Chapter 5
"Shall we stop?" Her voice the only thing I could hear, layer by layer she peeled my being apart. Mind, body and soul she pulled away examining as she went.
"I don't know." I said, ephemeral. Incorporeal compared to the absolute reality of her own self being.
"Then let us pause and allow your mind to catch up with the progress." She said, the odd felling sufficing my body dissipating in an instant. I was suddenly back on the shores of The Elsewhere, the woman cross legged in front of me. Holding her fingertip to my forehead, she hushed me. Quickly catching me to lie me back down gently as my muscles gave out, falling to the sand.
Anlyth had set up his patrol around us, his soldiers dutifully setting up an impregnable defensive permitter around their Goddess. I was told he was the highest ranking Commander of Syn's legions when she was with them still. They were her direct children from the time immemorial, while not born at the time of the Quartet's awakening. They were born soon after, at the whims of Syn's curiosity along with the rest of the Quartet's Children.
"I know you told me the other's names, but what is your name?" I asked the woman. She had closed her eyes hours ago, the divine fire emanating from them not completely dampened. Though I did feel a special kind of melancholy at not having the chance to see her eyes again.
"I am the Queen of the Fae." She responded simply, to my ears it sounded like a half truth.
"Is that why you have a title and not a name on the Quartet's emblem?" I asked earnestly, thinking back to the discussion with Hjalti back in the chamber when we were trying to figure out the meaning being the rune structure.
"A curious little Shadow born soul you are." She chuckled sweetly. Holding a slim hand over her lips. "I do have a name, the one my siblings call me. Much in the same way that Vilorlith is The Great Mother, Syn is Warmth, and Kyln is The Patience, I do have a name."
"Aye, we can continue again, Goddess." I said. Sitting me back up, placing her fingertip back to my forehead as she examined my being once more. I noticed she wasn't actually breathing, she was just moving her chest for the illusion of it. Closing my eyes. Readying my mind as she touched her fingertip to my forehead again, the feeling of lukewarm water filled my veins. She picked apart my mind this time, choosing memories at random. We landed inside a retelling of my conversation with Hjalti in the aforementioned Chamber, as I was teaching him music.
"No no no, you have to keep you finger tips on the frets of the neck, not in between them. Hold your hands steady." I told him, patting him on the back for at least keeping his trembling hands steady enough to play the cord.
"You know, you make this look a lot easier than it is, Bluejay." Hjalti responded.
The Queen spoke as she watched the scene play out, watching everything down to the smallest detail. "Gods," she said sweetly, her hand connected to my soul. Peeling away layer by layer down to my bones barrowed on time, a gift temporary and ephemeral. "That's the term then Children gave us, if you wish to think us divine, I won't stop you. But, we never saw ourselves that way. We are a force personified, the primaries of an endless void. The ones to breathe life into our creations. We are the notes heard on lost wind, Gjorn. We, I, don't see our selves as gods and goddesses, we are the Creators and Caregivers."
"Then why do you not correct them when they call you that?" I asked, watching myself teach my teacher. Though immensely amused at the apparent fact that she could see every thought in my head. Even the one's I wasn't thinking, ideas half formed, back burner concerns.
"We don't for two reasons. We don't want our Children to think less of us when we err. The second is that we do not allow them to call us such to our faces. Instead they simply call us Mother or Father, for at least in the Originals sense, we quite literally are." She responded in a light tone.
The memory shifting to the next, the scene hazy and indistinct while my mind filled in the blanks. The memory of my Father and I standing a top the mountain peaks looking back out toward the Ilse of Mhuzelt. "Son, when one day we can return home. I want to be buried at the Great Lake in the Center." His raspy cough still hurt to hear, his sickness taking him not many Seasons after this moment.
I was still amazed at his ability to climb all the way up to the summit without collapsing. He wanted to show me the Isle in it's full glory as the sun set behind it, it peaks colored in brilliant hues of red and oranges. Backlit by the darkening violet skies as stars popped into existence. I jumped when the Queen wiped away one of my tears, in a gesture I only ever remember my own Mother doing when I was a small child.
I felt small, the world much larger than I could handle. The fading light silhouetting my past self and Father as they watched the Isle slip beneath the waves of stars, the moon rising in the east only illuminating the snow capped peaks. The beauty of the scene enthralling me once more as this disembodied experience replaced the original memory.
Looking over to her she told me, "I will admit I am surprised at what the Shadows have done with you. With everyone at this point, everything. During our war with them, you Shadow changed children were nothing more than living weapons and tools to them. Stripped of individuality and emotion." She hesitated. "You will have to forgive Anlyth, his mind is clouded from the war even after all this time. His final orders from Syn were to assist Kyln in hunting the Shadows down, and to put the changed children to rest. A loyal soul he is."
