and earnestness in her father’s black eyes. “I understand.”

Ibrahim leaned forward, clapping both of his bony hands on her shoulders. “Take off my coverings, and gaze into my eyes.”

Kateryna unraveled the soiled bandages from the old man’s face. He unfolded his heavy eyelids, and she gasped at what she saw. Brightness shimmered and subsumed her. Planets and galaxies surged to and from existence; clusters of stars and asteroids swilled all around. She then understood that her body was simply a vessel, containing the near-infinite potential of her soul. Beyond the body, the world as she knew it was simply a tomb buried beneath the ruins of countless civilizations.

In that brief moment, Kateryna was free of it all. She was dust, drifting beyond the moon, then she plummeted into a sea of memory to relive a hundred moments of a life long passed.

When next she opened her eyes, she wept. Ibrahim held her, comforting her as a father should. Cain watched mournfully beside her, silent. She felt his rough hand encompass hers in belated solidarity.

III — From the collected journals of a mad wizard

I spent days pacing the tiles of my quarters in the western wing of the Citadel. I spent days pondering the implications of my visions, searching desperately for the thread that tied together everything I had seen thus far. I knew that somehow, I was bound to the poor people in the Vale Betwixt, and that it was my responsibility to intervene.

My colleagues were thrilled that I had returned from my morose expedition, and they pounded on my doors throughout the day. Yet I ignored them. In truth, my soul was still in Morgana’s possession, though my body had escaped. Each night, I lay awake dreading the baleful nightmare that might next plague my dreams. I dared not allow my colleagues to see me in such a degenerate state for fear that they would cast me out.

It had been weeks since last I bathed, for the bath house was several blocks away and surely, I would be spotted should I venture out. I stank of rotten eggs—the stench of sulfur. Bath or no, dear reader, the malodor of hell falls from the unclaimed. Yet, despite my own efforts with soap and cloth, I could not wash away my folly.

My soul was mine no longer, and thus, I was entrenched in a battle between life and death.

You, my dear reader, possess the fortune of hindsight. The fact you are reading my words, published and printed, is evidence enough that my fate was salvaged. So too, I was bound to my course—compelled to see it through.

It was the better part of a month before I worked up the nerve to weave my oneiromancy, to summon a dream of my own accord. I lit a bundle of frankincense and lavender in my urn to cleanse the air of malicious particles. I circled my bed with salt, skimmed from the surface of the Black Sea, a mile below my feet, for all eleven days of the academic week. Chanting the ancient words of the arcane, I called for the answers I sought.

The moment I closed my eyes, I was dragged into another world—another time.

* * *

Standing on the peak of a gentle hill, I looked out unto a vast sea of rolling, rubrous, golden grasses. The land dipped and bucked, falling and rising with thick, spiky heads of wheat bulging with ample grain. This sight had once made me profoundly happy. Today, however, I was consumed with apprehension.

I unfurled my slender fingers, my nails trimmed but lined with dark soil. In my callused palm lay a gleaming ring of white gold, set with a swollen garnet. I wiped my eyes; no direction felt like the right one, and I was stuck idling away in my ambivalence.

Sucking a breath of dry, late summer air, I felt a hint of peace—if only in the familiarity of the heat, the wind battering me as if I had opened the wrought-iron door to a furnace, a blanket of sweat and fatigue the only comfort of the season.

I took one last glimpse at the land, sprawling and free, then turned around. In the distance, perhaps a league or so, a rugged keep sat awaiting my return. Much farther beyond the keep stood the looming spires of Valencia, as they stood just before the fall of the Empire and immediately after, before the first Laszlo had built them higher, after the invaders were defeated.

I sighed and began the long trek home. I had come out here and pondered my escape every day for the last month and had yet to enact my plot. I did not know if ever I might work up the courage.

My mother was sitting at the head of the dining table when I arrived, staring aimlessly at the wall. She had become so frail, fallen so ill since father left us to fight the invaders. Her once-sumptuous blonde curls had dried into wispy cords. Her blue eyes that had seen so much had fallen into the sockets and glossed over. A dull, familiar ache in my gut beset me as I rubbed my mother’s shoulders and whispered gently into her ear.

