When Serpents Smile

[Whispers of Abyssion]

He flinched at her indictment, but her words surprised him not. The case of Ingwe Helyanwe had imprinted upon him the hypocrisy of the high elves and their high-handed treatment of those they deemed lesser. He even had to admire how they had faked the legend of the Tella’Karythar, the Last Crusader, to defeat Xem’zund’s armies on the banks of the Escaldor.

“Of course not,” he said, his scowl deepening. “But do not expect me to believe that you care what the world considers ‘right’ and ‘fair’. You have always acted as you felt you must: to combat the Elder Gods, the Star Pantheon, the Ancients, the Thayne; to banish the most powerful of your number when he went mad; to protect yourself against the jealousy and wrath of the broken world left behind after the Age of Strife. You did none of this for others to love you. Even in your final moments you have never sought the approval or the empathy of those you empowered. The Mongrel, the Homunculus, the Poet, the Emperor, the Briarheart. Each of them murdered you in their blind hate, never once considering that you acted all along to give them what they most desired.”

Touma paused, then exhaled long and loud. Reaching into the folds of his robe he brought out the slender bamboo kiseru. When he spoke again, he measured his words with care even as he chewed on its golden nib.

“But for what it is worth, I have always appreciated the Lindequalme. It is beauty. Not the cultured sculpted beauty of the elves, but the tenacious and dangerous beauty of life itself at its most raw. You said that it offended their sense of the aesthetic... I say that they do not appreciate the reminder of how they can never attain the perfection that they so strive for.”

A soft, wry smile wrinkled Pode’s lips and softened her expression. She too exhaled and relaxed. Her gaze roamed the azure-lit sanctum, resting on the forlorn crimson tassels of the spear embedded in the far wall. Then she returned it to her companion, and found his amber eyes the only tangible sign of life in sight.

Something struck her then: nostalgia, perhaps, or the bittersweet regret of her choice of mortality.

“Will you indulge an old witch’s whim?” she asked him, her voice faltering in a poignant tremolo. “A trip into the past, perhaps, to tell you of the Forgotten?”

In response, the human reached out across the table and the carved monarchs pieces scattered between them. Of Pode’s black pieces only the Queen remained on the board, checkmated by his own. The others lay to one side in defeat: King, Mage, Chevalier, Juggernaut. His scrawny fingers, battered by the duel of earlier, danced as he began to recite what he knew.

“In ages past, only a handful of magi could access the power of the Tap without the direct favour of the Thayne. They were Stronger, Greater, more Powerful than the other spellcasters of the world. Those that remain are now Forgotten.”

“It took the agreement of all the Thayne to give the Wizard Blueraven access to what remained of the Tap, when he prosecuted Denebriel and Zund,” Pode nodded. “But such was not always the case.”

Wizened and withered, her hand reached out to her King. The figurine depicted a man of powerful build, broad of shoulder and strong of feature, clad in clothes of nobility won through bloody violence and court intrigue. Across his back draped a black cape, decorated in stark white eight-pointed stars.

“Aesphestos the Starkiller, the first of us all, the worst of us all,” she identified. “Megalomaniac tyrant of a civilisation spanning from Istraloth to Cathay. For all our influence, all our empires, the rest of us were little more than lesser dukes waging civil war in the god-king’s shadow. He paved the path to greatness without consent of the Thayne, though Hromagh approved of his display of strength and was later his patron. One after another we walked in his steps, joining him in his ascension, but always he strode ahead of us.”

Her attention next alighted upon the Juggernaut, a nondescript hooded figure with only its eyes visible from beneath its cowl. Hourglass pupils glittered with tangible determination, as though their mere gaze could remove all obstacles from their path. Then her hand swept over Mage and Queen, both of which Touma could recognise as remarkably accurate caricatures of Xem’zund and Pode herself.

“Nyvengaal attained demigod-hood next, then myself, then Xem’zund. The world of that age was one of great anarchy and chaos, thousands of mage warlords vying and tussling for power. We were the three that emerged from the roiling masses, friends and rivals, always spurring each other on to further heights. Nyvengaal rubbed off on us both, but Zund and I were particularly close. I mentored him, nurtured him, helped him into Khal’jaren’s sights, helped him to avoid Yedda’s...”

