IGS #4: Epilogue

Fionna

The Silver Unfathom

She raced over silver sands beneath the burning sky. Would that her teleportation ability could cover leagues, but each pulse, each corpse she left in her wake was a tremendous expenditure of mana, and only useful in brief bursts.

For a long journey like this one? She’d learned that a slow and steady jog was best. Plus she needed to be a target. Visible from the sky. Easily marked. Or she’d be running for weeks, with no food, no water, nothing.

Every once in awhile she’d pause to turn and gape at the sky. The Sun was truly unspooling now, the sphere opening like a blossoming flower to disgorge its heart mana into the heavens. She’d never seen the like, and doubted she ever would again. Around her the land was saturating in the excess, and Hell itself was responding: the land was coming alive.

Stripped bare by centuries of Silverine depredation, the mana saturation was causing the sand and rock to become fecund. Spires of swaying stone were rising, pushing up and budding gemlike growths that pushed out feelers into the sky. Other rocks were accumulating, drawn by a newfound inner magnetism, to assemble into mobile clumps, fashioning legs for themselves with ungainly experimentation. A great manta ray of silver sand and gravel shuffled along the ground before rippling its great wings and lifting up to skim away, sprouting feelers or eyes as it went.

Miracles were all around her. Births or rebirths, or perhaps just acts of pure creation. It was overwhelming. Miraculous. Humbling. Terrifying.

And through it all she ran, her heart torn, knowing that her flight would only confirm Scorio and the others’ worst suspicions. Traitor. Herdsmen. That she’d been waiting for just the right opportunity to flee.

But she steeled her heart. What they didn’t know was that she couldn’t hide from her own kind. Her Herdsmen’s mark would call to her superiors no matter where she ran. In due time they’d collect her, interrogate her about what had taken place, this calamity, and the less she knew about Scorio’s plans the less she could be forced to divulge.

That, and a fierce determination had seized her by the throat.

She’d make her way back into the ranks. Do and say whatever it took to regain trust, twist what had happened so that she looked the innovative victim, and then, once Prisca or Gorax or perhaps even Sabaton lowered their guard, she’d find a way.

A way to repay Scorio.

Maybe it was madness on her part, or mere hubris. But he still didn’t know what he was up against. The scope of the forces arrayed against him. Her native Heart Oaths prevented her from divulging, but they wouldn’t stop her from acting.

From betraying her supposed betters at just the right time.

Or so she hoped.

Shadows passed overhead. She jerked to one side, breath catching, and saw a trio of Philosophers eyeing her, preparing to descend and claim her as a meal.

She thrust her hand up into the air and made the ancient sign. “I call upon the pact! I call upon the treaty! Take me to safety.” Her voice was thin against the constant dull roar of the distant detonating Sun. “Take me from here, for the love you bore my tribe for lifting you up from the Writhing!”

The Philosophers stilled, trilled to each other, then floated down.

“You-ther-some are part of the Sun’s madness,” declared one. “The ancient pact is dying upon the altar of our dying god.”

“No.” She projected as much force as she could into her tone, as much certainty. “You don’t know that for sure. Take me to my elder, and they shall explain all. You in turn can bring back word, and be made heroes for finding out the truth!” Again she thrust her hands toward them, as if forcing them to acknowledge the symbol of power. “Take me, now!”

The trio exchanged glances, and then their leader trilled uncertainly. “Very well. To whither would you wist?”

“Take me to the southern border,” she said, trying to hide her immense relief. “As quickly as you can.”

 The trio descended upon her, one clasping her shoulders, the other two each arm, and she was born aloft. As the winds picked up, the scent of sour mana curdling everywhere around her, she twisted her head to glance back at the distant Cube.

“Stay safe, Scorio,” she whispered. “I’ll do what I can.”

Lady Krula

The Silver Unfathom

With a scream Lady Krula hurled her chaise against the wall. Her heart was free, halved and secured against that bond that had held her in place for a century, the knowledge that her sister had died, was gone from the face of Hell to the Unfathom a blazing brand in her mind, her heart, her soul.

