The Ruler of Ruin

I fell asleep on the rough floor of the cavern. The soporific effects of the crabs’ mental attacks left me utterly exhausted and unable to resist the siren song of closing my eyes for a few minutes, which immediately turned into me falling into the dark void of slumber. I had never been so aware of being asleep before.

When I opened my eyes again I was in a different place. A vast sky filled with stars I’d never seen before hung above me, while all around me the chirps of night-time insects filled the dark glade with a song-like atmosphere. The dark glade was neither too humid, nor too cold. It felt wonder and lulled me into a false sense of being perfectly at home despite never having heard of a glade like this in my life. Large rose bushes filled the glade, and dark-skinned dryads tended to the trees and plants of the beautiful place.

A solitary rose climbed an obelisk at the heart of the glade. The obelisk rose into the canopy of the high trees, far above. Its flowers seemed to be made of crystal, and the air distorted around them in a way I’d only ever seen happen with extremely powerful magical items. The dryads didn’t seem to be able to notice my presence at all, even when I waved a ghostly hand through them.

When I approached the rose at the center of the glade, each step felt like walking through invisible barriers, but they only slowed me down, none stopped me. After my brief struggle, I was able to cup one of the crystalline flowers and lean down to smell its scent. The rose was so sweet as to be heady, floral, with a spicy note I hadn’t ever associated with a rose before. It smelled dangerous, and familiar.

As lovely as the rose was, though, it wasn’t for me.

This thought seemed to offend my psyche, or perhaps the rose itself? The glade wavered, and I stood upon a rocky outcrop overlooking the Castle of Havenstone. The world beyond the barrier wall was faint and hazy, as if it were a dream. I climbed down the hill and jogged up to the barrier wall. When I extended a hand to touch it, my hand went right through it.

“That’s new,” I mumbled, and walked through the wall into town. Inside the barrier-wall everything seemed to be where it should have been. Details I had never noticed about town stuck to me and forced me to consider that this wasn’t an ordinary dream. The denizens of Havenstone were even more ghostly than the buildings, only wispy illusions of their real selves. Yet they were there. I saw Horizon Guardian Gaston at the gate.

I made my way to my house. The dark sky, the lack of people on the streets, all convinced me it was night time in Havenstone. When I walked through the front door into the parlor, I could see the wisps of Mom and Dad seated on the couch. Their voices were distorted, quiet, but I could make most of their conversation out if I focused.

“Marius, you can’t keep telling me that Emery is alive, but not telling me how you know.” Mom scolded Dad with an intensity I was glad wasn’t pointed at me.

“The Patron of the Dustwalkers caught up to us before we made it back to Havenstone. She claimed to have encountered him and that he spurned her. He made a deal with someone else and abandoned her.” Marius shrugged.

“Can you even trust that? She’s…. Fey.” Coralie spat the word like a curse.

“Her phrasing left no room for falsehood about meeting him, both Remy and I agreed on that. She said he’s an Enkindler, Cora.” Marius sounded confused.

“How could a blank be an enkindler? He’s a blank, fully magical dead. He can’t even use normal potions! If he had the ability to grant Devotions the Church would’ve taken him from us, they would have noticed it at his Revelation.” Mom sounded deeply offended that Dad would say such a patently stupid thing to her.

“There’s more to the mists than magic, firefly. The True World isn’t open to it all. Maybe something out there finally filled Emery in a way that magic couldn’t. I’ve seen men and monster use powers that have no magic to them five dozen times over. Mithras has an agenda that doesn’t include non-magical powers.” Dad knew more about the mists than he’d ever willingly disclosed before. Why couldn’t he tell me about powers that weren’t magic years ago? I could have lived without despair, even a touch of hope would have made struggling through the Academy so much easier.

“Dad? Mom? Hello?” I tried to talk to them, but they couldn’t hear me.

“Do we tell Etienne?” Coralie asked dubiously.

“No. When we came back his first words to me were he told me so,” Marius replied darkly.

Of course, that’s what Etienne would say to me getting lost in the mist. I told you so. Not regret, just blaming me and basking in his predictions of doom. Mom and Dad fell quiet, so I wandered upstairs. Maybe I could steal some of my own clothes? My room remained as I’d left it, but I couldn’t touch anything. Try as I might, I couldn’t pull any trousers from my dresser, not even my underwear.

“Go back to hell, wretched spirit!” The door to my room burst open, and the wispy form of Etienne stood bathed in silver flames. Which he promptly threw at me. Unlike everything else, the silver fire landed on me and burned. I panicked, I had to get away, and ran through a wall while screaming in pain. I jumped through walls, fell through the ground, and then descended through darkness.

Eventually, I hit rock. After rolling and slapping at myself, the burning subsided and I slowly stood up. I had landed upon a bluff. On a vast plain, an immense herd of beasts I’d never seen before stampeded away from an on-coming storm on the horizon. They ran towards clear, sunny skies.

“The Flames of Mithras, eh? Even your astral form will burn from those,” a familiar voice spoke behind me. When I turned, a large raven spoke to me from a low branch on a tree. The birds black eyes shone with abnormal intellect, and there was no doubt in my mind the voice belonged to Corvusol.

“Astral form? That silver fire hurt like hell. How did Etienne see me when no one else could?” I doubted that Corvusol would willingly entertain me, but maybe he’d surprise me.

