Chapter 1: The Scorpion and the Hare
"There you are, Diemphis" – a familiar voice whispers and emboldens to echoing, earnest laughter – "or rather, here you are."
A brightness stains his blinking eyes. Footsteps approach and he desperately smooths his hands over the stones of the cool underchamber floor, gasping for air. The youth attempts standing but stumbles instead, the still-whirling world beneath him countering any equilibrium, then feels a strong, clawed hand catch him by the jaw. "A little paler, thinner."
His head moves at the will of the other's grip, encouraging him to scowl. "That's what happens when you leave home."
'That's what happens when I'm hunted,' Diem thinks irritably. He yanks himself back, regretting the action when hearing the silver sound of a necklace breaking into the other's grasp.
"Grounding could never stop me, Diemphis."
Just as his golden eyes adjust, Diem discerns that the amulet is cracked. His heart sinks, understanding why it hadn't protected him from the summoning. It falls. The Grandmaster smashes it underneath an iron-lined hoof.
"At least, not for long. Now... where were you for this time?"
"The Ghost Forest, Grandmaster Zortoreous," Diem answers dryly. The bull's broad form retreats to a black, oaken table of tools and artifacts. Wincing, Diem notes that his own northbone occupies its center, making him drop his gaze but evaluate the periphery – rough walls, items of restraint, a summoning circle beneath him.
"And, what were you doing out there?" asked absently, his gravelly voice pitching low, almost as though expecting no response at all.
Diem quips, "Enjoying the solitude."
The Grandmaster scoffs. "You will tell me everything..." He lays a hand on the northbone. Diem screams in agony and curls into himself. "Because you're mine."
Diem's first summoning had been jarring, but not painful. He remembers it felt a little like too much wine, or swimming in the sky, or floating in a void. He remembers feeling both one and separate, and completely at peace but with the spark of ambition. He remembers that his descent onto the circle's calligraphy had never been graceful, had always pulled him to his knees and left him breathless, but never blinded. Then he remembers the comfort of the Grandmaster's hand on his back, making him shiver and relax – and finally the feeling of being home, of accomplishment and a job well done.
"I saw your success," he recalls the Grandmaster saying of his first true mission: the killing of Varlobon Doshvityen, a gangster of Badrivad's southern lands. "You will be rewarded, but first" – and the Grandmaster had helped him to his feet, then steadied him as he swayed – "your promise."
Diem remembers the care he thought the Grandmaster felt for him; how soothing his voice, how reassuring his touch. When he had regained his senses, he retrieved a small parcel folded in bloodied linens, and presented it on a bended knee. The Grandmaster had accepted it, then stroked his hair.
"My son," he had declared.
'A means to an end,' Diem thinks as his stomach churns, as he unravels his body from the pained position of torment. 'I was so stupid, so naive. I...'
"Do you remember capturing my Netheric Emerald?" The Grandmaster rearranges materials of sharp, metal instruments and baubles of enchantments while turning the pages of an unthinkably large tome. For a moment, Diem considers the most drastic option: to rush him while his back is turned, to fight for all he is worth. "You were so proud. And, you made me proud."
Chains erupt into existence and latch to Diem's wrists, stemming from below then twinkling as they rest on the stones. Diem growls, affronted. "You really think I would hurt you, Grandmaster Zortoreous?"
In a chortle, the Grandmaster responds, "No, of course not. I'm only preventing your punishment for attempting."
As his segmented tail sways, Diem wonders if one careful puncture from its tip could do anything to this seeming God.
"Do you remember returning to your homeland as your new self – as this self? Not the child you came to me as…"
Diem shakes his head in thought – a slow, subtle movement that betrayed him. He rethinks these past three summonings, and that he had managed to resist them all but the last. As he was called home, and as though the world depended on it, he had reached out to grip anything – a passing tree, any mountain, anyone – with the magic inherent to him even when his hands bled to grip the cosmos, as his anchor strained and failed to take hold. This last time, for a few optimistic moments, he thought that the invocation would pass and drop him lands and lands away from where it snatched him, just like before, but it only pulled harder, and he succumbed to the great weight of the Grandmaster's will.
"I suppose you don't. Let's remember together."
"No, I do. I remember," Diem declares hoarsely.
"All the same" – the Grandmaster smiles; Diem can't see it but understands the glee in his tone – "let's wander back."
The Grandmaster lays a hand on his northbone, open-palmed on the sigil etched into the jackal's skull, connecting and crossing to the symbols scarring his flesh. Diem grimaces in anticipation of pain, but instead, his head spins. He falls. He remembers.
He remembers riding into Eld Mesmoria on a white horse, head held high and face half-covered by a gilded shawl to keep out the wind and sands and sun. All around him, merchants and near-foreigners clamored at the gates, vying and bargaining to gain access to the market. Diem had slowed his trot along the loosely formed line, and rode past it, directly to the guards and foreman. They accessed him on-sight as highborn, quick to judge the ridiculous finery of his white boots and silk cloak, but demanded papers regardless.
Diem had pulled down the fabric at his face with eyebrows raised, causing the guards to bow in servitude, though the foreman eyed him with a looking-glass before stuttering any apology. "You're early, Prince Zebideth. Forgive my suspicions."
"Only early by a day, foreman. But your suspicions keep my kingdom safe. You are forgiven."
"And your entourage?"
"They are slow."
He'd ridden past the gates grinning, overly pleased with himself; the strength of his glamor's disguise defied even magical precautions to spot it. The second gate beyond the market also waved him in with no difficulty.
Diem remembers this, feeling the elation of the moment even as his heart sinks. He was so, so proud to be a pawn. He tries to shake himself awake, back to reality, preferring the coldness of the dungeons rather than the following moments. He fails.
Somehow, for some reason, he rode to the wood and clay houses of his old neighborhood: heaped in dust, barren of brick or trees or even paved stone. The people moved slowly, regarding him with reproach and envy. "Why is he here?" Many audibly wondered, then some murmured as he stopped at a known landlord's place of business.
He had dismounted his horse and a footman led it to stables.
"My Prince! My Prince!"
Diem jolts at the memory, refusing to continue and snapping back to wakefulness, breathing hard at the effort.
"Oh, too soon," the Grandmaster coos, his hand steaming, but appearing unphased. He faces Diem, his eyes two black peach pits, two smoldering coals in a setting of red. "Although you deviated from your mission, this moment is one of my favorites. It shows your true self."
Diem props himself up against the uneven wall, glowering at the other with unfiltered reproach, seeming to challenge the other with everything but the honest word. Then, at sighting his northbone again, he drops his eyes and runs a hand through his fair hair – oily and darkened by travel.
That jackal was the first fehren he'd ever killed. It took a month to find a trace of it, a week to wound and track it, then hours of careful strategy to conquer it. This was the first gift he gave to the Greatest God Nethumn. After that, there was no turning back.
His next tribute was his right hand, a self-sacrifice every apprentice makes with some element of their body, added to the vinery of a mandrake to create an unholy amalgamation of a pact. With teeth clenched, he remembers (never forgetting, really) that the replacement hand infected his whole arm with the God's glory – grayish, black-clawed, and stronger – and he had thanked the Grandmaster for such a privilege. Then, his third tribute. At this, his tail twitches, not blunted at its end, but anointed by a gift from Nethumn: a barb to kill, not stun.
The Grandmaster's hand stops steaming. He caresses the leaves of the northbone, smiling as a vine coils around his tail's spike that has, by now, grown into the skull like a horn – and the mass, its center unseen, like a pit of snakes. "You faced no reprimand for your vengeance. Don't you remember?"
"I don't need to relive it," Diem seethes. "I recall clearly."
"You speak as though you don't recall…" Coldly, the Grandmaster replaces his palm to the skull. "I think that you do need to relive it."
Diem is sent back to the sycophantic look of the landlord who greeted him warmly as the highest rung of their society. Immediately, the subordinate dismissed his guard and invited his Prince to the backroom, an exotic area of magiclight decorated in curtains and beads and plush pillows surrounding a polished wooden table – far more than Diem and his family had ever owned. He would have given anything for one of those pillows for his mother, or a set of curtains to refashion into a dress for his sister, or a table to play cards or dice with his brother upon.
"My prince, a chair for you?"
"No, thank you." Diem had seated himself cross-legged on the soft, baked sandstone, careful to avoid the carpets dotted around the table.
"I am Abridger Selvidore Alisphontis, the second. My father's gifts are mine, and yours." Abridger brewed tea and served cinnamon cakes and strawberries, none of which Diem touched.
"Anything you need, of course," and Abridger cleared his throat to fill the stillness. "You want for servants, my Prince? You have come to the right landlord. I own contracts for workmen, or young ones to train, and maidens to keep your wife company, if you wish..." His eyebrows raised at this, yearning to build familiarity but met with no utterance. After a pause, he had bowed his head and insisted, "anything you need, my Prince. Anything I can do is yours."
Diem swelled at this concept of power over someone who had torn his family apart year by year and contract by contract. "I do need a maiden."
Abridger's eyes darted up and his smile split his face from ear to ear, flashing white teeth between well-kept dark hair. "Yes, my Prince. I have many!" Immediately, he rose and ran to a separate room, coming back with scrolls and flat parchment which he spread before Diem on the table with flat glass marbles and iron figurines. "She, here" – he began, offering a drawn portrait of a girl – "She is shy, but laughs beautifully. Very obedient, and –"
"Prettier."
Abridger blinked, then nodded, with a smile offering a different girl. "Friendly, talkative... teachable."
"How much?"
"A meager eighteen – err, twenty thousand gold," Abridger said at once, then remembered his company. "A small sum for your majesty."
"And, what if her mother should call for her?"
Abridger had laughed, shaking his head.
Diem gasps awake, sitting upright and whole-body shivering in the Grandmaster's dungeons, laughably relieved that he was nowhere near the desert. He hasn't gone to that place, even in passing thought, for years. The journey to his new life had been behind him almost completely.