Dead.

How? Where? Who had done this? Why now? It could be no coincidence, a mewling wretch could detect the corollaries, but what were the actual connections, what the cause, what the consequence?

“My darling,” said Artur from the doorway. “Please. Gather yourself. The Red Keep needs you like, now.”

Krula paused, shoulders heaving, and felt herself petty, a child midst tantrum, a buffoon. But that did nothing to ameliorate the pain. The sucking wound of nothingness that filled half her chest where before complacent awareness had rendered her quiescent.

“I know she is gone.” Artur raised his hands in what he probably thought was a calming gesture. “And I see your pain. But please, my sweetness, the Silverines are baying at the door. If you don’t face them—”

“Fine!” She dashed her hair away from her face. “Enough! I am myself once more. They’re at the threshold, are they?” Though of course she already knew. Could sense the hundreds upon hundreds of them pressing in on the Red Keep from all sides. “Then it is mete that I answer their knock.”

“Very mete,” agreed Artur hurriedly. “As mete as it can fucking get. They are… they are wild, my sweetness.”

She knew her grin feral. “Not compared to me, they aren’t. Out of my way.”

She swept down the halls, the stairs, ignoring all cries, shouts, questions. The great hall was teeming with concerned Great Souls.

Asha fell in with her, and spoke quickly, the words tumbling out. “They’re in a frenzy, my lady, they’re beside themselves. Rex tried to leave with Massamach, but he was lifted up and torn apart, he tried to fight them off even as they carried him away, but—”

Lady Krula waved Asha away. The crowd parted before her and she strode out the front doors onto the landing.

The sky seethed with Philosophers. They were beyond number, clans arrayed alongside clans, the air alive with their inane music, but that didn’t matter, there could be a thousand of them, ten thousand, and still they were nothing compared to the great presence that had drawn near, alien, majestic, terrifying.

An Abstraction.

The Philosophers parted, and from nothing the Abstraction wove itself into existence, or, perhaps more accurately, manifested itself from the interstices of a touching plane to appear before them in all its sublime horror.

Lady Krula inhaled deeply through her nose, brows rising, and knew she faced a mortal peril. She smiled. Luckily for her, however, she was quite ready for death.

“Greetings,” she called out. “I have not had the honor of meeting you before. I am Lady Krula. Be welcome to the Red Keep. What business you draws you here?”

The doorway before her was crowded with ogling Great Souls.

A Philosopher flew down to hover between them. It was arrayed in golden robes, its antlers vast, its eyes burning bright with power. “We have come to announce the end.”

“End?” Krula raised a disdainful eyebrow. “End of what, pray tell?”

“The end of ancient pacts. The end of stasis. For centuries we have been deceived. No longer. A god has died. Its death births corruption, corruption that we circumscribed, and in so doing discovered the nature of deception. The foulest deception. Our fury knows no bounds. Our vengeance will be total. Our gods now birth themselves into Acherzua. We witness their majesty. They shall unleash a new age.”

Krula licked her lower lip as she tried to parse the words. “Deception? We have held true to our accord.”

“All accords are ruptured. All alliances broken. Nothing is now sacred between us. This place we declare our own. Your Red Road we shall tear up by the roots. Our mutilated ancestors we call to the light.”

“Wait,” snapped Krula. “I don’t know what happened, but this Keep and my Road are the preserve of—”

From deep beneath the ground came a tortured groan. It infected her mind with mathematical symbols, illusory truths, paradoxes and mind blight. Everyone behind her cried out and staggered, and even she felt weak at the knees.

No.

Lady Krula extended herself, affirmed her Dominion. Her Primacy. From the Telurian Band to the Lustrous Maria, she—

The ground shivered and shook, and then a great chasm tore itself open just to the side of the keep.

The pain in her head became tremendous as something vast awoke from below, and began to phase its way up out of the ground.

