Chapter 12: Catalysis Controlled Future
When darkness and blood linger
Beauty blossoms brightly and boldly
The Valley calls your sisters
Your heart beats itself empty
A love for us all, leaving none for yourself
Creeping Catastrophes
Talia was gone, and I awoke with a married person in my arms. Afina was likely dead, and Dee remained missing. The sticky air of the Shroud still clung tightly to every bit of exposed skin. All I could do was pray to any goddess who would listen that we would be safe.
"Where do we go from here, Nyx?" Micah's throat was still raw from sobbing.
Anything I said would be wrong. I knew that. Micah knew that. But I hadn't read my poem that sun. I'd just awakened. So that's what I did. Reading the words aloud to Micah was a platform for my resolve.
"I've never been to the eveward region, Micah," I said when they didn't answer after I'd closed the journal. "Why don't you and I go see whatever it was Dee was so desperate to explore? We might find answers."
"We might find Dee," they said, "and then what, Nyx? You shove your burden off on your burden's wife who happens to be a goddess and a sister you won't let yourself have?" They pushed themself away from me and sat up to look me in the eyes. "Don't think I haven't noticed how eager you are to walk this path alone. I think Dee would understand if I opted to stay with a self-destructive idiot unwilling to take advantage of the life she's been granted."
Ouch.
Micah stood wordlessly and took out a long ribbon they kept in their pack. Tying round their wild hair, the ribbon's pearl sheen spoke of a love Micah might never see again, buried in the flames of something bigger than all of us. We both knew that anything we might do would be a long shot, so what was the point of avoiding any specific path.
After a long silence spent taking in the area, Micah set off. "Get moving, Nyxara," their voice was cold, absent the very life I'd known of it. "I'm not waiting for you. We're going to the Crucible. Maybe we'll find something true there."
Without doubt, I knew Micah had right to be fiercely angry. I was planning exactly as they said. And I hadn't even thought to offer them a choice. Still, it stung that they'd taken it so badly.
The miles we walked in silence gave me more than enough time to consider how utterly wrong it was, but I was still fully convinced Micah was overreacting. At least, I was until I remembered a moment from when we were up on the mountain, waiting for winter to pass, longing for more warmth than our small fire could produce.
"I'm glad," Micah had said, "that you found me, Nyx Nyx." Their smile warmed me like a hot meal. "I still miss Dee, sure, but you don't make me feel lonely like the people in Ivory."
Yet, there I was, walking in silence, letting Micah feel a void between us that I created. That did it. I couldn't possibly exonerate myself of the harm I was doing by trying to shove them off on someone else. Even if that someone else was their wife.
The sun had started setting as the realisation crept in, probably thanks to a the sudden chill settling upon the wide open space. So I sucked it up after almost thirteen hours of silence. "Micah," my throat fought against the words, but I powered through. "I'm sorry."
Micah stopped and stared at me, waiting for more.
"Yes," I admitted, "I was thinking of leaving you with Dee if we found her. And that was wrong." They continued staring at me. "But not because of what I was planning. It was wrong because you have a choice. And I was still thinking of things from the perspective of the lonesome baker woman of Greywatch Spire. Not as your friend. And certainly not as Lysandra." I paused, watching for any reaction. They gave up nothing. "I won't be her. You know that. But I will be a better friend. And if we find your wife, I'll beg her to come along."
That did it. Micah's harsh expression let a tiny smile leak in. "Even though you'll have to be second in line for jokes and joy?"
"Even if I were tenth in line, Micah."
"I doubt sincerely, Nyx," they said with a smirk, "that you could find ten people to put up with you. I'm certain second place will be safe."
"How dare you," I said stepping to close the gap. "I have plenty of friends. There's Eliana and Tareth —"
"Debatable."
"— and you and this warhammer —"
"Right." They were actively giggling at that. "That doesn't sound sad at all."
"— and I'm certain tonnes of other people will be falling over themselves to join me." I took them in my arms and held them close. "Truly. I am sorry. And I will do better about all of this."
We set camp for the night. The cold of night would be problem enough for us without trying to walk through it. Fire was too risky if the queen and her guard were anywhere nearby. And we had no way of knowing how far off we were or how long it would take for them to catch us up.
"Nyx," Micah whispered as we were settling in for the night, "tell me about them, the goddesses and their warriors."
"What haven't I told you already, Micah?" It was a fair question, but my gut asked the moment it was out of my mouth.
They raised up an set their head in a hand as they looked me over. "You've told me what happened, what they did. Tell me who they were."