“The monarchs are migrating, mother,” I said as if coaxing a child to spend time outdoors. “We should walk to the meadow and watch, like we used to.”

But my mother only sat there, her eyes now affixed on the old portrait hanging above the hearth. She and my father looked so healthy, so content, holding me as a newborn.

“I’ll have someone brew a pot of chamomile,” I said, forcing out the words, feigning compassion as I had for years now.

Air whistled through my mother’s teeth as her exhalation escaped her. “Why, Kat? Why did he leave us? What have I done wrong?”

“You did nothing wrong!”

She wept at the escalation of my volume, her cries a stuttering staccato that she no longer attempted to withhold. I shook my head, the muscles in my jaw tensing as I pulled my mouth flat, so she did not see my vexation.

I was so tired, so exhausted. And I had had enough.

I marched to the hearth, then pulled down the damnable portrait, pulling the mounting peg out of the plastered wall, leaving behind a gaping wound above a second peg, which briefly held a different portrait before the one I grasped was solemnly replaced.

“What—what are you doing?” My mother cried, rising from her seat for the first time that day.

I only snarled and threw the painting into the hearth, glaring into my father’s uncaring black eyes as his bitter countenance was consumed by hellfire. The flames crackled, the paint sizzled; together, they hissed: “You’ll burn, too.” I silenced the jeering with a fire poker, thrusting the iron tip through my father’s expressionless mask until my mother pulled helplessly at my sleeves.

“Why?” she wailed. “Am I not tortured enough? My only daughter…” She fell to her knees before the smoldering canvas and did not move again until her chambermaids retrieved her after midnight.

The next morning, I stood before the full-body mirror in my mother’s dressing room. I hardly recognized myself—partially because I was experiencing a memory that did not belong to me, but also because I intuited my subject’s own dissociation. I should have felt utterly vacillated, thrilled to walk the aisle into my own home, my own life. Away from my withering mother, who had begun to drain me alongside herself.

I should have been blessed with beautiful certainty. Instead, I scrutinized every detail of my pearly white gown.

Truly, the garment was gorgeous, immaculate, and befitting of the measured poise a governess should exude. But when I looked at the woman wearing it, saw her braided auburn locks, all I saw were the frizzled infant hairs jutting obstinately out of place. I stared into her freckled face, still scarred from youthful pocks and the fishing hook that had caught her cheek as a girl. I watched her pale, gray eyes—nothing like the resplendence my mother’s own once held—travel the length of my awkward, muscular body.

Any other woman could fill this dress and would better live up to the precedent it set. Any other woman would better serve my betrothed and his people.

The man I was to marry was kind, stately; gallant, as the wards, daughters of minor houses, liked to say. And who was I? The daughter of an orphan and a nomad, the girl who played with bugs and the woman who chops her own wood for the fire, who fishes for her own food and prepares her own dinners. Yes, I was bestowed a title at birth—but I was no lady. I had no manners, nor did I have the poise and the tact of a proper, noble lady.

“He deserves a better woman…” I said to the empty room, as my mother could not be bothered to leave her bed on my wedding day. “He deserves someone beautiful and decisive and regal… Not me…”

I wanted to be the one, to be his wife, to fill that dress with wide, child-bearing hips and ample breasts that could feed my sons and daughters. Yet the seams were too tight around my shoulders and stomach, and too loose around my chest. The corset suffocated me, siphoned my breath, even though life had already stolen every bit of air from my sails—and I had nothing more to give.

I stared at that woman and made a decision.

I would not stand idle and let the tide of duty lay claim to me; I would not make the same mistakes my father had. I would stand up for my ideals—even if they were inherently wrong. If I did not, no one else would.

Removing the white-gold ring from the third finger on my right hand, I placed it gingerly on the nearby vanity. I stripped off the flowing white gown I had no business wearing. I wiped the paint from my face. I had no business hiding behind vanity. In their place, I donned my father’s old tunic and leather riding greaves, tied on a padded jerkin, and slid my hardened feet into my worn leather boots that I had worn to travel every path and hill within my father’s holdings.