“No,” whispered Krula, sensing the entirety of the Red Road beginning to shimmer and break up. “This can’t be.”

“It is,” said the Philosopher. “For too long have my kind been pleasant and niceties. Now comes the hour of the Feasting. Now comes the time for the Ravening. Now we break all bonds, and we Ravage.”

The thousand Philosophers about the Keep shrilled as one, the sound akin to knives being driven into her mind, and Krula heard a pop and then everything became muted, distant, almost inaudible.

Wetness ran from her ears.

The Keep shook again, and then with a terrific groan, began to list to one side.

The chasm widened.

She had to react. But her Dominion, it was being torn out from under her. Inhaling deeply, she exerted herself as she’d not done in decades. This was her realm. Her land.

She had.

Primacy.

A vast marble hand extended out from the chasm. For a moment it reached for the heavens, and then it slammed down onto the chasm’s edge and tore at the rock. But she could sense it. On multiple planes, a complexity beyond her mind, ascending, healing as mana was poured into it from the sky, the Abstraction before her guiding the font, and reedy voices were distantly yelling, calling out to her in a panic as the Philosophers screamed their joy and as one mighty wave crested and descended upon them all.

Lady Krula closed her eyes and felt herself relax.

Sister. I come.

Cazador the All-Burning

The Scorched Swale

Dreams of flame. Moiling fire. The shift of strata, the low gravel grist of heated rocks sliding against each other at the seams. Slumbering potential. Patience. The percolation of Ruby mana, the pooling of lambent might.

Time rendered meaningless. A period of patience worn thin. Acherzua’s song was soothing, but insufficient. Where the next inflection? What yet had the temerity to rouse him by offering novelty, offering challenge?

Dreams of flame.

The roiling burn.

An awareness that was itself Dominion.

And yet.

A pause. A moment of stillness.

There.

Remote.

Fluctuation. Magnificent contortion. A scream carried on the ethers, plucking at the Interstitial Rivenings, a beautiful being dying. Other songs rising to glory. Stirrings worthy of his mind. Far, far from where he slumbered, but distance was relative, and this, this might be worth investigating.

And for the first time in over a century Cazador stirred in his scaled form, and began the lengthy process of awakening.

Lianshi

Bastion

“No, are you mad?” Lianshi couldn’t help but laugh as she gazed across the table at Gelegos. The leonine man was smiling at her in his whimsical, self-amused manner, an impossible, absolutely impossible man that she spent half the time wanting to throw an ink well at, the other craving to hear what he thought about her latest discovery. “There is absolutely no way that Vasparti the Grey is the same person as Felbor Mouse.”

Gelegos blinked slowly. “You’re sure?”

“It’s preposterous.”

“Note that both men were obsessed with women’s feet. Both men employed lists to an obscene degree. Then there’s the matter of their penmanship. Both had the same irritating tendency to doodle feet in the margins of their texts. Both—” An urgent knock on the door cut him off. Gelegos sighed. “Come.”

The door cracked open. Trebin, her Char assistant from last year’s class, poked his head in, eyes owlishly wide behind his glasses. “Um. Excuse me. Sorry for the interruption.”

“What’s the matter?” asked Lianshi, pushing Vasparti’s diary aside. “Trebin?”

“Chancellor Raugr asks that you come to the Foundation as quickly as possible.”

“Me?” asked Lianshi.

“Both of you.”

Gelegos rose to his feet. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. What’s happened?”

Trebin dry swallowed, gave a quick shake of his head, then opened the door wide. “He said ‘please hurry’.”

Lianshi and Gelegos exchanged a glance.

“Well that’s not good,” said Gelegos. “Raugr never says please.”

“Lead on,” said Lianshi firmly. “We’re coming.”

Ten minutes later they were at the ornate door beneath the main basilica of the Academy, the air cool and lit by warm Copper-mana lights. Trebin had all but run, impressed, it turned out, by Raugr’s tone even if he didn’t know what was actually wrong.

