Book 7: Chapter 1 (RAW) (Patreon)

Chapter 1 - Absolution

Meridian, home to what has simply come to be known as the Academy. It is there that the finest minds of Aranthia are said to gather, a true place of learning. A city of canals and fashionable boulevards, of crystal-clear water, famed for its architecture and art, Meridian is called by some the City of Song and by others the City of Learning. I have always thought both names true at once. Yet, in the end, Meridian serves one thing above all else: the Academy.

Here, nobles from across the continent send their scions to be taught by the very best in the land, so that one day they might become leaders themselves. It is here that bonds are formed, and many say it is because of those bonds that many wars have been avoided. The Academy is home to places such as the Great Library, a place almost unrivalled on the continent, holding tomes of history that date back to before the Cataclysm.

If the Goddess favors me, I would very much like to visit that place once more.

- The Fanciful Travel by Beron de Laney 376 AC.

Subtract. That was the answer. Strip away all that was needless. Carve myself down to something leaner, colder, nearer to the void. A state swifter than thought, deadlier than heaven’s lightning. I was on the cusp of some hard-won epiphany, and even as I grasped it, I knew the bitter truth that it would not be enough.

Claws ripped the air in patterns I had no answer for. Nothing in my training or experience had prepared me for foes like these. Things that had the strength of the wild, these creatures that were tougher than I was, hardier than I was. And that was no small thing. Even with the last thin dregs of Sage’s Sight—the only spell of mine that worked in this warded place, the magic that granted me a heartbeat’s glimpse into the near future—I was being driven back.

They indeed fought like beasts, but not like fools.

With snarls and slavering maws, they took wounds that should have crippled them. I cut to the bone. I hacked at limbs. I drove my borrowed steel deep into flesh. And they let me, when it suited them, only to trap my weapons in meat and gristle and snapping bone. Blood would pour for a breath, steam in the air, and then the wounds would close as though my efforts had been no more than scratches. The price I paid for hurting them was nearly equal to the hurt itself. Worse, they did not come at me one by one. They came as a pack, a single feral thing with many jaws, all brute force and savage cunning. And they kept coming.

It did not help that messages kept scrolling across my vision, the epitaphs of meaningless lives finally given meaning as they slowly added to my strength. Experience flowed into me even as I fought.

I did not need magic to know how it would end. The daughters of House de Savant were toying with me. It was a game to them.

“See how he struggles, sister,” one of them growled in feral pleasure.

“This is the one who humbled the monsters of the sea? The Bane of Al-Lazar?” her sister mocked, fangs white in her broad, wet maw, stained crimson with my blood. “I think not.”

“You play too long, my daughters,” Lord de Savant said, his voice thick with distaste, one hand resting upon his warhammer. “His Eminence’s patience wears thin.”

Arrogant sod.

I sprang for him, thinking to end this or to take the man hostage. Better to die going for the throat than be pulled apart for their amusement. I had barely moved three strides before a hail of bolts came at me in a fresh storm, clattering against my armored hide. Then something hit me from the blind side, all fur and muscle and murderous weight, and I was buried beneath an avalanche of Werewolf flesh.

I rolled free before they could pin me, twisted back onto my feet, and came up breathing hard. Quick enough, yes. But not quick enough to keep the cost from mounting. I felt the drain in my limbs, the ebb of my Stamina. It was going from me by degrees, and I had precious little to spare.

A growl rose in my throat then, ugly and low, too much like theirs for my liking. Frustration burned in me. Frustration, and fear besides. I would no longer deny it now that I was man enough to name it.

“You will need me now,” came that hateful voice, close as a knife at my ear, as claws scraped across my vambrace. “Here and now, to defeat my sister’s servants.”

“I don’t need you, Iasis. Stay out of this!” I spat.

“He invokes the Mother of Monsters! Mauros, do something, you arrogant fool. Again, do something.”

The Cardinal turned a look upon Lord de Savant sharp enough to skin a man alive. “The miracles of the Goddess are not commanded by men such as you,” he said. “Still, I can see the need is great, and the Goddess helps those who help themselves.”

I did not need the hateful Goddess’s help. I did not need her favor, her chains, or her price. I needed nothing. I would be enough.

Even weakened and without my magic, I told myself, my skill and my will would see me through this nightmare. I drove my blade through the trunk of one werewolf sister, kicked free, and sent the beast reeling backward into the armored knights behind her. A few of them toppled in a clatter of steel and curses.

Still, I knew what aid from a Divine aid. There was a price for everything had a price.

Cardinal Mauros began to chant. His face emptied as he did, all human warmth draining from it, his voice flattening into something cold and mechanical, as though he were no longer a man beseeching his goddess, but a vessel through which old power was being poured. He called upon the hated Avaria for aid.

I knew I had to stop him.

Snatching up a fallen weapon—an axe, broad-headed and blood-slick—I hurled it at him. The axe spun end over end through the air, straight and true, only to strike something unseen and fall away with a ringing clatter as a garbled system message crossed my inner eye. An invisible shield. Mauros looked at me through it with all the smug assurance of a man wrapped in his Goddess’s skirts.

That moment’s failure cost me dear.

