James Davis: The Shield of Weeping Ghosts

Anilya coughed, blood staining her lips as she pushed herself to a sitting position. She cradled a broken arm and one leg was bent at an unnatural angle. In the distance Bastun could see shapes diving and winging through the clouds. Black feathered wings bore tiny figures ever closer. Waves rolled in the ocean as beasts rose to the surface, spiny backs breaking the water before submerging again. Wiping her mouth on het sleeve, Anilya turned and saw them as well.

"They're coming for you," he said, shaking with the strain of maintaining the caged chaos that flowed from the Breath.

"So it seems," she replied, shifting her shoulders and looking away from the awakening denizens of Stygia, "though I suspect they'll have an eye for you as well." She shook with cold, frost forming in patches on her face and arms. "We could leave together, use this power for the greater good."

"I told you once before," he said. "Your passion lacks sincerity-and there is no good in this."

Pale arms, encrusted with ice, broke the ocean's surface and gripped the edges of the small island. Humanoid bodies, their faces frozen in grotesque expressions, pulled themselves sluggishly onto solid ground, flopping and sliding as they piled over one another. Dark angels, screeching hideous dirges overhead, circled and cast black eyes onto the procession of the damned.

Slowly, Bastun turned his head downward, unable to look upon the foul souls as they sought purchase on the ice. The slight weakness pained him, but the unnatural strength did not fade. The power did not so quickly punish this flaring spark of humanity. Claws scraped and drew his attention to the left where he spied a serpentine monstrosity writhing over a distant block of ice. Its pale blue eyes met his and he found a part of himself hiding in its multifaceted gaze. He shuddered, and the pain grew a bit more, but subsided more swiftly as if the power of Stygia were reshaping each lapse to its own design.

"Don't look away, Bastun," Anilya said hoarsely, and he looked at her blue-tinged lips, frozen droplets of blood clinging to her chin. "Remember this. Remember all of it."

The first of the condemned souls grasped her ankle, and she winced as her injured leg was tugged. Try as he might, he could not look away, could not abandon the need to see the fate of his friends' murderer. He whispered under his breath, in equal parts praying to the Three and recounting all that had brought him to this moment, this choice, this grim acceptance.

Anilya had not the strength to scream or cry out, but the damned did it for her as they pulled her inexorably to the ocean. Bastun heard in their voices a lament for their own existence, the dim memories of lives and deaths and torments suffered. He realized the curse of Shandaular and its Shield was birthed in the depths of this place, in the unceasing repetition of a frozen hell. Its power rushed in his ears, leaving him numb as a tangled mass of limbs and faces engulfed the durthan.

"Remember it, vremyonni!" she called out. "Remember the power! Rashemen may yet have need of it!"

The first splashes of falling bodies broke the water, and she was gone, the voices of her captors gone with her. In a daze, Bastun lowered his eyes and stared at the hilt of the Breath, studied the strange hands, his own fingers wrapped tightly around this fulcrum between worlds.

"It is done," he muttered, and yet he knew it could not be true, briefly imagining having to repeat the words every morning for eternity. The thought broke through the separation between will and flesh, and he pulled at the blade. Ice cracked and split as the sword shifted. The runes along the Breath flared, and he felt the walls he had built around his humanity begin to crumble. Pain flared behind his eyes, and he tugged harder, his new strength breaking the magic's grip. The walls of the Shield flickered around him, indistinct and transparent.

He rose and braced his feet on either side of the embedded Breath, straining and staring into the storm-laced skies above. Dark-winged angels, fiendish minions of Levistus, dived from their heights and fixed him in their black-eyed stares. The Breath glowed with a brilliant white light, and it felt as though he were tearing a limb from his body as the blade began to slide free from the clinging ice.

Flashes of darkness, stone, and lightning danced before his eyes. Black wings surrounded him, enveloped him in soft, downy feathers that reeked of perfume and death. Scarlet lips whispered in his ears, promising unimaginable pleasures and ancient secrets.

He fell away, tumbling backward as if struck. A cold stone floor arrested his fall. The Breath clattered and clanged as his arms fell out to his sides. Ilythiiri runes squirmed in the ceiling above, their magic fading once again into dormancy. They settled back into their patterns, entwined inside the knotwork of the Word's symbols. Bastun's head rolled from side to side. He stared at the walls and the mirage of power that swirled through the chamber.

Sitting up he raised the Breath before him, its once simple blade now filled with an unholy power. He stood carefully, looking upon the Word and the Breath with new eyes. It was more than a mere portal or gate; its influence still curled and swam through his body. Closing his eyes he felt something new. Reaching out with his thoughts he could sense the high walls of the tower, each stone in its foundation, every open door and errant breeze as if the Shield were an extension of himself.

The eastern walls, mostly a shell now as their interiors had crumbled long ago, warmed slightly as the first gray light of a winters dawn tried to penetrate Shandaular's mists. Much closer though, he could sense another presence on the Shield's walls.

Bastun's body moved with a preternatural strength and balance despite the mess of his thoughts. Part of his mind focused on descending the stairs, keeping alert, and finishing what he had begun-what had begun long ago. The rest of him felt a mess, a jumble of emotions, questions, and doubts. His cheeks were cold, a few tears freezing before they could roll away, but he could not determine for whom they fell.

Ghosts flitted by as time rolled in random directions around him. The memories of the Shield were his memories, though the details were fleeting as if the stone were alive and forgetting things as it aged. The past was all that remained, the only life left for the crumbling fortress to live. There was a kinship between he and the Shield that he was loathe to admit, but he could not deny it.

He recalled his first arrival at the gates, staring at the high towers and walls. He had been so eager to get inside and see for himself this place he had known in tome and scroll. Now, he only wished to escape. He had forged his peace, with KefTrass and himself, in blood and in ice, and had buried pain and regret in the deepest hell he could find.

The length of the walls and the various towers of the Shield spread out before him, and he found himself outside. Predawn light lit the eastern sky, glowing across the ocean of mist that rolled and eddied just below the battlements. Leaning on those crenellations, staring out across the ruin of Shandaular, stood the youngest son of the Nentyarch.

Serevan, his faced half-ruined with flesh slowly creeping backward into death's grimace, did not turn at Bastun's arrival. The prince looked upon a city that was not burning, not dying, but dead, a cursed shell of the city he remembered.

"Time is broken," Serevan muttered as Bastun approached. "The empire is gone. My father is gone."

Bastun paused at the prince's words, keeping the Breath before him as he eyed Serevan.

"You know this?" he asked, his voice resounding with the same power it had taken in Stygia. It echoed and vibrated through the wall, and the prince turned. Pale brows furrowed over the icy, lidless eyes.