"You know the Quintet of Sacred Gardens," I began slowly. They didn't need to confirm. I'd read it for them a dozen times on our descent from the Aerie. "The goddesses weren't dread spirits desperate for love and worship. They were just women who loved their work. Some of them loved their work a bit too much, but they were still people.
"Gardeners, sure. But also sisters, lovers, friends. And the Mavi were their dearest ones. Women born of the pure desire of the goddesses to understand the people they served." I let a long silence pass. Lysandra's warhammer seemed to buzz from somewhere behind me. "That was their purpose, really. The Mavi served the goddesses, and the goddesses served their people."
Micah smiled at the notion. Comforted, I supposed, that we weren't meant to be alone in it all. "Sure. But tell me about them. Tell me everything you can remember. Make me see the goddesses through your words."
"Fine," I said with a pout. "But you're going to hate this story."
Chimeric Cataclysm
Micah fell asleep long before I finished telling them all I knew of the goddesses, everything I'd seen through Lysandra's eyes in dreams. How Lafleur was born of a rose who chose to live rather than to be beaten. And the goddesses formed from mortal wishes for love and care.
Vaelis, the elder, the counsellor. Aurelin, the golden-eyed creator, beloved by Salora the grave. Lysandra the wise – Micah mocked me at that, claiming I was simply building myself up. And Draethis, embodiment of justice in an unjust world, lady of secrets and obsession. She was the one Micah latched onto most.
When the goddesses were overwhelmed, Lafleur fell to chaos, and the Mavi were born of desperation. It was the work of the Mavi that ushered in the great peace, and they all set down their weapons at the last.
The goddesses and their Mavi were the embodiment of love.
And the Shadow that appeared took them all from the world. None remained, save Gormlaith. And she faded eventually like the rest. But the next Scion appeared and took up the duty. Then the next. And the next.
Gormlaith hadn't known Lysandra was watching over her. She hadn't known that Draethis was simply missing. She had died believing herself alone. But Afina had somehow returned. They were all returning. In me. In Dee.
Even in Micah.
Though I couldn't tell Micah that. They likely felt it, the call to be the next Scion. Afina could see it when she met us. So of course Micah knew. They were too intelligent not to.
I fell asleep with the story on my mind, and Lysandra's memories once again flooded my rest with unease.
"You have to tell her, Vaelis," Salora was outraged at something. I knew well the purpose of this meeting. A woman had gone missing. Lillian Liatris. But there was something else Vaelis was holding back. "If you don't tell Lysandra, then I will."
"It's not simply the Liatris woman, sister," Vaelis looked old, no small feat for a goddess. "She and my soft Linna are both missing."
Physically recoiling from the information, I fought my nerves back down. "Do you think it was her? The human?"
Salora shook her head. "I worry it is far worse than that. Afina told me something disturbing. Someone has been experimenting with soulfire. Looking to turn it into a weapon." She met my gaze, her emerald eyes burning hot. "Lynae as well. And —"
"Whatever has happened, I fear that they are both lost," Vaelis admitted through tears.
"Then we must prepare, Salora," I said firmly, "for I am to be next."
"You already know." She was not surprised. "What can be done?"
"We must make way for the future. Let ourselves be taken, but leave a message behind. We cannot, as we are, defeat something that could take both a human and a Mavi so easily."
Salora's expression soured. "I hate this. But you speak the truth."
It was the first dream I'd had since the Aerie. Not simply the first dream of Lysandra, but the first among all. She knew she was to die. All of them did. How? And how could they let it come to pass?
"You've been talking in your sleep, Nyx Nyx," Micah said as I worked desperately against the dread that lingered. "Did they at least tell you what the message was? Because not knowing is going to kill me."
Several seconds passed as I sorted how to respond. "I don't know. Perhaps these dreams are the message. Or the Quintet of Sacred Gardens. Maybe they never left the message."
"Well, if you figure it out, try not to wake me up for the reveal. We have a long journey ahead."
Chasm Calling
My nights returned to dreamlessness after that. Micah and I slowly found our way back to the rhythm we'd built over the seven moons we'd known each other. If I'd known how difficult it was to maintain such a close friendship over a long time, I might have stayed in Greywatch. At least everyone there let me be.
We travelled eve-by-deim for several sevensuns until a great chasm blocked our path. Deep enough the bottom wasn't visible from the edge. So wide the mist of distance obscured what stood on the far side. Impassable unless we were prepared to risk everything.
So we took the riskier path, turning morn-by-deim to follow the chasm.
