Chapter Twelve, Apotheosis

19th of Sun’s Descent, 1328 CE

Stars stretched their limbs to crown the infant horizon. Early morn mist entangled attendants’ ankles. Dawn’s approach withheld for now, the most supreme sphere was then Saathar. The glum giant’s encasing rings circumscribed with impression of imminent calamity. Beacons lit along the snaking path marked the way of their procession across the mountain. The atmosphere so stale and thick as people passed between obstinate crags. The body of Moribond itself seemed as though it were standing guard over the coming tribulation with frigid indifference.

Azarra, spurned by sleep’s reprieve for days, drudged through listless spell. Her mind a woeful bog in which all positivity drowned. Unable to drag out even a shell of optimism from that morose mire. She did her best to maintain assured façade for any set of eyes not observing the ‘initiate’ gravitated to her. She could feel cracks slowly effacing persona’s mask. Pangs of foreordination and impotence marred her heart. At any moment it felt she could crumble to pile of dust & tears. Drakkon in contrast arrived exuding dogmatic determination, is belief in his divinity truly unyielding.

Azarra ruminated on their impossible passage. Knowing full well the reach of the under-mountains and how even the most experienced of runners sent through the vast tunnels would so often slip into hidden pitfall or be swallowed by skulking chasms. The network was known to be home to many beasts and creatures of unspeakable nature which preyed on unwary travelers. Getting lost among the labyrinthine nether was as simple as breathing is above. And the Shaman’s Spirit Walk is so precarious a rite of passage that failure & death was the norm. Hence the limited number of shamans within their elite fraternity.

The path opened to the silent procession. Their hypnotic trail hooked upon a towering bluff that overlooked treacherous waters churning out to the sea which split through Moribond. A circle lined with blazing torches drawn of symbolic artifice connected each beacon. Noxious fumes belched up from a cauldron filling the ambience of the bluff with baleful odor. The bellowing groan of Gaahl’s throat evoked spirits just beyond sight. The Elder Shaman had next to him three oracles poised within the circle. Each were as children compared to the ancient composer of this ceremony. Yet so vibrant & timeless came their canticle’s resonance.

As the prospective lord joined them another shaman gave the signet for mighty rhythm to join in drumming culmination of the ceremony. The beat conjoined with the trios’ gurgling to craft a space for spirits to roam freely. Their musical invocation soared, calling for attention from the gods themselves in their invisible halls. Dissipating breath of the winds, rising over the mount, and blowing the seas below, annulled the density of morning mists. The sprawling crowd consisted of more influential figures than before; more respected tribesmen, leaders, affluent nobles & distinguished preachers newly arrived in the last day. Come all to witness the spectacle after giving considerable tribute.

The Keeper beckoned the initiate forward without interrupting the stinging shriek he announced him with. As he neared a pair of oracles came and disrobed him; the rite requiring the initiate affirm commitment by displaying naked self before the world, in forms material and astral. Wordlessly, he agreed. Stood there unashamed though the biting chill of the winter winds made it nearly impossible to avoid a shiver. The three thralls of the muses returned with shamanic cowl and threaded mantle, dressing him for the journey.

Then the ladies broke formation, winding away from the initiate. They sang prayers and swung about in dancing backsteps, their nymph-like inflections persisting as they spiraled over to Gaahl. The host gave them each a bowl into which he poured the black syrup. One by one the oracles brought the malahausca bowls forth and bid the aspirant god drink to final drop.

The stench was foul enough for his nostrils to scream for escape. But the taste far worse. The putrid tang was absolutely, throat-bleedingly repugnant. And the substance itself, corrosive as it slunk along its way. His stomach nearly retched out the wretched blend, but he fought the urge. Gulping with guttural willpower. The struggle not to heave the sour stuff roiled his tract with bizarre dissociative feeling of hovering outside his body’s perimeter. He refused to flinch further at the appalling consistency of apotheosis’ sauce. Thrice he consumed the bowls with stoic resolve until his whole materia rocked with jitters and sensation of skin boiling into the ether.

The oracles then bedazzled Drakkon’s shawl, the Pilgrim’s Threads, with talismans. Bringing more blessings unto to the man and affixing the ragged robe of woven fabrics, furs & feathers, with bone charms; complements of various earthly creatures that sealed him to his Nature. Gaahl’s screeching climbed to its peak as he pointed outside their circle to a gaping mouth in the mountain.

The Pilgrim moved up, swaying as the substance did in his core, reaching the outskirts of the opening. There before him, stood an enigmatic figure completely veiled in exquisite threads of unknown making. Ephemeral glitz of many hues flickered between one color to the next in rapid succession. Attached above the faceless figure’s head a radiant flambeau of brilliant halo. The Watcher parted the entrance and lifted a long, inhuman hand to beckon a delirious tribute through obscured passage. The commuter of shamanic voyage shuffled through and with eerie speed the way behind him was shut. The Watcher sealed the cavern mouth with a boulder, leaving him alone in the dank darkness.

