Chapter 48 - Shadowblight

“Shadowblight?” Leon’s mind drew a complete blank.

“It does not surprise me that you have not heard of this accursed name.” Leena’s somber expression held the raw edges of a solemnity that faintly edged on terror. “In ages past, well over a millennium by your human reckoning, the daemon threat loomed closer than ever before, smothering the very breath of Aeria in its dread grasp.”

Leon’s mind immediately began to protest that daemons were simply tales told by old crones to naive children in order to scare them into obedience. However, the sheer weight of Leena’s words as well as the barely contained fear behind them stalled any protests from spilling forth.

Seemingly having caught the hint of skepticism in her listener’s eyes, however, Leena shook her head fiercely.

“Listen well, Leon Draxas. The daemons are the sworn enemies of all life upon Aeria. Their mere existence is the greatest bane to the future of our world, and their power is such that it would beggar the grimest, darkest nightmares conjured from any mad prophet’s raving mind. Do not make the same mistake our forefathers made. They too once dismissed the threat of the Daemon Horde as mere legend. Even our fabled courts of the fair folk, long though our memory may be, failed to heed the warnings of our grand elders of times past. Much less the rulers of your human thrones, whom the gods have seen fit to grant too great an ambition for such fleeting lifespans. Perhaps it is only normal that they would develop such hubris, which would inevitably lead to their downfall.”

Leon’s expression tightened as he heard Leena’s description of his race. As brutally honest as it was, the young scion of House Draxas found that he could not disagree.

“Legend told of the time of the gods, when they struggled mightily over the fate of Aeria. Bound as they were by their own covenants, they employed mortal agents in order to wage a bloody, ruthless war that spanned entire lifetimes of your human folk. The Daemon Horde tore the very essence of Aeria asunder to forge the Dreadgate. Its great maw spewed forth endless tides of daemons and their minions, ready to swallow all life in Aeria and forever blanket the land in darkness. Though fair folk, dwarven kin and noble humans all heeded the call to defend our lands, the blood they spilled proved useless in the face of the daemon juggernaut. In the final battle, when the last armies of our ancestors made their last stand and stood surrounded by the vast seas of the Daemon Horde, their prayers were finally heard by the Great Goddess Avaria.”

“It was the Fair Lady herself who broke the Covenant of the Gods, banishing the Daemon Horde back to their dark abyss and sundering the Dreadgate apart. The price was grievous beyond measure, for Great Avaria paid for the act with her own life. Aeria was, for the first time in untold ages, without its patron Goddess, and was thus a mere shadow of its former self.”

Leon was, of course, familiar with the tale of Avaria, Goddess of Aeria. The canon of the Holy Church of the Sacred Flame, the most dominant religion in the world, preached of The Sacrifice and how it had come to create the Great Scar. However, Leon had never realized that even the elves held a similar belief. More shocking still, Leena seemed to have a fierce, unshakable belief in the veracity of such legends, to the point where even Leon found himself inclined to believe what he had previously considered as mere tales the Church fabricated to fool the masses.

One stark difference, of course, was the fact that Leena claimed Avaria was dead, while the Holy Church preached that the Sacred Flame was everlasting, and Great Avaria had been reborn from its ashes. This shook Leon badly, as such clashing views would surely shake the very foundations of faith in the hearts of the Church’s believers.

“You’re saying the Sacrifice is no myth and truly happened? No, more importantly, you claim Avaria truly existed yet now lies dead?” Leon blurted out, in spite of himself and feeling foolish while doing so. Though he, like most of the aristocracy, paid lip service to the Church and its beliefs, he had long forsaken true faith within his heart. Gods? What gods? Wait, was this part of the reason why humanity had lost contact with the elven courts for all this time? “And only you elves are privy to this information?”

Leena’s hand on his arm tightened convulsively.

“Leon,” She hissed. “You should know that power blinds the eyes of mortal kin. It conspires with time to banish truth from memory, until only false belief fueled by greed and ambition prevail. Whether deep down they are aware of this or not, in the end it is immaterial. They may close their eyes and leap over the abyss, but struggle as they may, in the end they will still fall.”

“Listen well, for I am not finished. For long centuries, Aeria slowly healed from the ravages of the Daemon Horde. Though the world mourned the loss of The Goddess, her parting gift was a land cleansed of the corruption of darkness. Perhaps it was due to this unexpected windfall, or maybe it was blind folly. Regardless, over seven hundred years after the destruction of the Dreadgate, chaos once again descended upon our world. This time, it was caused by the folly of mortal men.”