"Unpleasant, Diemphis?" the Grandmaster chides, taking the moment to dip his hand into a basin that sizzled and boiled at his touch. After a moment, he draws his hand out, satisfied and salved, and hovers it over the skull. "Are you ready to show me a better story?"
Pausing for a moment, Diem nods. "I... I ran from you. I abandoned my place here at the citadel."
"Is that all? For a month, all you did was run from me?" He tuts disbelievingly and slowly shakes his spiral-horned head.
Choosing his words carefully, the student admits, "I found a lost traveler. I led him back to his group. I sent them on their way."
The Grandmaster laughs. "If that's all, surely, you'll let me see for myself," and reconnects to the northbone, spinning Diem not to Eld Mesmoria, but to only a week prior.
Diem had cursed that whole land. He cursed the forest, its insurmountable cold, and the unrelenting quiet – yes, the unrelenting, deafening tone of absence.
Silence is a characteristic of the Ghost Forest. Muffled and hushed, the snowy underbrush beneath his boots crunched as though in a dream, and his keen, long ears had identified no birds, no rivers, and no restless branches even when the winds blew – and even this was a distant, vacant howl.
The darkness grew. The light slowly died. The sunset hues cooled to purples and blues across the slopes and drifts, and flickered pink at the lazy shift of the snow-falling skies. Every valley swelled with mist. Every leaf and needle spiked with frost where dew-kissed and the silver trees, heavy with white and daggered ice, trembled in the northern winds despite their size and pride.
Diem lit his hands aflame with heartfire, then touched the harmless heat to his chest, warming through the fabric of his thin cloak and tunic. He shivered. He touched the warmth to his unsuited boots, which had already worn considerably in the month of travel through that wet, rocky terrain. As the brief dusk darkened, and as the Chrysibdian moon rose from the jagged horizon of the Endless Peaks, he cursed that whole land despite its beauty. He cursed the citadel he'd called home, his Master who had drawn him there, and the Grandmaster who had molded his soul into something misshapen. Finally, he cursed "The Greatest God" Nethumn himself.
Through the cold, he caught the spice of blood, tasted it on the crisp air like reddened meat – a scent he could cut with a knife. It ceased all other thoughts apart from hunger, inspiring long strides through deep snow, and expectant pauses for sounds that did not come.
His eyes, reflective in the growing night, spotted a hare half his size and upright, limping from tree to tree and leaning into a walking stick. Diem saw other eyes belonging to large, four-legged shadows, swiftly weaving between the gray-washed greenery, moving closer and closer to the hare who seated himself at the base of a large, white ghostwood. The hare prayed, voice softened like everything else.
A solitary wolf approached, head lowered and hackles raised, stunning the hare into motionlessness. Diem could see what would happen: as a distraction, one is seen and others ambush.
The hare raised a gnarled, crooked wand, and cast a barrier to repel the sudden attack from his left. Shaking, the hare struggled to upkeep the sheer, glimmering shield, then let it fall, winded. Another wolf launched an attack, but caught a mouthful of walking stick, snarling. Three others circled closer, yipping and growling in anticipation.
Diem walked forward from the brush and expelled magic from his right hand – an orb of dark fire that spit sparks and embers. It exploded upon impact of the wolf, lighting it into a shrieking, staggering blaze. The others howled, retreated, and scattered into the wood, terrified of the element they seldom saw.
"You narrowly avoided being dinner," Diem spoke, moving closer and stooping to examine the downed animal whose flames vanished. "What are you doing out here, alone?" Though Volkstein was a home to the Akkadrin, this one was far, far away from where any gentle eldrin should have been.
The hare didn't respond, only pushed off from the ground to lean against the tree, his breathing labored and slow.
"Are you alone here?" Diem asked as he selected a tree limb of leaves and sharp ends, and held it above his head to light on fire with a dark flame. A torch.
The hare didn't respond, only gripped his wand tighter. As Diem approached, the hare raised it in defense.
"Do you mean me harm, little rabbit?"
"My name is Patrivik, and I think I thank you, scorpion. I was outnumbered and unprepared. But I know these flames. You worship Nethumn." The hare's voice had sounded unused to common tongue, taking care to enunciate but sounding unworldly all-the-same. He clutched closer a satchel crossed over his body, putting the bag behind himself protectively.
"I did worship Nethumn," Diem responded carefully, glancing at his left hand in a sudden sadness. Without looking at the other, Diem asked again: "are you alone, hare?"
"Aetheris protects me. She will always protect me."
Diem turned himself to this other, interested and confused, and ultimately irritated that he gave no direct answer. "Are you alone, or with a group?"
"I was separated from them, but the Greatest Goddess Aetheris is always with me." The hare declared this with such confidence that Diem had paused and wondered if he felt anything unnatural.
'No,' Diem thought, 'Only the oddness of the Ghost Wood itself. A God would never deign to help one soul.' Instinctively, he crouched to inspect the hare's wound and staked the torch into the snow, hands free to unlace the poor wrapping about the other's leg.
"NO!" the Akkadrin insisted and stepped back from the Mesmorian. "If you are my ally, you will swear allegiance to Aetheris."
Diem rose, smirking. "There are no Gods here, little rabbit. Only the mortals who struggle to keep power."
"That is untrue, scorpion," he raised his wand, then lowered it in thought. "If it means nothing, you'll swear to Her allegiance."
Diem had laughed, shaking his head; had wondered what fool's errand sent this simple creature into the remorseless winter of the Ghost Forest. "And forsake my God, the one I have seen, who I know exists?"
"Aetheris exists; She is all around us, we walk on Her body. She protects us from the Nethumn inside Her."
"Nonsense," Diem dismissed. 'Aetheris is a land, not a Goddess. A God can't be the world itself.'
"No. Not nonsense. If you don't swear to Her allegiance, you may as well kill me now, Nether-worshipper."
And Diem pulls, like reigns on a steed, jarring himself away from the secrets. For a moment, he can feel the chill of the dungeon's floor, then callously, the Grandmaster redirects to the other memory, and with relief, Diem accepts the faraway recalling of his vengeance in Eld Mesmoria.
"And, what if her mother should call for her?"
Shaking his head, laughing, Abridger replied, "Her mother is indebted by the kingdom for more than this. And even without the mother's contract, she could never pay the debt of her daughter."
"How does one so young become this... indebted?"
"Ah, yes, well..." he began with caution. "The father, of course. He rented a house, and ox, and plow, but when he could not grow enough to pay his dues, he fled! And so, his wife worked the ox and plow, but needed to invest her daughter with me to keep the house. So" – he giggled, defying his mid-age – "they belong to me! I offered to put up the youngest in a home as a maid, but they all belong to me."
"And they could never pay such a mounting debt."
"Yes! And, I will tell the wife that her youngest daughter will now serve the courts instead."
"Are you going to ask in what way she will serve me?"
"Ah, no, my prince..." Abridger hesitated, unsure how to continue. "It is not my business... I only mean to say there is no worry here."
"Your business is slavery."
Abridger laughs, then quiets himself. "Well, they ARE common people, and we are –"
Diem had dropped his glamor then, his face morphing from the elegant angles of royalty to his own, freckled and sun-browned features, his eyes a piercing, gleaming yellow instead of blue. Abridger gasped.
"Do you recognize me, Abridger?" Diem whispers, a snarl growing in his voice. "I know it's been three years, but perhaps you have my picture here..."
"No!" Abridger stands, nearly upending the table in his haste. "No, I do not know you! You thief! Impersonator!"
Diem had silenced him with a wave of his right hand, forcing a sudden pressure to Abridger's throat that knocked him back and over. The gem around the landlord's neck splintered, then shattered, overcome by force.
"You sold me to the courts as a soldier," Diem ignored the desperate sputtering of the man splayed and gripping his throat, feebly calling for the guard he had dismissed. Calmly, the impersonator scanned the documents, noting that many amounts were crossed out several times and increased. "I was thirteen at my first battle."
Abridger raised a wand to him then, firing a weak beam of light that Diem cast aside with his own wand – a slender dueling weapon carved from the femur of his jackal. "I have learned the true art of magic. It took leaving this barren place to do it, but here I am, to reap what you have sowed."
The wand burst in the landlord's hand as he attempted a more powerful spell – too powerful for both the wand and the man – burning him from hand to forearm and sending splinters across the table and carpets and cushions. He would have screamed – if only he had been able.
With a sweep of his wand, Diem lit the table on fire, instantly curling all things to kindling. He knelt closer to Abridger, tightening the hold on his throat until the landlord was crazed for breath, the life in his eyes frantic and ebbing.
Diem remembers this feeling fondly, of conquering, of control. He remembers the smell of burning meat, enticing a hunger in him; he had wanted to eat Abridger's heart, but the fire gave no time for this. As the slaver choked his final breath, Diem changed his glamor to this landlord, then escaped as the guard filled the foyer of the burning room.
"The Prince! Save the Prince! A candle, oh Gods!"
A crowd had gathered, some with buckets of water or sand and others with blankets. Diem let himself fall back and disappear into them, becoming still another face.
Diem gasps awake, body trembling and head reeling. He feels cold, his underclothes soaked with sweat and his heart hammering hard. His eyes fall upon a young, portly brother-in-coven standing unsurely in the arched doorway of the dungeon. He holds a bag over his shoulder, and an armful of bottles and small, burlap sacks.
"Patrivik..." the Grandmaster nods. "I think I've heard this name before..."
"He's just... a rabbitfolk," Diem dismisses, but the confidence in his voice is gone. He is shuddering. His gaze falls to the amulet's broken pieces.
"Patrivik Ellis Lockiralt, the fifth."
Shocked, Diem sits stiffly. A lucid thought steals him: how much can the Grandmaster see? Can he reach into his emotions, his thoughts? How had he known the hare's full name? The apprentice stammers. "I don't know – I don't know anything about him. I only found him – returned him to those other monks."
"You'll show me this adventure, then?"
"I…" Diem begins but doesn't know how to finish. 'I can't,' he thinks. 'You might kill me. I've betrayed Nethumn. You will slay me.'
