Dragon Aster Trilogy (42 page)

The Sanctus had become a ghostly silent. Only the psi Threads that matched the thoughts of the Falls crossing their Border vibrated. Kas had no words or thoughts to the matter of his father’s death. His only concern was to keep Kira’s people alive. But even if he could successfully command the True, there would be no saving his mother’s home. It was now nothing more than a deathtrap against their enemies.

“You fear for a temple of stone, when it is the bodies and souls of its people who make it real.”

Kas looked up through the golden spider-like web of the Chamber of Light, as the white Iynx stood in its center. “I need your guidance.”

“You have your soultwin, Kas. You do not need me anymore.”

“I thought I had her, now...”

Gei sat down on his chosen Thread. “No matter how much you both fight, she will come back to you. She will always come back for you when you need her the most.”

“You need to leave with everyone else.”

“This is all that remains of your mother. I will not be leaving it.”

“There will be fire—”

“Kas,” Gei said, interrupting him. “Just what illusion weave would you have me sew to continue to exist on this world? This,” the white cat said as he looked around the webs he had sewn by his memory Threads around the room, “is the only reality I want. I cannot exist as an illusion of what I truly am. And this world has no more need of me.”

“So you will go back to Earth?”

“Solar’s Phoenix is proof that something is not right on Earth. The Sentry should have destroyed a monstrosity like that, but they have not. I wish to find out why, and if there are any further threats that will come. Perhaps I can be of more use there. Your destiny lies not here, but in the Atrum.”

“You mean with my father’s legacy,” Kas replied, bitterly.

“There must always be light and darkness. Only then can the Sylvan Aur rise again and hope to remain up. If you do not take the Atrum, then Damek will, and the light of your soultwin will once again die from the world. Then the madness of the Aeger will completely overtake everything. Balance must be returned before there is no saving Aragmoth, and his nightmares of death consume us all.”

“It will not be a balance if I become the monster my father was.”

“You are your mother’s son, first and foremost. I have faith that you will be strong enough to take the right path when the shadows of your past appear to block your way. Only regret can stop you. But for now, call the darkness that you command. Use it to surround and protect the light I see in your heart, and you will succeed.”

Kas nodded, and then looked at Gei more closely, as he could see the Sentry form of the Iynx. He guessed that Gei had used every last Thread he could to sew the Threads of this room, including his faint illusion weave.

Gei tilted his head to the side, amused by Kas’ reaction. “‘Strange angel’ Serena called me once, yet you don’t so much as have a word for me at all.”

“Angels are depicted in Earth’s Texts as having wings.”

“Very true. I must contemplate where I left mine,” Gei said, before climbing up to the nest of Thread in the center of the room.

Kas, with nothing more to say to him, turned and left the Chamber of Light for the last time.

Sybl felt like she would freeze to death, as she crossed the ice fields outside of the Efereal Mountains. The painful cold was proof that she was awake now. She followed the only voice she wanted to hear through the constant onslaught of bitter winds. Not Xirel or anyone was able to persuade her to stay put and do nothing.

Sybl understood now why the phelan somnus had their Trial of Somn on these fields, as every odd moment a True would appear over the snow, watching her. After some minutes, they became more in number, and she went in the direction they had come together.

It felt like her legs would freeze stiff before she could reach them, but she had found what they were all gathered around. The massive wolf-like creatures had circled around a huge, black Rift in the snow. On the other side of it was the voice she followed.

The ice around her began to crack, and she stepped back as something was coming up through the Rift. A set of claws appeared, but nowhere near the size she expected. It was Moon’s still-tiny hand.

She carefully went closer to him and pulled him out of the freezing Rift. “I don’t think I understand all of your plan.” Sybl nearly dropped him then, when the True collapsed all at once, creating an earthquake from their sizes.

Moon jumped down from her hands, and onto the first True who seemingly melted in estus energy. That energy he took into himself, before moving onto the next and doing the same. When he was done, all five True had contributed to his dragon-size that he now looked down at her from. “Asil. Will this suffice?”

She looked to where the True were no more, then up to where he towered over her.

“Conquest without sacrifice is meaningless. I understand this now.”

“Moon.”

“Show me where your dreams have told us to go next. There are no more nightmares that can stand in our way.”

Sybl grasped her necklace, as she could feel Cirrus’ psi calling to her.

“My soul has returned to Aster. Is that what you wish? For me to have a soul again? Even after what I did to you?”

“What happened was an accident, and it was partly my fault. I didn’t trust anyone, and in that distrust you simply reacted. I wasn’t fair. You should be forgiving me as much as I should be you.”

Moon set his claws over her, as if feeling for something that evaporated from her body. “So many emotions you hold now. This humanity has made you stronger.” He took his claws back. “When I have retrieved my soul, I will fully understand you. I know that I wish to start at forgiveness, just as you do.” Moon expanded his estus energy and pulled her into his somn. Then he opened a Rift and headed in the direction of his missing soul.

Cirrus couldn’t walk anymore, as the heat of the Keol was just too much to withstand. He hadn’t found who opened the Rift, and now it was becoming clear that it was opened to lead him to a slow death.