Her smile strained taut as she touched the Chevalier. Tall, elegant, sensual, a mere glance at the figurine demanded a bent knee and bowed head. Its polished skin glittered deep blue in the sanctum light. Its hair shone like silver, its eyes dazzled gold at the iris, and a chandelier of cleansing flame clad its silken white robes.

“Denebriel, Aesphestos’s daughter and wife, and the youngest and most ambitious of us all. She drove a wedge between Zund and I, upon her emergence to power. Zund had long fancied her mother, you see, and pried Cydonia away from Aesphestos by killing her and reviving her against her will. Denebriel never forgave him for that. I supported Zund out of friendship and indeed jealousy, thinking that I might beat Denebriel with weight of numbers. Instead she went back in time and aborted all my men before they were born, making it very clear that the only reason she didn’t do the same to us was because we had already left our mark on history. She didn’t kill us, in essence, because she didn’t want to spend the next thousand years tidying up after our deaths. She was a nightmare to argue with, let alone fight. We learned not to get on her bad side after a while, and found other gods to bicker with, but before long things were never the same again.”

“The Wars of the Tap?” Touma asked.

“The Wars of the Tap.”

[Whispers of Abyssion]

She eyed him in critical regard, the emerald brilliance of her stare now watery and tempered with impending death.

“I will not insult your intelligence, Serpent Tamer, by feeding you the words that so many consider gospel. Even the name we give it these days, the Wars of the Tap, so blithely understates the number and scale and ferocity of the conflict. We fought each other, and we fought those usurpers who plotted to overthrow us, and we fought those gods who looked down upon us. And the world burned. How it burned.” Roiling cloud shrouded her mien, as dark as her memories of those times. “Until in one of these conflicts Aesphestos pushed Denebriel too far, too many times. She rebelled. We all did. Aesphestos had grown too powerful, and too overbearing, and too arrogant, and far beyond any hope of salvation. So we aided the elves and the mya in killing him, and we sundered every known law of magic in the process.”

“The Leaguer of Caradin,” Touma prompted, focused on memorising as much of what she said - and how she said it - as possible. He would grasp the import of her words later. For now, he only had to listen.

“Indeed. There and then it ended, though we laid our plans and began our preparations many decades earlier. Denebriel travelled in time to murder Aesphestos a dozen times over, proving that through sheer persistence and dedication she could indeed negate the existence of even one as powerful as her father. She herself became a walking paradox in the process, though, and she lost her mind for it. In the meantime Nyvengaal, Zund, and I taught the High Bard Golan what he needed to defeat the Starkiller once and for all, and destroyed his soul essence afterwards. In doing so we sundered the Tap, to the point where the Thayne got off their lazy arses in turn to unite against us. And that was when Zund and I turned on each other for the last time.”

Her fingers returned to the Mage, almost apologetic in their touch.

“Aesphestos wounded Zund, you see, during the retreat from Ael-en-Gilith, enough for him to retreat to Dheathain to prepare a dozen new bodies. He entrusted me in the meantime with protecting Cydonia. I brought her here, for her protection. But I failed her, and him.”

She exhaled, and Touma caught a whiff of ancient, over-ripe cinnamon. It took all his self-control not to recoil in disgust.

“Aesphestos arrived here late one night in early winter. He blew my defences wide open, and murdered her in the heart of my power. Did I tell you that I raised this sanctum, thousands of years ago, to commemorate my ascension as a Forgotten One? Aesphestos knew, and thus he knew that in his moment of triumph he desecrated all I stood for. He cracked open Cydonia’s ribs, spread her lungs out on her chest, and stuffed her still-beating heart in her mouth. It devastated Zund. When he finished taking his revenge on Aesphestos, he aimed the black hole of his grief in the only way he knew. He put a knife in my back.”

Her eyes saw through him now, fixated upon a place in time that would never return to her grasp.

“Even wounded, I tried to ease his pain. I cast my last curse, in his name and Cydonia’s.”

