Revelation (Seeds of Humanity: The Cobalt Heresy) (13 page)

“They are not alone,” the woman replied. Her black hair was framed by a circlet of equally black, glossy metal with green gemstones embedded across its surface, surrounding one large, intricately carved emerald in the form of an eye, probably a cat’s eye as large as a deck of cards on her forehead. “The enemy has found the castle…they must aim to deny us that which we require,” she whispered before a violent spasm nearly threw her from the altar. The man held her shoulders and gently returned her to her previous position. “We are too late,” she finished weakly.

“Can you bring down the gate?” the man asked earnestly, but there was something else in his voice. “We’ve come too far to give up now, Tyreva,” he pleaded, and I knew then that what I heard in his voice was love for this woman.

Mistress Tyreva turned to the man and nodded her head. “I will try,” she replied. From this vantage point, I could tell that she was taxed to the limit already but there was a determination in her that could likely move mountains.

She seemed to calm herself in an apparent effort to summon her magical energy for another spell when suddenly she screamed—a bloodcurdling, terrible sound—as a green flash of light erupted beneath her prone body. She was thrown from the altar across the room where she struck against the wall with a sickening crunch. It was that moment when I had unloaded my dream world version of a double barreled shotgun into her head, and I winced at the memory of the act.

“Tyreva!” the man screamed and ran to where her limp body had come to rest.

The figures became blurry as they moved further away, so I followed the man and knelt next to his image as he cradled the woman in his arms. Her head had been the first part of her body to strike the wall, and there was blood pouring profusely from her nose. The ornate circlet which had adorned her head was smashed into a handful of pieces, and the large emerald appeared to have shattered into tiny fragments as well.

“Tyreva…no!” he cried. “You can’t die! The people need you…” he sobbed. “I need you,” he said softly through quivering lips, and I got the distinct impression that this was not a man who was used to crying.

Her body was completely limp, but her lips moved silently. The man and I moved as one to lean closer and hear what she was saying.

“You,” she breathed, “are what the people need. You came to us for this very purpose.”

“Tyreva, please don’t go,” he said, caressing her face as tears ran down his cheeks, “I’m not ready. There’s so much more you can teach me!” I only now noticed how physically fit this man was, and I was immediately envious. He was at least six foot four and two hundred fifty pounds of chiseled muscle, with massive hands that would have made Jack Dempsey envious.

The barest hint of a smile tugged at her lips as she whispered, “We are never ready, but you have learned all you will need.” She drew a wet, gurgling breath and a tear ran down her cheek. “I owe you a great debt which I fear I can no longer repay,” she managed to say clearly, despite her quickly failing body.

The man nodded wordlessly as tears continued to pour from his eyes, and I felt a deep sympathy for him in that moment. I knew that I had killed her, and that I had been justified in doing so, but being confronted with the reality of that decision gave me an unexpected pang of regret.

“You gave me a new life and no matter the cost, I will avenge you,” he whispered as he held her forehead to his. “Nothing in this world will stop me, I promise you,” he hissed fiercely, and his rage was palpable even through the echo of time. “I will rip the beating hearts from their chests and erase every trace of their existence from this place after I burn your name into their skulls!”

“I believe you will,” she whispered, and the life went out of her eyes.

The scary part was that I did too.

The spell ended abruptly in a flash of deep, blue light, which was strange since I hadn’t dismissed it. It took me a few moments to re-orient myself, but when I had done so I stepped outside of the dome.

“So,” Pi’Vari prompted, “did you kill her?”

I glared at him, but I decided he needed to know. “Yes, Pi’Vari, I killed her,” I spat.

My herald nodded. “Good riddance,” he said a little too smugly for my liking.

I couldn’t take it any longer. I cocked my fist and punched him as hard as I could in the nose with a winging overhand right. I knew I didn’t have enough strength to actually hurt him, so I didn’t have to hold anything back.

He didn’t see it coming and even if he had, my herald was never much for unarmed combat. Give him a bow and he could turn you into a pincushion from fifty yards, but in close quarters he wasn’t very adept.

