“And out of fear they killed him,” said Fionn. “But from your own lust for revenge, you killed far, far more. You sought the power of the gods, but would you have done so if you knew the Truth of Seletoth’s nature? Would you still endeavour to become like Him?”

“No…” whispered Morrígan. “I… I just wanted to feel… something.”

“And you could have,” said Fionn. “If you had broken away from Yarlaith and embraced the love of your friends in Roseán, you would have felt far more than what you do now. You had a chance.”

Then Fionn conjured another image, the day Morrígan and Yarlaith succeeded in raising Aoife Ní Branna from the dead, but before Morrígan went downstairs to help, she tended to Darragh, who had injured his hand with a meat cleaver earlier that day, and Morrígan healed it and he thanked her and gave her a necklace, and from this gesture, Morrígan regained some humanity, a mote of compassion, for Darragh shared with her the loss of his own mother, and Morrígan recognised for a moment that circumstance of his loss may have been worse than her own and for a moment she forgot about the catacombs and the experiments and the Necromancy, but then she remembered, she remembered the sanctuary she sought from grief, and in seeking it she left Darragh alone, and later that night, Darragh took his mother’s necklace back from Morrígan with the last of his dying strength, as Morrígan’s undead horde burned the village and slew its villagers.

Morrígan looked up to Fionn. “Darragh… I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do now….”

“The Simians are sailing across the Eternal Sea,” said Fionn. “They seek a new world to the west. Two Humans are travelling south, far from here, there are creatures that someday may form a civilisation. If we want to give them a chance of ever flourishing, of ever doing better than we did… we must leave them.”

“Yes,” Morrígan said, standing. “I hold the souls of Meadhbh and King Diarmuid. And you, that of Seletoth. If we cannot die, how can we let these people live their lives without this terrible power?”

Abruptly, Fionn lunged forward, and embraced Morrígan. She buried her face into his shoulder, and he felt the dampness of her tears upon his skin. Fionn bent his knees and launched them both upwards.

“We keep going up,” he said. “As high as we can go. Until we can’t go any higher.”

Realisation dawned Morrígan’s face.

“To the firmament,” she said, aloud. “To the void from where Seletoth came from.”

Both of their wings unfurled, and both accelerated their ascent to the skies above. Wisps of clouds streaked past, and the air around them quickly grew thinner.

Once the last of the clouds vanished, Fionn turned around, to stare down at the land he was leaving behind.

He recognised Alabach straight away. Warped and broken, with a great crack in its surface from north to south, the kingdom he had once known well now seemed so tiny and insignificant amongst the rest of the world. To the west, the Eternal Sea did not go on forever, but ended at a landmass far larger than Alabach. To the south, unfamiliar lands stretched all the way to the far end of the earth. Grey ice covered the majority of the land, but further on, to the land that he had directed Padraig and Aislinn to, plains of gold and green prevailed.

“This is it,” whispered Morrígan to Fionn. As they went upwards, the air grew thin and colder than anything the Grey Plague had brought. “If we keep on going, we won’t be able to return. We’ll have no control of where we go. And like Seletoth, we’ll plummet blindly through Eternity.”

“I know,” said Fionn, as darkness surrounded them. The world now seemed so small; a tiny disk of blue surrounded by darkness. “But Seletoth eventually came upon a world, our world, which he brought life to.”

“And if we come across the same, will we do as He did?”

“No,” said Fionn, embracing Morrígan as the dim light of the world vanished behind them. “We’ll do so much better.”

***

As the two gods departed, They spoke to those who still lived. Both voices entwined boomed like a song from the heavens, and all who heard Them rejoiced. It brought encouragement to two Humans who were setting on a frightful journey south. It brought hope to the hearts of the Simians and Humans sailing westwards, and they cheered and prayed and sang along with words of their own.

Though one lone Simian did not open his heart to the music, for his eyes remained fixed eastwards, on the land he was leaving behind. He looked on at the smoking ruin that was once Mount Selyth, and he wept for all of those he lost.

As powerful as the Tapestry of Fate was, there was one who had always evaded its threads. And he did so even now. The departing gods assumed him dead, but who were They to assume anything, after all that had happened?

And the lone Simian who did not sing to Their song saw something even They could not see. Perhaps it was a secret magic of his people, or perhaps it was something stronger and more ancient than even Seletoth Himself. But this lone Simian saw something among the smoking ruins of that mountain. And he was sure of it.

He frantically called for help, and even as the others aboard let the melody of the gods fill their hearts with so much courage and so much joy, Argyll the Silverback hoped they still harboured some fear in there for him. For it would take the fear he used to wield in Penance to turn this ship around.

Because his friend still lived.

Epilogue:

Journal of Padraig Tuathil

Dearest Journal,

It has been far too long since I last put a pen to your pages. After all that has happened, I am still the same man that filled the space between your covers with complaints about the City Guard. About the love I had and lost for Aideen. About the night the horde came to Cruachan. And all the insanity that followed afterwards. When I last left an entry here, we had reached Rosca Umhír, but the Lady Carríga interrupted my entry. After this, we climbed Mount Selyth, but Nicole and Farris died in the ascent. As we tended to Farris’s injuries, Fionn went to Seletoth’s chamber to request the god’s help. But before he emerged, a great explosion tore through the chamber, and indeed the peak of the mountain was blown asunder.