Drakkon drops into an alien underworld. Vision drowns as mind-bending plasma floods his veins. The atmosphere pulsates with flares of hidden things made glaringly visible by the shamanic potion. Though the way back was blocked and with it the sound of the chanting ritual beyond, he swore that the trill of the chorus rang louder than ever. Their timeless hymn ever ascending, accompanies his descent into Moribond.

Shadows gathered round him, clinging to his body like a wet cloak. Becoming tighter & darker the further he sprang. Drab spindles whipped of his threads wrapped around, blinding his eyes & binding his hands like a prisoner to the void. Dusky chords from the depths shook the tunnel. The chirruping of the earth below overcame the muses’ song, depriving him of guiding chant.

There was nothing but a living abyss. One that frowned back at him through its impenetrable, ubiquitous façade. Gloom set upon him like wolves to a wounded elk, tearing off chunks of his being and feasting on raw hope. Despair gnawed at his weakness, testing the meat of his mirth. He felt naught but marrow. Nothing left to him but bones, creaking ready surrender to dust and Helwinds.

But he could still feel the beating muscle in his chest. Could feel the film of life still pumping fresh inside. So, he spoke to it, his heart. Repeating the mantra his mother imbued in him since he was a child. I am the Living Light! Astral Eye within Man! That I Am is Eternal!

Slowly his form regenerates, and the sea of lawless darkness parts as his light shines a narrow path. No longer a ghost, the shadowed gauze retreats from his face, allowing a dim perspective to emerge. The perpetual utterance of the mantra in his head steeps the cavern with faith. From this litany Azarra’s melody crosses the cave straight to his core with wonderous inspiration. His mother’s song brightens the pitch-black tunnels, bouncing beams back from a line of torches, skittering projections of their candled roads. She summons up the nocturnal faeries floating about his shoulders like dandelions in the summer breeze.

Doubt still stabbed his resolve and made him question the true nature of his reality, yet her humming would then reach a crescendo and draw him back. Back towards the source of the sound which he intuitively pursued as the right course in this midnight maze.

Mother’s lullaby massaged his weariness, caressed his soul. Her holy timbre turned his key. Her fingers strum his heartstrings, as though a transcendent harp. Her voice and invisible hand plucked him from the bog. Creating instrumental accompaniment, a symphony of love & encouragement that swept mystic gale. A synthesis of future & past sprang out of his ghost; oddest radiance curling over and into him. Its wave transforms his self from current shape to a regressive mold, the impression of childhood.

An infant Drakkon pushed through the channel, eager and anxious to find his mother. The boy came upon a small fissure in the ground that at first appeared as though its only menace was that of possible tripping on it. Leaping over the gap, he felt it transpire in slow motion. His legs crossed over a massive chasm that stretched out for miles on end. It felt like days before bridging the crack. Space bent back to its equilibrium and time broke its extended stillness when he found safety on the other side of the break in the floor.

There in a corner of the cave wall he saw Azarra comfortably seated on a throne of radiant white. Casting brilliance about her countenance and corners she beckoned her son into her embrace. All his fears, angsts & apprehensions burst. Washed from his face with tides of unleashed emotion. But in that catharsis, he found safe solace expressing all to her to be consoled by maternal nourishment.

The boy folds his head against her ghostly bosom and finds himself submerged in soft pillows of clouds. She becomes a blanket of sky. Her astral fingers gently sift through his hair and pull back the strands fallen over his ears. She leans to whisper. Utterance of birds chirping with celebration of freedom as the wind playfully rocks the leaves & branches of the woods. Tears stream down the child’s face, nestling deeper into her enclosure. Weeping torrent of despairing sobs and sniveling whimpers yearning for reassurance.

Azarra pulled her azure dress from her shoulders and the wispy clouds around the boy’s face departed. Replaced by the pristine spring-wells from which he drank. The fountain of the elixir of the life. Guzzling from the spring; intoxicated on the rejuvenating taste of divinity, of nectarine & ambrosia. Empyrean decadence. The holy fountain formed of her breast brought him to an abundant valley stream. Hers was a garden in which the most splendid flora bloomed under eternal solar beams that sang for the flowers as she sang for him. Rocking him back and forth, heavens swaying with her kindly motions, she showed him the world and warming prophecy; kissing promise of how it would all one day belong to him.

Peering up from the cradle of his mother’s arms into her glittering eyes the child sees in her the fire of the stars. Only the flame she held was ephemeral and dissipating as he gazed long at her ghost. Suddenly her cheeks hollow to cavernous pits. Her jaw tumbles to display terrible mandibles clenching and gnawing at his fresh face. The taste of her fountain flowed of ash, bile & corrosion with a black oily thickness sticking in his throat like malefic sap.