Lianshi’s mind took up and discounted countless possibilities. The Chancellor and Autocrator of the House of Chimera was nothing if not stoic, and infuriatingly slow to act. She’d been beseeching him for a formal task force to be assigned to compare her findings in LastRock with the records in the Academy library, and he’d been dragging his feet and frowning pensively and promising to consider her requests any day now.

An impossible man, and as much as she hated to admit it, an inept administrator that was simply not up to the task of running the Academy.

It almost made her miss Praximar.

Two guards stepped aside smartly as they reached the double doors, and Gelegos inclined his head smoothly as they passed within.

Lianshi had only been in this sacred room twice, both times as Raugr’s invitation. The Chancellor seemed at war with himself; hungry for her expertise and advice, and loath to admit he was anything if not qualified for the job.

Still the octagonal room took her breath away.

Located deep beneath the Archspire, it was where the upcoming Class’s numbers were monitored, and their results from the first Gauntlet run tabulated. Arcane stone plaques were affixed to the walls, and symbols whose usage dated back to Bastion’s founding carved themselves into the grainy surfaces. Three scribes whose career encompassed nothing more than being able to read this arcane language stood beside Raugr, but they cut off their hushed conversation as Lianshi and Gelegos arrived.

“Chancellor!” Gelegos beamed. “It is a rare honor to be called into service. You will find in me, and my obtuse compatriot Lianshi, the most willing of servants.”

“Enough,” rasped Raugr. He wore his customary set of charcoal gray robes, but somehow looked harried, ill at ease. Bald, square jawed, his nose kinked by an old break, his brows low, his shoulders broad and sloping, Lianshi knew he prided himself on being unperturbable, but now a faint sheen of sweat glistened on his brow, and he looked pale. “I want your opinion on what the scribes are reading. It can’t be right.”

“Hmm?” Gelegos raised his brows in pleasant surprise. “Me? Oh, very well. Then why did you ask for Lianshi to attend?”

“Gelegos,” she chided, and would have swatted at him were the situation less tense.

“Because Lianshi is…” Raugr struggled to find the right word. “Reliably astute. I would appreciate her insight in this matter.”

“Here,” said one of the scribes, a balding, tall fellow with an unfortunate nose. “See, here?”

Gelegos moved to one of the stone plaques and studied the symbols. Lianshi, who’d never studied this set of symbols, watched her colleague instead.

His genial smile faded to be replaced by a sharp frown. “That can’t be right.”

“What is it?” she asked.

Gelegos reached out to run his fingers over a long string of symbols, the stepped to another wall to check something else. Only then did he turn to stare at the sole column in the room, a crystal beam in the chamber’s very center. Moving closer, he pressed a series of stone symbols at its base, then leaped back as it blazed to life.

So bright was the light that Lianshi was blinded. She raised a hand with a cry and turned away, Gelegos equally dismayed as he scrabbled at the buttons to dim the hue.

“The Imperators wept,” whispered Gelegos.

Lianshi stared at him. She had never, ever seen him so shaken, so earnest, so… serious. “What? What is it?”

Raugr forced himself to dry swallow and finally managed to speak. “Our classes have diminished in size. Last year we had a mere three hundred and twenty-seven. Ten years before that we had some six hundred. I checked the records. You have to go back to the class of 853 to reach a thousand.”

“So?” Lianshi glanced at the walls, at the dimly glowing column, at Gelegos who still looked stunned.

“So.” Raugr dry swallowed again. “The amount of mana collected by the Archspire has also diminished. It’s harder to measure, a rough spectrum that uses volts, but using the system—”

“Just tell her,” said Gelegos.

“Yes.” Raugr smoothed down the front of his robe. “Last year the mana collected came out to about 27,000 volts. Quite impressive.”

Lianshi raised an eyebrow, fighting down her impatience. “And now?”

“Last night.” Raugr seemed to lose his voice, and coughed into his fist. “Last night we had an influx that pushed the current amount to, ah, just above three hundred thousand, three hundred and sixty-five.”