He sat down, even as the rock under him felt like it would cook the skin under his pants. Cirrus couldn’t give up. Sybl was awake, and she was looking for him despite everything. Even as he knew he had long passed the point of forgiveness.
Sybl.

“Cirrus. Cirrus, I’m coming!”

He looked across the Keol as the fire rose and fell in waves, and the winds of ashes and fire burned his eyes. Through it all, he could feel something watching him. He got to his feet, and continued to watch the thick smoke in the distance.

It wasn’t smoke, but something alive. At first he thought it was a phelan or a True, but as it came closer, it looked more and more like a serpent flying through Keol, without wings. When the creature reached him, he couldn’t believe who he looked at. The massive black serpent sat down, then released Sybl from its estus energy.

She ran to him and almost pulled him to the ground with the little strength he had left to stand.

“Sybl…”

She cried and squeezed him harder. “You took too long to pull down the moon for me, so I improvised.”

Cirrus looked up at the black Cael in disbelief. “Where did you find him?”

“It seems my nightmares have a purpose too. Congratulations on passing your Trial of Somn.”

Cirrus couldn’t stop himself from shivering. “Is this why Fate never gave me a normal one like everyone else?” He didn’t get the chance to debate any of it, as the claws of Moon came right at him and pulled him into its somn.

At first it felt like he had been frozen solid from the extreme heat he was in moments before, then his eyes opened as Moon’s awareness moved away to allow his own through. He began to move his feet under him, and tried to get a feel of his new somn. “He’s so heavy. How did Moon fly?” When he looked back, he saw that his soul had given the furred serpent wings. They weaved from estus Threads out of his sides, with the strength to sew themselves to the edge eternity if needed. But they were infused with his aeri. He looked down at his chest and arms, as his black fur pressed against his skin and hardened into the scales of a dragon.

“When you’re big enough to just reach up and pull what you want out of the sky, what’s the point of flying?” Sybl teased.

Cirrus looked up at the red storm clouds overhead, but he knew that realistically, he was but a fraction of the size Moon could take three hundred years ago. Then he focused intently on her as he felt all her thoughts like they were his own.

“They are all against us now,” Sybl said, when their psi’s passed the thoughts on the rest of his kind.

“We will get them back,” Cirrus assured her. “Once we put the sun in its proper place, we will get them all back.” He unsomned and touched Sybl’s face with his hands, before pulling her into a hug.

She didn’t cry anymore, as his scent of lavender was enough to stop her tears. To her, he was the Cirrus she knew, even if his somn was now something else entirely. He let go of her, as Moon pushed his thoughts through Cirrus’ brain like a spear of ice. He had always believed that the Ancients and Eminor had a higher, intelligent consciousness of their own, and Moon was the definite proof.

“What’s wrong?”

Cirrus looked at his hand, then took her right hand and turned it over to look where the Mei to Kas was no longer. He touched her left wrist then, as he let his estus energy weave a new Mei to her, and a glyph of the Aliyr to himself. “I understand what makes this so important now. It keeps the other from doing something dangerous, or really stupid.”

“You sure?” Sybl replied with a smile, as she looked at the new, sparkling silver Threads on her wrist. “Because I think in our case it makes the odds of either even more likely.”

“Then we will do it all together. Better chances that way.” He smiled and pulled her next to him when she shook her head, letting her warmth melt away the last of his doubts. She relaxed under his touch in turn. Time seemed to stop altogether to give them one moment all to themselves. So he took it and kissed her.

Before she could take a breath away from him, he pulled her into his somn. Cirrus cut his hand with his claws, before setting it down on the fiery surface. The black hole expanded as a Rift out of the Keol. Once he was topside, he turned his focus to the wind’s lure of blood and battle, as a red glow bloodied the sky in the distance.

The Phoenix rose from the Keol just outside the Sanctus, igniting the empty fields with its fire. Then with a downstroke of its wings, it sent a wave of fire at the temple itself, igniting everything attached to it that would burn.

But there were no cries of terror or fear. Nor were there any dying screams. There was only fire, and the crackling and burning of what it could make answer to it.

The Phoenix slithered like a snake across the ground with its torso and wings upright, using the claws of where its wings folded to pull itself up to the pinnacle of the temple. It coiled itself around it, enough to crush the stone and cause the building to collapse. But instead of landing on the ground, it caved in entirely into the basement. It landed in the Chamber of Light, where Gei waited.

The specially made golden Threads ignited, but held as the creature struggled to escape, only making its entanglement worse.

“Solar, it has been a long time.”

“RELEASE ME!”

“I intend to,” Gei said, as he avoided the Phoenix’s tail that lashed out at him like a whip. His trap had caught enough of her soul’s Threads, and he quickly caught the ones connected to it and pulled them free.

All at once, the Phoenix’s fire went out, leaving a bird-like snake in the net, and a young, naked woman on the floor before him.

Solar rolled to her side and got on her hands and knees. “Do you honestly think you’ve won? Even without my Phoenix, the Falls will crush your pathetic army.”