IGS #4, Chapter 21

Jova

As the bronze sun descended beyond the straits into the Crimson Sea, the sky grew hazy with hues of magenta, lavender, and peach. The rough mountains that flanked the straits grew vague, details melting away, and the high wispy clouds that drifted at the top of the world took on buttery yellow tints. The waters below began to darken from their impossible azure, and the high walls of her city, Macran, were burnished by the dying light.

A familiar sight. One etched into her soul. One she’d enjoyed since she was a little girl, raised prematurely to queen, and witnessed from her broad palace balcony. The same salt breeze blew in from the west, the same fading warmth lit her skin, but absent were the sounds of the city itself, gone were the fading calls of vendors, the voice of the people at market, the sound of carts and horses.

Instead, smoke hung in a pall over the collapsed rooftops. Fires yet burned, here and there, devouring crossbeams and causing the occasional red tiled roof to collapse inwards.

Macran was gutted, burning, and littered now only with the dead.

Such was her victory.

Jova stood, spine stiff, hands resting lightly on the stone balustrade, and watched the sun descend. Power, all the power that she had ever wished for, was hers at last. She could extend her will and reshape the palace, could cause a segment of the balcony to detach and carry her over the blue strait to the city proper, and there repair the damage, rebuild the homes, raise again the Tower of Gulls where it had stood guardian for three centuries over the approach.

Or she could wipe it clean, could crush every edifice down to powder, could raze every building to the ground, and remove all trace of her victory, her failure, from the face of the land.

Power.

Hers at last, and it hadn’t been enough.

A lesson learned too late.

Power could not guard your heart.

Power could not force those you loved to stay true.

Power could not control the most important aspects of the world.

Only allow you to brutalize it when you realized your failures too late.

Tears tracked down Jova’s cheeks. The smell of smoke was strong in the salt air. The azure waters broke around the sunken masts and shattered hulls of the Vikonti warships where she’d buried them full fathom deep in the bay. Bodies floated amidst flotsam and rigging, crates and spars of wood.

But no amount of Vikonti dead would bring back the people of Macran.

She’d come too late.

In the end, even she had been unable to do the impossible and be in two places at once.

The Vale was avenged, but while she’d been gone, the Vikonti had slipped into her capital and done far worse.

Jova bowed her head, her shoulders trembling, her fingers curling into fists.

What use was power if you couldn’t save those who looked to your for protection?

What use was the ability to stir the mountains, upheave the very firmament, to rain ruin upon your foes and fly through the skies like an eagle if this was the result?

A city people by the dead.

And behind her, Venutius, her brother, dead by her hand, his perfidy revealed at last. His gloating, his jeering, his sickening jealousy bared so that she could no longer deny it. His treaty with the Vikonti, his political backstabbing.

In horror she’d willed a single pebble to fly through his head, and silenced him forevermore, but to what end?

Blood was supposed to be more durable than stone.

So blind.

So foolish.

So proud.

And in the end, so weak.

Jova gritted her jaw as she removed the golden circlet from her brow and set it on the balustrade. Why wear it now? Of whom was she a queen?

The war was over. If she wished, she could mount a plinth and fly across the sea to Vikont and there lay waste to their cities, their people, their fleet, their armies. It would take time, but time she now had.

All she need do was extend herself, and her power, that which she’d always thought would guarantee her people’s safety, could finally become what the Vikonti had always feared. A weapon that could level civilizations.

Blood. Vengeance. She could lay waste to them with the same finality they’d done to Macran. Didn’t her people deserve it? Didn’t their souls cry from beyond for justice?

But all Jova wanted to do was cry. To curl up into a ball, to allow the exhaustion of the past months to sweep over her. To accept defeat at long last, and the knowledge that she’d not been enough, could never be enough.

She was but one person, no matter how strong.

Behind her the palace ached with the dead. Sweet Belli, her daughter, her cousins, her aunt, her nephew and nieces. The eunuchs and courtiers, the palace guard and bureaucrats, the envoys and advisors. Servants without number, all dead amongst the Vikonti she’d slain in turn, filling the hallways with the stench of death, choking the palace so that it was now more mausoleum than home.