"Enter, Johnatien," The Grandmaster turns and nods to the other student, who enters at once but walks hesitantly to the table. He chooses to turn his back to Diem, busying himself with a small cauldron and bottles and jars.
"Your resistance will only wear you faster, Diemphis…" The Grandmaster sighs. "Don't you see how I allowed you to right the wrongs of your past? How I gave you the power to do so? Don't you recall how you went unpunished? I sent you to Eld Mesmoria for the Netheric Emerald..." The Grandmaster strides over, long, tri-whip tail trailing, his form towering. "And, you remember retrieving the Emerald, yes?"
Diem resists cowering. "Yes."
The Grandmaster's oxen visage twists into a faux frown. "And what did you learn there?"
Diem doesn't answer at first, wracking his brain for the response the other seeks. "I learned... the mission has priority. It must be completed..."
"Of course. And?"
Diem inhales through his teeth. He listens to John chopping strong-smelling herbs and uncorking a vial to pour into the cauldron. "I learned subservience to you, my Grandmaster. I am grateful to you."
The Grandmaster smiles with a mouth of pointed teeth. "This is good to hear. I thought I'd lost you." He lowers himself to meet Diem's eyes, his great mane of dark hair falling down his shoulders in a mess of edges and dreadlocks and waves. His dark fur bristles. "You'll tell me what you've done while away, won't you?"
Diem flinches. He nods. "The traveler was near death. I gave him back to his people."
"Ah..." The Grandmaster hardens his eyes, holds them to those of his student's. "You aren't being honest with me."
"I am, Grandmaster Zortoreous," Diem is careful to not look away. "I found him. There was a storm. After the storm, I took him back to his people."
Wordlessly, the Grandmaster rises and moves back to the table, placing a hand on the northbone. Diem feels the wave of memory forming, bringing him back to Patrivik, to Abbabelle and Joston. He resists. His body shakes. His chest tightens.
"I remember once when you resisted this much."
It was a hard-earned memory:
In the dead of night, Diem had heard a mob forming outside the inn. Their torches lit the window of the room even from stories below – an angry red. It was no mystery to him what they intended, and no mystery of why. He had carefully slipped out of bed and put an ear to the door.
"What is it, Diem?" asked his brother-in-coven, slow in waking, rubbing his eyes and yawning. There was so much to unite them, but Diem had felt only distance. They were meant to be a pair on this mission, sent to collect sensitive trade-route information. A quiet job. It should have been easy.
"You killed a girl," Diem began, his nose wrinkling with disgust. He remembers being more innocent, or dumb. He remembers he hadn't eaten anyone before – had never even killed – though understood it to be an eventuality. 'But this? This is unnecessary. For no reason…'
"You drained her tonight, and someone saw you. And even if they didn't see you creeping from her house, you didn't stop to think that we're the only travelers here. We are the difference. Of course we'll be blamed." Diem gathered his things with urgency, ignoring his comrade in the slow progress of pulling on clothes and shoes.
"What?" the other pretended to be startled, almost convincing in his sleepiness. "I didn't. I know that's risky – in a small village like this–"
The innkeeper allowed the mob in. They came loudly closer.
With a sharp quickness, Diem struck the other in the back, the weight of his tail like a club, the sting final and immobilizing but not deathly. Speechless, those wide eyes told of horror, and surprise, and betrayal. Wordless, he turned to open the window, then grinning, slipped carefully down the inn's side.
Diem kicks wildly, straining with everything in him to leap from that moment.
Suddenly, the air is cold, and he trembles on the dungeon floor.
"Just show him, Diem. He'll see it sometime anyway." John is at his side, careful to keep the steaming cup in his hands upright as the Mesmorian flails. After a moment, he offers the cup to Diem, who takes it in a shaky grasp and gulps.
'John,' Diem thinks, draining the cup and handing it back, trembling as the warmth eases his bruises and aches. 'If you only knew what I've done, you would not stomach me. You would never speak to me again.'
"Indeed, Diemphis," the Grandmaster's voice is no longer playful, but finally portraying the anger he's harbored since Diem fled. "How can you call yourself obedient? How can I trust you if I don't know everything you've seen?"
Diem is quiet, avoiding John's eyes, folding into himself.
"You do not understand. I need you to understand." The Grandmaster places a hand on the skull. Diem screams in pain.
"I did what I had to then! Grandmaster, please," Diem begs now, exhausted. "I grieve for our lost brother," he lies. Instantly, as he spoke it, he knew it as a lie. And in this moment, he realizes that while he cares nothing for his former comrade, he does care for the opinion of Johnatien – just as everyone in the citadel seems to. Everything is tempered for him; the edges softened, the curses unspoken, coddled like a fledgling dragon from which innocence could be tolerated with the promise of potential.
'Just like Anikka…' he thinks.
"Were you punished for this?"
"No," Diem responds quietly, thoughtfully. He wasn't punished, although the Grandmaster had known what he'd done.
"Think on this," the Grandmaster scolds. "Think on everything I have done for you." He replaces his reddened, steaming hand to the northbone.
Diem doesn't fight this time. He gives in, reliving the memory so completely that every thought, every feeling, and every action is accounted for.
"The prince is killed!"
"Claymire is burned!"
"No no no, the Prince has just arrived at the gates!"
"Hold him at the gates! He's an imposter!"
All things had been set to chaos, so much so that no one noticed Diem as an intruder making his way up and up and up sets of stairs, stealing deeper and deeper into the royal quarter as he became face after face. He found the hold of the Netheric Emerald as though it was his fate to take it, and just as skillfully foiled the precautions and locks which kept the gleaming, pink jewel safe from the wrong hands. He worked to clear the runes which would freeze and burn him, nullified barrier after barrier, and erased infections and curses which would lay him down before even leaving the castle.
It was his.
No, it was the Grandmaster's.
The view was vast. From the ivory towers of Eld Mesmoria, the land stretched beneath him as waves of sand separated by concentric walls leading to a forest of greens and oranges and purples at its center – kept within, like any other treasure. He remembers thinking that the vibrance of his country was wasted on the fickle minds of high society.
His boots touched the floor of her balcony like they had so many times before. He took time to manipulate the wards, then pushed open the double-paned glass doors as though he were home.
"Oh, you're back! Thank goodness!" The Princess had pushed herself into his arms.
Her dark hair – lavender-scented and finer than silk – caressed the backs of his hands. He had felt intoxicated. Her laughter was musical, her voice soft and swaying him. Just the nearness of her, without even touching her skin, harkened him to a time when they had pulled each other closer and closer, and at the fruition, found that they couldn't get close enough.
"I didn't hear you enter..."
Diem stared at her, remembering her face as the same heart-shaped structure but no longer pretty, now beautiful. Speechless, he kissed her. He felt a static he couldn't explain, a resounding reassurance that he was meant to be there, in that moment, with her.
She strained against him. "What's gotten into you, Prince Zebideth?"
"I..." he gasped, forgetting himself – that he was not himself. "Well, princess, I am not your prince."
She tilted her head, stepping back as his glamor fell. "Diem?" Disbelieving, she stepped away from him. "You— you shouldn't be here..."
"I've come back for you. I'm ready to take you away."
The princess had replied: "No, no, I can't. I know I said – but I didn't think — I was so young. We were so young! How can you expect me to follow the dreams of a girl?" And she stammered like that – exactly like that, word-for-word. Diem does everything he can to pull himself from the memory.
"I made a mistake," she had said, and even in the concrete memory her words were a thousand leagues away, resonant and cavernous.
'Anything but this,' he begs, and he can hear the Grandmaster replying that yes, there is another option.
'Give me the truth, Diemphis. Where have you been?'
He can't reveal the present. He revisits the past.
Diem's throat had felt dry. He ached to hold her again. He remembers foolishly pulling her towards the balcony and her shrill cries for him to unhand her.
This godsforsaken place. The chilling expression of fear on her face.
"Esmeralta... I... I did what you asked of me. I have become strong in the dark arts. I have come back to rescue you from your betrothed. I can help us both escape – we can go anywhere." He had stepped forward, imploring her, and knelt. "We can be anyone, or anything. I just want to be with you."
She shook her head. She apologized. She stammered that she had fallen in love with Prince Zebideth.
Diem can feel the taste of anger in his mouth, like blood in his throat, leadening his heart, dropping into his stomach. He had become insidious and conniving, had carved off pieces of himself for this end. He had given into his darkest desires and all his fears for this. For her. He twists on the dungeon floor.
"I could kill you, Esmeralta."
Stunned, she retreated from him like one might a beast of the wild, her small, soft hands leaving his like all the leaves from a tree.
This, in and of itself, hurt him. His heart broke. His mouth numbed. His vision faltered.
In so few words, he had betrayed her and everything he had ever stood for. After years of singled-minded study and devotion towards a purpose – her, not his God – he had undermined it all. His fists unclenched, jaw relaxed, tail drooped to the floor. He recalls remembering how they met – how sure and brave she was against the brash words of a young thief, a commoner, an urchin – how they had almost perfectly fallen in love – how she had to convince him that she truly loved him – how courageous their plan was, for him to save her from a stranger a continent away.
"But, you love me. Tell me that you love me," he insisted this stupidly, the tone in his voice pathetic, like that of a child. "Didn't you ever think of me?"
She stood in place like a marbled statue, letting the seconds pass by like lifetimes and then die when she never answered. Her tail, like his but thinner, daintier, and useless, curled across her slim body as her only defense against him.
Diem had turned away to look over the balcony and down to the kingdom he'd known all his life, to the people milling about in panic, then to the unclouded sky of unabashed starlight and a naked, aching moon. Beneath this, beneath him, beneath the stately towers of the royal sectors, encased in the final and most inner circlet of security, there existed the true Mesmoria: one of vibrant and gleaming forests, of blue sands and white, polished stones. And then he thought, though this was his homeland, this was never his home. These were not his people. They, and no one here, cared anything for him at the fringe of their luxuries. "I am so sorry," he croaked, then breathed deeply. He remembers wanting her to say anything, but she didn't.