“The Arda Vazra,” Touma said on her behalf. “The Red Requiem.”

“I only wished to give him the time and space to mourn. I only wished to give him the time and space to heal. But in his grief, caught between his love and his hatred, he could only imagine that I meant to hurt him further. And that warped my curse. It spiralled out of control, affecting reality itself and the minds of those who inhabited it, staining the lands with the colour of his bleeding heart.

“In the end he rediscovered his love of music and of art. It settled his mind, helped him to establish balance once more. It could fight the hatred that ate at his soul, you see, and thus could drive back my twisted curse that afflicted him so. Hence the elves also claimed it as their own, and at great cost they drove back the curse to the borders of their Great Forest. Forever more they would despise me as defiler of their lands. But even now I laugh at the irony of it all, for Zund had ever despised the elves for the genocide of his people, and I had always favoured them for their talent. In the end they too baulked at the sacrifice that reclaiming the entire Belegwain i Beleg would entail. Instead they resolved to abandon their ancient heartland until such time that they could reclaim it with ease. Until now.”

“I only wished to give him the time and space to mourn. I only wished to give him the time and space to heal. But in his grief, caught between his love and his hatred, he could only imagine that I meant to hurt him further. And that warped my curse. It spiralled out of control, affecting reality itself and the minds of those who inhabited it, staining the lands with the colour of his bleeding heart.

“That which is dead can eternal lie, for with merciful aeons, even Death can die,” Touma intoned. A low laugh rasped forth from Pode’s throat, nothing like the luscious lilt she had uttered earlier.

“Zund was ever the poet. It pleased me that he remembered himself so, on his deathbed. Myself, I wandered too far for such artful pursuits. I collected the works of others instead, to remind me of the paths I had walked, of the peoples I had visited.”

Her irises focused on his, one last time.

“Perhaps you will collect this token from me, then, as a token of appreciation for hearing out my sorrowful tale.”

With one shrivelled hand she held out her last piece, the Black Queen, its flowing red hair and piercing emerald eyes the likeness of herself in her prime.

“Or would you rather ask a question of this ancient relic?”

[Whispers of Abyssion]

“I would ask four.”

She blinked, as if surprised, then gestured for him to continue. The cloud in her brow warned him not to push her patience. But he had to know.

“First. You mention five of the Forgotten.” Without looking, Touma’s finger travelled to the monarchs pieces arrayed on the table before him. He pointed to each in turn, knocking them over as he named them. “Aesphestos. Denebriel. Xem’zund. Pode. Nyvengaal. Four lie dead, or in your case dying, banished for all eternity. What of the fifth?”

“Nyvengaal?” Pode’s brow crinkled in a delicate frown, but she said no more.

“The oldest of Alerian and Haidian archives speak of a hooded mage inclined to necromancy. I believe that was likely an aspect of Xem’zund’s powers that the dark elves and the daemons grafted to him when he attacked them during the Wars of the Tap.” Touma paused. “Is the reason for your lack of knowledge, for this lack of historical record, related to why you are now called the Forgotten Ones?”

She shook her head, wisps of translucent hair dancing across her forehead, and again did not answer. Touma held her unyielding glare a moment longer than necessary before continuing.

“Very well. Second.” Again his finger travelled across each piece in turn. “Hromagh. V’dralla. Khal’jaren. Jomil. Y’edda.”

His tone turned questioning.

“Draconus?”

Again Pode only shook her head, refusing any further answer. Perhaps she truly did not know, or perhaps she laboured under a geas compelling her not to speak of the matter. More likely she refused to feed him further answers without recompense. Touma had assumed that Pode, Mistress of Curses, had laid the curse of the Forgotten. Now, he could not be sure at all.

“Third. The favour of the deities was once necessary to access the Tap, and even now proves the easiest path to access its remains. The feats of Wizard Blueraven prove this, as do the legends of High Bard Golan at the Leaguer of Caradin. I would ask, then, what your aid to Golan entailed that you both gave him the power necessary to defeat Aesphestos and also sundered the Tap beyond repair. Did you simply turn him from the Star Pantheon to the Thayne? Or did you corrupt him altogether by some other means?”