Jova turned, tears still streaming down her cheeks. She would begin here. Would collapse the palace and compact it so that it became a tomb in truth, burying the thousands of dead in eternal darkness.

And Belli?

Her body spasmed with pain, though her features remained calm. In her quarters with her nurses. A small bloodied bundle.

She should fetch her, mourn her, bury her.

A monument. She would craft from the palace a monument to her pain, and entomb Belli at its peak, a spire of stone that would rise and point like an accusing finger to indict the heavens.

Nobody should strive as hard as Jova had fought, work miracles without number, make so many sacrifices that their details were lost, and still suffer such pain, such loss, such horror.

She would fetch Belli.

Yes.

Any moment now.

She would enter the palace and go to her daughter’s quarters, and pick up—with her hands, she would raise—her daughter’s body for the last—her daughter—

Jova’s face finally crumpled as sobs wracked her frame and she slid down into a crouch, face buried in her palms, to weep for her nation, her people, her lost friends, her dead family, for everyone and nothing at all.

The sun had set when she finally rose once more and entered the palace in the dark. Something had broken within her during that final bout of weeping, and she felt light, hollow, numb. There were no more tears left. The last had been drained of their reservoir. Now she was little more than an instrument. A tool.

She walked directly toward her daughter’s suite, the walls melting away before her as she ignored hallways and the logic of rooms. She cut through the palace like a knife, and when she reached her daughter she found that despite it all, she couldn’t make herself pick up the little bundle. Couldn’t make herself touch the little body within those blankets. For awhile, she choked, and then she willed the floor to rise up beneath the precious corpse even as her mind extended itself to encompass the palace and begin her labor.

Walls closed in on each other, collapsing rooms. Cellars and underground passageways seamed themselves shut. Stone arose from the depths, and the palace responded to her will, folding in on itself and burying the corpses.

Jova and Belli arose, higher and higher, and then broke free of the palace roof to rise above the evolving construction. Jova felt her power weave as it had never woven before, manipulate the rock with absolute certainty, and the palace responded. Its circumference constricted even as it great ever taller, spire upon spire, and still Jova wasn’t satisfied. She poured her power into the growing tower till it rose hundreds of yards into the sky, a great slab of smooth stone in whose very peak she fashioned a small chamber, and in there she placed Belli.

At the very last a violent desire to kiss her daughter one last time ravaged her, but she couldn’t she couldn’t bare to peel back the bloody clothes, so, hating herself, her cowardice, she sealed away her daughter in her tomb above the world, and floated back to stare, dry eyed, at what she had wrought.

On some level it was beautiful. But not in her old style. Gone was the delicacy she had once favored, the fluted columns, the smooth surfaces, the wondrous architecture. This monument to death was fashioned with brutal power, and cared nothing for finesse. It arose like a challenging fist, a mass of blood-streaked plinths piled together at the base like a crude hill, to rise into dark spires like the tines of a crown from whose center burst Belli’s tower.

Vast, ponderous, dark, and awe-inspiring, it was like nothing she had ever wrought.

But from hence forth, she vowed, all her works would be like this.

Brutal mausoleums for the hope that had been stolen from the world.

“Hail, Jova.” The voice was brought to her by the wind, the tone soft and tinged with sadness. “Hail to the Queen of the Crimson Coast, the Enduring, the Sovereign Light, and Avenger of the Lost Vale.”

It was a man, floating upon the winds like she, but without a slab of rock underfoot. His blue robe fluttered in the salt breeze, and his white beard was similarly tugged at. In the dusk light of the setting sun he studied her, manner grave, expression solemn.

He was no Vikonti, of that she was certain. But who? And to fly on the wind?

“I am come from your future, crossing the centuries to pay homage to your power, your legend, your might. I know that you grieve, and I tell you that tales of your grief have lasted as long as Belli’s Tower, which stands today in the wreckage of your home, unbreakable, storm defying, a testament to a mother’s love and the destruction that came thereafter.”

