​​​​15 The Darklight

FROM HIS DUNGEON, the prisoner listened to the sound of waves thundering against rocks. High above, thirty feet or so, were small windows. The light was faint by the time it reached the massive stone flags of the floor. The ocean was the only sound within Ralan’s prison. For a long time, it had soothed him. Now it mocked his helplessness. The chains gouged furrows into his wrists, but he didn’t care.

Within the gloom, and just visible, were four upright obsidian slabs. Darklight Stones, they faced him at angles. Within each were reflections, stolen and trapped. There were was one other, set back from and higher than the others. This one wasn’t obsidian and had steps leading up to it; a control stone, with an engraving he couldn’t make out.

For now, the stones remained quiet, but the prisoner knew they would awaken. Each time, they tore him apart and reassembled him into a new form. Something terrible, evil. Each time, once done, they returned him to the chains. Of course, it wasn’t his physical body they took. Just his soul.

The flight from his siblings had proven short-lived. They’d anticipated his destination. Three mortal days before his capture, but by then, Cadaver’s ire had cooled. The master after all, wanted him alive. To be used. Ralan saw it as a punishment for being whom and what, he was.

The son of the Grim.

Ralan shook at the chains in frustration, dust raining from the ceiling. A bilious shadow detached from a corner of the dungeon. It took several steps into the wan light.

‘You have yourself to blame,’ said the shadow in a human voice. ‘No one else, Ral.’

‘Do you hide from your shame, father? Or, do you reside within those shadows because you have come to love the darkness? I assure you it does not love you back. I would have loved you, but you did not let me.’ Learning who his father was, while shocking, had led him to seek him out. To discover his origins, to try to mend the battered memories he had left. At first, he had found a new family, a home. As with most families, however, disputes arose and grew beyond themselves.

The shadow lifted its head, but no sign of a face was visible. ‘I offered you everything of mine. All I asked in return was your loyalty.’

Ralan laughed, the effort painful, as he spun on the long chains. ‘I offered you love. You offered pain and suffering back. My existence is a torture.’

‘And whose fault was it?’ the shadow snapped. ‘I gave you a way to deal with the pain, to cope. Most of all, my son, I offered you revenge.’

‘I didn’t ask you for that. Revenge isn’t in my heart, but yours. It has eaten you alive, leaving this shell before me.’ He shook his head, feeling weary. ‘You are not my father, because I choose not to be your son. Your lies don’t work on me. I am not like the others. I know who I am. I’ve managed to keep my memoires intact.’ What existed of them, at least.

The shadow waved a dismissive hand. ‘You are too like your mother. Stubborn, vile, and needy.’

Ralan barked a humourless laugh. ‘Funny, she said something similar about you. I suppose I got the worst of both, eh?’

‘They brand me something evil, detestable. They use my name as a curse. Does no one understand? I tried to save them, Ral, all of them. I try to save them, even now.’

‘I saw through you back then. Yes, I recall enough to know you haven’t changed. For all you cloak yourself in shadow, you cannot hide your heart. You have come to believe your own legend. How sad, for there is one far more dangerous than you ... but you know this. You fear her. You fear what my mother might become.’

‘I fear nothing!’ the shadow screeched.

‘You fear she will succeed where you failed.’

‘Yours is a sickness. One I can cure if you would repent and acknowledge me your father and master. I can fix it all. You will see.’

‘I will oppose you until my dying breath,’ said Ralan, his heart filling with sadness. All I asked for was a family. He’d rediscovered a mother once, and lost her. He’d found a sister and friend, and lost her too. Now, a father. ‘Mine is not a sickness. It is humanity. We are self-destructive to the point of idiocy.’

‘Yes, humanity is a disease, which has sickened existence itself, and still I tried to save them. Do they thank me?’

‘You tried to enslave them. Hardly the same.’

‘To protect them from oblivion. To protect the world from them. It was and remains the only answer.’

Ralan gave a mirthless laugh. ‘To abuse them for your own ends. You sought to rule, to control, and nothing else. Enough of your lies. Why do you persist in these visits? What possible purpose can they serve?’

‘You refuse to see it, and I am near the end of my patience with you.’

‘You purged humanity from the others,’ said Ralan. ‘But not from me, because to my disgrace, I am of your blood as much as hers. If it is a disease, then I am riddled with it. You have become something inhuman, like my siblings. You are the one who refuses to see, or perhaps, you cannot. You’ve no idea do you, who your real enemy is, but I do.’

The pain increased a hundredfold and Ralan screamed, as his father watched. The Darklight awoke and within it, the reflections turned animate. Ralan cried out as his soul was ripped asunder. The Darklight tore it from his flesh. Absorbed within the Stones, it was reassembled with the reflections of others, all into a single hideous form. The screams of the Fetch died to a whimper, and it snarled with what some might have mistaken for a smile.

The Grim sighed, turned away from the empty sack of flesh spinning on its chains, and left in a swirl of shadow.

‡

THE MORTAL TOWN WAS a clutter of mud, flesh, and charred wood. The Fetch stood in its midst, observing. Within the collaboration of reflection and flesh, the one named Ralan was at times aware, although never in control. Ralan’s face wasn’t his own, but of another, his body unrecognizable. He saw through the eyes of this creature he had become, felt what it did, but he also felt the chains cutting into his flesh in the dungeon. Trapped between two realities, and neither pleasant.

The hem of the Fetch’s black cloak flickered in the breeze above the blood-spattered earth. It lowered its hood to reveal twin rows of horns on the back of its head and neck. They continued down its shoulders, bulging beneath the heavy cloak. The son of Grim’s reflection, which held greater power than the others, held them together. It gave it partial solidity in this world, but it could not maintain it long. Soon, that would change.

It did not look at its companions as it spoke, the voice a hiss. ‘Tell me, how long ago?’

The ghouls shrieked as they scattered throughout the town, entering buildings, gnawing at the dead. It was what ghouls did best. Once they had a scent, they never lost track of their quarry. However, when their prey were Torments, the rules changed. This Fetch was aware of whose reflections it wore, aware they were a gift from its master. It did not like interference, however, and one Torment worried it above all others. They were both supposed to serve the Grim, but it appeared some had different agendas, albeit the same prey.

The Forlorn One had not kept her side of the bargain. The master was furious, for she had delayed her return, although he had anticipated treachery. However, she had proven wilier than expected. The theft of the Shathra Stone was a stroke of genius on his master’s part, but she had not delivered it as arranged.

It seemed the Grim held a fondness for the human female. His servant did not understand sentiment, though some of the minds belonging to the reflections it wore, did. Worse, the master’s sentiment had caused problems.

The ghouls returned, pale naked bodies aquiver with excitement. They shrieked their findings, and it listened. The Torment female was twenty leagues away.

The Fetch strolled past the dead remains of humans. Some of the dead eyed it, their lifeless eyes rolling in their dried-out sockets to follow its passage. It was the effect of its power, and lasted as long as it took to pass by. Had it wished to raise their tortured, blackened corpses, it could have, but such action would be pointless. Even faced with an enemy, reanimated corpses weren’t useful except as a distraction. Living foot soldiers were what its master needed. Besides, it was becoming difficult to maintain form here. It would need to return later to gather more.

The remaining ghouls gathered around it as other scouts reported. With confirmation of her exact location, it stood still as the ghouls opened their jaws. The air shimmered, bubbled and popped, as one reality became another.

The Fetch sighed, the ghouls scattering through the grey landscape. The Styx was as always, grey, and sombre. It would recuperate first, and later it would return to the city of Shamar.

For now, it was nice to be home.