The beasts and Knights came together then, closing like the jaws of a trap. One of the Knights stepped in low and smashed his warhammer against my poleyn with a brutal crack while I was fending off the jaws and claws of one of the sisters. My armor drank most of the blow, but not all. Pain flared hot and sharp through the joint, and I felt at once that something in it had been damaged. My movement, never fluid enough for this slaughter, grew worse.

And there it was again, that maddening truth.

No matter how near I came to martial perfection, it would never be enough in a place like this, where men and monsters alike cheated. I knew well enough that I had maxed out my Advanced Swords skill, but I knew that I was a master and worthy of the Mantis, for numbers were a poor measure of skill. Yet, these horrible monsters were trying to prove me wrong. Trying to make a lie of my being. I would show them that there were things that numbers could not capture. The thought of it filled me with fresh anger. Anger was fuel. Defiance was fuel. I would burn both to the dregs before I bent the knee.

Mauros raised his hands and traced a golden circle in the air. It widened, brightened, and bloomed into a mandala of living light. The air in the hall thickened, grew heavy and close, as though the world itself had become more solid beneath the tread of divine power. The golden chains about me dragged harder for one terrible instant, forcing me to my knees—then shattered.

All at once, the stained-glass windows of the hall began to shimmer with molten gold. At first, it was only a tremor of light beneath the colored panes, a faint gleam crawling through the lead lines like fire finding cracks in old stone. Then the whole of the glass kindled at once with a golden glow. The hall, which had moments before been all blood, iron, and snarling death, was drowned beneath that awful splendor.

Light spilled from the windows in thick sheets, not clean like sunlight, but heavy and rich, as though gold itself had been melted down and poured into the world. It ran across the flagstones, over broken bodies and dropped weapons, over blood pooled black-red in the cracks, and where it touched, every stain and ruin was made terrible and beautiful both. The very air changed. It thickened. 

Then the windows bulged. Not shattered. Not broken. Bulged, as though something vast and living pressed from the far side of the glass, testing the boundary between one world and the next. The birth pangs of things that were not meant to be on this plane of existence. The images upon the glass stretched and warped around shapes too large and too holy to be contained by mortal craft until a wound was made. 

From that wound in the light, a hand emerged.

It was no human hand. It was long and slender and mercilessly perfect, its fingers armored in plates of living gold and silver. Where the joints of armor bent, white fire burned in the seams. It pushed through into the real. Then came the arm, and the shoulder, and the sweep of a vast wing feathered in light so bright it hurt to behold. Each feather seemed edged with script, tiny runes or prayers burning along the vanes like fresh-written law.

They came forth.

The first descended with grave and dreadful majesty, its face smooth and pale as carved ivory, beautiful in the way winter is beautiful. It had no softness in it. No pity. A golden circlet burned above its brow, and beneath that cold light, its eyes were empty furnaces.

Then came another, broader of shoulder, with seven wings instead of two. It did not beat them. It did not need to. The air bent around it in trembling waves as it floated down. It had four arms, each of perfect long-limbed proportions. Its lower hands carried a large two-handed sword that looked as if it contained white flames, while its upper hands were empty. Where its bare feet touched the flagstones, plants flowered for an instant and then turned to steam.

A third tore free from the glass and was born into this world in a rain of glittering sparks. This one wore the likeness of a woman, if woman she could be called, but her mouth was too still, too stern, and her eyes were blindfolded with strips of glowing linen through which light leaked. Behind her shoulders hung wings vast as banners, layered upon layered, each feather whispering against the next.

The hall fell silent but for the hum of the golden light. Even the Werewolves faltered.

The daughters of House de Savant, all fang and fury a heartbeat before, shrank back a pace despite themselves, hackles rising, lips peeled from blood-slick teeth. Their animal courage remained, but something older than instinct stirred beneath it. Beasts know fire. Beasts know thunder. And beasts know when something higher in the order of slaughter has entered the field.

The Knights lowered their heads, some in reverence, some in terror, though the two are kin enough. One man dropped his weapon altogether. It struck the stone and clanged once, and he dared not stoop and reclaim it.

Cardinal Mauros stood in the midst of it like a man already half-dead, his face lit gold and corpse-pale by turns. Sweat ran in streams down his brow, yet his expression had gone rapturous, emptied out by devotion so complete it bordered on madness. 

The light gathered behind the winged creatures until the windows shone like rents cut into heaven itself. Through them I glimpsed not sky, nor garden, nor any paradise promised by false prophets and priests, but distance. A great vastness. A glimpse into a place where mortals were not meant to look. Ranks upon ranks of brightness arrayed like an army beyond reckoning, banners of flame unfurling in a wind that did not blow in this world. It was not peace I saw there. It was order sharpened into a weapon. Judgment given form. The memory of some ancient war, not dead at all, but merely waiting. 

Then the gateway closed as the summoning spell ended, and three celestial beings were anchored to this world.

And somewhere deep in what was left of my soul, beneath the pain, the rage, and my own mortal fear, I knew what they were.

Angels. Devas, perhaps, or some other name men gave to such shining horrors. It was all the same in the end. More cheating. More naked unfairness in a world already stacked against me from the first.

“So, little Gilgamesh…” purred Iasis from just behind me, her lithe black form flickering at the edge of my vision. “Do you still believe you have no need of my assistance?”