Leena gazed directly at Leon, and there was unmistakable accusation in her gaze. “It was you humans who first gave in to the corruption of darkness. Daemons had been banished back to The Abyss, their thirst for blood unquenched, their hunger for destruction unabated. They bent their powers to the creation of a new Dreadgate, but found their efforts futile against the enduring might of Great Avaria’s sacrifice. However, after many centuries of continuous plots and stratagems, they finally found a loophole they could exploit.”

“Though the Dreadgate had been destroyed and its powers had been sealed, such a seal had been imposed upon The Abyss, not on Aeria itself. Through devious means, they managed to contact and seduce many of humanity’s best and brightest, whispering from the shadows and offering great power. This power came in the form of the anti-thesis of elemental essence, wielded to great effect by the Daemon Horde, yet banished by Fair Avaria’s sacrifice. Through the blind greed of humans, darkness insidiously crept back. After it was unleashed upon our world, burning great swathes of chaos and destruction, running rampant upon the land, it received a name that was both a cry of despair and a curse of irrevocable hatred.”

Leena let out a shuddering breath, pausing while she visibly collected herself, before uttering the next words in a dead, toneless voice.

“This was the Shadowblight.”

Leon’s heart skipped a beat as his blurring vision focused at the severity in Leena’s tone, struggling amidst the pain burning in his veins to listen carefully to the elven maiden’s next words.

“The Shadowblight is a terrible curse under the guise of a gift. It feeds upon the elemental essence present in every living being of Aeria. It is like a fire that consumes elemental essence, and this fire is the power of the dread dark essence. The greater the gift of elemental power present within a person, the more fiercely this dark essence burns.”

“Dark essence?” Leon had never heard of this term before.

“Elemental essence will, by nature, always seek to nurture and grow. Even the fire essence you wield, volatile and fierce though it may seem, merely serves to release pent up elemental energy and release it back into the world. Limited though an individual’s elemental powers may be, the world’s reservoirs run deep and eternal. Surely you understand this to some level, as talented a weaver of the elements as you are. Channeling elemental essence is merely an act of borrowing, while releasing it through spells is the act of paying it back. In the end, you even add your own essence as a fitting tribute.”

Leon’s mind whirled as he listened to this simple, yet apt explanation of Leena. Though he had never viewed it as such a symbiotic relationship, at this moment many of the more profound intricacies of the elements which had escaped his grasp suddenly seemed to grow clearer in his mind. Truly, elves lived up to their reputation as the best wielders of elemental essence upon Aeria. Just a few simple statements, yet Leon was blown away by the implications. However, Leena did not give him time to ponder on such matters.

“Dark essence is the polar opposite. While elemental essence nurtures and grows, dark essence devours and destroys. Thus elemental essence is represented by light, while dark essence leaves only a deep void, where no light nor life can exist. As you may know, it is far easier to destroy than to create. Similarly, dark essence counters elemental essence and is not only deadlier than its counterpart, it is also relatively simpler to gather and wield.”

“This is the gift of the dark essence. Through such power, many talented weavers of elemental essence rose to great prominence and fame in a short time. Such was the devious plot of the Daemons, for only after their prey reached such positions, did they finally unveil the curse of the dark essence. This was the Shadowblight.”

“Like its name implies, it is a corruption of the elemental essence dwelling in each person. When the process is complete and there is no more elemental essence to devour, the Shadowblight begins to consume the mind of the afflicted. Subtle changes in behavior will occur at first, but quickly become more obvious. Abstractions such as morality and virtue will lose all value in the face of desire and greed. An endless hunger will burn in the victim’s heart and mind, one that is impossible to appease. Madness will finally begin to set in, until the Shadowblight completely consumes the victim’s mind. Then, it will enter its final stage, and initiate its assault upon the soul.”

“The soul?” Leon asked, clearly confused by such an abstract concept.

“This is the deadliest incarnation of the Shadowblight. Though neither the method nor its metaphysical implications are clear, we only know that until the second stage of the Shadowblight, the infected were still unwitting carriers who have voluntarily succumbed to the temptations of dark essence. However, the most terrifying aspect of the Shadowblight only emerges upon the advent of the third stage, when the soul begins to burn under the assault of dark essence. After this point, sooner or later the soul will finally succumb to the assault of the Shadowblight. When this happens, the last remnants of the soul will crumble into ashes and scatter like silent, invisible snowflakes carried by an evil wind, leaving behind an empty shell, a soul-less beast driven by a ravenous hunger to obey the commands of its daemon overlords.”