“Before the Collision, the Astral Plane could be used to project your astral body to other dimensions, other worlds, and communicate or interact with far distant locations. These days, it’s a much more dangerous ability liable to get yourself killed. Arx Maxima should keep you on a shorter leash.” Corvusol followed its words with a great caw, then went to work cleaning his wing with his beak.

“I’ll have to pretend any of that makes sense. How did Etienne hurt me like that?” I repeated the part of the question I was most interested in.

“You aren’t the only one with enkindled concepts, kiddo. Your little brother did what I told you not to do and allowed the priests of Mithras to awaken four versions of Mithras in him. He’s not so much your brother anymore, as he is an avatar of Mithras that wants to murder you because you’re an abomination against magic, and a hindrance to his plans for his True World.” Corvusol delighted in this explanation. When the answers made my heartache or caused me pain or confusion, Corvusol seemed to draw joy from it. Joy, or maybe even power?

“They can’t just go around turning people into avatars of Mithras. Wouldn’t people notice? Wouldn’t Mom and Dad try to stop it?”

“It’s a slow change as the concepts settle into a person. Their thoughts gradually change, their passions change, and before you know it, they’re nearly a different person. It’s insidious, and the followers of Mithras have been doing it for hundreds of years now. If you think that’s bad, you really don’t want to know what happens to the people who make Castles.”

I’d never heard a crow laugh so much before, and as much as I wanted to ask abut the Castles, I had a bigger question.

“Could I change his enkindled concepts? Would that save Etienne from Mithras?”

Corvusol stared at me with the raven’s beady gaze, then cawed.

“Sure. You’re an Enkindler. You could force a change. Depending on how powerful the kid is, it could have dire ramifications if he isn’t willing, maybe even kill him. If you pull it off before he hits Citrine, you’ve got a solid seventy percent chance to save him. After that though, it’s in the single digits.”

“Citrine?”

“Look,” Corvusol gestured with its beak back at the storm.

I forgot my question when I looked at the storm, and could feel my jaw drop open. In the course of our brief conversation the storm had closed considerable distance and was maybe only a mile away now. The first thing I noticed was the familiar black winds. I’d seen their likeness depicted in the fall of Edgehold, this was the Ebon Gale.

“Is that the storm Amaranthine drew the Ebon Gale from?” I wondered aloud.

“That is a myth, a legend, a self-fulfilling prophecy created by the stupid and the fearful. It is a source of the Ebon Gale, but so much more. Watch the black lightning of dissolution obliterate reality, the dark wind disintegrate matter, and the churning storm clouds consume existence itself and leave nothing behind. She is a thing of supreme beauty.” Corvusol’s admiration for the storm bordered on lust.

“Is it sapient?” The horizon behind the clouds didn’t seem to exist anymore. Corvusol’s utterance of the storm leaving nothing behind might not have been the turn of phrase I had assumed it to be.

“Not yet,” Corvusol lamented.

“What is it called?” I wanted to know. This reality eating, all consuming storm must have a terrifying name. Something like the Nothingstorm, Absence Maker, Oblivion Tempest, or maybe the Abyssal Vortex. None of the names I conjured in my mind prepared me for Corvusol’s answer.

“Katrina,” Corvusol said.

“Katrina?” I repeated. The absurd name for the storm caused my eyes to leave it and meet Corvusol’s gaze.

“Yes, and that is why people are stupid,” Corvusol sighed dejectedly. “An object of such supreme beauty stuck with an ordinary moniker like Katrina. A greater tragedy there has never been.”

While we had been talking, Katrina had advanced on the two of us. Suddenly, Corvusol leaped off his branch and flew away, cawing loudly the whole while.

“Let it eat you! Maybe it’ll realize it, too, hates people!” Corvusol flapped away, his voice echoing back to me over the increasingly loud gusts of the Ebon Gale, and the rapidly approaching embodiment of dissolution.

“Take me with you, you asshole!” I screamed in futility at the departed raven. Yet despite my fists shaking at the heavens, my curses upon Corvusol’s name, the damn bird vanished into the sunny, distant horizon while Katrina barreled down on me.

I braced myself against the ground. The vortexes of flesh rending wind avoided me, for whatever reason. Voices of madness, however, whispered into my mind as the dark gale encircled me. Black lightning obliterated my surroundings, and in moments I sat on a floating platform of rock, surrounded by absolutely nothing but Katrina. I was astounded by the beauty of the storm. I might die any minute, but the culmination of utter obliteration represented by the storm resonated in me in a way I hadn’t been prepared for.

Almost without thinking, enthralled by the beauty of destruction, I inscribed that gibbering inducing paragon of destruction into my soul. I had two options left, my legs or my mind, and welcoming this beautiful thing into my mind seemed both glorious and foolish. I desperately wanted to pull Katrina into my mind, but my thoughts were… not quite my own… and with a great struggle, I enkindled the beauty of the Nothing Storm, Katrina, into my agility attribute. As if this pleased the storm, a vortex of wind caressed me, and then blasted me back to my body, wherever that was. The pain felt strangely sensual, and I understood Corvusol’s interest in Katrina.

When my mind, or astral form, hit my body it felt like I’d been dropped from a great height. The experience verged on euphoric, as my body evolved. I grew with Katrina’s brand upon my soul. Still, what would have happened if I had bound it to my mind, or essence? Had I made the right decision, or did I miss an opportunity?