I slipped out the back door before the guests arrived for the ceremony.

* * *

As I stirred from my summoned slumber, I was awakened by someone pounding upon my front door. I rubbed the grit and dried tears from my eyes, shaking my head. “Oh, my poor, sweet Kateryna…” I mourned under my breath as I hurried to greet my impatient visitors.

Approaching the door, I was surprised to sense the presence of the Archmage of the Citadel, Pascal Doon the Lavender. Dragons who walk in the shoes of men reek of sorcery and radiate heat, which feels much like sunlight—even through doors.

I had already begun reciting my salutations before I finished opening the door. “My dear friend! What draws you away from your busy schedule?”

“You’ve not left your quarters in the weeks since your return.” Pascal Doon said as he stepped heavily over my threshold. His tone was eloquent and well-measured, yet his voice was guttural and primal, emanating from deep within his diaphragm. “The faculty is worried your expeditions have been too taxing on you. They desire to know if we need to solicit outside help to assist you in escaping your nightmares.”

“Nightmares? I have no nightmares! I am on the cusp of a great discovery, a most venerable breakthrough! Nightmares? Bah! I laugh at the notion, Archmage. Neigh—I scoff at it!”

“Could you share what you’ve found? I must know why you’ve been sequestered so.”

I grumbled, crossing my arms. A cold draft licked my manhood, and I realized my loincloth had fallen off while I slept. Startled, I ambled to my wardrobe and hurried into a silken bathrobe.

“I will submit my research for peer review when it has been concluded. Be patient, you cold-blooded cur!”

A low growl rumbled in the back of my old friend’s throat. “Understand, my friend, what follows is out of my hands. You’ve made your bed.”

“What? I haven’t made my bed in weeks!”

Two orderlies appeared on either side of me, taking hold of my arms. I was astounded that I had not smelled their sorcery. Perhaps, I thought to myself, I was a bit worse for wear. My dawning understanding did not prevent my fruitless kicking and shouting of obscenities and draconic slurs.

It was far from my finest moment, dear reader.

“I need to know you’re okay,” Pascal Doon said calmly, after I had screamed my throat to ribbons. “We’re taking you to the trial facilities. You will dream under our supervision. From there, we will present our findings to the faculty chair, and they will decide if you should continue this project.”

The term “faculty chair” enraged me. Despite my bleeding throat, I began another litany. “You bastard! You can’t censor me; I bloody built this place, brick by bloody brick! My mind is hammer and chisel, my word is law, my findings established sorcery as we know it! You fools are keeping me from witnessing the most significant metaphysical event in recorded history!” And on and on I went, frothing at the mouth as the orderlies dragged me through the western wing’s halls, where the most esteemed professors lived and heard my mad tirade.

I have since grown to appreciate that my friend was only trying to help me. I even thanked him for his intervention and empathy. Eventually. Understand, dear reader, I had not slept for nearly a month—truly slept, for the sake of rest and recouperation—and I had developed an unhealthy obsession regarding my parasocial friends in Pandemonium and my seemingly damned soul, of which I had entirely lost track.

In the trial facility, they were forced to bind me with chains and a straitjacket. When I refused to sleep, muttering incantations to caffeinate my blood, they had to inject me with a sedative. Once the drugs took effect, and I was high and agreeable, the researchers led me through my ritual to summon a dream. It was all rather humiliating, but ultimately necessary.

As I drifted off—more like spinning, because of the drugs—my awareness was pulled yet again below the earth’s crust. The sedative had put me at ease, and with the support of the researchers, I was able to regain control of my bird’s eye view and stay hidden from the denizens of hell.

* * *

A young man wandered through a gray field, shrouded in roiling mists. He rubbed his arms, a vain attempt to subdue the incessant shivers caused by his soaked clothing and his overwhelming fever. His boots had been reduced to tatters, his toes bloodied from the long walk from the distant shore.