With his mind quieted, he understood the cacophony: many angry voices, the clash of steel on steel, the throng of bells.
"Your Prince, he treats you well?" It felt as though it wasn't him speaking; as though the words and voice weren't his.
She had nodded. He couldn't bear to look at her, but he knew it.
"I'm glad for that."
Diem jumped onto the banister, ready to climb down or fall, when she screamed.
With eyes wide but unseeing, Diem pants as though he cannot catch his breath, finding himself again on the dungeon's cobbled stones. "Please," he manages, choking.
"We aren't done, Diemphis," the Grandmaster speaks, his scorned hand poised over the skull but showing no signs of pain. "Show me what I actually want to see. Show me this... rabbitkin."
Diem stills himself. The memory is overwhelming, but the truth places all of fate in danger. The future is real. The past is not.
The Grandmaster replaces his hand, pulling Diem to where they left off. He can't stop this.
Esmeralta screamed. She fell to the floor. He made it to her side as blood poured from her chest, an arrow stricken there at an angle but fading into shadow, her eyes alive one moment then deadening in the next. He shook her. He called for help.
The doors burst open. A guard roared, spear in hand. Stupidly, he saw the spear thrown but refused to leave her side, taking the hit. At the impact, though, he staggered back and over, falling.
One of many, many regrettable moments. Part of him wonders if he hurt her himself, if he did such a thing with only a thought.
Diem is sprawled on the stone floor, his lungs on fire and his body convulsing with cold. He wonders if he will ever feel good again, be warm again, be anyone but a slave again. The memories make his history clear: he chose this. He surrendered to the delights of Nethumn and now all these fruits are his, these fields of grown hatred and spite and envy that he cultivated in his heart, his body, his mind – by earnest choice – are his alone. For love and hate, for survival and revenge, for conquest itself, he had sacrificed everything good in him.
And this clarity is his, hand-crafted with intention and care, step by step and yes by yes.
Now, suddenly, he doesn't want this. He loathes himself with the ire of a hypocrite.
'I deserve this,' he thinks, unmoving, calmer, breathing deeper and slower. John kneels and offers a brew. Diem pushes the warmth away.
"What do you remember, Diemphis?"
He covers his face in his arms, turns over to show his back, tail curling in to rest at his feet, covered only in breeches – at some point, he'd kicked off his boots. His eyes flood with tears but he does not cry.
"What do you remember?"
He had left Eld Mesmoria as his past, one which he never recalled or spoke of, one that was secret and precious to him. Then when it came undone that night, he had sealed it away, closing these feelings of anguish behind him, choosing instead the camaraderie of his coven.
"Diemphis, what do you remember?"
"My choices. My failures."
"Have you been unhappy here?"
'No, of course not.'
These halls had felt like a home. Maybe even, in some ways, more than his own family had, and no one understood this better than his brethren, who without words equaled his own emotions of abandonment and secrecy and solace in one another. He had enjoyed their growth as much as he enjoyed his own successes.
The Grandmaster is beside him, squeezing his shoulder in a comfort that calms his emptiness. "Once more, Diemphis. Take me to the rabbit."
"I can't," he breathes. His chest sparks with pain at every inhale.
"You can. You will," and Grandmaster Zortoreous walks to the table, pours some of the brew into a cup, and feeds the northbone which shivers and exhales. "Don't you realize, Diemphis? You don't need to hide anything from me. You are already forgiven," and his hand slips into the cold basin, boiling the water, breathing steam. "The constant here is that you are, of course, mine."
Diem feels fatigue. The strength of the chains at his wrists weighs him down. He rights himself and tilts his head back against the wall, closing his eyes, resting his body, imagining he is elsewhere. Anywhere.
"Do you know what it is to be mine?"
Diem doesn't answer.
"It means that I save you –" he pauses, smiling – "from anything. It means that whatever evil overfalls you is mine to battle, to repel, to overcome. You are mine, Diemphis. And so you are safe from all things, because there are not many stronger than I. But, you must obey. You must give me your heart."
It is as though the Grandmaser is Nethumn himself: unwavering logic, invasive knowledge and solace in annulation. Diem can't hide. He falters. He fibs.
"I ate him, Grandmaster."
"Ate…?" Grandmaster Zortoreous is dumbfounded, then laughs fully, deeply, darkly. "You ate the Akkadrin? You ate Patrivik Ellis Lockiralt the Fifth?"
"You- you what?" John recoils. "You ate an eldrin?"
Diem looks down, his head heavy and wrists aching at the chains. "We were caught in the haelstrom. I had no choice…"
"But that was a thinking – conscious being!" John objects, shaking his head in disbelief. "I don't believe you. You wouldn't eat me, would you?"
"No, Johnatien," the Grandmaster muses. "You are human. You are the least tasty eldrin of all."
John glares, then remembers himself. He stutters, "Tell me you didn't, Diem, and I'll believe you."
'He hasn't given Nethumn any piece of himself, yet,' Diem thinks, 'so he doesn't know the hunger a 'gift' bears…'
"Tell me, Diem!"
"I did, John. I ate him. He trusted me, and I killed him."
The room is silent.
"Diemphis, face me so that you can be forgiven."
A shock of fear and surprise shoots down his spine. Shaking, Diem unfolds himself. He wipes his face with an arm before turning over, before pushing his back into the uneven wall and resting there in a mid-stand. "Grandmaster Zortoreous, I cannot be forgiven. I ran from you. I abandoned the citadel. I disgraced you, and His name."
"All will be forgiven," the Grandmaster implores. "Now, promise your heart to the Greatest God Nethumn."
Diem cannot meet his superior's eyes. He cannot speak the words. It would mean a complete repentance. It could mean a million words all in one simple phrase.
"Promise Him your heart."
The student opens and closes his mouth, weighing options and finding that he has no other. "I, Diemphis Westen Caltibre xol Eld Mesmoria of Kirinth, promise my heart to the Greatest God Nethumn."
A frightening thread of pain twinged above all else. His hand went to his chest, expecting to feel a knife. Nothing.
The Grandmaster smiles slyly. "Take him to the baths, Johnatien. And then to bed. We will feed him in the morning."
John hesitates, then walks to Diem's side as the chains break and clatter to the stones. The Mesmorian stands shakily and leans into his brother-in-coven, who despite feeling repulsed, takes the other's arm over his shoulder.
"Rest well, Diemphis," The Grandmaster chides, now enthralled in the tome and busy boiling a concoction at the cauldron, laughing lowly to himself. "Tomorrow, you'll tell me if you had roasted rabbit, or stew."
Weary from remembering, the pair makes sluggish progress across the dungeon, and when they are far enough away, up the spiral stairs to the landing, the human asks quietly, unsurely, "Did you really eat that other eldrin?"
"No," Diem answers simply.
John breathes relief. "I knew you didn't. I knew you wouldn't."
The truth is a betrayal to their God.
As the haelstrom surged beyond the solace of the caves, Diem carefully attended to the hare's injuries: cutting and boiling new dressings, washing the gash at his leg, and applying his heartfire which made the hare wince, but heal just ever more slightly. Then, in the flickering light of the campfire, Patrivik confided in him.
"I know of your struggle," he began. "I have seen followers of Nethumn flee before, and have seen deserters drained of power every third day, then summoned the next. I see you are weak now, weaker than you would like to show."
Diem had narrowed his eyes. "How would you know?"
"I am a follower of Aetheris. My kind protect all children of Her Grace." Then he rummaged in his satchel and produced an amulet. "I made this before my journey. I was meant to travel to Mournos for pilgrimage, but Aetheris called me to Her quest. Now, I think this has purpose. I think it was meant for you."
Diem had mocked him. "What can that do for me? My Grandmaster is more powerful than you've ever seen – than you could ever know."
"I know you want to escape him. I offer you Her protection. I offer you proof of Her existence."
To pacify the monk, Diem drew symbols in the dirt and a confining circle around them as instructed, then joined the hare in a chant to bring about a miracle – and it had worked. He witnessed light rise from the earth and enter the simple piece of crystal. He saw it gleam with Her presence as he held it, and felt the peace of forgiveness enter him – so powerful it brought him to tears. How could he, as flawed as he was, be forgiven for anything?
'I have gone so long without Her. How have I lived so long without Her?'
And it had grounded him – saved him – kept the summonings at bay and allowed him to keep his strength, which he vowed to use for Patrivik's holy quest – THE quest. And he felt lighter. As though his sins were misunderstandings, as though his misdeeds were meant to be. And this, of itself, hurt him. From that day of the haelstrom's surge, he had felt changed, uncorrupted, and clear. He felt lighter, ached with the realization of how heavy he had been, and felt fear, even – of keeping this lightness, of being worthy of amnesty.
John helps Diem ascend another flight before interrupting his thoughts. "Did the Grandmaster really kill Anikka?"
Diem doesn't answer at first, then shakes his head. "I don't know..."
"But the others say… that you saw her dead? On the dissection table?"
A month ago, Diem had been so sure of what he'd seen in the Grandmaster's forbidden floors. Now, he questioned everything, and only desired the comfort of normalcy, of the citadel. "I don't know."
"Erikur said so, and he doesn't lie. He said he saw it, and that you got away."
"There is no 'getting away', John," Diem scolds.
"Emikka is gone. I think she got away."
'No, she didn't.' Diem thinks, remembering now that she had been incensed to see her sister lying there lifeless, that she had provided a distraction to Master Emil with her rage long enough so that a few could escape – that she had screamed, and fell, and gotten back up to fight. She hadn't fled. She, of all, hadn't gotten away.
'But what if we had stayed to fight?'
He feels small, sick, sad. He feels like a wasteland – empty of life and day and night and dreams. What had he first wanted, before all expectations? The sacrifices he made were for nothing – at least, nothing good. He has done so many bad things, became so enamored with what he thought he needed, and the quickest way to get there – but the stairs are endless. Impossible. And made of bones.
"Some of us want to run," John whispers.
Diem sighs. "This is our home, brother. Where would we run to?"
