All of them told her she was the key. Her Godsblood. She was the balance.
Gazing upward through the emerald light, she saw the statue of Mother Marrow. Even down deep in the ground, she saw it. The majesty. The elegance of nature. The iridescent beauty of creation.
Balance.
A pulmo cough escaped her lips but the fiery tattoos upon her flesh brushed aside the burn inside of her. Aether swam in her veins as the mist swirled like a cyclone about her bare feet. Everything was balanced about her. Life and Death.
Now she understood, truly understood. With that knowledge came a grin.
“Life and Death,” she whispered, as her aetheurgy billowed out of her like a bonfire. She hefted the greenish hammer in her left fist, the runes upon the haft and the diamond eye in her palm turned white-hot. With her other hand, she reached outward toward the owl-shaped black dagger lying beside her mother. The daemonic blade whooshed from the pooling blood and connected with her palm.
A ghastly voice from beyond the veil to the Meadows spoke, “HELLO, GODSBLOOD. A PLEASURE IT’LL BE TO SERVE YOU.”
Lu Har blinked once before trying to bring his aetheurgy alive, but she was faster. The daemonic blade sunk into the Fallen’s innards as Ashe screamed. Aether, pure and uncorrupt, poured from her mouth as the black Void Form of the Pit-wrought blade seared the Fallen’s flesh in a blast of black-red. Both aetheurgies of Life and Death, of Eminence and Noctis funneled into the elfir, lifting him off the ground as if he was weightless. With a heave, Ashe threw him across the chamber, away from her family and their friends, away from the downed vicars who were hers.
The Fallen tried to stand, but Ashe was already bringing the white-hot hammer down upon the Seal of Terris. A flash of blinding green, the Seal, followed by the emerald altar, shattered into a million shards, a rainbow of colors exploding forth, every spectrum known in nature.
“NOOOO!” the Fallen wailed.
The ground swelled under them with such conviction. The beam of light expanded, sending her backwards as the ground exploded as a great mass emerged, so large it swallowed half of the chamber as it rose, including the Fallen, the altar, and the broken Seal. The greatness burst through the ceiling, upward straight through the Temple, clear into canyon. Straight upward into Gargantua.
It wasn’t until Ashe cursed before she realized what the bulk was. It was a terrisvvyrm.
The vvyrm, all grey and earthen brown flesh, with its keratin protrusions and gaping mouth, was easily three hundred feet as it heaved upward from underground, colliding with the floating fortress of doom, piercing the stony underbelly. Other vvyrms rose from the dunes, crashing into the Fallen’s soldiers and war machines. The behemoth roared as its mouth unfurled upon the metal innards of Gargantua. Shooting through like an arrow, swallowing tower and spire alike, rising past the blackened mist of the void, splitting the fortress in twain as Mother Marrow’s aether ripped through like firebolts. Emerald aether sparking and discharging through the Fallen’s fortress.
For the briefest of instances, from below the Temple, Ashe saw Zenith’s sunlight high overhead. A calmness.
Then, the great draconem reached its apex, its roar a finality, and began to fall. Like a tree felled in the forest, the vvyrm crashed into the canyon—thankfully away from Ashe and everyone in the ritual chamber. The bulk crushed the outer rim, sending sand and stone launching into the Sea of Mist. The other vvyrms all fell, dead in a circle around the canyon. The blackened fog retreated, leaving only the soft grey.
Both halves of Gargantua toppled down amongst the Temple’s grounds, sending further aftershocks rippling through as the emerald aether of the Forgemistress of Creation continued its havoc. Walls of perfect interlocking marble shattered in a spider’s web of cracks and divots. The husk of the flying fortress burned as buildings collapsed upon themselves, spires and outer walls breaking under the stress of the holy aetheric heat. Fires high into the sky, aethecite fuel creating the source. Smoke as dense as mushy dung billowed, filling everything with near-black haze. Dust and tremors across the dunes, wiping away entire mounds, flattening the landscape in a busted semi-circle all around Her Temple.
Ashe’s mouth was still agape when an airship appeared over the gigantic hole left by the vvyrm. A shaggy-haired woman was at the rail, waving down. “You bloody buggers need any godsdamned help? Stray Cat?”
She began to laugh at the absurdity of it all.
Her mother lay coughing, her face ashen, blood spilled everywhere. Sadness filled Ashe, her laughter subsided, knowing that she would never know the woman behind the drake scale armor. Never know her mother the way a child would desire.
The drakken with the horns brought her father near, setting him beside her mother. He was barely breathing. Cadrianna’s hand reached out toward Emre, gently pushing back his curls, speaking softly before she balled up with another cough.
Ruane lingered behind while the Kanjan elfir tended to his bikromi sister. Cyan and Harlequin stirred.
“Brynn,” her mother said as Ashe crawled over to her. Ashe lifted the woman’s head, hugging to her breast. Cadrianna gripped her arms and held on with all the fleeting strength remaining. “My… Brynn.”
“Mother…”
“Forgive… me.” She coughed, blood spilling down her lips, reminding Ashe of her own affliction. Her mother’s eyes found hers, all-onyx focused on all-white. “Please…Strix… over her.”
Her mother nodded in her arms after a moment as the daemon blade’s voice sounded in Ashe’s mind. “YOU KNOW I WILL, CAD. I ALREADY KNOW SHE WILL BE JUST AS FUN AS YOU WERE.”
Emre Benld’s hand found Cadrianna’s upon Ashe’s arm. And for a moment, they were a family again. Fleeting as it might be.
A wry smile came to Ashe’s face as she looked around at those within the chamber, at her parents, etching their faces into her memory. “Guess they better call him the Flyin’ instead of the Fallen now.” There were groans from the others, her parents’ shoulders both lifted in soft amusement. Even close to death, they found the humor. Gallows though it may be. “Wait, what about the Swallowed?”
Her father laughed the best he could, wincing as his life ebbed away, his stare wandering toward the Meadows. “Just as…funny…as…mother.”
“Funnier… right… Strix…” her mother struggled. “Forgive… you… Emre…”
Both Ashe’s mother and father smiled, the three forever bound together. Tears crept down her cheeks as she held both while the last breaths left them. The family she had always wanted.
Finally found.
The Desert City of Drenth
AT THE STERN of the airship, an orphan girl with the trueborn name of Brynn Benld watched as the Sea of Mist closed about the mega-city of Drenth like a curtain dropping after a fine performance.
Like a crown of swords, the famed city jutted from the dunes, but instead of blades, were sky risen buildings that no longer had a giant shadow overhead. Once home to the aethecite mines, but those were now caved in and buried deep under the great desert with the last remnants of the magnificent terrisvvyrms as headstones. At least a dozen of the vvyrms were now entombed, the last of the largest draconem. Drenth’s outer walls were already being pummeled by an early dawnbreak sandstorm, a raging vortex imbued by the aetheric mist of the surrounding Sea.
The girl gripped the railing with a bangled left hand, fingering the handle of a black steel blade with her right. “Home,” she whispered to the mega-city as it disappeared into the grey.
Home.
For so long, the girl had sought that elusive place that she could call her home. Now she could, no, now she would. Home was where a family placed their roots, it didn’t matter where, just where the family was, that was home.
And Drenth was home for her. Now and forever.
“YOUR MOTHER USED TO HATE THIS CITY, KNOWING WHAT HAD HAPPENED TO YOU AND YOUR FATHER.”
