29 At the Edge of Everything

Present Day – in Zalanthya

THE ICY WIND plucked at her legs, but the young woman didn’t feel it. It rummaged through her clothing raising goose-bumps on pale flesh. She didn’t notice. One foot in front of the other across a frozen landscape. The rift behind her shimmered like cracked ice. It hung in the air, the cracks like the edges of a bloody wound knitting together.

She had not known where she was going and so the rift had opened on this snow-covered wasteland. It was somewhere out there, waiting.

Her destiny.

Her task.

Each step was reluctant, for she had not wanted any of this. She did not care about destiny, but a force greater than her had decided otherwise. The wind grew in strength. It scoured the snow from her path leaving smooth ice. Her soft slippers were hardly proof against such cold, but she didn’t notice frozen toes either. Coursing through her was a power she’d never conceived of. An emptiness filling her and threatening her memories and sense of self. It was a power with its own mind, its identity in part stolen from the various souls making up her fractured core.

Tartaros wanted a weapon, a blade to strike this world. It had chosen her. So had Manic and Mania, those traitors of the Darkness, though hardly allies of the living. Everyone sought to destroy or use her. No one, not one save a lone undead mage, cared about what she wanted.

Oh, Fin, she thought, and realised she was weeping, the tears freezing to her cheeks. The clamouring in her skull subsided as the emptiness rose to the edge of her thoughts. She kept Threadfin’s face in her mind, to keep a part of herself free and independent, extant.

Threadfin Todder was someone who confused her. Her feelings made no sense. A part of her, which was a little girl, loved him as a brother, while another part felt a love which was something else. She should have felt revulsion and hatred for the Astra of old loathed the viral undead. Liviana had attempted to kill him while different fragments of her soul, the sisters Antipa and Rade, had in the past initiated the purges. Yet, the part of her who fought against all of them, Lorn Larthuz, was also the part which kept back the emptiness.

Love fought the Darkness. Love was what kept her from succumbing and kept one final piece of her soul free. Rade Wyn, sister to Antipa, had resisted the spell to become a ghost. All for the love of a son.

Yes, thought Astra, as she took those steps across the ice, love is the way to fight Tartaros, to hold the Darkness at bay.

Though Rade Wyn refused to join with Astra, and Lorn’s soul fought to hold back the other fragments, Astra knew the fight was doomed. She felt the contempt with which Tartaros regarded her. It did not care. Time did not exist for it, nor did love, or anything else. Eventually, nothingness devoured all.

So why resist, why fight for another minute, hour, or day?

A dark swirl enveloped her as her magic came alive. The sorceress, Astra, sensed their approach. Three figures emerged from the driving snow, stomping through drifts towards her. They halted a dozen paces away each one six feet apart.

Astra halted too, and the wind created a funnel to swirl about her. Her magic darkened the funnel as though forming storm clouds.

‘Spectralic magic mixed with viralic,’ said Etruria, who stood on the right. ‘I never thought such a thing possible. Look how they meld as one as though brother and sister, different and yet the same.’

‘It isn’t possible,’ announced Fakir, on the far left.

Etruria gave him an exasperated look. ‘Well, if it isn’t,’ she said, gesturing, ‘please explain what’s in front of your nose.’

Fakir shrugged. ‘The Shathra Stone is also impossible. Doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Existence and non-existence, both equal and opposite forces, forever entwined in a dance of creation and destruction of which we are a part.’

Etruria narrowed her eyes as though wondering if Fakir was playing with her. ‘I hate it when you get poetic. You do realise you are a bore.’

‘Some consider it romantic.’

Etruria snorted.

Adal, in the centre, addressed Astra directly. He was no longer in the guise of a fat man and his angelic soul emanated from him as it did the other two. His black hair was long and lustrous, eyes as deep pools of gold. His shoulders broad, he also stood taller than the others. ‘Astra,’ he called out to her, ‘we’ve come to talk. Nothing else. There is no need for tension.’

Astra heard his words, but so did Tartaros, and the emptiness within threatened to overwhelm her. Adal, perhaps the oldest angel to have walked this world, stood before her. Tainted by Tartaros, he had somehow evaded its influence. An enemy of the Darkness and thus her enemy, whether she wished it or not.

‘We want to help you,’ said Etruria. ‘We can save you, but you must hold on. There is no inevitability about any of this.’

It was Fakir, however, who spoke the truth. ‘There is,’ he said, ignoring Etruria’s glare and Adal’s sigh. ‘You both know how this goes. We came to talk, but we will fight nonetheless. Her power is too great and we three cannot defeat her. Delay her maybe, but look at her; the Darkness consumes her and soon nothing of the person will remain. The fragmentation of her soul has slowed the process, but it is inevitable. I warned you this was a waste of time.’

‘Fakir,’ Etruria growled, ‘you are not helping. We talked about this.’

‘You talked about this. I listened.’

‘Obviously, you did not.’

‘There is more going on here,’ said Adal, taking a few steps towards the sorceress hands held out in a peaceable gesture. ‘There are others in this war, unreliable allies, yet allies nonetheless.’ Then he addressed Astra. ‘The Grim seeks your destruction. We do not. Many have perished in this war. Killing you serves nothing. The Darkness will simply choose another. Let us help you and let us find a way to defeat it. Together.’

‘Is that not impossible?’ asked Fakir.

‘Know when to shut up, Fak,’ Etruria snapped.

The sorceress realised Adal was peering into her, seeing things she couldn’t. Adal had dealings with the rebellious twins, she knew. He had his fingers in many pots and there was no knowing his mind in anything. No, she did not trust him and Tartaros despised him.

The emptiness encroached her mind and clouded her judgement. She felt her arms rising and while a part of her yearned to go to Adal, to embrace him and accept his help, Fakir was right. There was just one outcome.

The sorceress attacked.

Fissures in the ice rushed towards the three angels, sending spumes of icy fragments and snow into the air. As the trio moved to avoid it, Astra drew on the dark well of power far beyond her - the essence of Tartaros. She sent webs of dark lightning with such speed that avoiding them was impossible.

Yet avoid them they did.

Etruria and Fakir blocked her attacks, ripples of air erupting to thwart the lightning even as they stepped aside. Adal had vanished.

He appeared on Astra’s right, but didn’t attack her. ‘Listen to us. We do not need to do this. I know within you is a woman yearning for help. Let us help you. Lorn Larthuz, can you hear my voice? Lorn, fight it!’

There was a pang of anguish deep within Astra, but the emptiness treated it with the contempt it deserved. She redoubled her efforts. Veins of magic erupted within her, twisting her legs until they formed a pillar, which lengthened and pierced the ice beneath.

Adal gaped and she offered him a cold smile. Yes, try stopping this one.

Hearing her call, from the fissures they rose. The first of her army. They clambered free from another reality, a small part of a stolen army of revenants. Once the Grim’s vanguard, now hers.

Some two hundred climbed out as her magic seeped through the ice to depths unknown. Shraeds also emerged while her army attacked the angelic trio. Spectralic magic decimated the revenants, but Astra had simply been making a point. There was nothing else to discuss.

The three Seraphim Council members, unwilling to fight her, withdrew. Her shraeds saw them off.

The surviving revenants melted away into the cold winds as she continued her lonely walk across the wastelands of Zalanthya.