"There you are, Diemphis" – a familiar voice whispers and emboldens to echoing, earnest laughter – "or rather, here you are."
A brightness stains his blinking eyes. Footsteps approach and he desperately smooths his hands over the stones of the cool underchamber floor, gasping for air. The youth attempts standing but stumbles instead, the still-whirling world beneath him countering any equilibrium, then feels a strong, clawed hand catch him by the jaw. "A little paler, thinner."
His head moves at the will of the other's grip, encouraging him to scowl. "That's what happens when you leave home."
'That's what happens when I'm hunted,' Diem thinks irritably. He yanks himself back, regretting the action when hearing the silver sound of a necklace breaking into the other's grasp.
"Grounding could never stop me, Diemphis."
Just as his golden eyes adjust, Diem discerns that the amulet is cracked. His heart sinks, understanding why it hadn't protected him from the summoning. It falls. The Grandmaster smashes it underneath an iron-lined hoof.
"At least, not for long. Now... where were you for this time?"
"The Ghost Forest, Grandmaster Zortoreous," Diem answers dryly. The bull's broad form retreats to a black, oaken table of tools and artifacts. Wincing, Diem notes that his own northbone occupies its center, making him drop his gaze but evaluate the periphery – rough walls, items of restraint, a summoning circle beneath him.
"And, what were you doing out there?" asked absently, his gravelly voice pitching low, almost as though expecting no response at all.
Diem quips, "Enjoying the solitude."
The Grandmaster scoffs. "You will tell me everything..." He lays a hand on the northbone. Diem screams in agony and curls into himself. "Because you're mine."
Diem's first summoning had been jarring, but not painful. He remembers it felt a little like too much wine, or swimming in the sky, or floating in a void. He remembers feeling both one and separate, and completely at peace but with the spark of ambition. He remembers that his descent onto the circle's calligraphy had never been graceful, had always pulled him to his knees and left him breathless, but never blinded. Then he remembers the comfort of the Grandmaster's hand on his back, making him shiver and relax – and finally the feeling of being home, of accomplishment and a job well done.
"I saw your success," he recalls the Grandmaster saying of his first true mission: the killing of Varlobon Doshvityen, a gangster of Badrivad's southern lands. "You will be rewarded, but first" – and the Grandmaster had helped him to his feet, then steadied him as he swayed – "your promise."
Diem remembers the care he thought the Grandmaster felt for him; how soothing his voice, how reassuring his touch. When he had regained his senses, he retrieved a small parcel folded in bloodied linens, and presented it on a bended knee. The Grandmaster had accepted it, then stroked his hair.
"My son," he had declared.
'A means to an end,' Diem thinks as his stomach churns, as he unravels his body from the pained position of torment. 'I was so stupid, so naive. I...'
"Do you remember capturing my Netheric Emerald?" The Grandmaster rearranges materials of sharp, metal instruments and baubles of enchantments while turning the pages of an unthinkably large tome. For a moment, Diem considers the most drastic option: to rush him while his back is turned, to fight for all he is worth. "You were so proud. And, you made me proud."
Chains erupt into existence and latch to Diem's wrists, stemming from below then twinkling as they rest on the stones. Diem growls, affronted. "You really think I would hurt you, Grandmaster Zortoreous?"
In a chortle, the Grandmaster responds, "No, of course not. I'm only preventing your punishment for attempting."
As his segmented tail sways, Diem wonders if one careful puncture from its tip could do anything to this seeming God.
"Do you remember returning to your homeland as your new self – as this self? Not the child you came to me as…"
Diem shakes his head in thought – a slow, subtle movement that betrayed him. He rethinks these past three summonings, and that he had managed to resist them all but the last. As he was called home, and as though the world depended on it, he had reached out to grip anything – a passing tree, any mountain, anyone – with the magic inherent to him even when his hands bled to grip the cosmos, as his anchor strained and failed to take hold. This last time, for a few optimistic moments, he thought that the invocation would pass and drop him lands and lands away from where it snatched him, just like before, but it only pulled harder, and he succumbed to the great weight of the Grandmaster's will.
"I suppose you don't. Let's remember together."
"No, I do. I remember," Diem declares hoarsely.
"All the same" – the Grandmaster smiles; Diem can't see it but understands the glee in his tone – "let's wander back."
The Grandmaster lays a hand on his northbone, open-palmed on the sigil etched into the jackal's skull, connecting and crossing to the symbols scarring his flesh. Diem grimaces in anticipation of pain, but instead, his head spins. He falls. He remembers.
He remembers riding into Eld Mesmoria on a white horse, head held high and face half-covered by a gilded shawl to keep out the wind and sands and sun. All around him, merchants and near-foreigners clamored at the gates, vying and bargaining to gain access to the market. Diem had slowed his trot along the loosely formed line, and rode past it, directly to the guards and foreman. They accessed him on-sight as highborn, quick to judge the ridiculous finery of his white boots and silk cloak, but demanded papers regardless.
Diem had pulled down the fabric at his face with eyebrows raised, causing the guards to bow in servitude, though the foreman eyed him with a looking-glass before stuttering any apology. "You're early, Prince Zebideth. Forgive my suspicions."
"Only early by a day, foreman. But your suspicions keep my kingdom safe. You are forgiven."
"And your entourage?"
"They are slow."
He'd ridden past the gates grinning, overly pleased with himself; the strength of his glamor's disguise defied even magical precautions to spot it. The second gate beyond the market also waved him in with no difficulty.
Diem remembers this, feeling the elation of the moment even as his heart sinks. He was so, so proud to be a pawn. He tries to shake himself awake, back to reality, preferring the coldness of the dungeons rather than the following moments. He fails.
Somehow, for some reason, he rode to the wood and clay houses of his old neighborhood: heaped in dust, barren of brick or trees or even paved stone. The people moved slowly, regarding him with reproach and envy. "Why is he here?" Many audibly wondered, then some murmured as he stopped at a known landlord's place of business.
He had dismounted his horse and a footman led it to stables.
"My Prince! My Prince!"
Diem jolts at the memory, refusing to continue and snapping back to wakefulness, breathing hard at the effort.
"Oh, too soon," the Grandmaster coos, his hand steaming, but appearing unphased. He faces Diem, his eyes two black peach pits, two smoldering coals in a setting of red. "Although you deviated from your mission, this moment is one of my favorites. It shows your true self."
Diem props himself up against the uneven wall, glowering at the other with unfiltered reproach, seeming to challenge the other with everything but the honest word. Then, at sighting his northbone again, he drops his eyes and runs a hand through his fair hair – oily and darkened by travel.
That jackal was the first fehren he'd ever killed. It took a month to find a trace of it, a week to wound and track it, then hours of careful strategy to conquer it. This was the first gift he gave to the Greatest God Nethumn. After that, there was no turning back.
His next tribute was his right hand, a self-sacrifice every apprentice makes with some element of their body, added to the vinery of a mandrake to create an unholy amalgamation of a pact. With teeth clenched, he remembers (never forgetting, really) that the replacement hand infected his whole arm with the God's glory – grayish, black-clawed, and stronger – and he had thanked the Grandmaster for such a privilege. Then, his third tribute. At this, his tail twitches, not blunted at its end, but anointed by a gift from Nethumn: a barb to kill, not stun.
The Grandmaster's hand stops steaming. He caresses the leaves of the northbone, smiling as a vine coils around his tail's spike that has, by now, grown into the skull like a horn – and the mass, its center unseen, like a pit of snakes. "You faced no reprimand for your vengeance. Don't you remember?"
"I don't need to relive it," Diem seethes. "I recall clearly."
"You speak as though you don't recall…" Coldly, the Grandmaster replaces his palm to the skull. "I think that you do need to relive it."
Diem is sent back to the sycophantic look of the landlord who greeted him warmly as the highest rung of their society. Immediately, the subordinate dismissed his guard and invited his Prince to the backroom, an exotic area of magiclight decorated in curtains and beads and plush pillows surrounding a polished wooden table – far more than Diem and his family had ever owned. He would have given anything for one of those pillows for his mother, or a set of curtains to refashion into a dress for his sister, or a table to play cards or dice with his brother upon.
"My prince, a chair for you?"
"No, thank you." Diem had seated himself cross-legged on the soft, baked sandstone, careful to avoid the carpets dotted around the table.
"I am Abridger Selvidore Alisphontis, the second. My father's gifts are mine, and yours." Abridger brewed tea and served cinnamon cakes and strawberries, none of which Diem touched.
"Anything you need, of course," and Abridger cleared his throat to fill the stillness. "You want for servants, my Prince? You have come to the right landlord. I own contracts for workmen, or young ones to train, and maidens to keep your wife company, if you wish..." His eyebrows raised at this, yearning to build familiarity but met with no utterance. After a pause, he had bowed his head and insisted, "anything you need, my Prince. Anything I can do is yours."
Diem swelled at this concept of power over someone who had torn his family apart year by year and contract by contract. "I do need a maiden."
Abridger's eyes darted up and his smile split his face from ear to ear, flashing white teeth between well-kept dark hair. "Yes, my Prince. I have many!" Immediately, he rose and ran to a separate room, coming back with scrolls and flat parchment which he spread before Diem on the table with flat glass marbles and iron figurines. "She, here" – he began, offering a drawn portrait of a girl – "She is shy, but laughs beautifully. Very obedient, and –"
"Prettier."
Abridger blinked, then nodded, with a smile offering a different girl. "Friendly, talkative... teachable."
"How much?"
"A meager eighteen – err, twenty thousand gold," Abridger said at once, then remembered his company. "A small sum for your majesty."
"And, what if her mother should call for her?"
Abridger had laughed, shaking his head.
Diem gasps awake, sitting upright and whole-body shivering in the Grandmaster's dungeons, laughably relieved that he was nowhere near the desert. He hasn't gone to that place, even in passing thought, for years. The journey to his new life had been behind him almost completely.