The blow snapped Pi’Vari’s head back, but I was disappointed that his nose didn’t break—and even more disappointed when my wrist exploded in pain. He struggled to maintain his balance and would have succeeded if I hadn’t quickly kicked his legs out from under him.

As he fell I stood over him and grabbed his collar, pulling his face closer to my own. I was once again disgusted by just how weak my ‘new’ body was, despite my own efforts at remedying that particular defect, but I pulled him up enough to get the desired effect. He was holding his nose in one hand, while the other had braced his fall to the ground.

“You will either change your tune, or you will learn to show a little restraint as to when—and where—you play it,” I growled at him through clenched teeth. “These people are our enemies, but they are still people and deserve our respect! Do you understand me?”

Pi’Vari had regained his composure and removed his hand from his nose. “You overstep your bounds, Jezran. You are not yet Master of House Wiegraf,” he hissed. “As such, your authority over me is more limited than you appear to believe!”

“Is it?” I asked in a threatening tone. “Believe me, Pi’Vari, the last thing you want is for me to start playing by your rules. I never lose a game once I’ve taken a liking to it,” I warned. There were literally thousands of people on internet forums back home who would attest to that, if asked.

Pi’Vari looked like he was about to retort, but he bit his tongue and inclined his head slightly.

I stood back and watched as he got to his feet. Aemir was a respectful distance away, but it was clear that he was prepared to cut Pi’Vari down if he decided to try anything. Dancer, on the other hand, was leaning up against the curve of the dome on one leg, with the other foot pulled up under his buttocks. He appeared to be getting a kick out of my little outburst, which was pretty uncharacteristic of me…at least, it was since I’d come to their world.

“Now,” I said in a commanding voice, “let’s finish checking these domes. Mistress Tyreva, the woman who controlled the Colossus, wasn’t alone and it sounded like the man who was with her was a protégé of some kind. It’s possible that he also gained access to one of these domes.”

“Did you at least discover his name?” asked Pi’Vari with the barest hint of defiance in his voice.

I shook my head, ignoring the barb. “No, I didn’t get his name, either in the dream world or here.”

We spread out and quickly enough, Dancer found another disturbed dome, but this one hardly resembled a dome any longer. It had been blasted apart by some kind of massive force, casting bits and pieces of it all across the cavern in a fan-shaped pattern. Someone—or something—immensely powerful had torn this thing apart, and I had little doubt as to who was responsible.

The pieces bearing the sigil weren’t nearby, so we focused instead on what had previously been in the middle of the dome. Unlike the previous chamber, there was no altar. Instead, there was an upright sarcophagus which resembled a nine foot tall iron maiden like I used to see in gothic movies. There were no spikes inside it, but there were also no holes or hinges of any kind. The front section appeared to have been pivoted away by simple, brute, force.

“The altar in the other dome,” I began, thinking out loud more than anything, “looked to be how this Mistress Tyreva connected with the Colossus. Shouldn’t her protégé, or whoever unsealed this one, need to return to this place to control whatever was unleashed?”

“It is possible,” Pi’Vari said coldly, obviously still smarting from earlier. “We do not yet know enough of their magic to make a final determination.”

The entire object was made of what appeared to be iron, with rusty red colored streaks along its surface. I found nothing of interest either inside or outside the ominous case, so I continued around to where my herald was examining the front section.

My herald hesitated a moment too long, which drew my attention. “What is it, Pi’Vari?” I prompted.

“I may have been wrong about this place,” he replied evenly, “I do not believe this is a burial site for actual gods.”

Now my curiosity was piqued. Infuriating as he was, I had come to place a lot of weight behind Pi’Vari’s observations. Only rarely had he been completely wrong since lending his talents to my group.

I slowly circled around behind the sarcophagus as I asked, “What do you think it is, then?”

“It is likely a burial site of a kind…but its purpose might be more historical than spiritual—like a museum,” he explained. “I do not believe these are the actual remains of gods; I believe this is a collection of their dormant vessels.”

That got my attention. “Are you saying that each of these domes contains a sleeping avatar?” I blurted.

“No,” he replied tersely, “they are not ‘sleeping.’ When their respective inhabitants perished, their connection was severed and these vessels—or avatars, as you say—became dormant. They cannot ‘awaken’ in the traditional sense, as the beings which originally inhabited them no longer exist.”