“Spawning a new slave to the Daemon Horde is bad enough, but each of the snowflakes spread in the final stage of the Shadowblight is a seed of darkness, bearing the dread dark essence to an unwitting new host. This host will find a newborn power burning through their elemental veins, and unknowingly nurture this seed of Shadowblight. Having found a new host, dark essence will once again begin its cycle of consumption and corruption, until in the end it completely devours the new host into a new slave before sprouting new seeds of darkness.”

“It is this terrifying cycle of corruption and enslavement that nearly destroyed us all. Before we even became aware of the existence of the Shadowblight in the human kingdoms, these invisible seeds had been borne by dark winds into the fair folk’s domains. By the time human servants of the Daemon Horde finally arose all across the lands and began the construction of countless dark rifts to open the way for their masters, the taint of the Shadowblight had spread far and wide across the land. It even reached deep into the heart of the fair folk’s land, where even the King of the Diamond Court succumbed to its temptation and became traitor to us all.”

At this point, Leena parted her lips but words failed her. Anguish drowned all other emotion as though she were reliving memories far too painful to endure. After another moment, she finally drew a deep, shivering breath before visibly steeling herself and continuing.

“I will not elaborate on this massive calamity. Know only that it was a holocaust the likes of which have never visited our world since the times of the Sacrifice. In the end and at great price, the threat of the Shadowblight was ended. Entire kingdoms were burned to ashes. Countless innocents were sacrificed in order to char the last vestiges of dark essence from Aeria. Even the fair folk engaged in the cruelest genocide they had experienced yet. The bitter fruits of such actions, necessary as they were, still echo in our days. Most of all, the fair folk have never forgiven the humans for ushering in this terrible curse.”

“In honor of the memory of those sacrificed to halt the Shadowblight, and so that Aeria would never again know the ravages of such a scourge, a select group of fair folk was created. They are known as Lightbearers. Thus I present myself to you, Leon Draxas. I am Arleena Starbreeze, Lightbearer of the Sapphire Court. My team of 12 Lightbearers were among many tasked to delve into the mysteries of a series of rift incidents, and to ascertain to what extent the Daemons were involved. Six long months have passed, and in the pursuit of our mission all my companions have given their lives. We have uncovered many of the mysteries of this land, but we have found even more questions in their wake. Unfortunately, in our last mission my final two companions sacrificed themselves so that I might survive. Left alone, I had resigned myself to halt investigations into the depths of the red zone. Instead, I began to blend into the local populace while I recovered my strength. It was precisely as I was still recovering that I met the bandit raid, and subsequently both you and Skyle.”

“Wait, you claim elves created the Lightbearers to guard against the Shadowblight returning. How come I’ve never heard of any of this before? Why would you keep this as a great secret instead of spreading the word, especially among humans where you claim it first took root?”

Even as Leena answered, Leon’s own mind had begun to produce its own answers to his questions. Her words only served to verify his own conclusions.

“As I said before, humans have been gifted and cursed with great ambition. Knowledge of the dangers of Shadowblight is widespread within the circles of the fair folk so as to warn our people lest they should become tempted by it. Your own race, however, chose a different path, perhaps more suited to your own nature. As far as I know, several secret agencies police the knowledge of dark essence, holding it to be the utmost taboo. Even a mere whisper of it would be dealt with swiftly and ruthlessly, such that its seeds have been stamped out of existence through sheer brutality and death. By thus squashing even the mere mention of it from your histories, humans seek to ensure that not even fools blinded by their own greed would reach towards dark essence after hearing of its power. Still, I’ve heard of stringent tests spread by different human organizations that periodically test for the Shadowblighted under the guise of various rituals.”

Leon’s face paled greatly as he processed all this information. He could, in fact, recall several archaic rituals performed by the Holy Church on a yearly basis which were mandatory for every man, woman and child. All this time, he never had an inkling of the importance of such. Leon found himself feeling a certain amount of consideration towards the Church for the first time in his young life. It had taken an agent from the elven court, a Lightbearer, for him to understand many things.

“Hold a moment.” Finally, he could see why his gut had been telling him that not all was as it seemed with this girl they had rescued. Then, his mind shifted towards Leena’s most recent actions, particularly her sudden curiosity towards Skyle. Sudden realization hit him like a hammer, and his heart skipped a beat as his mind seemed to freeze for an instant.