"Tell me again," Micah said a few suns into our walk along the chasm's rim. "why you think this path is a deeper risk than simply crossing the death trap to our left."
I knew they were goading me, trying to convince me that crossing the chasm was better. They knew the dangers of each. "If this chasm doesn't close soon, we'll be walking within a sun of the queendom's capital. If we try to cross the chasm, we risk getting stuck within it."
"And why is it smarter to risk capture by the queen than death by accident and loss?" They stopped walking and stared me down. "Either way we die. At least this way we die on our terms, not on hers. A known risk weighed against an unknown terror."
"So we agree," I said lightly, already defeated.
Micah set their hands on their hips, attempting to look as severe as possible. "Then why aren't we crossing the death trap, Nyxi?"
Of course, that was a fair point. And of course, I couldn't argue it. So of course, we began our descent into the cold, dark depths the very next sun.
The initial part of the downward climb was almost easier than the vertical ascents we'd fought at the Aerie. Plenty of footholds. Myriad flat areas to rest. A veritable wealth of sturdy and easily reached safe places. Almost like the land itself begged us to make this journey. It felt like a trap.
And in spite of the trap, we continued our effort, descending for three suns – which we only managed to track thanks to the three to five hours of real light we got once the rim was too high to see – and finding a river in the deepest depths.
Micah was so skilled with their cold-flame and so accustomed to perpetual use that we never wanted for light, only for the warmth of the sun. In all their research, Micah had never really sorted whether cold-flame could be used to produce the heat necessary to make it feel real and safe.
The frigid depths only felt more terrifyingly empty in the light of Micah's soft white cold-flame. Shadows stretched on for miles, forming sharp claws and wild fangs on every surface. The surface of the river seemed to fold in on itself time and again.
Micah's fire orange hair seemed to glow almost cyan under the white light. Their ghostly appearance was a stark contrast to the warmth they usually showed.
"Looks like it's time to get a bit wet, Nyx," they said with a smile. "Unless you have a boat tucked away somewhere I can't see?"
"I have everything I could possibly need except a boat," I said, feigning defeat. "I come prepared, after all. Any chance you've found a way to tread water with your cold-flame?"
They laughed brightly, the sound echoing like a howl off the rock walls. "As I said: it's time to get wet together. Can you at least swim?"
I thought about the many mornings I awoke soaked through after attempting to rid myself of Lysandra's warhammer. "Well, at the least, some part of me knows how."
Micah stared for several seconds. "Are you going to explain that or just let me wonder?"
"I'll explain if we make it to the Elder Valley alive," I laughed around the words, hoping it came off as a joke. Micah didn't laugh with me. "Okay fine. I know how to swim. But a lot of dumb things have happened that led me here. The least dumb among those was meeting you."
"So I'm just a dumb thing that happened to you?" Micah scoffed. "And here I thought we were friends."
"We are friends. I'm just an idiot."
"No." Micah took my shoulders in their hands. "Do not speak ill of yourself. We don't do that. You are a strong, driven woman. Calling yourself an idiot is not allowed." Cold-flame flashed in my periphery. I felt Micah's conviction warm where their hands touched me. "Do you understand?"
"Yes. Understood."
"Good. Now let's you and I start working on a plan to cross."
Cursed Combatant
The growl was our first warning of the threat. I knew the sound well. A burbling rumble that echoed from the depths of the creature that owned the threat. This one wasn't quite the same as the mountain beasts we were accustomed to. More hollow by half and more menacing to go with it.
A plains landaax had found its way down into the chasm and was waiting for any sign of food on the far side of the river from our descent. Our only saving grace was that it seemed terrified of the water. We'd been swimming long enough that any attempt to turn back would be a deathwish, so continuing closer to it was our only option.
Smaller than even the runts among the mountain kind, the landaax was mostly only a threat inasmuch as it was on solid ground, while we were still treading water. But that hunger was a wildcard.
"I am loath the suggest this, especially given how much you have fought me about the topic," Micah began, "but I think it's time to use that warhammer for what it was built to do."
"You want to give it a swing? You were pretty good with it back in the forest." I thought back to their deft tree felling with the thing, despite it being a hammer and not an axe. "Or are you saying I have to give up yet one more thing in the name of this journey."
"Woman up, Nyxara," they said. No emotion. Just calculation. "It's a thing. It only controls you if you decide it controls you. Are you a woman or a pawn to some cosmic force beyond you?"