“So…” I began, my mind racing with possibilities, “what purpose might someone have for collecting these empty vessels?” I had a few answers in mind, but none of them were terribly comforting.

“It is yet another mystery, Jezran,” he said with a little more emphasis on my name than usual.

I suddenly remembered the large emerald Tyreva had worn on her circlet which resembled a large cat’s eye, and decided to see if Pi’Vari knew anything about it.

“Are you familiar with an emerald green sigil,” I asked brusquely, “in the shape of an eye, probably feline in shape?”

“Indeed,” Pi’Vari replied absently, “it represents fear in most primitive cultures.”

“I mean more specifically,” I pressed, “are you familiar with any beings who would use it as their sigil?”

There was a pause before he replied, “Yes, Jezran,” he replied somewhat tersely, “it is the symbol of Narcath, Mother of Nightmares and Queen of Terror. She, or more precisely, ‘it’ is one of the few targeted beings who escaped persecution during the Twelfth Gods War.”

When I came around to where he was, I found him kneeling and examining what looked to be a large patch of rust on the front of the lid.

“Did you find anything?” I asked, seeing his gaze locked on the large patch of rust, which I now realized was a sigil.

Pi’Vari shrugged. “I may know this one as well,” he said, gesturing to the symbol on the front of the sarcophagus.

I looked closely and saw that there were two objects represented, crossing each other at their respective mid-points like blades on a coat of arms. The first appeared to be a barbed hook, like the kind used for moving bales of hay but quite a bit more savage-looking with a blade sticking out one side of the grip. The second was unmistakably a short, wide blade; probably a meat cleaver of some kind with a large chip notched out of it a third of the way back from the tip.

“Who does this sigil belong to?” I asked, a slowly mounting sense of dread building somewhere in my gut.

“An ancient creature,” my herald began quietly, “who until now was never confirmed as a proper ‘god’ in the universally accepted meaning of the word. It represented retribution and carnage,” he explained levelly, “but never developed a recorded following of any kind. In fact, if I remember correctly, this creature quickly slew any who actively worshipped it.”

My eyebrows went up. I didn’t like ‘retribution’ and ‘carnage’ in the same sentence when describing a foe I would inevitably come face-to-face with.

“Does it have a name?” I asked.

Pi’Vari chuckled somewhat ominously before answering, “They called it ‘The Iron Butcher’.”

Needless to say, that didn’t help alleviate the mounting dread I felt. Then another thought burst into my mind, and I could barely suppress a shiver. “I don’t think this is a museum, Pi’Vari,” I said softly as a lump formed in my throat.

He turned to me, eyes wide with incredulity. “Oh,” he challenged, “and what do you believe it is, Jezran?”

I looked around the cavern slowly, taking in the whole scene before answering. “I think it’s a trophy room.”

Chapter X: Formal Introductions

We catalogued the images of the Colossus and this ‘Iron Butcher’ as thoroughly as we could, and when our subsequent search of the cavern revealed nothing of further interest—including no additional exits—I decided we should go back and check the chamber containing the graves and the obelisks.

“I wonder if you can activate the obelisks, Master?” said Aemir as he walked alongside me.

I really didn’t know if I could. “That depends,” I replied after a moment’s consideration, “mostly on whether or not I can discern where their partners are located. If I can do that, then I’m guessing I can. But the bigger problem is whether or not I can reinforce the structure of the damaged transmitting obelisk long enough to achieve transport.”

“You are a mighty wizard, Master Jezran,” he said reassuringly, “I have no doubt you can do as you must.”

I laughed in spite of my best effort to avoid doing so. “For the nineteenth time, Aemir: I am not a Master,” I corrected him. “And I am not as mighty as you suggest. I’ve never attempted anything even remotely like what you’re suggesting, but as usual it appears we are out of options.”

Aemir shook his head. “Your modesty does you no credit, Master,” he growled, which was an unusual display coming from the normally mild-mannered Desert Knight. “You have never failed to accomplish that which was required, including finding a cure for my previous ailment.”