AC2:Announcements - 2004/01 - Ashes to Ashes
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January Episode: "Ashes to Ashes"
A wild-eyed Tumerok in shimmering armor was the first to leap into battle. The strange geometry of the Chaos Plane stretched and distorted as he lunged at the monstrosity before him. With a savage cry, he brought his clawblade down hard, aiming for a spot that would have crippled an ordinary Undead. This lightning-wreathed colossus was no ordinary Undead, though, and it seemed only to be angered by the blow. Its wrath struck the Tumerok warrior like a battering ram, splitting his skull, snapping his bones like twigs, rending his heart and lungs into hot crimson stew. By the time his limp corpse struck the ground, his spirit had already fled to the Lifestones.
But there were others ready to take his place, dozens of others, the mightiest heroes of Dereth gathered for war. Screams crowded the air as the mortals flung themselves at their unearthly opponent. The chaos-melded avatar of the three Archons shrieked and writhed, dealing death at will, but it was obviously outnumbered and overmatched by the company of champions. The mortals would win their victory.
And it would be meaningless.
Geraine stood back from the battle, willing himself invisible to the crowd of young fighters who drove themselves towards triumph. His eyes were troubled. The great breach in reality that had spawned the Chaos Archon was closed; he had sealed that door himself, moments after the original Archons met their fate. Then he had carefully led Dereth's mortals to this place, knowing that living hands would be needed to defeat his old enemies. His plans had gone perfectly, as they always did. The only creature that dared challenge his mastery was dying beneath the hacking blades and crashing spells of a pitiful handful of mortals. And Geraine, His Eternal Splendor, would once again reign supreme over the dead and the living.
Yet one power would escape Geraine's grasp forever. When the mortals won their hollow victory, the last tenuous link to that power's resting place would be destroyed. And was that not victory enough? No, Geraine realized, it was not. As long as that rogue power survived, it would work against him with the slow patience of immortality. Centuries or millennia from now, it would find its way back to Auberean. Would it find him sleeping again?
A flame-haired huntress loosed a volley of arrows into the Chaos Archon, and suddenly the thing collapsed to its knees. Its shrieks of rage now sounded more like the screams of a terrified child. Lance after lance of magical lightning shattered its breast as a ragged cheer went up from the surviving warriors. What passed for its life's-blood now ran from the Chaos Archon's body in a hundred places, and the rest of its flesh was growing insubstantial, transparent. It lifted its tortured gaze, staring sightlessly at the place where Geraine stood...
Caught in that insane glare, Geraine suddenly understood. He saw the trap: the long ages he would spend in frustration and fear, laying plans against a power he could never control. He must have total victory or none at all. The ancient king of the Undead started to walk forward, at first cautiously, then breaking into a run. His robes flew behind him as he sprinted towards the crumpled thing on the ground.
The mortals, standing in awe of the beast they had vanquished, never saw Geraine as he dove forward into the body of the dissipating abomination. Then the last shreds of the Chaos Archon dissolved into foul smoke, and the mortals stood alone in exhausted triumph.
Geraine was alone in the darkness.
He strained all his senses, physical and magical, but found nothing beyond the limits of his own body. Yet he felt pain--terrible pain--and a strange, disorienting dizziness. His body must still exist, to inflict such suffering on him. Gradually, Geraine realized that a physical compulsion was creeping upon him. There was something he must do. But what could he do, in this empty blackness? His body began to ache, crying for relief in an unfamiliar tongue. And finally, his body did what Geraine could not remember to do.
Geraine gasped for air.
He breathed.
A reedy female voice floated across the surface of the darkness. "He lives! The Prince yet lives!"
A deeper, colder voice murmured, "That is hardly living."
The woman sounded offended. "Know you not what we have suffered for yon sleeping child? Day and night we watch him! Day and night we squander the finest medicines in Dericost for his sake! Aye, he lives, and you should give thanks!"
"Give thanks? For the wasted breath of a dying whelp? In any case, breath means little. Surely he is mind-cold by now, an empty husk, nothing more."
"Wake up, young one! You hear us, do you not? Give us a sign!"
Slowly, Geraine opened his eyes. Had they been closed all this time? He hadn't thought so. But now, he saw himself surrounded by blurry, indistinct shapes. He was lying on something soft and white. And every few moments, his chest heaved and he drew another ragged, painful breath.
An unfamiliar taste polluted Geraine's mouth, metallic and rusty. He wanted to spit.