He thrashes for air to gasp at, but she drags him in closer. Her touch serrates. Cutting his lip, blood slithers down his chin. With immense force he pulls away from her cruel constraints and pleads for release. But gazing into those splayed sockets, he finds only abyssal spider webbing strung along the empty mires therein. The faint silver-gray birth mark that lined her former face and denoted her affinity to the Divine crumbles. Decay broadens obsidian rift. Ruptures the remaining flesh. A mangled abomination in place of her beauty & maternity. Craters slump her diabolical mask low, stripping to deteriorated vision of Death. Flakes of rotten skin plucked and winnowed by infernal mistrals rising from the depths. From these clefts in her wilting skin a horde of arachnids, worms & nightmare pests crawl out. Scattering, they scurry across his arms with revolting appendages peeling back his skin.

He screams as arachnid avalanche sprawls over him. Azarra’s scream was louder still, a horrible cadence capturing lament of extinguishing stars. Along with this banshee cry black bile spat from ghoulish maw. The blighted sludge gushes from her throat into his. Burrowing into lung-chambers and summoning legions of spiders to scratch and skitter into his innards. There in the pit of his vessel they spin knotted black mesh. Every cord wound from the fibers of his fears and buried nightmares. The black secretion congeals within his intestinal tract, hardening the choler therein. He could not retreat from this horror. It consumed him from within, tainted his very blood with noxious malice.

The corps of arachnids worked, wriggling, within him for terrible task. Spider-thralls with men’s faces slaving to erect a nest of his substance. His grave moisture their silk. Twining their vile webbing behind his sockets. There the wretched harvestmen cast their densest net yet, blinding Drakkon to what went on within him. Left only for the squirming of a million pests and their progeny abiding in egg sacks all through his pores. Tireless vermin ate their way out of the body they’d encased in, soon to gorge too much and leave none left.

Then his gut expunged itself. Viscous bile hurled onto cave floor and through cracks. Painful repulsion came with this, yet afterwards the strain and disgust made way for a slight relief. The bulk of poison ejected, but its stain remained. As did the existential sway and psychedelic curse he swallowed in shaman’s cup, refusing to let him escape to a semblance of sobriety – and sanity.

Freezing droplets falling from the ceiling woke him from stasis spawned of frightful hallucination. Pulled his self into his real surroundings. He found his head resting upon a cold rock spattered with water drawn from the cavern top and bile levied of his gut. His head dampened with dreams. Deep of the waters of delirium he drank. Looking up at where he’d once seen the sheen of Azarra’s eyes to find holes where loathsome creatures made their homes. Pests exiting those houses of filth to meet the stranger who’d disturbed their lowly lives.

In stumbling rut Drakkon bolted from this disturbance, further into the well of night. He could not outrun the constant creeping of phantom spiders scampering up his spine nor shake the wraith webs from his hair. The itching from the bites could not be ignored but as he scratched a layer of skin that fell to the floor. He could not dally on this disgust, the morsel he’d been made into.

Running forward, his only course. Stalactites and stalagmites gnashed against his way. Forming a massive jaw of Moribond itself. The teeth ground against one another, but then with their chipping showed small path through its throat. He dashed through the monster’s canines barely escaping the clamping bite.

A cracked boulder guarded the corkscrew bridge ahead. This underground pass spanned over more treacherous pit lower into the mountain’s belly. Behind the colossus of a rock the thin passage lit by luminous moss, illumed for him, he knew. But the guardian stone’s runed and ruined face scratched Kassan’s features, and his feet refused him. Vague visage morphed to fleshly mask stretched over the rock’s surface. With appalling transformation, so swiftly complete, the disembodied head flew at Drakkon. Expunged by the dim glow it hisses ire at this disturber and passerby. The blob-head block laughs as it breaks off more pieces, flings flakes of desecration and fills the limestone hall with the gravel of grating taunts.

“Your fate will be as mine, boy! We are closer than you may imagine. You are no god, just a blindfolded child on tread of delusion. O, your attempted mastery of this land is far more laughable than my beheaded ambitions. Your claim to the Fire of Creation shall lead to your immolation. Inferno alit by the stolen flames you seek to covet!” Spoke the deadened rock-orb, graven with the face he was yet to know as his father’s.

“As you burn you shall know me as your precursor. Kindling kindred are we. For we are of same brood. Of mind & body! Tis etched in our blood! The weight of stolen crown brought me down. So too will hubris be your undoing. Damnation is your name! Desolation, your inheritance! Know that you are nothing. That you deserve nothing and that you will return to nothing.”

Darkness shrouding Drakkon wiped blank the slate of his memory. He knew not his own name, nor how he arrived here. Where even was here? All was of bleakest night punctured by no single star. Identity evaporated into nothingness. His corporeal body dissolved into ether. His steps were taken by an invisible specter that drifted over the narrow bridge crossing the wide chasm. I am nothing... I am nothing...

Fade in. Fade out. Each time losing more and more of the substance betwixt the empty spaces. His spirit raptured up piecemeal. Then body collapsed with quaking force. Something knotted inside. It squeezed, punching out the last portions of puss squatting in his stomach. Spleen saturates the rock which had somehow followed him to where he toppled. At least the sour puddle corroded the remnants of Kassan’s hobbling head.