The man screamed his brother’s name. He wondered how many hours—days?—he had been calling, searching to no avail. Now his voice was failing him, overused and wracked by pestilence.

The mist parted behind the man.

A devil had been stalking him for the better part of an hour and now moved in for its coveted feast. The man had no idea how much danger he was in, his awareness eroded by the gaseous influence of the mist which plagued the Screaming Fields, designed to disorient lost souls until they were eaten. I wondered why my dreams had bonded with someone so insignificant. But I watched on, as I have long since learned to trust my art.

The devil, in an act of playful curiosity, revealed itself to the young man, who, in frenzied sublimation, soiled his already soiled trousers and fell weeping to his knees. It leaned forward on thick arms, hunching like a gorilla to support its bulbous torso, hanging its mottled face above the poor man’s head, laughing at its good fortune and drooling with hunger.

“Please…” the man sobbed. “I need to find my brother. Let me find him, then you can eat me! You can eat me a million times over… Please…”

The great devil threw back its head and let out an incredulous guffaw, a terrible tumult of lost souls it had already devoured through the eons. What wonderful luck! It bent down low to the man’s height, stitching together an agreeable countenance.

“You make a compelling proposition, poor mortal,” said the devil. “Tell me, what is your brother’s name?”

“Isshiah… He’s just a boy…”

The devil hooted and snorted in amusement.

How foolish mortals can be! I need not remind you, dear reader, never tell a devil anyone’s true name for any reason.

“Ah, yes… Isshiah… A wonderful name, a godly name. I can lead you to your Isshiah—on one condition.”

Flesh folded in on itself in the beast’s chest, and a scrawny set of hands emerged holding a scrap of papyrus, every inch covered with a scrawl of unintelligible script. It plucked a thick hair from the perimeter of its puffy areola and used it to circle a blank line with its inky blood.

The denizens of hell often revel in bureaucracy, and it is oft said that our modern governing structures were first employed in the Burning City of Grahtzildahn. Devils revel in the hunt—and when they catch their prey, they use contracts and riddles to play with their food like mouser cats chasing chipmunks up trees.

The man took hold of the improvised quill with a tremulous, battered hand. He was about to sign the devil’s document, but was stopped by a shrill cry from above. Morgana’s riders—her remaining Chosen mounted atop their griffins, emerged through the clouds in V-formation.

The woman taking point soared over the beast’s head while the two men in the rear crashed into the demon, forcing it onto its back.

Syr Gabriel leapt from his mount and buried the head of his halberd into the devil’s exposed, fleshy underbelly.

Dame Citha screamed a command, her griffin rearing back, allowing updrafts to carry it toward the clouds. She pulled the string of her longbow, a bolt of light appearing in an arrow’s stead, then sent it spearing through the devil’s skull—ending its miserable existence in an instant.

The young man fell onto his haunches before the riders, relief spreading across his haggard face. Syr Derrida dismounted, pulling the man to his feet.

“It ain’t Arthur.” Gabriel said, then spat on the ground.

Derrida sighed. “Clearly.”

“Gut ‘im and move on, eh?”

Terror flooded the man’s expression, but Derrida raised a pacifying hand. “Don’t you see who this is? Raise a finger and I’ll feed it to Krakow.” Derrida’s mount snapped his beak to punctuate the point.

Still flying overwatch in the sky, Citha called out: “Time to move—the hordes caught our scent!”

“Tell me, boy,” Derrida yanked the man’s arm and slapped him across the face, “have you seen Arthur?”

“Isshiah…” the young man groaned. “I’m searching for Isshiah… Father, please. You must help me.”

“I don’t give two shits about your simpering whelp, Derrida!” Gabriel roared over the thundering footfalls of the encroaching mass. “We need to fly!”

“Seth! Have you seen him?”

“Leave the boy, he’s dead anyhow!”

“Don’t leave me…” the young man bawled, collapsing at the feet of his ambivalent father.

“Derrida!” Citha yelled from on high, hurling beams of light at the drones leading the way for their heavier cohorts—all hungry for mortal flesh. “Time’s up!”