"Unpleasant, Diemphis?" the Grandmaster chides, taking the moment to dip his hand into a basin that sizzled and boiled at his touch. After a moment, he draws his hand out, satisfied and salved, and hovers it over the skull. "Are you ready to show me a better story?"
Pausing for a moment, Diem nods. "I... I ran from you. I abandoned my place here at the citadel."
"Is that all? For a month, all you did was run from me?" He tuts disbelievingly and slowly shakes his spiral-horned head.
Choosing his words carefully, the student admits, "I found a lost traveler. I led him back to his group. I sent them on their way."
The Grandmaster laughs. "If that's all, surely, you'll let me see for myself," and reconnects to the northbone, spinning Diem not to Eld Mesmoria, but to only a week prior.
Diem had cursed that whole land. He cursed the forest, its insurmountable cold, and the unrelenting quiet – yes, the unrelenting, deafening tone of absence.
Silence is a characteristic of the Ghost Forest. Muffled and hushed, the snowy underbrush beneath his boots crunched as though in a dream, and his keen, long ears had identified no birds, no rivers, and no restless branches even when the winds blew – and even this was a distant, vacant howl.
The darkness grew. The light slowly died. The sunset hues cooled to purples and blues across the slopes and drifts, and flickered pink at the lazy shift of the snow-falling skies. Every valley swelled with mist. Every leaf and needle spiked with frost where dew-kissed and the silver trees, heavy with white and daggered ice, trembled in the northern winds despite their size and pride.
Diem lit his hands aflame with heartfire, then touched the harmless heat to his chest, warming through the fabric of his thin cloak and tunic. He shivered. He touched the warmth to his unsuited boots, which had already worn considerably in the month of travel through that wet, rocky terrain. As the brief dusk darkened, and as the Chrysibdian moon rose from the jagged horizon of the Endless Peaks, he cursed that whole land despite its beauty. He cursed the citadel he'd called home, his Master who had drawn him there, and the Grandmaster who had molded his soul into something misshapen. Finally, he cursed "The Greatest God" Nethumn himself.
Through the cold, he caught the spice of blood, tasted it on the crisp air like reddened meat – a scent he could cut with a knife. It ceased all other thoughts apart from hunger, inspiring long strides through deep snow, and expectant pauses for sounds that did not come.
His eyes, reflective in the growing night, spotted a hare half his size and upright, limping from tree to tree and leaning into a walking stick. Diem saw other eyes belonging to large, four-legged shadows, swiftly weaving between the gray-washed greenery, moving closer and closer to the hare who seated himself at the base of a large, white ghostwood. The hare prayed, voice softened like everything else.
A solitary wolf approached, head lowered and hackles raised, stunning the hare into motionlessness. Diem could see what would happen: as a distraction, one is seen and others ambush.
The hare raised a gnarled, crooked wand, and cast a barrier to repel the sudden attack from his left. Shaking, the hare struggled to upkeep the sheer, glimmering shield, then let it fall, winded. Another wolf launched an attack, but caught a mouthful of walking stick, snarling. Three others circled closer, yipping and growling in anticipation.
Diem walked forward from the brush and expelled magic from his right hand – an orb of dark fire that spit sparks and embers. It exploded upon impact of the wolf, lighting it into a shrieking, staggering blaze. The others howled, retreated, and scattered into the wood, terrified of the element they seldom saw.
"You narrowly avoided being dinner," Diem spoke, moving closer and stooping to examine the downed animal whose flames vanished. "What are you doing out here, alone?" Though Volkstein was a home to the Akkadrin, this one was far, far away from where any gentle eldrin should have been.
The hare didn't respond, only pushed off from the ground to lean against the tree, his breathing labored and slow.
"Are you alone here?" Diem asked as he selected a tree limb of leaves and sharp ends, and held it above his head to light on fire with a dark flame. A torch.
The hare didn't respond, only gripped his wand tighter. As Diem approached, the hare raised it in defense.
"Do you mean me harm, little rabbit?"
"My name is Patrivik, and I think I thank you, scorpion. I was outnumbered and unprepared. But I know these flames. You worship Nethumn." The hare's voice had sounded unused to common tongue, taking care to enunciate but sounding unworldly all-the-same. He clutched closer a satchel crossed over his body, putting the bag behind himself protectively.
"I did worship Nethumn," Diem responded carefully, glancing at his left hand in a sudden sadness. Without looking at the other, Diem asked again: "are you alone, hare?"
"Aetheris protects me. She will always protect me."
Diem turned himself to this other, interested and confused, and ultimately irritated that he gave no direct answer. "Are you alone, or with a group?"
"I was separated from them, but the Greatest Goddess Aetheris is always with me." The hare declared this with such confidence that Diem had paused and wondered if he felt anything unnatural.
'No,' Diem thought, 'Only the oddness of the Ghost Wood itself. A God would never deign to help one soul.' Instinctively, he crouched to inspect the hare's wound and staked the torch into the snow, hands free to unlace the poor wrapping about the other's leg.
"NO!" the Akkadrin insisted and stepped back from the Mesmorian. "If you are my ally, you will swear allegiance to Aetheris."
Diem rose, smirking. "There are no Gods here, little rabbit. Only the mortals who struggle to keep power."
"That is untrue, scorpion," he raised his wand, then lowered it in thought. "If it means nothing, you'll swear to Her allegiance."
Diem had laughed, shaking his head; had wondered what fool's errand sent this simple creature into the remorseless winter of the Ghost Forest. "And forsake my God, the one I have seen, who I know exists?"
"Aetheris exists; She is all around us, we walk on Her body. She protects us from the Nethumn inside Her."
"Nonsense," Diem dismissed. 'Aetheris is a land, not a Goddess. A God can't be the world itself.'
"No. Not nonsense. If you don't swear to Her allegiance, you may as well kill me now, Nether-worshipper."
And Diem pulls, like reigns on a steed, jarring himself away from the secrets. For a moment, he can feel the chill of the dungeon's floor, then callously, the Grandmaster redirects to the other memory, and with relief, Diem accepts the faraway recalling of his vengeance in Eld Mesmoria.
"And, what if her mother should call for her?"
Shaking his head, laughing, Abridger replied, "Her mother is indebted by the kingdom for more than this. And even without the mother's contract, she could never pay the debt of her daughter."
"How does one so young become this... indebted?"
"Ah, yes, well..." he began with caution. "The father, of course. He rented a house, and ox, and plow, but when he could not grow enough to pay his dues, he fled! And so, his wife worked the ox and plow, but needed to invest her daughter with me to keep the house. So" – he giggled, defying his mid-age – "they belong to me! I offered to put up the youngest in a home as a maid, but they all belong to me."
"And they could never pay such a mounting debt."
"Yes! And, I will tell the wife that her youngest daughter will now serve the courts instead."
"Are you going to ask in what way she will serve me?"
"Ah, no, my prince..." Abridger hesitated, unsure how to continue. "It is not my business... I only mean to say there is no worry here."
"Your business is slavery."
Abridger laughs, then quiets himself. "Well, they ARE common people, and we are –"
Diem had dropped his glamor then, his face morphing from the elegant angles of royalty to his own, freckled and sun-browned features, his eyes a piercing, gleaming yellow instead of blue. Abridger gasped.
"Do you recognize me, Abridger?" Diem whispers, a snarl growing in his voice. "I know it's been three years, but perhaps you have my picture here..."
"No!" Abridger stands, nearly upending the table in his haste. "No, I do not know you! You thief! Impersonator!"
Diem had silenced him with a wave of his right hand, forcing a sudden pressure to Abridger's throat that knocked him back and over. The gem around the landlord's neck splintered, then shattered, overcome by force.
"You sold me to the courts as a soldier," Diem ignored the desperate sputtering of the man splayed and gripping his throat, feebly calling for the guard he had dismissed. Calmly, the impersonator scanned the documents, noting that many amounts were crossed out several times and increased. "I was thirteen at my first battle."
Abridger raised a wand to him then, firing a weak beam of light that Diem cast aside with his own wand – a slender dueling weapon carved from the femur of his jackal. "I have learned the true art of magic. It took leaving this barren place to do it, but here I am, to reap what you have sowed."
The wand burst in the landlord's hand as he attempted a more powerful spell – too powerful for both the wand and the man – burning him from hand to forearm and sending splinters across the table and carpets and cushions. He would have screamed – if only he had been able.
With a sweep of his wand, Diem lit the table on fire, instantly curling all things to kindling. He knelt closer to Abridger, tightening the hold on his throat until the landlord was crazed for breath, the life in his eyes frantic and ebbing.
Diem remembers this feeling fondly, of conquering, of control. He remembers the smell of burning meat, enticing a hunger in him; he had wanted to eat Abridger's heart, but the fire gave no time for this. As the slaver choked his final breath, Diem changed his glamor to this landlord, then escaped as the guard filled the foyer of the burning room.
"The Prince! Save the Prince! A candle, oh Gods!"
A crowd had gathered, some with buckets of water or sand and others with blankets. Diem let himself fall back and disappear into them, becoming still another face.
Diem gasps awake, body trembling and head reeling. He feels cold, his underclothes soaked with sweat and his heart hammering hard. His eyes fall upon a young, portly brother-in-coven standing unsurely in the arched doorway of the dungeon. He holds a bag over his shoulder, and an armful of bottles and small, burlap sacks.
"Patrivik..." the Grandmaster nods. "I think I've heard this name before..."
"He's just... a rabbitfolk," Diem dismisses, but the confidence in his voice is gone. He is shuddering. His gaze falls to the amulet's broken pieces.
"Patrivik Ellis Lockiralt, the fifth."
Shocked, Diem sits stiffly. A lucid thought steals him: how much can the Grandmaster see? Can he reach into his emotions, his thoughts? How had he known the hare's full name? The apprentice stammers. "I don't know – I don't know anything about him. I only found him – returned him to those other monks."
"You'll show me this adventure, then?"
"I…" Diem begins but doesn't know how to finish. 'I can't,' he thinks. 'You might kill me. I've betrayed Nethumn. You will slay me.'