Black filthy tendrils glue his eyelids shut. Consciousness recedes to bottomless plunge. Oblivion receives him through its gates, through which not a single memory could pass. Only abyss awaited. Ever surrounding all. The slate of mind sinks into unknowing underworld. Into blank rivers of a nether, of which no soul could hope to sail still living and which had no way out from. Leading only onward to unending nowhere.

Passing Words

That evening, Temple grounds

Azarra tread the vertical incline to the top terrace alone. Night fell on Ty-Drasil. Yet a constant buzz stirred (with unspoken pact of sleeplessness shared) amongst the factional visitors. Still more had arrived to see spectacle, hoping to be among the first to witness the apotheosis or demise of her son’s godly claim to power. However only those of high prestige or affluence for sufficient tribute were permitted to walk through the Temple and her mountainside she was sculpted from. The rest were butted in by sentinel spears to their assigned chambers and in their camps tucked in the valley. Thus, she welcomed solitude in the absence of preying public.

Only a single face flashed fleet notice as she strolled up. That of a most peculiar druid who manifested on their grounds earlier to observe the goings on. This was a strange happenstance not merely because of the druids’ reputation for being reclusive vagabonds - who cared only for their hidden groves and seasonal migrations and not for the affairs of their fellows in mankind - but more so by this one’s appearance. His look was half-wild, unkempt and yet all too secular and material. In garb made from plants and foliage more than anything else. The man’s face and forearms were painted with berry streaks of blue, scarred by lightning strikes.

All this adding to the impression that the druid truly was of the elements. And yet he had amulets of more than his caste and an ostentatious collection of rings & other vanities bedazzling his hands and ears. Have their circles been circumscribed by covetousness too? Or just stricken with curiosity for all things shining outside their stony groves?

So many others had sought Azarra out in the day. Some demanded conference with her over subjects & schemes of varying sort; mostly centering around the aims of the Drakoni and the likelihood of her son’s surviving the trial. All that petulant noise drove her to the fringes of insanity; pressed her civility. She desperately wanted to be alone with her thoughts. But she could not repress the incessant burden of a thousand voices shouting at her, in simultaneous hail of demands, threats & wantful lip service.

Gaahl, grant me peace! She trekked to the peak, towards the high perch overlooking the mystifying range. There to where the mystic’s weary wisdom might rekindle her resilience.

When she reached the top of the tortuous steps two grim faced sentinels barricaded the path with spears. They did not budge as she came within feet of them. Azarra reforged herself, lined speech with commanding steel. “I am here to hold conference with the Keeper. Let me pass and meet with him. I am an oracle and, more so, a friend to him. Tis a matter of harsh need.”

One of the marbled sentinels grunted. For a while they said nothing. Then the other huffed resentful reproach. “By what authority do you command us? You have none. No title we hear, be it oracle or otherwise. Nor has the Elder given word to see you. Until your cause is weighed you are to us nothing more than a glorified apostate who left this Temple before she truly belonged to its ways. Leave us and find your rest.”

His compatriot sniggered, shifting gravel in his throat scraping its apple. “Ah, Azarra. Thou art not unlike that other apostate carried here in thy company. We will not arrest thee so unkindly as she. But by lance and decree, thou shall not be permitted passage.”

Supreme dejection rippled through her. Am I to toil in unrest, pacing with violence of heart until they announce my failure and doom along with it? I have nothing but this to move towards brighter chance. Nothing at all.

But a familiar voice boomed from behind shrined cliff to null Azarra’s defeat. The call came from that shaman who’d spoken out against Surrellius, Ligeia. Hers was a tone both strong and musical. “Let her through! She is of the sisterhood of Sight and a Daughter of Stars. She is true friend to our Keeper and soul not deserving of such infantile affront. By my authority & the Aegis ov Astraea, you shall admit her to our hearth!”

Shock chiseled away their statue expressions of idle mockery. They parted as commanded and formed an archway of humbled bows, spears locking overhead. As Azarra passed by them sighing clouds brushed her face. From that smell she could tell for all their posing with warrior grimace that the two were incredibly inebriated, stained by potent cups. Even the guard were on edge with the purgatory of waiting. It seemed to invite all to drink away the hours, get numb to their passing. She pondered what booze-coated brawls might ensue below when feuds bristled to heads. The fusion of spirits with nervous irritation might not prove a friendly one.

The elder woman’s warm smile welcomed her upon the ridge overlooking the shaman’s hut. Ligeia ignored the divisive protocol of station to hug Azarra with a vigor far more able and energetic than her age implied. She and Gaahl were not so different in this regard. Eyes that brimmed with impressions of intelligence to outshine the world weariness of long experience. Her orbs were like twin lunes bulging from crescent craters. She too staved off sleep, as told from her moon lids drooping half-closed in dream. Yet even through tired sleet her features suggested a fire for life; albeit one that faded with time and years of dealing with stubborn sages, no doubt.