Syr Derrida took a final glance at the scared little boy before him. He had never cared for Seth; he had always been a weakling. A pathetic excuse for an heir… and just when his eldest son was beginning to show promise, he had committed the most cowardly act of all, betraying their entire family in one fell swoop.

What enraged Derrida most was how much Seth reminded him of himself. Derrida had never been brave—he was pragmatic, only choosing battles he knew he could win. Yet his shit of a son had made it halfway across the Screaming Fields unarmed and unmounted as his failing body ate itself. Could Derrida have done the same?

Probably not.

“On your feet, lad!” Derrida mounted and pulled Seth onto Krakow’s back. A mental command brought them sweeping into the sky just as the skittering waves closed in, trampling over themselves in a blood-starved frenzy.

Gabriel glared at Derrida as they continued to the threshold, the border between Morgana’s realm and Grahtzildahn. Morgana’s newest herald cared not for his companion’s resentment—he did not intend for the lumbering fool to return.

IV — The Oracle of Dawn

The threshold of the second layer of Pandemonium

“And now you’ve seen,” Ibrahim whispered, rubbing Kateryna’s back tenderly. “Now, I shall recite all you need to know.”

The old man raised his arms, throwing his head back as he chanted in a strange tongue Kateryna could not comprehend.

The lantern swung like a pendulum, back and forth, thick plumes of smoke weeping between the panes of wavy glass, sinking to hover just above the floor.

Kateryna fell back onto her hands when she looked into Ibrahim’s eyes, glowing perfect white. He rose, standing over her, possessed by a grotesque dance twisting and contorting his limbs, fingers weaving unknowable forces into the tapestry of prophecy.

“The Great Stair stands in the center of the Burning City—it leads all the way up… and all the way down. Salvation one way, damnation, the other!

“Your mother is rooted in the riverbed parting the shores of Life and Death, the Dusk and the Dawn. If you wish to find her, you must ascend the Stair. To survive, you must let go of the pain in your heart, all of it, for your soul will soon face overwhelming assault.”

Kateryna nodded and wiped a tear from her eye. “I understand what I need to do.”

“Good, child.” Ibrahim sighed, an eldritch wind escaping his lungs. “Good.”

The old man closed his eyes, releasing the incantation with a pulse of air that dispersed the lingering smoke. He redressed the soiled linens around his face, then turned towards Cain.

“I do not have a prophecy for you,” Ibrahim said. “Yet my matron bid I deliver you a message. If you’ll hear it.”

Cain blanched, the deep lines of his face carved into a dreadful mask. “I will hear it.”

Surrounding shadows closed in, threatening to snuff out what meager light remained. A chill skittered across Kateryna’s neck as the walls expanded, and the hut itself breathed in—then back out.

“Your role is not so simple,” the old man said, annunciating each word in a rehearsed mimicry of the Valentine accent. “You stand at a crossroads, and you must tread the mire to make the final push. Retrieve the blade forged from the blood of a thousand heretics. Thrust its point into the heart of evil. Only then can Life and Death walk together again.”

“These are not your words…”

“No.” Ibrahim’s expression softened. “They are not. Take them as you will—but consider them with care.”

“I cannot—”

“You’ve stricken this world with imbalance!” The old man’s voice shook the walls, rattling the bamboo chimes lining the ceiling. “Surely, you can muster the courage to correct it!”

Montauk’s tocsin cry sounded from outside. Cain leapt to his feet and charged through the invisible doorway, light blooming into an elongated door-shaped hole in the shadows.

Kateryna scrambled to follow, but Ibrahim held her wrist, beckoning her to wait. “Dear Kateryna Cain of Undton, take these gifts to assist your journey. You need not charge into the abyss empty-handed.”

He handed her a leather kidney bag decorated with dark beaded cords. “This contains three doses of my elixir. It is all I have to give; take care to ration it.”

The old man then held out his hands, drawing a plain iron-tipped spear from thin air. “This is the Sun Spear of Dawn. May it light your way and always return to you.”

