“Brynn.” Cadrianna’s head lulled toward Ashe. “My Brynn…” more crying. “Please. O Strix, stop the pain… never trust the… Bliss… the Pentax… O, the pain…”
Ashe staggered like she was hit with a thousand-pound hammer. She looked at her hand, the one with the Eye of the Soul. It radiated heat, diamond flickering prism, each gemstoned ring near bursting with light. The ground shook. The entire Temple pulsed. The altar of emerald quaked. A verdant ray shot from the altar, shooting upward through the chamber ceiling, up through the very Temple of Mother Marrow itself. Blinding and strong. The Seal at her waist yearned for the holy luminescence.
“Choice you have, Godsblood,” Lu Har was saying through the blaze of green. “Break the Seals or be consumed by the fire. That is no lie. Balance there must be, Solanine held no lie there. Break the Seals. Give balance. Or there will be suffering for more than just these whom you love.” He motioned toward her mother, toward her father dying in the drakken’s arms. To the others she didn’t know.
“She will do no such thing,” her father said softly.
“And yet you, her loving father, held the knowledge from her. This makes you better than I?”
Ashe looked between the two. “Father?”
The bikrome stepped forward. “A necessity. Knowledge she wasn’t yet ready to possess, Fallen. You’d weigh her down with the entirety of it without her able.”
“Who you calling able?” Ashe demanded in heated agitation, it’s not like she wasn’t standing right there.
“Child, you were, you needed to grow,” the handsome bikrome continued, remembering how she had cradled her as a babe through the potential fates of the future. The bikrome of the present raised the hammer in her hands, the silver and gold bracelets flickering in the green light shooting through the Temple. “Needed to learn on your own, without the restriction of knowledge. Think, Brynn Benld. Don’t let his words sway you. Trust in yourself.” She smiled.
Then the bikrome sprang into action, aetheurgy coming to life in her hands.
A blink of lashes, agonizingly slow, and the bikrome whipped out her arm, swirling waves of the mist rode the dozens of bikromi seer sight bracelets, her fingers summoning aether. An audible pop as the essence of the fire’s lifeforce came alive with Ignis. Flames licking, growing, and melting down the walls like a waterfall of liquid fire.
The earth under them trembled greatly.
A giant wave of mist crashed behind Ashe, like a tidal of grey aether spurred by Aere. It struck, chipping stone and flutes alike. Debris rained down on her as the Fallen thrust aetheurgy of his own at the bikrome, using the black fog as his weapon, squelching the fiery aether. Coming to life, the haze turned opaque, hardened like marble yet malleable and deadly.
Ashe recoiled. Cadrianna whined upon the wall, crying out the name ‘Strix’ over and over. The elfirish man and the drakken siblings moved for cover.
Arm raised to ward off the dust and marble chips, the bikrome flung the coiled mist using Aquis from the sweat now drenching her face. Like the greatest storm upon the ancient seas, the mist wetly rose, a wall stopping the attacking wave, two living barriers colliding and dissipating upon touching.
The bikrome yanked the dust, twirling her fingers and sharpening the particles, sending it flying down the hall like a thousand tiny arrows. But the Fallen’s aetheurgy broke the barrage with Aere. Then the most powerful aetheurgist in the land cradled Ignis and Aere together, flung it out toward the bikrome. Prepared, the bikrome was not, the full brunt of the two Tenets of Aether hit her and sent her sprawling. Unconscious. Breathing still.
The Hammer clattered upon the stone at Ashe’s feet, the Seal urging her toward it.
The ground was shaking so hard, Ashe wondered if the Temple would cave in above them.
Lu Har appeared contrite, annoyed even, his ruby red robe covered in dust from the Temple’s walls. He turned to Ashe. “Time it is, Godsblood. Your choice before you. Maintain the balance or bring the world into everlasting suffering.”
“Zenith’s cock, I thought I was done with this shit.” Ashe knew there was only one choice. She looked toward her mother pinned to the wall by that strange owl blade. To her father now lying on the ground, his eyes half lidded. To the pair of growling drakken. Toward the unconscious bikrome and vicars. To the Kanjan. Words meant for the Fallen. “If I break the Seals, will you let them go?”
“That is up to them.”
“Brynn, no. Kill him!” cried her mother.
“What is your choice, child of Nightingale? Kin of mine.”
“Fuck, I’ll do it. I’ll break the fucking Seals to Eminence.”
As the Fallen waved his hands, his aether rushed to do his bidding as the blades of the owl-shaped dagger pulled from her mother’s body. She dropped to the ground and curled up, clutching at her bleeding wounds.
The mist prodded Ashe’s legs, pushing her toward the altar. ‘The mist is your tool, your weapon, your existence. Harness it, be it, and it will serve you.’ She looked toward her father; his words rang true. Trust in the mist, she must. Served her to this point, it will continue to serve. Trust in herself. Choice now made, Canlon Carr would be proud.
The quaking was closer now, shivers sent up Ashe’s legs as she reached for the hammer, hefting it. The tool possessed no weight, simply greenish metal in the shape of a forger. Instantly the runes in its haft began to radiate as the diamond in the Eye of the Soul began to blaze. Her runic tattoos glowing in tune. With her right hand, Ashe lifted the Seal of Terris.
The path now lay before her. A path only for her. The Pentax had chosen her to be their warrior. Chosen her for Eminence. Warrior she must become.
“Brynn!” The green light of Mother Marrow filled Ashe’s vision, shielding her crying mother under the hunter mist. “Please don’t leave me again!”
But she must, “Trust me, Mother.”
“Brynn, no. He is the… father of lies…. never trust…the gods… and Their…” Coughing, dying slowly. “Strix, help…”
The six blades reformed into one, the owl embedded in the cross guard faced her, and the oddest of things happened, Ashe thought she heard the blade speak within the din of her mind and that of the quaking earth. “TRUST.”
With the Seal now in hand, Ashe moved toward the altar, each step a chore as the trembling ground underfoot made it nigh on impossible to walk. Pausing before the vertical green brilliance, she took a deep breath, then stepped into the light, standing before the crystalized table. With the black braided steel Seal held above in both her hands, the hammer in the crook of her elbow, she watched as the circle of emerald in the Seal glimmered in conjunction to the surrounding light, the three other circles of gems fading into shadows.
As had in the Meadows with Solanine, the fruitful lifeforce of Mother Marrow engulfed her. She felt the void of the Pit within the Fallen beside her. Felt the breath of the Forgemistress fleeing both her mother and father. The strong aether flowing in the drakken siblings. Of the others, hearts all beating fiercely, defiantly against the black of the oncoming void.
Deep in the earth underfoot she could feel the true spirit of the world. Of Mother Marrow, the Forgemistress of Creation. That was the quake. Mother Marrow and Her children. The guardian draconem. She knew.
Lu Har leaned close, his face bespeaking what his aura didn’t: pride, eagerness, victory. “Do it, Godsblood.”
She glanced once more at her father, who was barely awake. His lips moved, but no sound emanated. His aura was a wildfire of sapphire, as if he knew what she had in mind. A barely perceptible nod of agreement.
“What do I do?”
“Place the Seal upon the chantry.” Ashe did as told and placed the circular braided steel into the indent upon the altar. The glow of mid-summer forest leaves grew so bright she had to look away. The ground underfoot stopped rumbling. “Place the Eye upon it, channel all your anger, all your rage into the Eye. Your aether will pass through Noctis, claiming it as your own.”
Ashe held out her hand bathed in the greenish glow, the Eye in the bangle around her wrist reflected a thousand mirrors of her own face. She recalled her meeting with Canlon Carr, the Last Godsking. With her father. With Solanine.