“Welcome, Azarra. Ah, what little wit is left in me recalls well your proclivity for readings and workings as an oracle. Oh, I had hoped to see you in altogether safer circumstances. Would that we could just sip tea and share stories.”

“I thank you ever more, goodly Ligeia.” Stunted breaths of surprise stilted her speech. “I am happy to know your kindness. These nights...”

“These nights those heckling sages deprive us all of deserved rest.” The shaman puffed on long pipe, herbal smog between the thoughts she bridged. “A great many shadows blight our people still. We hold some suspicion that among those campfires dotting the valley there are those who revere the snake & the bear still more than Elderath. Hard to find good company on nights such as these. Nevertheless, I leave you in the good graces of our Keeper. Forgive me for the brevity but I must away for company of spirits. We must each find soothing salve this nocturne.”

“Th-Thank you!” Azarra uttered, still slightly stunned but visibly flooded with gratitude for this kindness. And as quickly as she’d appeared Ligeia evaporated into the evening’s shaded alcoves. But before dusk absorbed her silhouette the dual meaning of her ‘spirits’ could be gleaned from small flask the wisewoman warmed her gullet with. Her salve, one to coat the liver.

The prodigal oracle swayed to Gaahl’s humble bower. An abode encircled by wooden totems (sculpted by his hand in days gone by and lined with icons of the shamans he succeeded and ancestors he admired). Incense smoke melted faint fog at the threshold. Finding him quietly laid across a modest bed next to a toasty fire. In defiance of his advanced age the withered soul preserved awareness as his sleeping eyelid opened to look upon her entrance to the dwelling.

“I apologize. My intent was not to disturb your rest like this.”

“Do not fault yourself or be overly concerned, girl. I will be getting more than enough rest soon.” He laughed morbidly; charcoal chuckle lifted by lingering pipe smoke. “Besides, you look anxious. For a friend to assuage your worry is worth sacrificing a little slumber. Your presence is far more appreciated than the company of dreams. Especially ill-fitting ones.”

“Your nights are worried? Do these dreams trouble you?” Her concern for Gaahl was genuine and not solely since he was the one person capable of best protecting her from conspiring sages.

“To attach too much to an old vessel that is soon to be given back to the mold of creation is pure folly. Ego’s idle apprehension. This body is of the world, ephemeral and earthly. A fleshy totem, a pillar of person, to soon be blown away by that which animates all life only to transform it through death. I am but the dust of the cosmos. My shell shaped & sculpted, then demolished and reformed. Our existence passes in the blink of an eye; yet to us one day, one hour can stretch to seem eternity. I have seen enough of this world to know that clinging to it would be a futile exercise in suffering.”

Gentle smoke drifted between his words, alongside a couple, less gentle, coughs. “The only reason my soul does not willingly fly across that threshold is that it is weighed down by concern for the state of the world and those left behind. Perhaps I am seduced by selfish delusion and am not viewing all from the eye of the eagle, as a shaman should. Surely the world will still spin without my fevered ‘wisdom’, but I feel that I am here to oversee some shift in the plane. To help summon fortune’s favor for our ancient tribes and re-converge with a purer state of being that our ancestors once dwelt in. Unity of spirit & purpose.”

She sensed he had more to say, that he would soon answer her, & stayed still by his side. “I am worried that I will leave this world to its perpetual revolutions in unrest & upheaval. I do not fear my own end, so much as I fear the final death of our people. For all our legacy is on the brink, at risk of eradication to time’s forgetful tyranny. In all my years of experience I still do not know the whim of the gods. Not fully. Yet there is a change inclement. Everyone here feels it. You do too, I see. Though whether this shift will deliver us to our zenith or Infernae, I know not.”

Gaahl’s voice altered its capacity with capricious flow. It disheartened Azarra to witness such a proud, powerful soul undergoing such steepening decay. However, likewise was it weirdly inspiring in how his spirit’s strength lingered even as his body’s waned. “Alas, I hath not slept easy. Miasma captures hypnagogic signs. Ah, I should resign myself to somnambulism. For I am unknowing, but a portrait of an old man snared by mankind’s oldest humor – the dread of limitation. We, forever blind to the ways of the heavens, search the dark for answers not allotted to us. Is obscurity not how we are equal?”

He spat a throaty glob. A grotesque sound but one she ignored, pretending to not see this sickly phrase. “Still the spirits once shared so much with me. Of the currents of their world and ours affixed with potential, darkly bright. That this impasse, this treacherous crossing arrives with numerous pitfalls and countless routes. Roads and roots sprouting in all directions leaving me humbled. Brought low to the point of being pressed upon by the foot of a Jotun whose size I cannot comprehend. At the mercy of the gods, as ever, but now affixed in the center of their storm. Perhaps even they debate our fate, unsure if we deserve salvation for our stupidity?”