The spear was lighter than Kateryna’s lost harpoon but felt more durable. The haft was hewn from the branch of a sycamore, sanded and polished to a smooth matte finish. It hardly looked like a divine artifact—but a spear was a spear, and it was more than she had before.

Balance and chaos.

“Thank you, Ibrahim…”

“Now go!”

Kateryna dashed after Cain. He stood at the edge of the porch, sword in hand, Montauk crouching low beside him. Three riders, clad in the same black armor as Cain and mounted atop their own monsters, hovered around Kateryna. She gasped when she saw the hostage on the back of the smallest griffin.

“Seth!”

Cain held her behind him with his off hand. She caught a glimpse of the towering drop just over the ledge and immediately felt her stomach lurch. Seth locked eyes with her, but the gaunt rider had clamped a gloved hand over his mouth.

“Give it up, Arthur!” the gaunt man said. “This doesn’t have to get ugly. Let us do our jobs, eh? You can finally have some much-needed rest…”

“Get onto Montauk,” Cain whispered to Kateryna. “Fly to the Burning City.”

Kateryna shook her head. “I’m not leaving without you—you’re coming with me.”

“Ain’t no chance of that, girl,” said a hulking rider. “Your old man’s screams are about to join the rest in the Fields.”

“Kat,” Cain said, glaring at the three riders. “Go.”

Seth ripped the gaunt man’s hand from his mouth. “She has nothing to do with this!”

The gaunt man sighed. “If we let your girl go, will you let us get this over with?”

“Yes.”

“Foolish,” said the third rider, a Skanu woman with a shaved head, her face adorned with golden jewelry. “The girl will return.”

“Way I see it,” the gaunt man said, unsheathing his sword, “the Goddess demanded Arthur’s head—so that’s all we’ll take.”

“Coward,” said the big man.

“Enough!” Cain stepped off the porch into open air, as if it were solid ground.

Bright light shone through his pores, through his eyes and mouth—quickly shadowed by the unfurling of a great raven’s wings. Cain’s body contorted, his skin bubbling and roiling like so many beetles burrowing into a corpse, then shimmering as a diamond in the glow of morning.

The aspect of a tall, full-bodied woman encompassed Cain’s withered form—a Valkyrie of Wystran myth, straight out of the stories Kateryna’s mother had told her as a girl.

“Declared for death or no,” the Valkyrie’s voice resounded through the air. Storm clouds gathered above, rolling and toppling over one another. Lightning flashed and thunder clapped in time with the beat of the Valkyrie’s wings. “I am still the Chosen, the living avatar of the Great Mother’s divine will. If you should take my vessel, do not expect me to stand idle.”

The Valkyrie raised Cain’s battered longsword, now wreathed in a shroud of holy flame.

The two men exchanged incredulous glances. The Skanu lowered her head in rushed prayer. Kateryna fell back into Montauk.

“This doesn’t make sense,” the gaunt man muttered. “Who is she?”

“The Goddess lives, Derrida!” the Skanu cried. “As she once was, the Goddess lives!”

“I’m bored of this farce,” the big man hefted his halberd over his shoulder. “I yearn for blood!”

Montauk scooped her head between Kateryna’s legs, tossing her into Cain’s saddle, and launched into the sky and away from the coming battle. The wind battering Kateryna’s face, she leaned into Montauk’s ebon feathers for succor against the forces of gravity she was not accustomed to. Kateryna yanked on the beast’s feathers, screaming for it to halt, but Cain’s beloved griffin paid no heed.

Kateryna’s heart skipped a beat as she watched her father—no, the Valkyrie, the Goddess Incarnate—charge the big man, who twisted, narrowly evading the killing thrust of her flaming sword. The other two riders dipped, repositioning into a defensive formation. In the chaos of the maneuver, Seth had slipped from the gaunt man’s saddle, plummeting into the chaos below.

“Montauk! Please!”

Kateryna screamed, tears flowing down her face. She was powerless, forced to watch her beloved die. Again.