"See? Mind-cold, is he? Welcome back, young prince! How are you feeling?"
Geraine ignored the question. He tried to rise and found he could not. "Who are you?" he croaked. "What is this place?"
"Mind-cold indeed," the frigid voice muttered. Geraine could see that it belonged to the tall, dark shape to the right of his bed--his sick-bed, it seemed.
"What is this place?" Geraine repeated.
"Why, it is your own home, Prince! Here, drink this. You'll soon be good as new, yes indeed."
Haltingly, Geraine drank from the flask that was pressed to his lips. The bitter liquid seared his throat, but his vision soon cleared. He found himself in a narrow room with a high ceiling. Its walls and floors were of unadorned stone; the room was empty except for his bed, a well-stocked bookshelf and a table upon which rested a variety of potions and packets of dried herbs. The owner of the reedy voice turned out to be a decrepit old woman, peering solicitously at him through milky eyes. The crone's breath stank of garlic and onions as she chortled over her patient
"Yes, yes -- he's good as new, don't you see! Ready to run and dance!" The crone clapped her hands gleefully. "Beg your pardon, young master, but you'll be needing more medicines, and soon. Yes, yes! Soon, soon!" The old woman continued to babble as she scuttled out of the room. But Geraine was no longer paying any attention. His eyes were fixed on the dark man who stood stiffly by the foot of Geraine's bed. His clothes were of rich fabric, but simply cut; he wore a sword by his side and a look of disgust on his face. Geraine knew him instantly.
"Father."
"Dare you call me so?" The dark man spat and advanced a step on Geraine. "You may call me your King, and naught more."
"I... this is not real." Terrifying as his surroundings were, Geraine had not survived the long millennia by accepting sorcerous tricks at face value. Grimacing at the pain, he forced himself to sit up. His teenage body was frail and thin; here and there, blood stained his white tunic. All an illusion, he reminded himself.
"This is not real," he repeated in a wavering voice. His father answered by drawing his long, jeweled sword from its sheath. The weapon, whose like Geraine had not seen since his father's kingdom burned to ashes, rang faintly in the cold air.
"Not real? Aye, it is hard to believe. Hard to believe any son of mine would be so pathetic, so wretched, so... small." He lifted the sword until its point rested lightly on Geraine's breastbone. "Who are you?" Geraine asked, detesting the sound of his weak, mortal voice. What a disgusting fantasy his enemy had forced upon him! "Whom do you serve?"
At this, the King snarled. "I serve no master!" he said. "Least of all do I serve you, weakling! Beg my pardon, or I will end the disgrace you have brought on my line." He pressed lightly on the hilt of the sword, and Geraine felt his skin break, felt hot blood running down his chest. "Aye, I will end you here."
Feeling the heat of his blood for the first time in ages, Geraine laughed.
Reaching forward, he gripped the blade of his father's sword with bony hands. And he pulled. Ignoring the agony of his false body, ignoring the blood that spurted from his chest and hands, he drove the blade into his flesh.
"This... is... not... real!" Geraine shouted. And with unimaginable effort, he stood, the sword still piercing his chest. Pain rushed through his veins like liquid fire.
The sword slipped from his father's fingers and Geraine's body simultaneously, clattering to the floor. "You... you cannot... what is this madness?"
"Madness indeed," Geraine said dryly. He stooped to pick up the fallen sword. "A beautiful blade, but... now that I think on it... I believe these stones were emeralds, not rubies." As he stood again, the blade now leveled at the thing that pretended to be his long-dead father, he felt taller, stronger. "And now that I think on it, I believe you have forgotten your role in this story. You never hated me as a child, father. You only hated me for what I became."
"Oh, my hatred is real, young Prince. My hatred is the truest thing you will ever know."
"This is the second time I've killed you, Father. But I think I'll treasure this memory even more than the last."
Almost casually, Geraine drove the blade forward into his father's heart. The murdered man made a small sound, like a whisper or a sigh. Then he fell backwards against the bookshelf and slumped to the ground. He was quite dead.
Geraine indulged himself with one last look at the ancient sword. He knew he would never again see its equal. Sighing with admiration for the things time had buried, he cast the counterfeit behind him. There was no sound of metal striking the floor, and he knew that if he looked back, he would find nothing at all.
Geraine no longer needed to breathe; thank the darkness for that! Yet he must still speak. Drawing the cold air deep into his dead lungs, he shouted: "Where are you, Eibhil? Stand forth! Stand forth and meet your master!"