Azarra adopted brittle-tea-tone of reassurance. “Perhaps it is not so that you have been cursed with nightly terrors for simply seeking what there is to know of the unknown. Rather, think on the spirits themselves undergoing tumultuous transition. Hope & dread clash in their space too, no? The image of that tapestry unraveled to chaos is reflected on and of ours. You who are the wisest of men with Eye into the unfathomed realm I cannot call arrogant. Knowing you as mentor, patron and friend is an accordance of the Fates. We can help one another still, as I’ve much to repay you.”

She pressed the back of her palm to the Elder’s forehead. The fervor left still in his breast fought off fever valiantly. But he was waning. Sharply. “It hurts hearing how clouded your dreams be, what little rest they afford you. You have endured worse, so what is a little longer if the portends of rapture may soon arrive? The fates will grant you your wish to be the hand that pushes the tide gently to a greater horizon. The Waning of the World is upon us. Prescient prediction you warned of. The omens are everywhere. Surely as our world readies to shed its old skin and take up the waxing forces between and beyond this pressure is to test reformation.”

Gaahl pushed her hand away and pulled himself up with the help of a stave. Leaning back, lit by the warm glow of the humble fireplace, the Elder presented his misty eye. Studying and scrutinizing his pupil he spoke. “Prophecies are rarely clear. All the sages and shamans who devote themselves to the prophetic Eddas derive entirely different conclusions. Some find an eccentric sort of insanity which isolates them from their peers. We may well be posted at a cross before the Waning crux befalls us in earnest. But there is no telling which world is to be destroyed and what shape the rebirth will take. I fear there is some grotesque ghost smiling over this show of ours. Something waiting to make a grand entrance on the world stage. A want to devour all players there. I loathe to ponder what hideous remains would be left to its influence with our little play poorly concluded.”

Assailed by more fits he turned from his apprentice to face the meditative wood & coals burning beside. “I know you wish for me to help him, but he is beyond my reach. Your Drakkon is alone in his Walk of Spirit. I would not dare tamper in gods’ affairs.”

Grim vapors breathed from him. “While I do wish his success there is little else to do. Your son may be best chance for sowing unity through the tribes but to unify under a pretender is to join unforgivable effrontery against all good. Did I not give clear address to the Summit? I sense the eagerness in your eyes, pleading for me to motion for an early resolution but that cannot be done. Like all else, the outcome is suspended outside our circles and waits on the writs of the Fates, or else the schemes of the Hels.”

Azarra could feel dusty doubts erode that confidence, constructed as a bulwark against the hopeless lake she waded. This temple felt more like a sepulcher where her former family worked tirelessly to entomb her alive. Complete abdication of control incensed her. I LOATHE this dependency on others, too weak in my own course to steer it! Damn the seas and all who sail! That I must dally on the sidelines as the ocean careens, curses my mast. Bloody gods and stubborn sages: choke on thy shallows!

Still, I am not without voice. Drakkon deserves my confidence. If we can persevere when the eyes of the world are watching, then the world will finally bring me what I am owed. Dreams made flesh in payment for its cruelty and every pain; every tear I shed; every life lost along the way will be given meaning. So much sacrificed for the goal, by others I cannot repay, and more must be given still. If I cannot live a life of worth let me die and suffer no stinging poison. Apotheosis or death, with nothing in between!

Angles of her battled for sublimation, her need for the world conform to ailing will. An invocation of her innermost Self clumped the puddy of her persona, keeping denial from spoiling her manner. “It is better this way. Drakkon will measure up to the challenge. The world swings by this pendulum. My faith says he is greater than this gauntlet. Should we fail, I would gladly give myself up. I am with him wholly in Fate’s gambit. For a world without the Word we would spread is dead to me. So devoid of the purpose that our flag waves over the daze. Our fire is all consuming. Thus, I stand inside the flames, awaiting the Light.”

Azarra inhaled deeply of the night. Her inflamed fears stood upon solitary peak. Through shamanic canopy she spotted a parade of stars. “Look how the sky flies star-banners, each bearing grace from gleaming hails. Transient, they pass on. Yet they are so vast in number, so undying, that their light does not waver before our eyes -but lasts! Lives on through our sinews!”

Gaahl’s eye reflected the twinkling of the meteor shower above as he listened. Delighted to hear Azarra not succumbing to all that bore against her. “This is the game of the gods and we who follow their instruction. Having to push through such traps, amuse & impress those watchers with our persistent play. We ready victory. To sever snares of the Hels. The Solstice is nigh and with it the bleak breath of Winter. Yet it coincides with Drakkon walking the path. Just as frost devours crop and cloaks wood in cold, when the dark season of death passes Spring blooms renewal.”

The more she chanted her thoughts the more she began to believe them. “That which no longer serves us and our gods will perish to nourish stronger roots. Seeds of plenty planted for the pillars of an Aeon that will purify itself of the darkness which long reigned over the earth. Through this, all will be remade for the betterment to the gods’ reflection. It fills my heart with sorrow that you will not see this awakening of eternal spring but know that you are passing at the threshold of a more perfect world. The one you long envisioned.”

