Advent Stories: The End Begins
8 months ago
Saul | WarbossKurgan
It is the end of Mithridates Alti’s war. Countless possibilities have collapsed down into a single excruciating conclusion. His war is over, his last battle fought. The vampire is undone, and I am undone with him.
My palace burns. From atop my throne, I can feel the very air turn against me, my withered body blackening under its touch. I watch, detached, as the flesh I inhabit undergoes a terminal incineration.
There is a clap of sound, a flash of light. My bleeding eyes recognize the Seraphon I once named equerry, returned to claim what she believes is hers.
I am overcome. Her monster drags me from the throne. All of me that can die then does. So quick is her escape, so alien is her mind, she does not perceive that I am smiling.
———
It is the dawn of Alti’s war. The skink stands beside me, though I do not see her and she does not truly see me.
I listen to my generals speak of the disposition of forces, of diplomacy and strategy and maneuver. I have already recited every word on their lips, but I let them speak for their own sake.
Somewhere out there Iden cowers. He covets his vaults more than life itself, and he knows that I covet them too. While we are enemies they will not pass from his hands.
The skink’s eyes rest on the glyphs on my throne. Her tongue flicks once, twice, as though tasting the air for treachery. Every beat of her cold-blooded heart prunes futures like Dariel clips roses in his garden.
———
Alti’s war is over. Through the eyes of the willing and the unaware I watch as Dariel’s victory is made complete.
In the end, Iden has lost everything except his vaults. Renaya has been cast adrift, to live as a wanderer in a strange land. And I?
They say that success is commemorated, failure merely remembered. They are wrong, because my failure is destined to be forgotten like it never happened.
I watch as a thousand books fall into the flames. My back pulls down a hundred monuments to me, while my hands strip my name from a hundred more.
If my eyes remained, I would weep for those whose memories must be damned along with mine. If I had a mouth I would laugh at the absurdity of it.
Let Dariel have his triumph. I know only victory.
———
Alti’s invisible hand rests heavily upon Iscarion. It is an age of peace, a bubble of refuge against the wild storms that have consumed so much of Hysh. It ends today.
Already they call me the Deathly, the one who so rarely stirs from his throne of glass. In truth the other five are no younger than I. In truth I am further from death than any of them, but the truth lies.
Friends share everything in common. The six of us now share nothing, save the conviction that Eresiel must die. For our people. For our ways of life. For our ambitions.
Our daggers flash in a staccato rhythm, rising and falling. With every blow Alti’s grip on this place weakens. With every moment the fiction of a united Prime Dominion fades. And as Eresiel thrashes and lies still, new possibilities branch out like the rivers of blood spilling across the flagstones.
———
Alti is long dead, and the Realms still turn. From my throne in the clouds I watch, detached.
A city of metal and aether falls from the sky. Two Realms become one, and one becomes two. Acquisition is cited as justification, and a cat dreams of becoming a dragon.
Sworn enemies lay aside their grudges on an old battleground. A maw walks across the earth and devours holy ground.
These visions are spread thin, razor-sharp filaments of fate caught in a web I barely perceive.
A tug, then another, a single strand persistently drawing attention. I see the blood of an old foe, spilled out of Iscarion, flowing downriver in search of a blade with more than one fate.
And as the blade’s true master stirs, I rouse as well.
———
Mithridates Alti is a man, as am I. There is no war in Hysh, no crisis, no discord. We all give praise to a god of unbridled ambition and ceaseless innovation, shedding everything else in pursuit of excellence like a snake sheds old skins.
I am alone when I find it. Ham-Galad, the Throne of Light, the magnum opus of a dozen masters, each a paragon of their respective craft.
I do not understand why I carve the glyphs. In truth, I barely remember it. If the craftsmen saw my defacement of their work they would be outraged, but none of them are fated to lay eyes on it ever again.
My hands move decisively, driven by a will not their own, scratching out the signature of the craftsmen and inscribing one more alien still. The symbols mean nothing to me, meant instead for a Seraphon who will live many centuries from now.
My work is done. I fall asleep at the base of the throne, there to be woken when the world ends.
———-
Now is a construct, a simple idea fixed in one-dimensional minds. Now is meaningless against the expanse of everything that wasn’t and will be.
Now is nothing. Now is everything.
Like a stone dropped in a still pool, the ripples of Alti’s death have reached the edge and rebound to the source. War returns to the Prime Dominion.
As if from a ship at sea, I watch from far beyond the edge of Hysh as the lives of the people I left behind play out before me. An avalanche of possibilities, all crashing down upon a single moment. Had I breath, I would draw it.
Now, everything rests upon her.
