David Dalglish - Wrath of Lions

The man grabbed his arm, halting him in place. “Wait. Are you saying…?”

“Yes. It is a ruse, Turock. A grand ruse to keep you and your students out of the way. You have been played on all sides.”

“The prisoner told you this?”

Ahaesarus smiled. “He did not need to.”

He scaled the hill before them and gazed out across the grayhorns’ grazing fields. Turock seemed calmer now, displaying a dutiful sort of pride. It takes acknowledgment of your talents for you to listen? Ahaesarus felt pity for the man.

“Your home will not go undefended,” the Warden said. “You will stay behind with half your apprentices and whatever townsfolk choose not to leave. The others will join me and my fellow Wardens…and them …on the trek to Mordeina.”

Turock’s gaze shifted to the field.

“Oh my,” he said, jaw slack. “Where are they going?”

Ahaesarus watched the massive wrinkled hides of more than a thousand grayhorns as they marched south, disappearing into the distance, their bleating fading away.

“They are going to the same place as us,” he said. “The capital of Paradise. Ashhur is forming his army.”

The dungeons below Palace Thyne used to be the only place in Dezerea devoid of color. When Ceredon joined forces with Kindren Thyne to free Aullienna Meln and her people, there had been nothing down there but walls of lime rock and granite and thick steel bars. It had been drab and lonely, a truly hopeless setting for those without hope.

That had changed, for now the dungeons were speckled everywhere with shades of red.

A despondent Lord Orden had once told him the dungeons had not been used since the emerald city’s creation nearly a century before. All that had changed when the Quellan arrived and conquered their cousins. Afterward, not a day passed when Ceredon didn’t see a member of the Ekreissar march a beaten and bloodied Dezren down the stairwell behind the palace. As he looked around now, locked in the very cell that had once held Aully, he saw evidence of what had happened to those poor souls. Their bones were stacked up in the nearby cells, ribcages on pelvic bones, on femurs, on skulls, large and small, adult and child. The walls were painted with their dried blood, a sickening brown and black, while patches of writhing white marked where thick chunks of flesh and innards had been cast aside. Flies buzzed around it all.

It was the most awful thing Ceredon had ever experienced, the macabre answer to his questions about what Clovis Crestwell did during his long hours locked away in the dungeon.

Ceredon was weak and starving, forced to sleep in the lone corner of the cell he had managed to clear of elven remains. Time dragged on, day and night indistinguishable, while he stared with ever-growing acceptance at the ruin that surrounded him. The torches on the corridor’s rough granite walls always burned brightly despite the fact none came to change them.

Even though his situation was hopeless, Ceredon did not give up, did not give in. He was the prince of the Quellan, the future Neyvar of his people. He would be strong for them. He had no choice. At least that was what he told himself.

His stomach rumbled, and he reclined in his corner and closed his eyes. At least the smell doesn’t bother me anymore, he thought. The rancid stench of decay had made his head spin at first. Now that sensation had passed, the reek becoming as normal to him as the scent of the flowering dogwoods that lingered in the air from spring until fall in Quellassar.

Thoughts of home brought back his concerns for his father. When he had first awoken in this terrible place, he’d expected the Neyvar to free him at any moment. In between bouts of nausea he would sit idly, hands wrapped around his knees, and watch the distant door to the outside world. But that door never opened. His conscience constantly chided him: He is ashamed of my failure and has disowned his only son. There were many moments in which Ceredon, who had never so much as shed a tear for as long as he could remember, felt close to crying.

“Did I do you wrong, Father?” he pleaded at the ceiling. “Did I not do as you wished? Please, tell me!”

You did not disappoint him, my child. He could not be prouder.

It was a woman’s voice, as soft and comforting as a velvet pillow, which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Ceredon’s eyes snapped open, darting this way and that, but he saw nothing but the desiccated corpses of a hundred Dezren. He winced in pain when he brought his hands up to his ears and shook his head. An odd sort of calm overcame him.

“Is this my punishment?” he asked. “For not acting in time? For allowing so many innocents to perish?”

You did what you could, my child, the voice said again. You have acted as a true hero should, with honor and dedication, with love for your goddess in your heart. No single elf can right all the wrongs in the world, but it takes a true hero to try.

“Celestia?” he whispered. This time the tears did flow.

I am here for you, my love, my greatest of creations, my righter of wrongs, but I do not wish for you to join my side just yet. You are my agent in the flesh, and you must go on.

His body grew numb as the fractured bones beneath his skin began to heal, the cuts and bruises disappearing from his body. He laughed then, the sound bouncing off the walls of the dungeon and coming back to him distorted, as if it had issued from the mouth of a demon from the abyss. It should have frightened him, but it did not.

You are loved, you are complete, the disembodied voice of the goddess said, answering his doubts.

Ceredon shook his head and wiped the tears from his cheeks.

“What would you have me do? Please, tell me.”

You must remain strong, my child. You must not give up hope, no matter how unbearable your existence might become. There is balance in all things, and the great pain you experience now will be rewarded tenfold in the many centuries to come.

“Will you not free me?” he asked. “Please, release me so I may confront those who have done evil in your name.”

That, I cannot do, she answered. You must find your own way, or your existence will mean nothing. But remember this-you are my children, never forgotten, never unloved. Trust me, Ceredon. Trust your goddess.

Ceredon stood and wrapped his hands around the bars to his cell, gazing into the flickering hall as if he might see Celestia in the lurking shadows.

“But what of the brother gods? Their war will consume and destroy us! If one of them finds victory over the other, what will become of us?”

There was a long pause in reply to his question, and for a moment he thought he had offended his goddess, that she had abandoned him. But soon the ethereal feeling of comfort washed over him again and she said three simple words: They are wrong.

Another sound reached his ears-a hard, clunking noise, like a sack of potatoes being dragged across uneven ground. The handle of the door leading into the dungeon began to jiggle.

You must remember, the goddess said, that no matter what you see, no matter what is taken from you, you still have your life. That is what matters. Do not bend, my child. Do not break. Become like the mountain I love so dearly. Unyielding. Unmoving. Forever.

With that, she was gone, her essence leaving the dungeon just as the door flew open and struck the wall with a thud. As pounding footsteps approached, Ceredon held onto the words of his goddess. He stood tall in his cell and walked toward the bars.

It was Clovis Crestwell who approached his cell, though to call him a human any longer would have been akin to sacrilege. He wore no clothes, and Ceredon could see, for the first time, that there was not a strand of hair on his body. His flesh was stretched taut over musculature that seemed to shift from one moment to the next-first bulging, then retracting, then broadening again. His face was rippling as well, the jaw elongating, the brow distending, until all would suddenly snap back into place. It was if the human’s flesh was a prison that his insides could not wait to escape.