I reached out to grab the goddesses hand, enjoying the sight of Mhuzelt with her. A connection made between our minds, the image of a flittering blue songbird with antlers filling my mind. Without a word I let her hand go, I had a feeling that she had a hand in that creatures appearance in The Elsewhere. Had I just looked at her mind the same she had to me?
"I don't begrudge him a single thing. He followed his orders, I understand his hatred for me. I only hope in time he will see that the world has changed on the Branches there are still monsters in that world, only that my people are not one of them." I said.
"Wise words from one so young, I do not see a memory that speaks of the Dwarves origins. Can you tell me more, Gjorn?"
I sat up on the shore once more, my head splitting from her examinations. Holding my temples in the palms of my hands, while she steeped some odd form of healing magic into my veins. Though my soul's nature resisted her force, it seemed to resist anything that wasn't also shadow related. She had told me that her role in the creation of the world was to apply rules and make sense of the Quartet's creations, a set of scales to balance the imbalances.
"My people were born out of the Hammer Strike. The Gnomes and us, we were once the same people before that happened." I began, distant memories filling my mind as I tried to recall the history of my people.
She leaned in close to me, a whisper far quieter than anything I should have been able to hear. "My name is Alnya. Please, I give not my name lightly. Speak of it only in private to me alone." I stared at her, an opened mouthed expression plainly evident as Anlyth walked up to us to ask.
"You were once one people?" He seemed to acting a least a bit ashamed of his hostility to me before. The moment he saw the Queen had taken an interest in my Shadow touched soul instead of ordering my outright slaughter, made him rethink his notions of me. He was not used the the Shadow touched being sentient, nor intelligent, far more accustomed to hearing his fellow Children's voices repeated back to him without thought.
So I told them the story of my people's civil war, of how the reasons were lost to us to this day. I told them of how the Gnomes had awoken some sleeping King buried beneath the skin of the earth and drove it mad. In it's fury it struck the earth with a great hammer creating the spire in the center of the Isle and the surrounding mountains from the rebounding stone. How the Sleeping king had struck a curse upon us both, the Gnomes chained to the Ilse unable to leave without a relic of the spire with them at all times their skin to turn ashen in the fires of war. Us Dwarves unable to return home cast out of the Ilse to wander foreign lands sun kissed skin to weather the sun.
I told them of the Wars and skirmishes we fought with the Empire to take our ancestral homes back, though it now a foreign place to us. The irony never having been lost to us. Which led to the story of how my clan had taken the fortress that housed Syn's Vigil and to how I ended up in The Elsewhere. "I, being here, have never felt such a comfort to know I'd ever see what my forefathers had lived in. To see what Mhuzelt was before it was struck by the Sleeping King's hammer, is a gift I never thought I'd receive. I had no idea is was an endless savannah graced by Syn's sunlight, how strange it is to me now to know it is nothing but mountains and lakes." I said, hanging my head low, finishing out the story before they saw my own eyes grow wet.
Someone had place a warm hand on my shoulder, not bothering to look up. Why have I been given the opportunity to see what my Father had so desperately wanted to see. Our home, unmolested, unchanged. What our Fathers had seen, what they had lived. To feel united once more. Why me?
Anlyth's voice spoke. "I too wish to see my home again. I remember far back to the days before the shattering, flying through the skies with Syn beside me. To feel the joy of what the Mothers and Father had made. For us." Looking up I saw him kneeling beside me, head turned away from the Goddess.
"I feel I may have been wrong. When we fought the Shadows... those influenced by their corruption. Where not the people we knew, the dead looking back at us with eyes hungry for our blood. You, you are you're own person. Despite being a Shadow, you are not some corruption. Well, you are. but."
"Anlyth, you are doing a poor job of explaining this." The Queen's sweet voice filled my ears once more as she listened to the exchange. She had her head cocked toward my voice the entire time I spoke of our history, her interest plain as day. She lift my head with her slender hand, her face the eclipsing all else in my vision. "After having seen your mind, your soul. You are one of my Children. Changed to be sure, but your soul is rooted into the the souls I made for the Fae. I see a change that I see in the humans, further warping to a pseudo human being broken into these Gnomes and what I see in you. A Dwarf. Gjorn, you are one of my Children."
"What do you mean?" Both me and the Fairy asked at the same time, our heads turned toward to her.
"His soul, is steeped into the same realms of thought that I had originally created the Fae. Seeing into his homeland, the trials his people have faced. I can conclude a few things, the first being this; his soul is the same type as the Fae. Meaning at least to my mind as the Shadows took everything from us." She paused as her shoulders began to shake, her expression trying to hold back tears. "The Children I couldn't save, he is a descendent of them. His being warped and changed to become more naturalized to a world that no longer functioned properly without the Quartet. His forbearers wandered the burnt earth in the same planes that we sit in now, forced to adapt and function without us by the Shadows."