He’d struck a nerve. Her countenance flared dark and angry, even as her features continued to age and wither before his eyes.

“Even of the learned so few see beyond us, the Forgotten Ones, as the great threat to Althanas,” she snarled. “Their fear drives them to their wretched gods, the Thayne and the Stars and the Ancients, with prayers for strength and for guidance. But of all deities power-blind and capricious, none are as power-blind and capricious as the great Thayne themselves. For millennia they have held the reins of the world, and the arrogance they have thus accrued far exceeds the aspirations of Aesphestos.

“Had we guided Golan to them they would have ensnared him as a plaything in their little games. They would have left Aesphestos to fester like a weeping sore upon their toy world. So we provided him instead with an enemy to unite them against. Zund, Nyvengaal, Denebriel, and I presented ourselves as the enemy of both Star and Thayne in the great struggle. We spurred those thrice-damned deities to grant him power, and thus made him our pawn. How Draconus bellowed when he learnt the truth! Aye the truth, and how we used Golan to sunder the Tap and to protect ourselves against their wrath.

“Perhaps you might argue that we deserved the backlash we thus incurred, and you would not be wrong. To the mortal cowering in his home we were the great villains of the age, and the Thayne their saviours. In truth, though, how different are we? Only in that they were overt in their victory, and we were not. You might remember that lesson, Serpent Tamer.”

“I might,” Touma agreed.

“Looking back upon those times, if anything the games of the Thayne were of greater consequence than ours. They sacrificed the last of their true rivals, the Star Pantheon, to buy time during the War of the Tap. One after another we slaughtered them, until only a handful still remain today. But, for you, it might be a good thing we did so. How do Xem’zund’s arts compare to those of Selana and her precious Wanderers in Starlight? They too would feed upon the departed souls of their own kind to fuel their magicks on the Firmament. They too would possess their comrades in battle only to leave them as empty husks of ash and singed cloth. And when they did not have enough of their own blood to offer as sacrifice...”

“You considered it important enough to deal with them, even if it meant playing along to the tune of the Thayne?”

“Perhaps,” Pode laughed without mirth. “When Denebriel went mad she tried to recreate the lost Stars as the Ethereal Sway, and walked the same paths of soul possession and sacrifice that they did. She ate all her abominations in her desperation to live, but her choir of discord filled her stomach only long enough for Rayse Valentino and Teric Barton to cut her down. It was, after all, but a lesser copy of the Truth. Remember that too, Serpent Tamer.”

She paused, regarding him with intent.

“Yet I digress. Your fourth question?”

“N’Thayn’sal, the Time of Ending, the Days of Torrent.”

“Ah. Of course. You did make sure to remind me what you fought against, when we met before in my Lindequalme.” The Red Witch sat back, as if Touma had finally approached the heart of the matter. Again her eyes turned cryptic and sad. “I can tell you only this. N’Thayn’sal is and is not the Cataclysm you seek to prevent. It is a chain of apocalypses, one after another, brought about by the Fallen to destroy the world as we know it. It is a series of dark portents, of quests doomed to end in vain, strewn in the path of a blighted raven fluttering broken-winged across the lands. It is a world where Raiaera falls to the bloody-eyed banner. Where Salvar tears itself apart in fanaticism and in madness. Where tides of darkness swallow Cathay whole, and thousands of war-boots trample the jungles of Dheathain, and Corone drowns beneath the waves of its strife. It is a world where gods die like leaves in the arctic wind. Where stars extinguish like candle-flames in a tsunami. Where the Disciples stalk the land, titans of wrath and destruction sowing seeds of destruction in their wake. Where the bones of Althanas’s greatest heroes moulder in rotten heaps, long since forgotten.

“It is a world almost as dangerous as the nightmare that you know may come.”

She sighed as his brow furrowed, as her words failed to convey the meaning that she sought.

“Unfortunately I no longer have a fraction of the power of all the Thayne combined, and cannot do for you what they did for the Wizard Blueraven. But perhaps, now that we are alone… yes. Perhaps I can provide a second perspective on what the daemon Natosatael showed you.”

