As Koshis’het took in his shadows, his eyes filled with tears, of joy and pain – both. Joy – because his torment will be easier in the days to come… pain – because the retreating gods were tearing at his mind, wanting to stay a second, a minute longer.
Lorian now possessed their own power. Which they detested – in their own overwhelming way – and drank from the cup of that hatred, feeding their eternal flame.
“My king… thank you…” the Ritualist murmured as the pain began to ease, his blind eyes glistening with tears. “If you could also help the Shatar’sai… they guard the chamber where they sleep…”
Lorian’s eyes bored into Koshis’het with deadly daggers. He was sure that the Fae king would say no. But…
“Take me to them.”
Lorian was aware that good guards were part of his plan. The ones who would alert others and not fall prey when the gods fully awakened. And for that they would need all the strength they could get.
Nymre walked beside him, her expression disgusted. He knew what she saw in the Ritualists – rotting creatures from abandoned temple who foretold her death. But they were more than that. Perhaps they were petty, and their divination power could be terrifying when well directed. But they were also the last outpost.
So was he.
He was like them, the last outpost before the slaughter. He didn’t like to think of himself as such. He wasn’t doing it for them, or for the Fey. He did it because he didn’t like the idea of the end of all things.
Nymre had told him once that it was too final. After the end… nothing remains. Dark debris, filled with flames, brimming with divine light.
A debris built over his and Nymre’s corpses, sinking in the pool of nothingness, deep, deeper.
Nymre may have felt disgust for the Ritualists. But she knew now, she knew everything. And she came with him willingly, to see with her own eyes how far things had gone. Her large, pale eyes embraced the corridors that led to the heart of their land, observing mould and decay with a doubtful air.
“I was here so long ago, Lorian,” she admitted, turning to him, her whitish hair falling across her face. “Has it always looked so…”
He chuckled, darkly.
“Dead?”
“You could say that,” her eyebrows furrowed. “I was almost sure that the temple dedicated to the Dark Forest would be much more alive. I suppose the gods have already seen to that.”
“Gods eat everything, my lady,” Koshis’het, now completely sober and no longer intoxicated by the divine aura, broke into their conversation. Lorian could teach him not to, of course… but the Ritualist was past the point where punishing him would bring him pleasure or even joy. “Their power is not just coal and flame. They bring destruction, they feed on every aspect of life. Long ago, on the eve of time, they fed on loose magic… but in their greed and hunger, they decided to create a stellar race, powerful enough to grow like a fruit until it was ripe and strong enough to feed them with an infinite amount of magic,” he laughed, a rasping cackle filling the passage. “We are indeed created from the night sky and starlight… but we pay the price. As does everything in this beautifully cursed world.”
Nymre looked at Koshis’het as if he were begging her to step on him. Lorian found it amusing.
“Please continue to bother my lover,” he mused. “Rarely can anything annoy her as much as my person.”
Nymre didn’t answer, but he noticed that his words amused her as well.
When they were alone, she would like to continue it. A banter that would remind her of her younger years. But not when this Fae was looking at her. Not when he was not the only one looking into her soul.
The air was slowly getting thicker, hotter. It wasn’t this hot the last time he was here. They were truly awakening, filling the chamber with their seething presence. He felt more than he saw the guards standing outside the door to the Gods’ Chamber. Their tortured minds groaned in his head, caught between duty and fear. But they knew their task and would never abandon their post. Formed from young Ritualists, they had to have a will as hard as stone.
And Lorian valued that in others. And they deserved relief.
His shadows drifted slowly towards the guards, enveloping them in a thick mist that soothed and silenced the hundreds of voices they heard in their heads. Gradually, he shut out the gods’ presence with their own weapon – the power he had gained by drinking from them. The guards visibly relaxed.
Lorian felt a surge of gratitude. Something he hadn’t expected and didn’t really want. It was foreign to him. A weak feeling from a weak soul. Something that took more than it gave. Something he had long since locked away within himself.
“Do you wish to enter the chamber with the raven lady, my king?” asked Koshis’het, his hand searching for Nymre like a worm crawling over a branch. She returned a blank, indifferent stare. “Will you allow…”
“I do what is best for Lorian and the realm,” she cut off any speculation. “And I need no permission, my good priest.”
A smile formed on Lorian’s lips. Nymre would subjugate even the gods, if Koshis suggested they had any power over her. And perhaps that would be the end of it all, the woman’s pride delightfully resolved all their problems, he toyed with the idea, entering the room.