“Skyle. No. You can’t possibly think-” He stuttered.

“Yes, he is Shadowblighted.” Leena’s reply was as grim as her face, her tone one of irrefutable finality.

“You’re wrong.” Leon exclaimed between clenched teeth, his heart sinking. “Skyle.. No, it can’t be!”

Leena paused for deliberate moment but her eyes did not waver at all. “Listen to me Leon. Listen well. I told you Shadowblight seeds target the bright and gifted. This is because the greater the original amount of elemental essence, the greater the dark essence when it finally erupts. As a consequence, when Shadowblight is transitioning between the first and second stages, a great clash will occur within the energies of an individual as the last vestiges of elemental essence are finally burned clean. The length of this process varies on an individual basis, and may last anywhere from days to several months. It is suspected, however, that the greater the talent, the longer the transformation process will last. The late King of the Diamond Court is even said to have endured a period of three years before finally breaking through and bursting with staggering power, burning the entire Diamond Court into cinders.”

Leon swallowed the bitter aftertaste in his mouth while finally realizing why he had heard of the Emerald and Sapphire Courts, but never of the Diamond Court of the elves.

“It is known that within this timeframe the afflicted will be unable to channel elemental essence or dark essence as they usually would. Only upon completing this process would the dark essence finally surge and begin its assault upon the mind, while also granting a great increase in essence power. The Shadowblight discriminates not based on race, gender or age. Only talent draws its voracious maw. Now tell me Leon, you have seen how incredible talented and intelligent Skyle is, even at such a young age. And yet, have you seen him use his elemental powers these past few days?”

“But.. But you’ve never used your own powers either!” Leon accused.

“So that I may never be exposed to even a hint of corruption, my oaths as a Lightbringer prevent me from drawing upon essence of unknown origins, such as the beast stones from this place. These oaths I hold more sacred than my own life. Tell me, however, would Skyle be beholden to such oaths?”

Leon frantically searched for such a reason to justify Skyle’s actions, but he knew clearly that Skyle was a practical boy, and beyond that, a simple farmer that would have no reason to have such oaths. As a matter of fact, Leon himself had often wondered why Skyle had never used his elemental essence.

Leena’s odious inquisition continued, and Leon found his mind sinking deeper and deeper into despair as he heard her next words.

“During this internal clash of energies, elemental essence from external sources would also be firmly repulsed from interfering, no matter how benevolent its intentions may be. I’ve noticed that your own wounds have been well treated using elemental essence. However, Skyle’s own bear not a single hint of such essence. Can you explain to me why? Surely, you tried to treat Skyle’s wounds using your own powers, am I correct? What happened then?”

“I.. I..” Leon grasped for an answer, but could only squeeze his eyes shut as his shoulders sagged and his head slumped forward. Leena didn’t seem to mind his silence, as she just continued in that same implacable tone.

“The most definite proof, however, is the matter of his eyes. It is said they are windows to the soul. Be that as it may, a sign of the final stages in the violent internal clash between elemental essence and dark essence is the change in coloration of one of the eyes. Sometimes, extreme reactions to elemental power can produce subtle variations in the hue of both eyes. However, as dark essence consumes the final vestiges of elemental essence within a body, one eye will remain the same color while the other will blaze brightly with the fire of dark essence. Do you know what color this flame takes?”

Leon raised his head and stared speechlessly at Leena, wishing he could cover his own ears.

“Dark essence burns, not red, nor black, but rather a deep, icy blue that represents the coldness of the void.”

These last words pounded upon the last vestiges of resistance in Leon’s mind, opening wide the maws of despair.

“But Skyle, he’s a good person. Much better than me, or you.” Leon protested in an almost inaudible voice.

Leena shook her head. “That is inconsequential. I told you that while the first corrupted become so of their own free will, the seeds of Shadowblight take root without the consent or even knowledge of their hosts. All they know is that a new talent has suddenly awakened within them. Since they’re often the best and brightest in the first place, such a discovery does not come as a great surprise. By the time they might suspect something is amiss, they would already have fallen to the corruption of dark essence.”

“Are you so sure that Skyle has this Shadowblight? Absolutely so? You are willing to gamble on his life, on your own life that this is true?” Leon growled as fiercely as he could manage, though his voice trembled both with the great shock he had received from Leena’s revelation, and his own state of utter exhaustion.