"Those retched creatures forcing their hand to adapt rather than create, changed his being to work in a world that doesn't. This sleeping king as he described is nothing more than another shadow breaking them to fit another role. In modern era that he exists in, his soul is stable. With no need to balance and adapt, perfectly suited to existed without further intervention." Opening her eyes a little to see me more clearly, the fire from her eyes increasing tenfold. Her green iris's looking deep into my soul.
"I am sorry, Child. We never wanted our Children to suffer the way you had, your people had. I never wanted to see my changed in such a way. You were meant to know peace with no hardship." I cut her off, placing my hand on hers.
"If I am one of your Children. I do not begrudge you this, as with Anlyth. I understand the sacrifices that needed to be made in war. My people had lived well, despite the issues we face, the pasts we wish to rediscover. I do not fault you, Mother."
"I..." She faltered, the rest of Anlyth's fairies turning to look over at her. With her reaction the sun in the sky shifted from a bright summer day, to one that radiated a dazzling array of colors. "I was expecting more animosity. You have learned what your world is, you know my role in it. I was the one who couldn't save the children. I was the one who shattered the world to escape."
"Why are you sounding like you are asking for my forgiveness? You are a god, shouldn't you be absolute in your decisions?" Gjorn raised his brow at her, placing his hand in his palm as she searched for words.
The Fairies had their full attention on us as the conversation continued. A searching, pleading look plastered on all their faces. "You say I am a Shadow. Or at least someone who has been changed beyond repair to the original. Based off all but your reactions, I am treated as a threat to be eliminated at all costs. I understand there was war with them, I understand War." I stood, placing my own fingertip on her forehead. The quick hands to weapons didn't escape my notice, though she didn't react beyond cocking her head.
"So I ask, might I blaspheme or no. Why is a goddess, no, one of the original creators, acting like this? Do you feel guilty?" I asked, the open mouthed stares at me for my question from the soldiers was also not missed.
She brushed away my hand, rising to her full height. The world growing gray, indistinct, her form towering above me. Her smokey hair billowed around me, encapsulating us. Stripping the world from existence, opening her eyes entirely. Their fire the only points of light in the endless haze that surrounded all, the light green of her irises capturing my attention once more.
I felt her arms wrap around me, pressing her forehead to mine. "I don't know how I feel. Eons spent hiding my misery at losing my family, though I love my Children as well as my sibling's Children. I miss my Brother and Sisters far more. Little Shadow, I see in you a wrongness I cannot overlook. Though, I see my influence, my sister's influence in you with the way you use magic. I cannot help but wonder, what have I missed? What has Ileon become? Can I bring my family back somehow? Can I repair the world I shattered? Can I fix the damned and broken? I have hidden myself away from the world out of fear, for I saw what the Shadows did to them."
"To see you, I see our power in afterglow. Still functioning, I wonder what has happened to the slaves we made of the Shadows. Slaves to the world they so wished to engage in, was it fair? I see in you a hope, a song yet unsung. The souls the Shadows have remade, intrigue me. Is it just yours? Is it all? Are Vilorlith's children like you? Are Kyln's, Syn's? Are you unique? You are the only thing from the shattered lands that has ever made it here without my permission, I understand how you did it, but..."
What is that? This feeling? A strange comfort, unwelcomed. Though pleasant it was entirely intrusive, like pressure in the air before a storm. Or the popping of your ears when ascending a mountain. Focusing, calming my mind in the maelstrom of the smoky haze that the goddess was. Reaching out without thought, I caught hold of it, and her her gasp.
Memories filled my mind, an ocean of thoughts, concepts an infinite array of constructs and the metaphysical. My head threatening to split in two, it was just too much. Her eyes swam before my own, ethereal, something I had never seen. Something I had always seen, something that never was.
The scene faded around me, standing atop the steps of a gorgeous city of marble and gold. I raised my eyes to the Fae, my Children. Born from the scales of fate, born from the earth, born of logic and power. Balance incarnate. Interactions with the Children swam through my ears. Hush words of worry, where to go in life. Advice I offered as their Mother, to guide them toward the path I saw in my mind. To lead them, to nurture them, to allow my creations to become what they were always meant to be.
The scene shifted again, a short women with the night sky for eyes, wrapped her long tail around me. Connecting the aspects of logic and emotion together. We spoke oh how the Children were meant to become ourselves. Gods in their own right, we decided to Tether ourselves to them, to gift an ever growing piece of our divine spark to each and every one of them. A spark self reproducing, growing endlessly. A Child to live long enough would become an immortal aspect of their own choosing, no greater gift we could give them. In the hope that they would join us in our ever expanding creation, we knew they would.
