Ashe drew a breath as she rolled up her sleeve to reveal intricate tattoos all along her left forearm. Aetheurgic runes inked in varying colors into her ecru-toned flesh, all of them imbued with the Four Tenets of Aether. Aere, Aquis, Ignis, and Terris. Her Shard Form of aetheurgy inked on her dominant arm by her taskmaster during her time with the Scattered Shards back in Kalderim. The tattooed runes of the Four Tenets were surrounded and connected by smaller runes in a delicate pattern linking body and aether.
The poison fog coalesced, drawn from every nook in the catacombs, forming around her body like a heaving cocoon, soaking in her emotions. She sucked it in like the addictive pipeweed drug, the poison within the aether dancing down her nostrils, flinging about her innards with deadly glee. The runes on her forearm shone in brilliance as she touched their aetheric spark, for that’s all it took.
She snapped her fingers, finally burning her aetheurgy. Spark.
The world exploded outward in an invisible torrent of grey aether. Time stopped as the undulating wave crashed. Evander was frozen, like a statue. His hand still outstretched toward the safe, finger pointing. His eyes narrow in anticipation, soft brown irises under craggy eyebrows, his lips curled upward in a hopeful grin.
Aetheurgy, the magic of burning aether. Her gift. Her curse.
A gateway in the mist yawned in front of her, opening like the air itself parted, the runes along her outer forearm synapsing in the Tenet of Aere. A shimmer, a cut in the fabric of her reality. A clean fissure, a long, elegant slice in time and space followed by piercing screams from the void beyond. Everything hazy, a mirrored image of her world, but only a shadow of itself. A plane in the world of Death.
The Meadows, as those who believed in the Pentax called it, or the void to others, especially those who knelt before Nocturne.
Empty, the Meadows was, regardless of the wails from souls freshly wandering the realm of eternal slumber. Dark yet not. Luminance from everywhere and nowhere. Ashe reached through the misty gateway toward the mirrored safe, the mist running over her arm like a river traversing down a bank, flowing in-and-out of the runes representing the Tenets, into her palm.
It flickered brightly, the mist did. Telling her it was ready, that it was there for her to control. If her taskmaster were there, she’d long since been beaten bloody for bastardizing her Shard Form thus. But this was her choice now, her path.
After sucking in more of the poisonous haze, Ashe held her breath, then thrust her hand down, penetrating the once solid stone in her reality, gliding through the misted gateway into the safe’s shell. She likened the feeling to slipping a hand into a big, steaming pile of horseshit; that’s how odd it felt. Fingers found the base of the lock, twisting and turning. She exhaled the mist as if she was standing in the dead of a Kanjan winter bare-assed.
A click.
As she began to pull back on the aetheric power and sew up the gateway to the void, Ashe was drawn to something within the safe. An urge beckoning her. She dug toward the bottom, reaching. Something triggered in her mind, the mist pulsing with it. Magic.
A flash of light, of all colors and none. Ashe tried to yank her arm free, but the magic held strong, and her tattooed runes flared intensely like never before, pain shooting up her arm and into her body, deep down into her soul. Pricks along the tips of her fingers, blood pouring down, dripping freely in the void.
What the fu…
She stared into the misted gateway and found her hand wasn’t empty. A thin chain of braided gold had wrapped around her wrist toward the center of her palm where a diamond in the shape of an eye lay. The golden links fanned out to auric rings on each of her fingers, each begemmed with four shards cleaved from the great crystals of the greatest crystal. Blood dribbled from underneath each ring as the shards gleamed.
What are you?
The wailing from the void grew stronger. Heartier. Angrier. The non-ground beyond the gateway trembled, a deep quake from the depths of the unseen. The mist turned opaque, dark as the void itself. Her arm disappeared into the pitch. The lantern in Evander’s hand sputtered and winked out, leaving Ashe bathed in an eerie ruby-black-colored shine.
There was movement behind Evander, from the catacomb’s tunnel. Someone or something ghosted toward her.