“How about you, Leon?” Leena countered softly, like a silken knife easily slicing under his ribs, and into his heart. “I’ve revealed to you the secret of the Shadowblight. Would you be willing to gamble upon the lives of countless innocents, upon the very fate of Aeria itself, that Skyle is absolutely pure and untainted?”

Leon staggered back. First of all, did he trust Leena? He was relieved to find that he still did not, even after everything. However, was this Shadowblight a lie? His gut told him otherwise. Too many facts matched, like pieces of a puzzle Leon never knew were in his possession.

Then the truly vital question became, was this suspicion enough to doom an innocent life? His upbringing and education had drilled into him the importance of principles in governing the masses. Such principles were different from those of moral or sacred virtue. Instead, they were the bedrock of pragmatism, upon which the altar of power was built.

One such principle instantly sprung to the forefront in Leon’s mind: the needs of the few were always subordinate to those of the many. The life of a single innocent to redeem the lives of ten, a hundred or a thousand was not just a sound logical decision, but also a basic principle of ruling. Thus did kings and princes make their decisions, so that the lands would prosper and the people benefit.

Even when that single innocent was his own best friend, the true brother he never had.

“What happens if the Shadowblighted die before the end of the third stage?” Leon was surprised at how cool and steady his voice was.

“It is the only known method to contain its taint: drowning it under oceans of blood.”

The cold answer did not surprise him at all. Now, all Leon could do was ask himself the simple question: would he do it? And if he did, would it not surely doom his soul in the process?

Shocked and overwhelmed as he was, Leon was still able to appreciate the bitter irony of it all: that it was the death of his own heart that would be the first sacrifice for the many.

It was thus, Leon finally realized, that the hearts of Kings became stone, and slowly died.

Skyle..

His mournful mental cry was cut short by a faint, yet unmistakable rumbling that had grown painfully familiar these past few hours. The ground trembled and the whole cave only served to amplify it further, until its echoes filled his ears with its droning din.

“They’re here,” Leon whispered, closing his eyes.

“They’re here,” Leena echoed solemnly.

“Perhaps it is for the better,” Leon thought to himself. “Better that I die here, torn apart under the ravenous fangs of a giant bug than to sacrifice the life of my friend in the name of some damn principle.”

Such thoughts were interrupted by Leena, who gathered her hands under Leon’s shoulder with unexpected gentleness.

Shaking his head, Leon placed his own hand on the Lightbearer’s shoulder, stopping her movement.

“No, this is as far as I go,” Leon sighed in reply to Leena wordless query.

“We can still move. Who knows how deep this cave goes?”

“Arleena Starbreeze, I am wounded, probably dying. I have overdrafted until my veins have run bone dry. Even now, I feel that the slightest breeze might scatter them into so much dust, and with it my own life,” Leon explained in an indifferent note, as though he were commenting on the weather and not about his own death. “Still, even as I am now, or perhaps even more so, I am Leon Draxas di Adrausier, and this is where I choose to make my last stand. I will run no further, for I would rather look death in the eye than be stabbed in the back. Can you understand this?”

Leena pursed her lips, but her next words were as direct and merciless as he had expected. “It is no great honor to choose death before duty. Neither is it courage to await a quick death instead of struggling in the face of impossible odds for the sake of a greater purpose. Leon, you now bear a great burden in the secret of the Shadowblight. You are responsible, just as much as I am, in seeing.. This matter through to the end.”

Only the slightest faltering towards the end indicated that she had changed her wording at the last moment. Still, they both knew the name that she had omitted in that last sentence.

“I am well aware that this secret you shared with me was no gift, but rather a huge burden. It is due to the severity of this burden that I will remain here. In my current state, if I were to join you in escaping I would only slow you down. This way, at the very least I will slow them down instead.” Leon jerked his head towards the mouth of the cave, where the roughly erected wall of stones left only a few faint rays of light in. These streams of light shook faintly as the rumbling grew louder and the rocks echoed the vibrations.

After a brief, considering silence, Leena finally nodded with a solemn air.

“You know the burden I bear, and I trust you understand its gravity. No matter what happens now, we are now fighting for the same cause.”

After a brief pause, Leena saluted in a formal manner, her right palm coming to rest over her heart.

“May you die fighting the Shadowblight, Leon Draxas.”

“May you die fighting the Shadowblight, Arleena Starbreeze.”

In the silence that followed, the only sound that filled the air was the relentless rumbling of the ground, growing louder and louder with every breath.