General Summary
Day 201
Late in the day we arrive at Dreamfall, entirely unprepared for what it looks like and how it feels.
Before us lie acres upon acres of dead trees - 30 to 80m tall with what would have been multiple layers of canopies. The blackened branches are eerily still with no leaves or life below. A 100m radius of dead land surrounds the forest and ends abruptly, bursting forth into grass and scrub as though someone had severed a limb and left the rest of the body intact on our side.
Even from a distance we can see a towering black ziggurat at the centre of the grove. Six spires rise from it, 200m tall and clearly Imperial. The stonework looks Dwarvish, and I am reminded of the lasting scars the Empire has left on multiple races. The structure itself feels magically purposeful but nothing else - it was never a home or a place of work. It existed to do harm and that’s all.
The magic is palpable in a way that I would usually describe as ebbing and flowing but there is no flow here, only the tide drawing towards this ziggurat and giving nothing back.
Kadia tells us that she had heard rumours of what was built here but hadn’t believed until now. The magic here is on a scale that is beyond her or any of her teachers (though I can feel that if I joined with several other Dread Lords and Ladies we could have erected something similar). I imagine that destroying it will take much more than building it did. It’s a strange and unfortunate quirk that often building horrible things and destroying good things is so much easier than destroying the horrible and creating the good.
I reach out instinctively towards the Empress, trying to find her presence. Instead I feel something colder, lonelier, and much emptier than the Empress I know. I’m enveloped not by the warm, gentle darkness but by cold, terrifying shadow. I tremble and find myself locked in place, though still standing.
“You are summoned. Alone.”
Back in the daylight I sink to the ground and find myself surrounded again by family. Camellia and Bran rush to my side with healing and Camellia wipes inky black tears from my eyes. When Kadia touches me she flinches and drops to her knees, bowing.
“It felt for a moment like I was in the presence of a Dread Lord of old…”
I beckon everyone to sit with me. Seems we’re all ending up down here anyway…
When Bran drops to his knees as well, his eyes are glowing stranger than usual.
“You have to go. Nothing I’ve ever seen is so certain. If you don’t go….things just stop. I’ve never seen something so clearly that must be...not even things that are just moments from happening…”
All around us, the fae are on edge. Zemini is handing out small glasses of enchanted fruit juice and tending to people. They all look nearly sick from being so close to this place.
I rise and brush myself off. I have some letters to write and then I will go to the ziggurat immediately. Kadia offers to come with me but I refuse - she’s gotten to see how loving the Empress has become and she should not have to face this coldness again. Instead I ask Alder to accompany me as far as he can.
I settle down to write some letters. Mistress, Doraal, Alwen, Tira, Lyssa, Rabiya, Amytri, Zadiyah, Rosalia...most are simply instructions and lay out my hopes for what I was doing on this side...I don’t have soft words of goodbye to include. The ones who need those words know what I would say, and seeing them on paper would not be a comfort.
Zemini brings me a (much larger) glass of fruit juice and sits with me a while. They give me a small charm to bring light with me (which I accept as a cultural difference and recognize the thought behind it). But most importantly they hold my gaze seriously as I tell them from an old wise wizard to a young eager one: This is not a magic to investigate until you die. This is magic that will kill you. They nod sincerely. The fae are planning on camping on the other side of the hill so as to avoid looking at the grove anyway.
Alder and I meet, both in uniform, and say our goodbyes before walking straight into the dead grove. He walks directly in my shadow, silently, until he comes to an abrupt stop and kneels. The magic will not let him go any further.
I pull him close and savour the moment as he whispers,
“Come back. You have to come back,”
It’s not a promise I’m eager to make, but I nod,
“I’ll do my best. My name is for the hiss of air when people long-parted meet again,”
And I continue alone towards the ziggurat. As I climb the enormous, Osyr-sized stairs, I see enormous magical runes inscribed on walls so black that they seem to devour the light. Beneath me I hear faint fae songs, mournful and desolate and confined. Finally I arrive at the top, a 40m platform with the six obelisks surrounding a magic circle that plunges into impenetrable darkness.