The smell of smoke filled my nose, the battle was going poorly. Kyln and his Giants were fighting valiantly against the Shadow Azu and the spawn she had wrought. Our own Children used as cannon fodder in her corruption, abused mockeries of the divine creations they once were. My fury burned in streams of magma as if feel from my eyes, weaving the ides of fate to let them died quicker under the earth rumbling blows of Kyln. We felt each death in our own minds, their spark, our spark extinguishing with each loss of life. "My dear brother, you are stronger than I."
My eardrums burst from the scream that left her lips as she fell. Reality warbling around us, blanking in and out of existence, the scene shifted one final time. The Brownie clan were forced through the weave to appear at the feet of Syn's legion. They were meant to be in the Citadel, defending it from the onslaught of shadow touched and monstrosities that beast Bhal has made of the world. They were blood soaked, the only clean parts of their faces was were their tears washed them clean.
Syn had stepped forward, her wings ablaze with the brilliance of the suns she had made. She reached down to comfort the Brownie General Ilgor, who flinched at the goddess' touch. The General had spoken before Syn or I could ask why they were here. "We are the only ones left. She, the Great Mother sent us away. She, she couldn't save them, any of them." She gasped the words out, struggling to get the information.
A second sun had risen on the southern horizon. It took a few moments before we realized what we were looking at, this was no sun. Vilorlith had glassed the Citadel in a rage I knew not her capable of, millions of bolts of lightning falling to the earth. It was only after my shock before I noticed my sister point to the sky. A hailstorm of comets falling on the molten earth that Bhal had taken, crashing to the surface in great shockwaves.
A gust of wind billowed across the grasslands we stood upon. Her voice filling the area, our minds, our everything. "I am sorry. This was the only way."
The night sky plain in the noonday sun, stars began to fade away. As the moon vanished, so too did the heavens we had created. Syn reacted quicker than I did, reaching out to grab onto Vilorlith's Pillar of Creation, refusing to let reality crumble with her loss. Like a punch to the gut, I watched her Children writhe in agony, suddenly untethered to their Goddess. Syn was busy with the Pillar, Kyln was silent, I was too slow to stop the corruption of Bhal take her Children.
Their skin turning a ghastly green, their tails withered off in mere seconds. Their hands and toes grown short sharp claws, her song but a faint echo in their minds. Ilgor stood slowly, or what was once her and spoke in a staccato bird like fashion. "And we here, shall honor our Great Father Bhal and slaughter you all."
I snapped out of her memories, feeling the experiences I had just witnessed as if they were my own. Crashing hard on my ground, I felt a sharp blade pressed to my neck. Going completely still, slowly opening my eyes. What I saw was Anlyth standing over me, sword tip plunged into the earth infinitesimally close to the artery in my neck.
His eyes burned, a hatred and anger. I recognized it now, that spark, the one I had heard Alnya and Vilorlith talk about. I could see it through his chest, beating in time with his heart. The fire that billowed out of his eyes was weaker than the Quartet's, but the same in the end. He was actually close to being a real god, I just knew it.
The second thing I noticed was the Queen's hand over his, apparently having caught it in time to keep him from shearing my head from my shoulders. An unspoken conversation between them, eyes locked as she furrowed her brow at him. Even after I witnessed that, had done that without permission. I think I can understand we Anlyth cannot stand me now though, seeing the Great Mother's changed like that...
"Born into half a body, A reunion of of shattered souls, delusional demons welcome home" What was that? Something felt different again, my voice steeped in power. As if speaking was controlling magic, no creation, around me. I couldn't control it. An old proverb from the Clan back home. Meant to remind us that even though hard times exist, the demons we think are the enemy, is us ourselves.
Both their heads whipped down to me. Anlyth and Alnya feeling a compulsion I knew that hadn't felt in a very long time. Something clicked in my mind, The Great Mother was the goddess of wind, sky, heavens. I have a talent for Air. Did just hearing her speak in Alnya's memory enough for me to figure it out?
Her eyes burned as she resisted the magic, "My Magnificent Songbird, find your way to The Elsewhere again. We shall show you the truth. You shall know the truth, take that voice you have taken and bring true music to the Shattered world. Let them hear once more the Glory of her voice once more."
Everything shifted around me, sleeping through a free fall. I hit the ground with a loud grunt, coughing dust out of my lungs. Turning over on my side, sore, tired and hungry. I was vaguely aware that I was back in the chamber Hjalti and I had first discovered. The sound of boots rang off the stone walls of the hallway just beyond the crevice. The sound of a klaxon audible even down here.
The darkness slowly making it's way from the edges of my vison to consume all I saw. I fell into a deep sleep, passing out as the sound of boots grew louder.