Her palm opened in his face.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

Breathe!

He lay on his back, paralysed beneath the dripping blood moon. All around him the chaos raged, the last desperate stand of mortal life against its uncaring, unfeeling aggressor.

Breathe, damn the Thayne!

He couldn’t feel his legs. He couldn’t feel his arms. But he could feel the wet cold spreading from his pulverised torso, as though some wayward titan had used him as a punching bag. How could he have been so stupid? Cornered and pummelled like some common beast? It made no sense. None at...

Breathe! It is not, can not be, your time to pass!

His eyes focused. Over him loomed a figure armoured in liquid silver, her torn wings as black as the starless night, her features flawless even in battered bloodied bruising. Silmeria’s tears glistened and spilled as he returned to the world of the living.

Praise...

A passing abomination split open her skull, splattering him with blood and brain and other unmentionable gore. His head pounded in empathetic pain. How it pounded.

This is not the world of N’Thaynsal.

“No,” he told the voice, the voice of himself from ages past.

This is not the world where everything that could have gone wrong, has. Not the world of Aesphestos reincarnated and enthroned upon the Citadel, not the world where Aurient forsakes the elven peoples in the Kilya Gorge. Not the world where a thousand other apocalypses wreak vengeance upon the fabric of reality.

“No,” Touma Kamikaji replied. “No, but still the Cataclysm occurs.”

He looked to the heavens, where black miasma ate away at the last of the stars from the eastern horizon. The word ‘extinguished’ did not convey the sudden violence of their death. One minute they lived. The next they died, wrenched from the heavens and flung into the fathomless void. The moon burnt in crimson fire that barely illuminated a second round object in the sky, stone-cold and frozen in time.

Is that...?

“The sun,” he told himself, gripping his sword with the last of his strength. He dared not look down at his own body, at the lifeblood that seeped from his stomach to the barren dirt below. He would die here tonight, of that he was sure. The only thing left to decide was how.

Staggering forth, he hurled himself once more at his shapeless foes. They danced in the hazy heat of a sky-high wall of flame behind him, laughing at one man’s attempt at a final stand for the one he loved. Forms of shadow and ash slipped from his grasp, and even when he landed a solid blow it only delayed their advance for a heartbeat or two. They killed as they fought – without emotion, without mercy. Their touch eroded the bodies of their foes, a necrotic rot that ate hungrily at steel and flesh alike.

The Fraternity?

Touma glanced to his right, at the pile of half-formed corpses dissolving into churned mud. A dark black eye accused him without words, and a muscular arm still gripped a jewelled battle-axe in defiant defeat. Half a broken black wing crowned the knoll upon which their foes had overwhelmed them.

The Chosen?

This time Touma looked left, downhill where the sheer magnitude of the defeat soon became clear. He spotted stray crimson scales from Akiyoshi’s armoured hide, tarnished beneath the flaming moon. The gilded shield of Glorfindel the Golden lay alongside the battered breastplate of Grandmaster Jehan Leitdorf. Nanashi’s flames flickered behind him one last time, before they too quenched with a terrible finality. A hundred shades and more swarmed the wandering scholar, blotting him from existence. The world plunged into darkness.

That just left two alive on Althanas, aside from he.

Aurora held her ground to the last. They showed her no quarter.

Then they cornered and butchered Kayu before his eyes, and he could do nothing but watch.

Really. What in the name of all that I’ve fought for am I doing?

“After all, how often is it that one gets to know the circumstances of one’s death?” Touma Kamikaji asked as the shadows rushed to claim him.

How many times do you remember? the voice of his distant past answered.

Then he thrust his sword into his own throat.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

He had experienced such illusions before, his first at the tender age of eight. He had long since learned not to flinch at the nightmare of his own death. But his stoic demeanour belied the pale fear as the blood drained from his face, the sweat on his palms as they fought not to ball into tight fists.

Even if he did not set a foot wrong in preventing N’Thaynsal, the Cataclysm might still snuff out a billion lives in a heartbeat.

So what could he do?

Would he still watch the world burn?

“And now I must ask you this in turn, Touma Kamikaji. One apocalypse or a thousand. Which would you choose? Which will you bring?”