Because I am weak—because I am cursed to fail him, over and over.

A soothing voice billowed through her mind, clear as a mother’s whisper to her babe. “You are not powerless, dear Kateryna.”

Montauk?

“Cain does not speak. Nor should you.”

Dive, Montauk. Please.

“As you wish.”

V — From the collected journals of a mad wizard

For seven nights, I dreamt beneath the observation of Citadel scholars, researchers dedicated to decoding the discipline of oneiromancy. Fools! When will they realize that sorcery is art, not science—I’ve always said: Phrygian Sorcery is beholden to the laws of science but remains entirely subjective in its application.

I must admit, I was humiliated. There I was, one of the four founding archmagi—my teachings informed sorcerous study and arcane theory for generations—confined to a padded room with only a one-way viewing window for company.

I resisted the orderlies tooth and nail. They dressed me in a scratchy gown, leaving my posterior exposed to the air. They bound my arms and legs with dampening chains to prevent the use of my arts to crush them like so many bugs. I ate only when coerced. And they beset me with fruitless sponge baths when I at last grew too tired to resist.

By the third night, my visions had become so vivid, so disturbing, that my body convulsed in wild fits—eventually, they had to lash me to the bed, as I began to float snoozing to the ceiling.

I read reports claiming that I was muttering incoherently through waking hours and slumber alike. This was not nonsense, dear reader, for I recited the words of hell; conversations I overheard in Morgana’s Hall, in the Demon King Grahtz’s court. I bleated like a nightmare and screeched like a lemure, my soul ablaze with hellfire.

My symptoms lessened by the final night of my internment. My dreams returned to those unwitting friends: the wicked Syr Arthur Cain and my sweet Kateryna.

* * *

Cain wore the aspect of Dusk, the last vestige of the Goddess as she had been. Such a thing should have been impossible, but in the Dread Angel’s hubris, her blind obsession for her Chosen, she had failed to recognize a lingering spark in his heart—a spark that had once belonged to her.

For decades, Citadel scholars argued the merit of eye-witness accounts claiming an angel laid waste to Idraan, finally chasing the Kaza’dur back to whence they came. Now I saw the truth for myself—ashamed, too, as my doubts of such accounts had cost people their lives.

Dusk’s Avatar charged Syr Derrida first. Being the weakest fighter, he was an easy target—and he carried a passenger, besides. Dusk’s newly named Herald drove his white-faced griffin low, spinning in the air to evade the wide arc of the angel’s flaming sword.

Seth, unaccustomed to flight, fell from the saddle and plummeted towards the black waves below.

Kateryna dived after him, racing the poor boy to the sea. Holding the saddle horn with one hand, reaching into the open air with the other, Kateryna yanked Seth from his fall, pulling him by the hem of his tunic onto her lap.

With the battle raging above them, they fled for the shimmering threshold, to Grahtzildahn.

Dame Citha watched the pair fly away and, for an instant, considered sending an arrow for Montauk’s heart. Gabriel rushed by overhead, returning her attention to the raging angel that so resembled Citha’s beloved goddess—a version of her, at least, lost to time.

“Take the rear, strong right!” Gabriel shouted.

Citha dug her stirrups into Stockholm, who flapped his great wings until she fell in behind and above Gabriel. They surged through the air trailing Derrida’s retreat. Soon, they cleared the sea, flying over the blackened coastline of the Screaming Fields.

From her view, Citha saw Derrida’s evasion failing—he howled in pain as he parried a near-lethal blow from Dusk’s avatar. The avatar’s flaming sword showered sparks over him as Derrida batted it aside with his pitiful smallsword.

Divided loyalties and uncertainty clashed in her heart. Citha drew her longbow, an arrow of perfect light manifesting between her fingers.

“Forgive me, Goddess…”

Citha loosed her arrow, striking the avatar in the thigh. The blow did nothing but enrage her further. Gabriel raised his halberd, poised to kill, for a center slash, but his blade sliced naught but air.