Gaahl’s time-swept face, skin resembling the bark of great oak, etched effigy of a smile at Azarra’s enduring ardor. “I see why the Fates chose you for such a monumental burden. While most would be pulverized by such imperative gravity - or absorb the venom of odious circumstance in their blood and become a conduit for it - instead you suffer blow by blow the Hels’ harsh winds. Your resolution has only been strengthened by the severity your life is shaped by. At least Kassan is gone, and so too your hate can die.”

He reached for her hand, taking it as a trusted companion rather than a maimed creature in need of nursing. “While Drakkon’s rule cannot be assured till trial’s conclusion it is certain that he is your son. If he inherits but a portion of your hardened will then he shall surely persevere... No matter what comes, my respect for you cannot be depleted. I am so impressed with you. Truly, a mother befitting the Divine.”

Somehow puffing the pipe reprieved his lungs. Infrequent rattling still seized his core but came from smoke’s compulsion more than fatal sickness. “The stray seer Corinna spoke visions of your son’s ascent. Perhaps her affinity to the astral plane transcends the both of ours. The double-edged blade of her spells is the cost of her closeness to the hidden weavings. I pray she shall soon be unshackled, and all our worries allayed by truthful Sight.”

A grey cluster stuck on his stare. “But I must inform you that when I die Primus Surrellius is to be named Keeper of the Key. This, by my Will, that the sage takes up the mantle to keep sturdy order when the rest wanes. Promise me, Azarra, that should your son succeed, you will honor an old friend’s last wish? Swear that you will not intervene with the Temple’s affairs and agitate my successor? There can be no hostility between you. His advancement to high pontiff is the only way to keep the Temple from being engulfed in the world of man and lower our station with the gods-”

Disgust spilled out & over her. “-Why? Why give credence to that hungry manticore of a man? He, who froths at the mouth with avarice, should have gleaming reward for greed? Surely there must be some better candidate to bear the torch than he?”

“Surrellius’ allegiance will help beyond his moral attitude. He hath amassed a fortress of favor here. A sad majority of the sages hoard around him and even some seasoned of oracles swear by him. Should he be denied what is his, in both his view and that of most, his repudiation would likely ‘justify’ a coup. It could sunder Ty-Drasil, dividing us evermore. But I know his worth as a man can be made up for in raw leadership ability. If he is made Keeper of the Key, as presumed, his loyalty to our foundations and traditions will be his pride. His vanity will be tied to his post, his responsibility. He will thus hold the Temple together. Is this not better than embittered tribes debating by axe what and who shall decide their destinies?”

Azarra objected. “Good conscience demands those of heroic potential seize the courage to charge against such corrupt spirits as possessed the demon, Kassan.” She spat to ward off evil. Gaahl made no notice of her indelicacy. “We must not be routed to craven course. Cannot give tribute of the Scepter to surreptitious Surrellieus. He, whose comfort is threatened by my very existence and that of my son’s. Why should plotters be venerated, and their hostages arraigned?”

The old man searched her soul. His singular eye shifted between Azarra’s, rifling her psyche for that substance of her. He had to know she could be trusted to follow his wish. He leaned in to drive his point. “His leadership would defend us through the desolation of winter. When frost is underfoot, solid ice is not far off. Coming cold may deprive many of their sensibility. It will not be a good season to war. Although when is war necessary? If the imposing doom is as your apostles tell, perhaps tis nigh. But Ty-Drasil cannot ebb to perversions of progress that might rid us of the old ways, the shuffling transit to this Drakoni Aeon... A bloody transition that could prove. If the holy seat gets dragged along into these wars our way will not survive. The more we are exposed the more probable it becomes that Vizzarion - or worse, our confused ire for each other, - will strangle us in our sanctum before we can properly awake. Can we not sleep on our own pillows till then? Do you see the ‘why’? Will you not swear it?”

The oath he asked of her hung overhead as dangling icicle. Azarra rummaged through her strewn archives, hunting for solution. “Can you not foresee though how Surrellius would only hold thee in perpetual Winter? Stagnation and scorn would be mark of his Keeping. He may deign you never rise from those plump pillows of languid spiritualism. Surely, Ligeia would be better choice in leader? Insight & compassion flow from her as denotes the measures of one great. Why abjure her, a good friend and guardian?”

“’Tis true that Ligeia is a wise, elder soul. But her adherence to hermetic oath and unwillingness to compromise with sages on vital issues earns her few friends outside shamanic order. Most here would refuse to serve her, despite obligation, out of misguided principle. Hapless herds of scholars could be militarized as assassins of order.” Gaahl reflected on his involvement in public life, and concluded compassion necessitated a watchful eye over events and conflicted hearts of men.

“Besides, her sympathy for you would brew suspicion. The politician must confess self-interest to purify patriotism. People fear to trust those who answer familial insult with preferential justice. This, and more, prevents her from accepting such a tiresome position and why the Primus must be ordained pontiff to retain the artifact of our neutrality. ‘Tis the only way.” His assertion grew graver as he went on. His unblinking eye waiting for her response.