The first thing he saw inside were open eyes.
Everywhere, growing into the walls like a grotesque tapestry. Eyes, bulging, tearing, crimson with effort. Built into the flesh, literally. Thousands of them, lined up at the entrance, as if waiting for him and him alone. And they were, feeling him, seeing him, touching him with the power of the gods, eager to tear his mind from him.
Nymre looked sceptically at this display of gore.
“It seems the elders are aware of my aesthetic choices,” Lorian gazed up at the ceiling, where eyes hung from fleshy tendrils, bloodshot and focused on him as well. “Eyes have always been my favourite.”
Nymre wanted to answer, but then the door closed – Koshis’het did not enter. Nymre greeted it with a raised eyebrow.
“He is afraid, my raven. Don’t blame the decaying priest who doesn’t want to decay any further.”
“Wasn’t it like this before?” she asked, pointing at the eyes. Her hair began to move, touched by the power of this place. Nymre looked with slight concern at her own tangles, moving as if under water.
“They never watched so… carefully.”
“Your jokes are not amusing.”
He graced her with a small smile that lit up his beautiful features.
“We are standing in the very heart of darkness. Every leaf, every tree, every living thing begins here. Here are the roots of the Eternal Forest, and here I decided to trap the gods. It was perhaps the best and worst choice. The magic of this place kept them asleep long enough for me to feed on their power… but at the same time they caused the forest to decay.”
“So… the priests can thank you for their condition?”
“Of course,” his smile widened even more. “I owe them some grace, after all.”
Slowly, cautiously, he approached the place where the gods slept. He had no intention of absorbing them today, and he knew that they were just waiting to take over Nymre’s mind, just as they had done with the Ritualists. Nymre… stubborn, strong Nymre… if he told her that this journey was too dangerous, it would be another reason to go with him.
But it really was dangerous. The thing was, it could really end badly.
He pulled the eye stalks from the wall. They struggled, first trying to grab his elbows and hands, but his shadows penetrated them, separating them so they couldn’t bury him under their mass. But they latched on to him, one by one, like beloved children, clinging to their father with fierce love. He could feel their flesh crawling over his skin.
The gods wanted him. Wanted him spread out on the tree, suffering for eternity. Burned by hundreds of suns. Lorian was sure those eyes already saw his agony.
And there they were.
Caught between branches and stones, no taller than he or Nymre, no more imposing… their skin looking like copper mixed with gold, dimly reflecting the light of the torches. Their limbs sunk into the walls, fossilized in time and space. Fingers joined in triangles in front of them, drowned in roots, seemingly trapped forever.
And their eyes…
Lorian had never seen such eyes.
Perhaps no one in all of Ain’asel has ever seen anything like them.
They had every colour in the palette, and it was as if they had no colour at all. Black and white rainbow, prismatic dullness. They were both alive and dead, like the world that would happen if they woke up.
“They’re really here…” Nymre whispered.
She approached and stood by his side, her hand on his arm.
The gods’ lips were turned up, grotesquely stretched, like a theatre mask from older human days. And Lorian knew what it meant. They were displeased, hungry and twisted, and that was their pleasure. To see him and to show him that they were not completely asleep. That they were one step away from revenge and fulfilment.
And that they were patient.
As much as he was not.
“I don’t like it here, Lorian,” Nymre decided to speak. “Not because of the gods. I feel the forest. It… screams in my head. It feels pain… is that normal? Do you…?”
“Yes. Any of us would feel the funeral dirge of the sacred woods.”
A stalk of eyes drifted in Nymre’s direction, she swatted it with her hand in disgust.
“But if the forest dies…”
“Even if they don’t wake now and I can still drink from them, the woods won’t survive. They will collapse and so will we. There are no safe choices, no real ones. The mortal fool who travels here must want to give his life. Otherwise, the laws imposed on us by the same gods you see here won’t allow the spell to work.”
Nymre looked at him, considered him for a moment.
And then she laughed. A little fear in that laugh. A little panic. Bitter and sad, though laced with mocking and feigned joy.
“He would rather assist them than help us, in any way. Even if it would not be the end of his life.
“That’s why… I have to do it,” his smile grew darker, more seductive… more predatory. His face lit up from within with black light. “I have to make him want it.”
“But how…”
“I have to break him,” and Nymre could swear she saw shadowed teeth and thick jaws of night in his face. Buried deep within himself. A beast of shadows and blood, well kept on a leash – most of the time. “And it will bring me immeasurable joy.”