His attention returned to the shards of Pode’s mirror, to his Fraternity as they fought to protect him against the Raiaeran incursion. For now Silmeria and Ginuvo had the advantage of the higher ground, but the Dirgedancers would soon find a way around that. If they disrupted Angelus and Hiroyuki, he would no longer have a means of severing Pode’s remnant power from her spiritual avatar. She would obliterate him in a heartbeat, and choose to die at the hands of the elves instead.

So would he retreat, now before the tides turned?

Would he abandon the fate of the world for the sake of the elves and their petty vengeance upon Pode?

And yet still they fight.

He watched as Ginuvo lobbed rubble from the fallen chimerosphynxes at the wall of shields advancing up the stairs of Pode’s ziggurat. He watched as Silmeria winged low across the surrounding marshland, occupying the elven archers in a deadly dance of shaft and spell. He watched as Angelus and Hiroyuki continued to channel their efforts into maintaining the null field, as Phillipe stood his ground at the templum doors with one hand resting on the hilt of his rapier, as Leon reclined against the gateway arch and strung his bow in preparation for battle.

Why did they follow him? Why did Silmeria care? Why was Phillipe so loyal? Why had Leon chosen him over the flames of Ninedrakes? Why did Ginuvo seek death in his name? Why did Angelus and Hiroyuki set aside their mutual hatred to cooperate for his sake?

He watched them fight their respective wars, searing their efforts into his mind like a brand upon the flesh of a slave. He knew the answer was simple, one that he had given Pode only moments before. He led them, and they followed. The question was not whether he would fight. The question was how.

He turned back to Pode, alone and aged and holed up against the world. He thought of what she had lost, in particular after the Sundering of the Tap and her rift with Xem’zund. He thought of how some of his contemporaries, even now, wandered in self-imposed exile and failed to fight the approaching darkness.

His hands gripped the hilt of his blade.

“As the Wizard Blueraven once said, I will not compromise. I will allow no apocalypse, no N’Thaynsal, no Cataclysm, to take from me the world that is rightfully mine.”

Pode laughed from toothless gums. Her voice whispered through her sanctum, a breath of wind stirring the long-forgotten dust.

“Do be careful, Touma, when you declare your intent so. Words have power, and such power reaches the ears of those who would seek to twist it to their own means, those not so different from yourself. In uttering those words the Wizard Blueraven himself was forever bound to the will of the Thayne. You know that your patron is one of few that might still challenge them, and this gives you confidence. But remember that the Angel of the North plays this game too, and the Elder under Stone, and those of the Star Pantheon who still cling to existence.

“The world is set to fall again into chaos. It awaits a new breed of conquerors, a new generation of Forgotten Ones. Will you be one of their number, Touma Kamikaji?”

Her bony fingers shook as she held out the Black Queen.

“Will you defy the will of the gods?”

Touma took it from her without hesitation.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

The elven onslaught forced the eclipse overhead into retreat, exposing wan sunlight to the world once more. In the mirrors his Fraternity had broken the first Raiaeran charge. But Silmeria sported charred grazes from arrows that had speared past too close for comfort, and Ginuvo had run out of ancient debris to hurl at his attackers. Touma knew that he could delay no longer.

“I studied your exploits, Pode, and those of your compatriots, in great depth. I sought to learn from your mistakes, swearing never to fall into the same traps. I thank you for your instruction, even at this time of dire need.”

He inclined his upper body, just so, as he addressed the Forgotten One for the last time. With deliberate, ominous grace he rose to his feet, towering over the shrunken witch. She made no move to oppose him.

“Aesphestos the Starkiller died in the pyre of his pride. Saint Denebriel perished in the throes of her madness. Xem’zund, Dread Necromancer, battered himself against his cage of love and hate until naught but a wispy shadow.”

A wisp of humour creased Pode’s lips. “And I?”

“Your sins are lethargy and sloth, Pode. You have power, but you lack purpose. Perhaps it was Xem’zund’s blade in your back that brought this upon you, I do not know. It may have been Aesphestos’s death, or Denebriel’s descent into insanity. Likely it was something before that still: forever you have wandered, and observed, and mentored, and collected. But never have you left your mark upon the land, save the one time that, in your own words, it went horribly wrong. And yet, given that I stand before you now, horribly right.”