Exhausted emotionally, she loosed dispassionate sigh before leasing concession to the Elder’s mortal bequest. “Very well. If it must be so, with reverence, I pledge bestowal to your Will. I shall acknowledge the Scepter and not intervene in matters no longer mine. Ty-Drasil can be left to her own rights. As I forge a different accord, once I’m free of this humiliating ring, that is.”

Azarra bit down on wriggling betrayal and gave thought to his comforts. Smoke & fire only did so much against cold of a differing kind, and even strongest souls shivered without that special blanket. To avoid choking on her sobs she went to weave some of this sacred wool of human care for the wizened shaman. “I will prepare tea before I go. Rest well for now, good man.”

Tea brewed in lonely crisis & longing confronted her with murky effigy of herself in the broth gazed back terrible self-insight. Dark drip of her thoughts suffused the leaves. She could no longer be resolute in caring for this dying man who cast her aside at death’s door. She must be willing to cast him aside, in return, should it prove necessary.

“Sometimes Fate prevails over character.” Croaked a sleepy Gaahl.

His eyeless thought created anguishing waves within the steeping tea. Should this potion serve only to avail him sleep? Dipping crushed hannabis leaf & naiad-root into the stew Azarra sifted through worries until sipping the steaming pulp to quench them. Pulling out bulkier batch of leaf, she cindered pacifying fumes, balanced on tip of fiery tongue. Every inhalation numbed the trembling in her core. As her lungs embraced the mist so too did her mind open to transmute her world to reveal beauty even in despair. Suddenly she missed the presence of her son’s sunny hope, affecting in herself the inspiring aura of his confidence.

Exothermic crackled expressed essence of her belly’s heat. Lightened by vapors, Azarra pressed on the man’s cramped chest, outpouring healing balm; sweltering surge to cauterize that invisible wound in the shaman’s aura. She summoned missive of mountain winds & smoldering herb. Spirits abound! Preserve & guide the heart of this shaman, your servant. Let not the dark take him before his time. Let the arrow of the Muses’ strike change in his will. O Fates do not sever his mortal self in the eleventh hour!

Then she withdrew, ashamed of her prayers. Flow extinguished abruptly and fully. Stamped out as though it had never existed. Midnight sealed her sight. No one is listening to my prayers. There is nothing out there. I am alone. My thoughts are empty.

Azarra was barely able to shut the floodgates of darker emotions rearing up. Rue stifled her throat, where stillborn sobs snuffed, and she fled into the mouth of night.

Impermeable film from the mountains concealed any sign of the manifold campfires burning below. Nothing past portends of doom. Despite having not been here for what felt a fully separate lifetime the lonesome soul found the foot path unconsciously familiar to her. That back window in her brain mapped memories, steering through the dark which procreated paranoia.

Melancholic stream showed her to tiny pool at the altar of the eternal flame. By that brazier she wept. Tears of the past, for the loneliness borne from the denial of her blood family when yet so young, fused with those of present. Azarra huddled tight to her cloak before pale flames, receiving brilliance in haggard soul. Time folded to make the place appear just as it had in those childhood years but then shined gross distinction from that bygone blossom. Dreary undertow dragged her between trenches of dream & mocking nostalgia. Heart-petal sails torn betwixt shallow and long shores; Infinity reached into paradoxical confines.

Fluorescence danced behind her lids. Mortal cradle hung low, moribund leaves & captured ash floated about the undying brazier. Then, twisting thought to renewal of prayer, the felled flora swirled nymph shape.

The entranced woman’s focus hauled from the beacon kindled by unknown & everlasting coals. Squinting, new shapes appeared on the rock wall’s surface. Two visitors, conjoined by flickering channel, carried by the wind’s cool kiss. Shedding secrecy of their cowls, she saw before her the warmly freckled face of Delphine. Strands of her cherry hair falling to tease her skin created a striking contrast against her black cloak and illustriously pale neckline.

Delphi’s eyes didn’t hide concern and disquietude. Yet her gaze also aroused a richer hope, a total trust in Azarra. The faith her friend beheld her with burned brighter than pillar of unquenchable flame. The grove of her glow planted seed in shadow of indecision.

The second figure, which guided the first, waved. Ligeia’s feather mantled face shined. “This curious dame came all this way to ascertain whether you were here or not. I thought I’d humor her persistence.” With that the shaman subsided to the shade covering the mountain path. “Stay safe, you two.”

Azarra rushed to embrace Delphine, finding in her the anchor which she’d sought in the Elder. As they adjoined in a calming cocoon, peering with intense affection, her arrival initiating a spark. Rejuvenating idea refilled her chalice. She knew then just well how Delphine would play the perfect negotiating token to rectify their bleak deal. As she reflected on what felt like Gaahl’s passing words and the ogling the inclement Keeper had of her loyal friend’s figure, she knew what to ask of her. It was a lot to ask but all she could do to stave Surrellius. & it could be done within reason, she hoped, without full sacrifice or a final bloodletting.