"Enter, Johnatien," The Grandmaster turns and nods to the other student, who enters at once but walks hesitantly to the table. He chooses to turn his back to Diem, busying himself with a small cauldron and bottles and jars.
"Your resistance will only wear you faster, Diemphis…" The Grandmaster sighs. "Don't you see how I allowed you to right the wrongs of your past? How I gave you the power to do so? Don't you recall how you went unpunished? I sent you to Eld Mesmoria for the Netheric Emerald..." The Grandmaster strides over, long, tri-whip tail trailing, his form towering. "And, you remember retrieving the Emerald, yes?"
Diem resists cowering. "Yes."
The Grandmaster's oxen visage twists into a faux frown. "And what did you learn there?"
Diem doesn't answer at first, wracking his brain for the response the other seeks. "I learned... the mission has priority. It must be completed..."
"Of course. And?"
Diem inhales through his teeth. He listens to John chopping strong-smelling herbs and uncorking a vial to pour into the cauldron. "I learned subservience to you, my Grandmaster. I am grateful to you."
The Grandmaster smiles with a mouth of pointed teeth. "This is good to hear. I thought I'd lost you." He lowers himself to meet Diem's eyes, his great mane of dark hair falling down his shoulders in a mess of edges and dreadlocks and waves. His dark fur bristles. "You'll tell me what you've done while away, won't you?"
Diem flinches. He nods. "The traveler was near death. I gave him back to his people."
"Ah..." The Grandmaster hardens his eyes, holds them to those of his student's. "You aren't being honest with me."
"I am, Grandmaster Zortoreous," Diem is careful to not look away. "I found him. There was a storm. After the storm, I took him back to his people."
Wordlessly, the Grandmaster rises and moves back to the table, placing a hand on the northbone. Diem feels the wave of memory forming, bringing him back to Patrivik, to Abbabelle and Joston. He resists. His body shakes. His chest tightens.
"I remember once when you resisted this much."
It was a hard-earned memory:
In the dead of night, Diem had heard a mob forming outside the inn. Their torches lit the window of the room even from stories below – an angry red. It was no mystery to him what they intended, and no mystery of why. He had carefully slipped out of bed and put an ear to the door.
"What is it, Diem?" asked his brother-in-coven, slow in waking, rubbing his eyes and yawning. There was so much to unite them, but Diem had felt only distance. They were meant to be a pair on this mission, sent to collect sensitive trade-route information. A quiet job. It should have been easy.
"You killed a girl," Diem began, his nose wrinkling with disgust. He remembers being more innocent, or dumb. He remembers he hadn't eaten anyone before – had never even killed – though understood it to be an eventuality. 'But this? This is unnecessary. For no reason…'
"You drained her tonight, and someone saw you. And even if they didn't see you creeping from her house, you didn't stop to think that we're the only travelers here. We are the difference. Of course we'll be blamed." Diem gathered his things with urgency, ignoring his comrade in the slow progress of pulling on clothes and shoes.
"What?" the other pretended to be startled, almost convincing in his sleepiness. "I didn't. I know that's risky – in a small village like this–"
The innkeeper allowed the mob in. They came loudly closer.
With a sharp quickness, Diem struck the other in the back, the weight of his tail like a club, the sting final and immobilizing but not deathly. Speechless, those wide eyes told of horror, and surprise, and betrayal. Wordless, he turned to open the window, then grinning, slipped carefully down the inn's side.
Diem kicks wildly, straining with everything in him to leap from that moment.
Suddenly, the air is cold, and he trembles on the dungeon floor.
"Just show him, Diem. He'll see it sometime anyway." John is at his side, careful to keep the steaming cup in his hands upright as the Mesmorian flails. After a moment, he offers the cup to Diem, who takes it in a shaky grasp and gulps.
'John,' Diem thinks, draining the cup and handing it back, trembling as the warmth eases his bruises and aches. 'If you only knew what I've done, you would not stomach me. You would never speak to me again.'
"Indeed, Diemphis," the Grandmaster's voice is no longer playful, but finally portraying the anger he's harbored since Diem fled. "How can you call yourself obedient? How can I trust you if I don't know everything you've seen?"
Diem is quiet, avoiding John's eyes, folding into himself.
"You do not understand. I need you to understand." The Grandmaster places a hand on the skull. Diem screams in pain.
"I did what I had to then! Grandmaster, please," Diem begs now, exhausted. "I grieve for our lost brother," he lies. Instantly, as he spoke it, he knew it as a lie. And in this moment, he realizes that while he cares nothing for his former comrade, he does care for the opinion of Johnatien – just as everyone in the citadel seems to. Everything is tempered for him; the edges softened, the curses unspoken, coddled like a fledgling dragon from which innocence could be tolerated with the promise of potential.
'Just like Anikka…' he thinks.
"Were you punished for this?"
"No," Diem responds quietly, thoughtfully. He wasn't punished, although the Grandmaster had known what he'd done.
"Think on this," the Grandmaster scolds. "Think on everything I have done for you." He replaces his reddened, steaming hand to the northbone.
Diem doesn't fight this time. He gives in, reliving the memory so completely that every thought, every feeling, and every action is accounted for.
"The prince is killed!"
"Claymire is burned!"
"No no no, the Prince has just arrived at the gates!"
"Hold him at the gates! He's an imposter!"
All things had been set to chaos, so much so that no one noticed Diem as an intruder making his way up and up and up sets of stairs, stealing deeper and deeper into the royal quarter as he became face after face. He found the hold of the Netheric Emerald as though it was his fate to take it, and just as skillfully foiled the precautions and locks which kept the gleaming, pink jewel safe from the wrong hands. He worked to clear the runes which would freeze and burn him, nullified barrier after barrier, and erased infections and curses which would lay him down before even leaving the castle.
It was his.
No, it was the Grandmaster's.
The view was vast. From the ivory towers of Eld Mesmoria, the land stretched beneath him as waves of sand separated by concentric walls leading to a forest of greens and oranges and purples at its center – kept within, like any other treasure. He remembers thinking that the vibrance of his country was wasted on the fickle minds of high society.
His boots touched the floor of her balcony like they had so many times before. He took time to manipulate the wards, then pushed open the double-paned glass doors as though he were home.
"Oh, you're back! Thank goodness!" The Princess had pushed herself into his arms.
Her dark hair – lavender-scented and finer than silk – caressed the backs of his hands. He had felt intoxicated. Her laughter was musical, her voice soft and swaying him. Just the nearness of her, without even touching her skin, harkened him to a time when they had pulled each other closer and closer, and at the fruition, found that they couldn't get close enough.
"I didn't hear you enter..."
Diem stared at her, remembering her face as the same heart-shaped structure but no longer pretty, now beautiful. Speechless, he kissed her. He felt a static he couldn't explain, a resounding reassurance that he was meant to be there, in that moment, with her.
She strained against him. "What's gotten into you, Prince Zebideth?"
"I..." he gasped, forgetting himself – that he was not himself. "Well, princess, I am not your prince."
She tilted her head, stepping back as his glamor fell. "Diem?" Disbelieving, she stepped away from him. "You— you shouldn't be here..."
"I've come back for you. I'm ready to take you away."
The princess had replied: "No, no, I can't. I know I said – but I didn't think — I was so young. We were so young! How can you expect me to follow the dreams of a girl?" And she stammered like that – exactly like that, word-for-word. Diem does everything he can to pull himself from the memory.
"I made a mistake," she had said, and even in the concrete memory her words were a thousand leagues away, resonant and cavernous.
'Anything but this,' he begs, and he can hear the Grandmaster replying that yes, there is another option.
'Give me the truth, Diemphis. Where have you been?'
He can't reveal the present. He revisits the past.
Diem's throat had felt dry. He ached to hold her again. He remembers foolishly pulling her towards the balcony and her shrill cries for him to unhand her.
This godsforsaken place. The chilling expression of fear on her face.
"Esmeralta... I... I did what you asked of me. I have become strong in the dark arts. I have come back to rescue you from your betrothed. I can help us both escape – we can go anywhere." He had stepped forward, imploring her, and knelt. "We can be anyone, or anything. I just want to be with you."
She shook her head. She apologized. She stammered that she had fallen in love with Prince Zebideth.
Diem can feel the taste of anger in his mouth, like blood in his throat, leadening his heart, dropping into his stomach. He had become insidious and conniving, had carved off pieces of himself for this end. He had given into his darkest desires and all his fears for this. For her. He twists on the dungeon floor.
"I could kill you, Esmeralta."
Stunned, she retreated from him like one might a beast of the wild, her small, soft hands leaving his like all the leaves from a tree.
This, in and of itself, hurt him. His heart broke. His mouth numbed. His vision faltered.
In so few words, he had betrayed her and everything he had ever stood for. After years of singled-minded study and devotion towards a purpose – her, not his God – he had undermined it all. His fists unclenched, jaw relaxed, tail drooped to the floor. He recalls remembering how they met – how sure and brave she was against the brash words of a young thief, a commoner, an urchin – how they had almost perfectly fallen in love – how she had to convince him that she truly loved him – how courageous their plan was, for him to save her from a stranger a continent away.
"But, you love me. Tell me that you love me," he insisted this stupidly, the tone in his voice pathetic, like that of a child. "Didn't you ever think of me?"
She stood in place like a marbled statue, letting the seconds pass by like lifetimes and then die when she never answered. Her tail, like his but thinner, daintier, and useless, curled across her slim body as her only defense against him.
Diem had turned away to look over the balcony and down to the kingdom he'd known all his life, to the people milling about in panic, then to the unclouded sky of unabashed starlight and a naked, aching moon. Beneath this, beneath him, beneath the stately towers of the royal sectors, encased in the final and most inner circlet of security, there existed the true Mesmoria: one of vibrant and gleaming forests, of blue sands and white, polished stones. And then he thought, though this was his homeland, this was never his home. These were not his people. They, and no one here, cared anything for him at the fringe of their luxuries. "I am so sorry," he croaked, then breathed deeply. He remembers wanting her to say anything, but she didn't.