A shroud of darkness—no, a shadow—fell over Citha. She blinked, and Dusk was in front of her. Citha commanded Stockholm to lean forward so she could engage the avatar, but the griffin leaned backward instead, catching the avatar’s flaming blade in Citha’s place.

Always the stubborn prick, her poor Stockholm.

Gabriel circled back round, striking from above, leveraging the length of his halberd like an oar. He managed a shallow cut on the avatar’s scalp but paid for it with her searing blade plunging through his mount’s belly and into his ass.

Stockholm drifted, dying, to the ground. Derrida, following close behind from Gabriel’s leading left, struck the avatar’s armored back. He cursed as the blade of his smallsword shattered against its divine armor.

Gabriel roared, consumed with battle-joy and bloodlust. His bleeding mount somehow remained airborne, still circling Dusk. Gabriel twisted his halberd for a passing back swing. Smiling wide, his teeth bared, he reveled in the glory this prey would bring. He imagined the head of his halberd buried in the angel’s chest, cutting free her lungs.

Instead, it was his chest that was on fire—the avatar had shifted so Gabriel struck only Cain’s breastplate, rather than the goddess herself. In retaliation, the angel gripped his throat, plunging her blade into his heart.

“She isn’t real…” Gabriel coughed, thick blood pooling in the corners of his small, pouting mouth. “None of this is real.”

Gabriel, along with his massive mount, plunged into the black earth, a plume of dust exploding in their wake.

When the cloud cleared, Dusk’s avatar landed to find Syr Derrida standing over Gabriel’s corpse—the remains of his smallsword jutting out of the big man’s face.

The angel raised her blade. Derrida sucked in a deep breath through clogged nostrils and fell to his knees.

“Please,” he said. “I’ve had enough blood to last lifetimes.”

The rage in the angel’s eyes cooled; the roiling storm above slowed to a gentle drizzle as the flame of her sword extinguished. The Goddess Incarnate looked down upon her knight, moved by the regret painting his face.

“I thought you were gone,” Derrida went on, “so I gave up hope. I see now I was wrong. Allow me to continue my service in Dusk’s name…”

“I gave up, too,” Cain and the angel said in unison. The avatar’s form faded away. Cain, battered and wounded, fell into Derrida’s arms. Dusk’s voice, disembodied: “Take care of him, my knight. We are almost through this darkness.”

Krakow cried out before Stockholm’s limp form. Derrida eased Cain onto the ground and rushed over to Citha’s side. She writhed beneath the dead weight of her fallen mount, her right leg crushed; her heart was beginning to slow, her boiling blood cooling to a simmer.

Derrida’s eyes cast over her, then to Gabriel’s bleeding corpse. “He was always a bloody pain, wasn’t he?”

Citha pulled vainly at her leg, then let out an ululating scream.

“You saw the Goddess…” Derrida rubbed his temples, knelt before Citha. “We all saw her.”

Breathless, she said: “Yes.”

“As she was before. She was whole.”

“…Yes.”

“What do we do?”

Citha’s eyes rolled to Cain, unconscious on the ground. “You need to take him… protect him.”

Derrida laughed, shaking his head. “I’m bloody useless! I can’t do this alone—I can’t leave you.”

“You must.” Citha grimaced as a sharp pain shot from her heel through the sack of meat that had once been her leg.

With those final words, Derrida retrieved his blade from Gabriel’s skull. The weapon had always seemed to make its way back to him for better or worse. But its time had ended—his smallsword had always been better suited for fencing with children than for warfare, for committing heresies for a generation or more.

Derrida tested the balance of the broken blade. After all these years, holding the thing for too long still made his wrist ache, ever the epitome of inadequacy. But now, everything rested upon his shoulders.

“Do you wish to rest, Citha?” Derrida said, squeezing his watering eyes shut.

“I’m not ready for that,” she gasped. “Free me, and I’ll make my own way. I’ll be of no help to you like this.”

“Morgana might find you.”

Citha’s mouth fell flat. “With what we saw… I’ll take that risk.

Derrida tightened his grip on his sword, shivers rolling down his spine. “Okay, then.”