Jova’s eyes widened.

Belli’s Tower.

Had could he know? She’d but constructed it.

“I care nothing for your homage,” she whispered. “You intrude. Be gone.”

“I have come to pay homage, and to invite you to make a difference. Yes, from here you wage destruction upon the Vikonti, and it is so palpable a destruction that the land upon which they lived isn’t repopulated for a hundred years. But your tale is a tragedy, Jova, for when you finally gaze upon your last dead foe, you famously state that it was all for naught, and take your own life.”

Jova stared stonily at the man even as she extended her power to the remains of the palace beside her. One flexion of her will and an avalanche of rock would fly through the air to batter him to pieces.

And yet.

How had he known the name of the tower?

“Instead, I offer you a chance to walk a different path. In my time, there are millions in need of salvation. Women, children, the elderly, men and women of fighting years. All will soon die before an onslaught of fiends, an army without number and impervious to reason or compassion. I have taken it upon myself to recruit heroes from across the ages to help fight back this existential threat.”

“Who are you?”

“Me?” The old man smiled, and she fancied his eyes glimmered in the gloaming. “I’m just a concerned old man. But if you must address me, the title of Archmagus will suffice.”

Jova licked her cracked lips. “You would tear me away from my vengeance?”

“Your vengeance took place centuries ago. Three hundred and sixty-seven years before I was born, to be exact. The Vikonti suffered and died. You had your vengeance. It didn’t bring your people, your nation, or Belli back. But you can make a difference now. To protect instead of destroy, so stand with other legends to defend humanity. In the tales they tell of you, they speak of how you worked miracles, how you stood alone against a vast foe, and nearly prevailed. Well. This time you need not stand alone, and when you win, it will be for everyone. For millions of innocents.”

The Archmagus drifted closer. “I come in their name, Jova. You have power. But now you must decide how to use it. Change your legend. Let it end not in tragedy, but in so sweet a victory that the world itself will remember you with kindness, with love, and compassion.”

The old man’s voice shook the roots of her soul, wedged cracks into her numbness, and she saw again the bloodied bundle. Rage shook her, grief, horror. She wanted to scream, but knew, deep, deep down, that if she let slip that pain she would tear the mountains into the sea.

“Come use that power for good,” said the Archmagus quietly. “This is a second chance. For you to find victory anew. For you to destroy those in need of destruction. Come fight for those who cannot defend themselves. The innocents. The babes of tomorrow.”

The babes of tomorrow.

His words caused a gasp to escape her lips, and she screwed her eyes shut. Closed them as tightly as she could, but still the tears squeezed forth.

It seemed her reservoir wasn’t completely emptied after all.

She hung there until she regained her self-control, then opened her eyes with a gasp and allowed her shoulders to slump. She stared past the old man at the dark waters below, at the dark city lit only by the errant fire.

Turned, slowly, to gaze upon Belli’s Tower.

Death. Death and destruction and the silence of tombs, forever.

“I will come with you,” she said at last, tone wooden. “I will fight these fiends. I will use my power for these innocents.”

But I will never allow myself to care again, she vowed. Never shall I suffer this pain, experience this horror. Never, ever, ever.

“You have chosen wisely,” smiled the Archmagus. “A wondrous future opens before you, with the chance to work new wonders, fresh miracles, and to bring peace and prosperity to all. This is a new beginning, Jova. Come, I will take you to my palace, and there you shall meet other legends like yourself, men and women of such power that for the first time in your life you shall feel yourself amongst your own kind.”

Jova just stared dully at the man, hating his long windedness.

The Archmagus raised his hand, and a blue light shimmered about his fingers. It swept down to envelop the old man, then flew up to where Jova hovered, and Jova saw no more.

[Imagine my immense relief when I booted up my office desktop and found all the files sitting pristine and pretty in Scrivener. Ah! The sweet relief! Enjoy this big drop, guys, and thanks for your patience and understanding.]