“Three hundred thousand, three hundred and sixty-five,” repeated Lianshi.

“Which can’t be right,” said Raugr, as if agreeing with her. “But we can track how many biers have been activated by the Archspire, and, well.”

“Four thousand, six hundred, and twenty-one,” said Gelegos, voice faint.

Both of Lianshi’s brows rose. “Excuse me?”

Raugr nodded wordlessly.

“That can’t be right,” protested Gelegos. “Three hundred and twenty-one students in the last class. Twenty-seven thousand volts. That’s about eight volts per student. The current ratio would be…sixty-five volts on average per student. That’s almost exactly an eight-fold increase.”

“Precisely,” said the tall scribe. “That just can’t be right. I fear that the corruption creeping in from the outskirts may be affecting the Archspire, because…”

Lianshi stared at the glowing column. It pulsed gently, even turned down as it was. She could feel in some intuitive manner the power that was contained within it, within the Archspire far above.

“It’s not a mistake,” she said softly.

“…which is why the readings—what?” The scribe cut himself off.

“It’s not a mistake.” Lianshi blinked and looked at Gelegos. “I don’t know how I can tell, but—my friends were digging into some secrets deep in Hell. This is them. Because of them. Don’t ask me how, but I just know it.”

The scribe laughed harshly. “Oh, very nice, base intuition, well—”

Raugr held up his hand. “I want you and Gelegos to help study this situation. You’re both excellent scholars. We have less than a month until the next class is reincarnated. If we’re to receive over four thousand Great Souls… we need to know. We need to prepare.”

“You can’t prepare,” scoffed Gelegos. “The Academy is wholly unequipped to handle this kind of miracle.”

“We will handle it.” Raugr put all his authority into his words. “We have no choice. But first I want you to determine the veracity of these readings. And if they are correct… well. The gods help us.”

The scribe began to argue with Gelegos, but Lianshi tuned them out once more. She stared instead at the glowing column, and felt wonder, felt awe.

Four thousand six hundred new souls. And each with an average of eight times more potency than a normal class. Which meant there would be outliers. Those whose contribution to the Archspire far outstripped anything imaginable. Thought possible.

Scorio, she wondered, hand moving to cover her mouth. What have you done?

Viridian Heart

The Emerald Reach

Stillness at the center, the eye in the heart of the all-devouring storm. Swarm-centered, tessellated forces, the expression of order by means of subjugation. A thousand thousand flecks of meaning marching exactly as they should, expanding due to ineluctable laws, the primacy of power, the imperative of hunger.

Manifold hunger, symbolic, figurative, literal, eternal.

Acherzua glimpsed through endless broken mirrors of green glass, her vales and mountains, her adumbrated forests, her crystalline caverns, her slow-sweeping bogs and marshes. Across which a thousand thousand flecks of mobile armor marched, swirling, incoiling, ordered, order-imposing, on the move, migrating, unstoppable, itself in every speck, itself in every location.

Loci of conflict. Insubordinate nuclei of resistance. Fiends preponderant, fiends unaware of the inevitability of conquest. And Great Souls, fierce-angled, surprising, resilient.

Great Souls contesting its domination of all.

In the center of its emerald bower, surrounded by rotating shards of sentient Emerald mana, the Viridian Heart pulsed and received counter-pulses, a thousand every second, an infinitude every day.

All was as it should be. All expanded as it had envisioned.

And then.

Fragmentation, static, and chaotic signals from the far north. Antennae quivered atop mountain peaks, fibrillated where they drifted in the winds, stilled and turned to stare where they marched in perfect formations.

A great anomaly. The wash of seared mana could be felt rebounding all the way across the endless tracts of the Lustrous Maria. Eddies of falsified divinity.

A godling had died.

Greed kindled in the Viridian Heart’s core.

Pressure, activity, a manifestation of subliminal intentions from the north.

The promise of greater delights.