Entering the darkness, the world rushes away from me. I kneel carefully, intent on conserving my energy for the inevitable conversion rather than trying to keep myself upright. I am prepared for an unyielding wall of darkness that I have no hope of moving. First, though, I want to search for any sign of the Empress I know and love. I feel the cold hands of this Empress sift through my memories and take in everything I have ever been. My early days with Mistress, working through the Academy, standing by her as the world demanded more, taking my own place as a Dread Lady. The decades of furious war against the Collective and my ice cold heart pumping blood through frozen veins as I left the Capital and walked alone against them. Finding the warmth of myself again here surrounded by humans and loyal elves...and fae. My thoughts of my mission here against the Collective giving way to a drive to reach out to the fae and the trolls in friendship - to find Lyssa and welcome the dwarves again with love and not chains. I know she sees the depth of my conviction to restore this Grove and return Wellspring to our once-enemies.
“I would hear your advice,” she says.
“The Empress I know in my time is happier. There is nothing to be gained in keeping this place. This world doesn’t have to be our enemy,”
“Walk with me,” she says, and the darkness falls away to reveal Dreamfall as it once was - gleaming leaves adorning the enormous trees.
“From here we make the most difficult decision. I see in your mind an enemy we cannot defeat. I have lost everything already. There is strangeness in your mind’s vision of me. You have come searching for strength, power. You need to destroy your enemies. In your heart I see myself still,”
And I see myself razing the Collective alone as my family lay near death in the Capital.
“This is my heart,” she tells me. I see the truth in her statement but I feel the fear of her words in my mind. I will not turn my back on her but the cold fear creeps in like thin ice over dark water. I do not need to destroy enemies unless there is no other option, and I will not come to reside in the part of myself that sees no other opportunities when facing an opponent. I tell her as much - my work here is in gathering the friends and allies who might stand at our back when we need them.
We have already lost this War of Fire. It saw us banished to the other side of the Barrier Mountains, alone at first and even now crushed between the Barrier and the onslaught of an enemy we can only evade for so long. Is that what you want? To dig deeper into every relationship with knife and chain and divide the world with so many impenetrable barriers? What will any of us have left after that?
I feel her rage deepen at my words but she lets me continue.
I have disobeyed once - when I stormed out of the Capital to lay waste to the Collective (this, my heart knows, is not quite true...my Empress didn’t command me to stay) and I was wrong to do it. The iron-cold anger that I brought with me to kill Shakshakshafah stayed with me long after I needed it and it was a poison from which I could not win free.
If you want my advice I will give it but if you want someone struck down then throw the dagger yourself, don’t ask the dagger where it ought to be thrown.
And she hurls me against a tree where I slam against it and fall to the grown, nearly broken. She lifts me up towards her again and I can almost feel malevolence as she asks again for my counsel.
Give this place back. I am here on your orders doing work that I know how to do. I have been working since I got here and I have plans for how to finish it. If you have other orders then tell me now otherwise get out of my way!
The entire world goes dark as I fall from her grasp to my knees on the floor again, gasping.
“Stand, little one, as you should,”
I hear her voice softer now as my wounds are healed and I find myself facing her and four other behind her. From two of them she takes robes and a staff and adorns me.
“You carry a piece of me that I have become. You stand not fearless but courageous in the face of my sin. In these lands you are a new thing, a thing much needed.
Heiassa, take this place as my Fifth Hand of Darkness. Return me at the end of your journey that I might be whole again. I can only be proud to have gained the service of one who would stand against my rage and counsel me,”
The six of us go deeper into the ziggurat to reveal millions of leaves swirling in the darkness, faint songs on the wind. She instructs the four other Hands to teach and guide me, for it will take all six of us to release them gently.
It takes us through the entire night as these four Hands teach me about the magic they used to create this place and what it means to serve as a Hand. That my job now is to be not only an extension of her own will but a force that can check and restrain her as needed. It takes a special ability to stand in her own heart and not lose your own.
Finally we dismantle the magic keeping the leaves captive. As dawn breaks and it is time for me to step back out of the ziggurat, I hear the Empress again.
“There is a time for rage and fury. Never forget the righteousness of when my heart was with you,”
And then for a brief moment I feel two hearts beating inside my chest before they merge into one beat, one rhythm.
I step out into the faint dawn light and find the earth carpeted in blue-green grass. The leaves above shimmer with colour and life, and the faint fae songs permeate the air. Sad songs, yes, but happy as well. Around me the walls of the ziggurat are still black but now I see the light reflecting off of it.
I walk out through the trees towards the place I left Alder and feel a part of myself still within the structure.
Comments