A figure, completely naked. Light brown, almost blonde hair gesticulated as if underwater. The figure was nearly translucent, like an apparition, a mixture of light reds melding with pitch blacks burned within the figure’s breast, over their heart. Rune-like scars flared upon their chest, aether bleeding from the healed cuts. There was a smile on the heart-shaped, familiar face, onyx irises and sclera aglow in a similar coloring to the eerie light, punctuated by blacker pupils.
Behind the apparition followed a large shadow, spreading darker than anything Ashe ever imagined possible. Kindled crimson slits formed, eyelike, in the black. Only something so sinister could be borne of Nocturne’s Pit.
“GODSBLOOD!” The voice was ragged and ethereal, like the wails from the void, daemonlike.
Ashe coughed; her pulmo escaping in frazzled bursts as her arm became freed of the shimmering gate. The real world trembled as she broke the connection between the two planes, the mist fleeing into the ancient tunnel like a craven mercenary dropping blade and shield amidst flight from an overpowering enemy.
Time, otherwise, remained stopped, Evander still statuesque.
Retreating hurriedly, Ashe tried to cover her mouth to staunch the blood and tar from her pulmo. Backside hitting a stony tomb, Ashe took her fingers away, darkened blood staining. Blistering cold struck her, breaths clouding as the vaporous figure slid past Evander, a part of its arm passing right through his shoulder. By the Pentax, it went right through him! Reaching for her, slowly, mere inches away.
Ashe shook as the shadow expanded, swallowing the ghastly figure. Garnet fading, onyx slits brightening for a heartbeat. Laughter, strange and aggressive. She covered her head with her arms, tattoos burning, a scream trying to sound, dying as the void fell.
“COME, GODSBLOOD, COME TO US.”
The shadow retreated and was gone in an instant. Time scurried into action, speeding back to normal. The girl sought out the apparition, but it was nowhere. The shadow was gone, leaving her alone with Evander, her heart pounding its way up her throat.
“Bloody Nocturne, Snow Eyes, you’ve done it!” Evander said, completely ignorant of her frightened condition. He pulled on the locking mechanism, drawing the lid away from the safe. His aura pulsing shady emerald. “Mother’s milk.”
Out came a woven mask, simple yet detailed. Humirish face with horse-like ears. A satyr mask. One of the relics of the old mysteries from Eminence, one of the creatures honoring the Drunk God Brio, son of Mother Marrow and Zenith. Valuable beyond reason because anything from the ancient city or of the Pentax was worth a fortune in quadrans within the Mistlands.
A fit overtook her, her stomach clenching. The use of her magic bringing forth the destruction to her body from the mist’s poison, killing every little bit of humanity inside her. Her blood fire, her lungs aching with torment. Feverish and weak, she was wasting away.
This was why using aether was called burning because that’s what her body felt like. Aflame like being in the center of a firedrake’s pyre.
With the mask in one hand, Evander came over and pulled her upright, throwing her arm across his shoulder, the aetheric runes fading back into ink. Her legs were feeble, her insides jelly.
Evander half-dragged her through the dusty catacombs, her slippers scuffling to keep pace as he hefted her up the never-ending staircase. “For such a tiny thing, you weigh almost as much as my limp prick.”
Raven hair falling into her eyes, Ashe looked over her shoulder for the wraith and the shadow but found neither. Breathing was a chore, her lungs arguing with themselves about which to do: breathe in precious air or expel the deadly poison. Neither was giving it a solid go as far as she was concerned. By the time they reached the top of the stair, Ashe was standing on her own, yet still woozy.
Ashe put a hand to the wall as Evander closed off the hidden panel, the strange bangle affixed. She gave it a solid yank, but the thin chain held strong. Breathing came easier back within the study. Out of the corner of her tear-brimmed eyes, she saw the body of the murdered servant, lamenting her undesirable fate.
The heavy oak door burst open, and a young woman hurried into the room. Wren, their lookout. “Vicars!”
Strange, unseen laughter echoed the earlier taunt.
“COME, GODSBLOOD, COME TO US.”
II