The huge crystal reorganized its strategies, sending forth a wave of pulses that were telegraphed from receptor to receptor, across forests and fields, meadows and mountain ranges.

Constrict the flanks.

Secure the southern line.

Push north.

Push north.

Push north.

Imogen the Woe

The Azure Expanse

She’d interred herself in the heart of a crystal shard, its beatific cool blue at first a solace to her burning breast, but nothing could temper the pain, nothing could truly still the racing of her thoughts.

She was, after all, her own worst enemy. It was in her hand that the traitor blade was held, its tip always aimed at her eye.

But in the cool, crystalline depths she’d found reprieve, frozen in form, held in a static sea of purest, gentle blue in the heart of an obelisk that was itself in the heart of a forest of other such crystals.

Sapphire mana curled about her, chill and temperate. All was civilized. There was no pain where there was no thought. There was no hunger where there were no dreams of food. If she could remain perfectly still, her eyes closed, her hands folded over her chest, then she could persist like this forever, not lost, but held in abeyance.

At peace through an approximation of death.

Her stillness was sacrosanct. The expanse of her mind curtailed.

But even here.

Even here.

Even here her powers betrayed her.

Thousands of miles away, so far she couldn’t encompass the distance in her mind, a small arc of light leaped through the dark.

Oh, but it was bright indeed to shine so far.

Imogen frowned. She didn’t want it. She didn’t like it. She was still. She was at peace.

Wasn’t she?

But that arc.

Had it tasted of home? Had it sung with a thousand voices? Had she heard them raise their cries in celebration?

Now, that was interesting.

She had thought she slept, but they, they truly had been at peace.

But who were they? What had awoken them?

Imogen scowled. Whatever it was, it had awoken her in turn.

The crystal shard shattered, falling about her in a thousand chunks, and she floated free into the chill air. Rose into the lavender sky. The crystal forest stretched away in all directions, but she paid it no mind.

That arc.

That light.

So familiar.

She plunged her hands into her dark hair. No. She didn’t care. Couldn’t care. The last time she’d ventured forth he’d ruined everything, had ruined the party, their celebration. She wouldn’t so blindly venture forth again.

No. This time, if she was to explore, she’d not go alone.

Where was Zellair these days, after all? Or perhaps jolly Joranvyn. Perhaps they weren’t busy. Perhaps they’d be curious, too.

Imogen opened her eyes, and smiled tremulously.

She’d find them, and ask.

After all, what were friends for?

Nox

The Lustrous Maria

Half-submerged in the golden pool, Nox luxuriated in the after-glow of pure bliss. Foes defeated. Ancient Quantic songs raised on high once more. How he had labored amongst the female flanks, diving and coursing, singing and clinging first to one mottled back and then the next.

A fever dream of mating.

So much Coal mana expended. No longer saturated, he felt light, diaphanous, at peace.

About him rumbled the quenched females. Content to remain in his company for brief while longer. Others in other pools were equally content, but this was his pool, and it was the best pool, for it was Nox’s domain.

He felt the quiet arrogance of a victor without foes left to best. Within him curled and coiled the tendrils of evolution. Nox had proven himself worthy. Nox had proven himself supreme.

It had been very good exercise.

And yet.

After a sweet eternity, he roused himself from the golden waters. Something was amiss. Shifting about, sending eddies of gold over his mates, he turned toward the north.

His clutchmates.

Scorio and Naomi.

Both were together. That was good.

But he could sense danger. Need. Uncertainty.

Nox considered ignoring it. He could remain here for a few days longer. Sink deep into reverie, ponder his best Quantic lines, consider what was left for him to accomplish before he became a Supreme Phantom Toad. They had the choicest females. The richest pools.

Well. Richer than his own.

Nox tried to settle, but the pull from the north was insistent.

With a sigh, he roused himself. Turned about awkwardly, and began clambering over the females who croaked and shifted as they became increasingly annoyed with him.

But his best friends were in need.

So Nox would find them.

And together they would make things right once more.