Darksteel whispered upon lacquered ebony as it emerged into azure flame. If he so wanted, Touma could have taken Pode’s head from her shoulders in a single blinding stroke. But the ceremony of the moment denied him such discourteous behaviour, and he knew that she appreciated the ritual as well.

“Earlier in the Lindequalme, when you tried to disillusion me, you accused me of guilt. Guilt that I had failed to save everybody that had crossed my path, guilt that thousands had died in my wake. I level that same accusation at you, Pode. At first you cursed the Red Forest to save Xem’zund, but when that failed you continued to curse it, all the better to keep your distance from the world. And only now, now that your friends have perished and your enemies have emerged victorious, only now do you lay down that burden.”

She smiled at the accusation, a soft and sad smile. Her last words emerged as a croak from parched, shrivelled throat.

“Did you know, Touma Kamikaji, that I cursed the Flames of Hyperion when he wandered northwards through my land? I cursed him never to know when to give up. You, of all people, would know how cruel that was.”

Indeed Touma did, given Nanashi’s blind determination to walk the path of selfless sacrifice. Not that Pode’s curse would have done anything but enhance a curse that already existed. Red Witch or not, the younger man would still have found himself in the mid-winter wastes of Berevar, doomed to die a thousand deaths of exposure and cold.

“Now I curse you, the Whispers of Abyssion, always to know, and not always to be able to do anything with that knowledge. Perhaps, thus, you can walk your path without fear. After all it is my curse to blame for your failures, not your own mortal limitations.”

Touma bowed again, and for once it was a sincere and grateful bow. Pode, the last of the known Forgotten, deserved nothing less than his full respect.

“We will Remember those who were Forgotten,” he said.

Then he struck her head from her body.

Crimson mists sighed as her headless torso slumped to the floor. It lingered there for only a moment longer before the tethers binding it to the Firmament began to fade. The last remnants of her spiritual energy dissipated into nothing.

The last he saw of her features was a peaceful smile.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

Don’t preach to me of ‘debt’ and ‘sacrifice’, daemon.

Have you ever seen your life poised on the edge of a precipice, peering into the depths of an infinite abyss?

I have.

Have you ever dashed your hopes and dreams against the unyielding rock of reality, and tried to piece them back together again as they swim through your open fingers?

I have.

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night, tears pouring down your face as you scream her name?

I have.

I spit on your ‘promises’. I spit on your ‘deals’. I spit on all of your ‘traditions’.

This is my path to walk.

My world to save.

Do you have it in you to follow me?

Touma Kamikaji, aged 13
The Night of Nefarious Flame
Inscribed in blood on the Academy gates

***

“It is done?” the daemon asked from nowhere. Coruscant light gleamed in the congealed plaque of its rows of serrated fangs. The many leathery folds of its ancient face bathed in the crimson of the dying mana vortex. Four serpent-like eyes watched as Pode’s gift stabilised the extraplanar prison containing the Disciple of the Dark Goddess. It inhaled a lungful of cinnamon and smiled to itself, strangely pleased.

“It is done,” Touma Kamikaji replied from atop the ruined central spire of the Temple of Sublime Tranquillity. Somewhere in the heavens above the Young Star Selana snarled, that he would defile her sanctum so not once, but for the second time. He fingered the mask liberated from the depths of Pode's templum, now tethered at his waist to his belt, and laughed inside at her powerless fury.

The last of the liquid crimson drained from the Black Queen as he spoke, once more rendering it a lifeless piece of crafted glass. Its hair no longer gleamed a vibrant red, nor its eyes the same emerald that had pierced his soul at this very spot. A pair of cracks worked across its smooth features, jagged edges of destruction that soon sundered the piece into a myriad obsidian shards. Even these dissipated as fine ash into the steady westerly, blowing into the mourning dawn from Twilit Peaks to Roiling Sea.