Knocked unconscious, myself and Lady Carríga awoke to see Fionn appear as a god, who told us to travel far south to seek a new world. He did not answer our questions, and fled northwards instead.

Collecting what we could from the remnants of the mountain settlement, we started on our journey south, on horseback, across a frozen sea. And when the horses couldn’t go on, we went by foot. First, we came to a new land that had also fallen to the Grey Plague, but we carried on south. And alas, just as we were about to give up hope, the ice retreated. We found ourselves in a land of wide plains and tall trees. As alien as this landscape was to us, one thing was for certain: this was a place capable of sustaining life. Our arduous journey had come to an end. But what we found next proved more challenging than anything we had come across before.

Fionn spoke of Simians to the south, and we found a band of them soon enough. We observed them from a distance at first, nomads travelling across the grasslands, hunting and gathering in packs. When we were certain they were not a threat, we introduced ourselves.

They are a simple people, far more primitive than the Simians of Alabach, communicating with a very basic dialect. Fortunately, by standing before them, unarmed, with my palms spread wide, they recognised that we meant no harm. They also must have identified that we’re like them in many ways, as despite the language barrier, they welcomed us into their tribe. If ‘tribe’ would even be the correct word.

Much time has passed since then. We’ve grown quite close to these Simians and have managed to break through the barriers of communication. Aislinn speaks to them about the Trinity, and about the Love of the Lord and the Light of the Lady, but I wonder how much actually gets through to them. Though, it has been a long time since I saw another Human, and these people seem to become more like us with each passing day, from the way they walk, to the manners of their grunting speech. If Aislinn has aimed to teach them what it means to be Human, she’s done an astounding job. Hopefully, they don’t take on our worst traits, and learn to live without greed and misery. We thought them other practical things, like how to create a fire, how to cook food, and most importantly, how to farm. Although it required much patience from both us and them, when these primitive people saw that they could create food from the ground itself, they no longer needed to roam. With them, we settled, exchanging hide-yurts for wattle-and-daub huts, growing their community from a mere few dozen to the population of a village, for so many others wanted to come and learn of these strange ways.

Our new life is not without pain, however. Aislinn has taken our burden with a significant amount of grief. What I mean is, we’re both all too aware that we are the last. The final two. If our kind were ever to propagate once more, it would need to start here. At the bond between a man and a woman.

But we have tried. So many times, we have tried. Sometimes driven by love and passion, but often out of pure duty. Each time, Aislinn is certain that my seed will hold, but at the turn of each moon, we learn that we have failed. Now, when we lie in bed at night, I hear her weeping. I’m aware of how a woman’s mind work: she blames herself. And she sees herself as failing not only her own desire to bear children, but of all Humanity as a whole.

I constantly try to re-assure her that it may not be her body’s fault but….

But I know that my own seed is strong. Aideen, back in Cruachan, was bearing my child the night the horde came. Perhaps the fault really does lie with Aislinn….

No. I can’t blame her. Gods, writing this, it’s the first time I’ve recalled the details of that terrible night in Cruachan. I can still hear them, the dead, as they first came over the walls. The scent of burning flesh is still fresh in my nostrils, and I can still taste the king’s thainol on my lips. The drink we shared before the undead broke into the keep. What was it he said, a gift from Farris? From Penance?

But I digress. It never fails to surprise me how such a minute detail like the taste of alcohol can over-shadow such terror. I must not dwell on the past. This shall be my last entry. I’ll live out the rest of my life amongst these Simian-like beings, and maybe someday, when the Grey Plague has gone, we’ll return to Alabach. Until then, I’ll stay by Aislinn’s side. We’ll keep on trying. To bear the first child of this new and frightening world. I believe this is the only thing that’s keeping her going, and I fear that it may be our very last hope. For if we fail, all memory of Alabach and all the people who died will vanish for eternity.

No. We will not fail. If the world is just, and the Lord’s love for us was ever true, we will not fail.

The End

Guide to Alabach, Her Places, and Her People

AC: After Conquest. The Thralls of Fate begins in AC403.

Aislinn Carríga: Lady of Keep Carríga, Rosca Umhír, sister of Sir Bearach and Cathal Carríga.

Aldrich Canal: Simian-built canal connecting the Rustlake to Móráin Sea.

Aoife Ní Branna: Morrígan’s deceased mother. (Ee-fa Nee-Branna)

Ardh Sidhe: One of the Seven Seachtú of Alabach. (Ard Sid-heh)

Argyll the Silverback: Leader of the Simian dissident movement in Penance, formally the head of the Guild of Thieves.

Borris Blackhands: One of the Triad, the governing body of Penance, along with Cathal Carríga and King Diarmuid Móráin III, XIX.