The room was gone. The castle was gone. Geraine stood alone on an endless, flat plain, as black as obsidian beneath a starless sky.
Facing him, somehow near enough to touch yet impossibly far away, stood the crone who'd poured foul medicine down his throat. She grinned toothlessly. Geraine did not smile back. He waited patiently for the ancient one to speak.
"So, you finally understand," she said softly. Geraine was relieved that Eibhil had abandoned her inane chatter. Any further deception between them would be demeaning.
"I understand that you brought me here," Geraine said. "You were always the voice whispering to my Archons of the Way, leading them into oblivion. But now I see that your plans went far deeper than that."
"My plans?" The crone cackled dustily. "My plans saw your father's kingdom reduced to a circus of death--a mockery over which you ruled, O Splendid One. My plans saw Asheron, a mage far greater than you, slain by trickery and betrayal. And now my plans have brought you here."
"A mistake," Geraine replied.
"A mistake?" Eibhil's laughter sounded like the creak of a coffin's lid. "Never that, Geraine. For here, you are nothing. This is the end of the world. This is the edge of Auberean, and of all reality. This is where I ripped a hole in the ancient prison and destroyed your foolish Archons. As easily as you sealed that breach, I can tear open another. A dozen such. At my command, that which dwells in the blackness between the stars will devour your petty world."
"And yet," Geraine pointed out, "here you stand, trading stories with me."
Eibhil did not respond, but stared at him in stony silence.
"What is it you want, Eibhil?" Geraine stepped forward, eyes shining. "If you wanted to destroy Auberean, you could have done that ten times over. Even I could have done that. Destroying a world is nothing. It is nothing to open the gates of the Abyss."
He smiled like a tiger.
"It is another thing to pass through those gates unscathed."
Geraine began to walk towards Eibhil, across the featureless plain. The crone still seemed indeterminately distant, neither near nor far. Yet Geraine knew he drew closer with every step. "You are no longer a woman, Eibhil. You are raw hatred, a festering wound, dreaming of a woman who never was."
"Eibhil was a woman," the crone replied quietly. "Ah, but she was murdered. Murdered by the book she wrote. Her masterpiece. Her child. Her lover!"
"Liar."
The crone looked at him blankly, uncomprehending.
"You never wrote a word of that book, Eibhil. You may have brought all Auberean low, and you may have drunk the blood of a hundred generations of dust-begotten mortals. But you never wrote that book."
Geraine paused. If he spoke falsely now, he was undone.
"You seek the one who did."
In Eibhil's stricken eyes, Geraine saw his victory.
"YES!" she screamed to the inky skies. "The wisdom... the power... the glory! I will find Him! I will find Him and I will become one with Him! The Book seeks its Author, Geraine! I am the Book, and His every thought is written on my skin. I care nothing for Auberean... nothing for you... nothing for myself! But I will find my creator!" She fell to her knees, reaching out to Geraine, beseeching him, pleading with him. "You have the power I need, Geraine! Help me pass through the door to His realm! Help me find the one who made me!"
Geraine smiled, almost kindly. Then, with a mere thought, his father's sword appeared in his hand. Geraine noticed with amusement that emeralds had replaced the offending rubies. In their facets a dozen pleading Eibhils were reflected, a dozen Geraines blazed with victory.
He swept Eibhil's head from her shoulders with one clean stroke.
The headless crone continued to kneel for a moment, her hands still raised in supplication. Then she melted to the ground. Her flesh shriveled and withered as if every moment was a year in the grave. Soon, there was nothing on the ground but a pile of worm-eaten clothes, and buried in those clothes, a hard lump.
Geraine pushed the fetid rags aside with the tip of his sword. There lay the Book of Eibhil, marred by a long, deep slash across its cover. The cut was edged with dried blood. He scooped the thing up and turned to the last page. There, just as he expected, were the words he needed.
Geraine spoke twelve syllables aloud. Before him, soundlessly, a doorway shimmered into existence. "There it is," he told the Book softly. "The path you sought all your long, miserable years." His grin turned savage, and Geraine flung the Book far out onto the plain, far away from the black door. Eibhil, he knew, would never find the thing she sought. But he would, even if his search lasted for an age, or a dozen ages.
"I go not to meet an Author," he said under his breath. "I go to become one."
And Geraine, His Eternal Splendor, was gone.