“And so fades the last of Pode, the Mistress of Curses, the Crimson Witch.” Natosatael din’Pholoris might have sighed, if not entranced by the shimmering spiral that anchored the Disciple’s prison to the Lindequalme. “She was right, you know. I would have enjoyed witnessing her demise.”

“Of course,” Touma nodded. “And then you would have eviscerated me for demanding your presence at such a trivial matter. Pode was already dead. The High Bards and their peons saw to that. I merely dealt with the last of her lingering regret and guilt.”

“And granted her a measure of redemption.” Natosatael bared its fangs. “You are right. I would have killed you on the spot if you had invited me there.”

Despite the chill racing down his spine, Touma’s eyes never wavered beneath Natosatael’s sibilant threat. Observing for a moment longer to ensure that the vortex remained stable, he turned to face his master and slave in practiced, hawkish nonchalance.

“You had more important things to attend to.” He paused, then asked, “How long?”

“Five years,” the daemon guessed without hesitation. It scratched one of its flabby chins in a contemplative mannerism acquired from centuries of deceiving the lesser mortal races. Muscular, hooved legs folded beneath its bronzed torso as it floated a hundred metres from the ground. “Three if the Council makes good on their pledge to continue the cleansing.”

Already the bloodoaks at the base of the vortex withered, faded and forlorn, sapped of the crimson colouration that gave them their name. Within weeks the leeching would spread to the elf camps to the north; within months, it would consume the whole Lindequalme. In three years, then, the bards would have restored their precious Belegwain i Beleg. And apocalyptic devastation would once again roam the heart of their nation.

“Do you not fear that they might release the Benevolent before that time?” As ever, Natosatael read Touma’s thoughts with the ease with which he might have skinned a child. The mortal shook his shaggy mop of dirty brown hair, letting unwashed unkempt locks stream in the wind.

“Blinded they may be by their own vanity and glory,” he said, “but stupid they are not. The Star Pantheon will not allow them. Too much lies at stake.”

A violent thunderclap echoed through the cloudless skies, as if furious that a mere mortal - and a lowly edan at that - would presume to impose upon the gods. Neither Touma nor Natosatael paid it any head. The elven deities had little choice in the matter if they wished to protect their people. The fading relics of a dying race concerned them not.

“In which case,” the daemon purred, “you have saved Raiaera, for now.”

It did not mention the dire straits in which the nation still found itself: civil war and schism, remnant undead hordes, corrupting plagues. Neither did it mention the sacrifice of the world’s foremost arcane practitioner to buy them those three paltry years. If Raiaera did not overcome the many obstacles upon its path to stability and strength, then little would save Althanas. No doubt Touma would manoeuvre the Fraternity into aiding the elves, for a united and glorious Raiaera would form the best bulwark against the dark times to come.

In the meantime, though, the world needed the Serpent Tamer elsewhere.

“Where next?”

Touma Kamikaji turned into the breeze, lowering his left hand to the scabbard at his hip and Pode’s mask of sorrow that dangled there. Light linen robs flapped about his sandaled feet as he indicated the mountains in the distance.

“Alerar.”

All about him the crimson curse continued to drain from the Lindequalme, spilling to the parched earth like arboreal tears. But his lip only curled, halfway up his gaunt right cheek in curious triumph.

For when bloodoaks weep, serpents smile.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

Five years ago, I had the honour of taking charge of the final chapter of the Raiaeran Featured Quest, the Corpse War. I brought an end to the Spring of Retribution Dawning with a climactic battle against the Forgotten One Xem’zund, which gave rise to the legendary Dawnbringers. In doing so, however, I somewhat fumbled the Dread Necromancer’s characterisation. It took Caden Law, in his JC-awarded story The Red Requiem in Cresting Summer, to do him justice. I’ve felt somewhat guilty ever since.

This is one step towards assuaging that guilt.

We will Remember those who were Forgotten.

[Philomel]

Title of Thread: When Serpents Smile
Judgement Type: Workshop Thread
Participant: Whispers of Abyssion

Rewards (based on 17 posts as the last was OOC):

Whispers of Abyssion receives:
2065 EXP
221 GP

[Hysteria]

GP and EXP added!