With his mind quieted, he understood the cacophony: many angry voices, the clash of steel on steel, the throng of bells.
"Your Prince, he treats you well?" It felt as though it wasn't him speaking; as though the words and voice weren't his.
She had nodded. He couldn't bear to look at her, but he knew it.
"I'm glad for that."
Diem jumped onto the banister, ready to climb down or fall, when she screamed.
With eyes wide but unseeing, Diem pants as though he cannot catch his breath, finding himself again on the dungeon's cobbled stones. "Please," he manages, choking.
"We aren't done, Diemphis," the Grandmaster speaks, his scorned hand poised over the skull but showing no signs of pain. "Show me what I actually want to see. Show me this... rabbitkin."
Diem stills himself. The memory is overwhelming, but the truth places all of fate in danger. The future is real. The past is not.
The Grandmaster replaces his hand, pulling Diem to where they left off. He can't stop this.
Esmeralta screamed. She fell to the floor. He made it to her side as blood poured from her chest, an arrow stricken there at an angle but fading into shadow, her eyes alive one moment then deadening in the next. He shook her. He called for help.
The doors burst open. A guard roared, spear in hand. Stupidly, he saw the spear thrown but refused to leave her side, taking the hit. At the impact, though, he staggered back and over, falling.
One of many, many regrettable moments. Part of him wonders if he hurt her himself, if he did such a thing with only a thought.
Diem is sprawled on the stone floor, his lungs on fire and his body convulsing with cold. He wonders if he will ever feel good again, be warm again, be anyone but a slave again. The memories make his history clear: he chose this. He surrendered to the delights of Nethumn and now all these fruits are his, these fields of grown hatred and spite and envy that he cultivated in his heart, his body, his mind – by earnest choice – are his alone. For love and hate, for survival and revenge, for conquest itself, he had sacrificed everything good in him.
And this clarity is his, hand-crafted with intention and care, step by step and yes by yes.
Now, suddenly, he doesn't want this. He loathes himself with the ire of a hypocrite.
'I deserve this,' he thinks, unmoving, calmer, breathing deeper and slower. John kneels and offers a brew. Diem pushes the warmth away.
"What do you remember, Diemphis?"
He covers his face in his arms, turns over to show his back, tail curling in to rest at his feet, covered only in breeches – at some point, he'd kicked off his boots. His eyes flood with tears but he does not cry.
"What do you remember?"
He had left Eld Mesmoria as his past, one which he never recalled or spoke of, one that was secret and precious to him. Then when it came undone that night, he had sealed it away, closing these feelings of anguish behind him, choosing instead the camaraderie of his coven.
"Diemphis, what do you remember?"
"My choices. My failures."
"Have you been unhappy here?"
'No, of course not.'
These halls had felt like a home. Maybe even, in some ways, more than his own family had, and no one understood this better than his brethren, who without words equaled his own emotions of abandonment and secrecy and solace in one another. He had enjoyed their growth as much as he enjoyed his own successes.
The Grandmaster is beside him, squeezing his shoulder in a comfort that calms his emptiness. "Once more, Diemphis. Take me to the rabbit."
"I can't," he breathes. His chest sparks with pain at every inhale.
"You can. You will," and Grandmaster Zortoreous walks to the table, pours some of the brew into a cup, and feeds the northbone which shivers and exhales. "Don't you realize, Diemphis? You don't need to hide anything from me. You are already forgiven," and his hand slips into the cold basin, boiling the water, breathing steam. "The constant here is that you are, of course, mine."
Diem feels fatigue. The strength of the chains at his wrists weighs him down. He rights himself and tilts his head back against the wall, closing his eyes, resting his body, imagining he is elsewhere. Anywhere.
"Do you know what it is to be mine?"
Diem doesn't answer.
"It means that I save you –" he pauses, smiling – "from anything. It means that whatever evil overfalls you is mine to battle, to repel, to overcome. You are mine, Diemphis. And so you are safe from all things, because there are not many stronger than I. But, you must obey. You must give me your heart."
It is as though the Grandmaser is Nethumn himself: unwavering logic, invasive knowledge and solace in annulation. Diem can't hide. He falters. He fibs.
"I ate him, Grandmaster."
"Ate…?" Grandmaster Zortoreous is dumbfounded, then laughs fully, deeply, darkly. "You ate the Akkadrin? You ate Patrivik Ellis Lockiralt the Fifth?"
"You- you what?" John recoils. "You ate an eldrin?"
Diem looks down, his head heavy and wrists aching at the chains. "We were caught in the haelstrom. I had no choice…"
"But that was a thinking – conscious being!" John objects, shaking his head in disbelief. "I don't believe you. You wouldn't eat me, would you?"
"No, Johnatien," the Grandmaster muses. "You are human. You are the least tasty eldrin of all."
John glares, then remembers himself. He stutters, "Tell me you didn't, Diem, and I'll believe you."
'He hasn't given Nethumn any piece of himself, yet,' Diem thinks, 'so he doesn't know the hunger a 'gift' bears…'
"Tell me, Diem!"
"I did, John. I ate him. He trusted me, and I killed him."
The room is silent.
"Diemphis, face me so that you can be forgiven."
A shock of fear and surprise shoots down his spine. Shaking, Diem unfolds himself. He wipes his face with an arm before turning over, before pushing his back into the uneven wall and resting there in a mid-stand. "Grandmaster Zortoreous, I cannot be forgiven. I ran from you. I abandoned the citadel. I disgraced you, and His name."
"All will be forgiven," the Grandmaster implores. "Now, promise your heart to the Greatest God Nethumn."
Diem cannot meet his superior's eyes. He cannot speak the words. It would mean a complete repentance. It could mean a million words all in one simple phrase.
"Promise Him your heart."
The student opens and closes his mouth, weighing options and finding that he has no other. "I, Diemphis Westen Caltibre xol Eld Mesmoria of Kirinth, promise my heart to the Greatest God Nethumn."
A frightening thread of pain twinged above all else. His hand went to his chest, expecting to feel a knife. Nothing.
The Grandmaster smiles slyly. "Take him to the baths, Johnatien. And then to bed. We will feed him in the morning."
John hesitates, then walks to Diem's side as the chains break and clatter to the stones. The Mesmorian stands shakily and leans into his brother-in-coven, who despite feeling repulsed, takes the other's arm over his shoulder.
"Rest well, Diemphis," The Grandmaster chides, now enthralled in the tome and busy boiling a concoction at the cauldron, laughing lowly to himself. "Tomorrow, you'll tell me if you had roasted rabbit, or stew."
Weary from remembering, the pair makes sluggish progress across the dungeon, and when they are far enough away, up the spiral stairs to the landing, the human asks quietly, unsurely, "Did you really eat that other eldrin?"
"No," Diem answers simply.
John breathes relief. "I knew you didn't. I knew you wouldn't."
The truth is a betrayal to their God.
As the haelstrom surged beyond the solace of the caves, Diem carefully attended to the hare's injuries: cutting and boiling new dressings, washing the gash at his leg, and applying his heartfire which made the hare wince, but heal just ever more slightly. Then, in the flickering light of the campfire, Patrivik confided in him.
"I know of your struggle," he began. "I have seen followers of Nethumn flee before, and have seen deserters drained of power every third day, then summoned the next. I see you are weak now, weaker than you would like to show."
Diem had narrowed his eyes. "How would you know?"
"I am a follower of Aetheris. My kind protect all children of Her Grace." Then he rummaged in his satchel and produced an amulet. "I made this before my journey. I was meant to travel to Mournos for pilgrimage, but Aetheris called me to Her quest. Now, I think this has purpose. I think it was meant for you."
Diem had mocked him. "What can that do for me? My Grandmaster is more powerful than you've ever seen – than you could ever know."
"I know you want to escape him. I offer you Her protection. I offer you proof of Her existence."
To pacify the monk, Diem drew symbols in the dirt and a confining circle around them as instructed, then joined the hare in a chant to bring about a miracle – and it had worked. He witnessed light rise from the earth and enter the simple piece of crystal. He saw it gleam with Her presence as he held it, and felt the peace of forgiveness enter him – so powerful it brought him to tears. How could he, as flawed as he was, be forgiven for anything?
'I have gone so long without Her. How have I lived so long without Her?'
And it had grounded him – saved him – kept the summonings at bay and allowed him to keep his strength, which he vowed to use for Patrivik's holy quest – THE quest. And he felt lighter. As though his sins were misunderstandings, as though his misdeeds were meant to be. And this, of itself, hurt him. From that day of the haelstrom's surge, he had felt changed, uncorrupted, and clear. He felt lighter, ached with the realization of how heavy he had been, and felt fear, even – of keeping this lightness, of being worthy of amnesty.
John helps Diem ascend another flight before interrupting his thoughts. "Did the Grandmaster really kill Anikka?"
Diem doesn't answer at first, then shakes his head. "I don't know..."
"But the others say… that you saw her dead? On the dissection table?"
A month ago, Diem had been so sure of what he'd seen in the Grandmaster's forbidden floors. Now, he questioned everything, and only desired the comfort of normalcy, of the citadel. "I don't know."
"Erikur said so, and he doesn't lie. He said he saw it, and that you got away."
"There is no 'getting away', John," Diem scolds.
"Emikka is gone. I think she got away."
'No, she didn't.' Diem thinks, remembering now that she had been incensed to see her sister lying there lifeless, that she had provided a distraction to Master Emil with her rage long enough so that a few could escape – that she had screamed, and fell, and gotten back up to fight. She hadn't fled. She, of all, hadn't gotten away.
'But what if we had stayed to fight?'
He feels small, sick, sad. He feels like a wasteland – empty of life and day and night and dreams. What had he first wanted, before all expectations? The sacrifices he made were for nothing – at least, nothing good. He has done so many bad things, became so enamored with what he thought he needed, and the quickest way to get there – but the stairs are endless. Impossible. And made of bones.
"Some of us want to run," John whispers.
Diem sighs. "This is our home, brother. Where would we run to?"
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