"This feels like a step too far," I said, still moving slowly closer to the shore. "If it looks like I'm having fun, make me stop, okay?"
I found a foothold and solid earth beneath my feet and began rising from the water as walked toward the beast. The warhammer hummed at my back, begging for me to hold it. As I was preparing to give in, the landaax cowered away, tail curling under it, eyes cast to the water beneath my feet.
Wouldn't it have been nice if the thing was actually afraid of me. It must have seen or heard something I couldn't. Like a rumble just below my hearing. The pads of the much larger landaax hit the water just as I noticed it pouncing out of the darkness. The warhammer almost seemed to leap into my hand as I turned toward the sound and did all I could to prepare for the impact.
The warhammer's haft was just long and wide enough to catch both the beast's claws and keep them from reaching me, though one of its feet struck my hand directly where it landed on the stout weapon. I felt the weight pushing and trying to crush the fingers as I fought back against the force.
"Get off of me," a growl escaped from my own gut as I threw the landaax back. Resetting my grip on the weapon, I went to charge on the beast, but my path was suddenly blocked. Out of nowhere, yet again, a silver blade seemed to insert itself into danger, immediately followed by the warrior who owned it. "Afina? You're supposed to be dead!"
"Now is really not the time, Lady Togha," she snarled. "You and your Mavi need to get out of my way for a moment. I'm a little worn out from trying to catch up to you two."
Micah took my hand and dragged me away. Far enough we wouldn't be collateral damage, but close enough to see. Afina was ringed in a sickly silver glow, and her moves seemed almost automatic, like her sabre was fighting on her behalf, predicting the enemy's moves three steps in advance.
She fought like a demon against the landaax's assault. It would raise a paw to attack, and she'd already be closing the space to dodge or counterattack. Each step she took was part of some dance she'd learned and practised to exhaustion. The blade stopped still at one point, awaiting the beast's next attack. In only a few breaths, Afina had subdued the greater of the two landaax and was advancing on the lesser.
"Apologies if I worried you, Lady Togha," she said as she cleaned her weapon and sheathed it at her waist. "I came as quickly as I could, but I was a bit indisposed."
"Stay back, apparition," Micah stood between Afina and me, the snowpetal I'd given them in the Aerie held in one hand. "We saw you fall to the Shadow. So either you are the Shadow, or you are a ghostly replacement for Afina."
"While we're at it," I added, "what happened to Talia? Prove you are yourself or else we will hold you to task."
Afina cackled at the suggestion. "Neither of you is any match for me, even if you were fully yourselves. Lady Togha is not a lady of battle. Were you Lady Gideon and Lynae alongside her, maybe. But you are not." She stopped her advance and sat on the rocks right in her position. "As I do not intend to harm either of you, how would you like me to prove myself?"
Micah's shoulders relaxed some, and they stepped back to stand with me. "Who are we searching for?" They said, voice trembling.
"Your wife," Afina said before turning to me, "and her resolve. Though I suppose that's more a 'what' and less a 'who', so perhaps herself."
"Show us your eyes," I said, recalling what she'd said of Draethis. "Show us your true self."
Their sapphire hair seemed to glow slightly for a moment as they met my gaze. Their silver eyes spoke of loss and neverending pain. I saw what they had lost, an emerald ring barely visible around their pupils in the half-light of the chasm. It was her.
"How did you survive, Afina?"
"I'm going to ask you a question that only two other souls would know," she said as she rose to her feet, "and hopefully the answer should tell you everything you need to know."
"Fine."
"The last place I saw Gormlaith was high in the Aerie," her expression was grave as she spoke, remembering something that hurt her deeply. "I gave her something and begged her for something else. What did I give her, and what did she give me?"
"A box," Micah whispered. "With the weapons of Salora and Vaelis. And you begged for strength. Strength to accept something so that Salora's sacrifice wouldn't be in vain." I hadn't told them about that. I'd dreamed it several times, but I'd told no one. Micah was becoming the Scion. "And Gormlaith told you it couldn't be done. Except that you pressed her. And she gave up everything for you."
Micah's voice had started as a whisper, but it was raising to a violent rage as they shared the memory. They were angry, remembering something long lost to time.
"Twenty of them came and went, children of loss in the name of the future." The snowpetal they held began to change as they spoke. It grew into something elegant, fit to them like a tailored suit. "You stole her longsuffering, her immortality, in the name of a future even you wouldn't see."
The haft of the weapon was the same ivory as my own, but it was etched in obsidian. A small piercing blade adorned one end, and the other was a sleek weight carved from the deepest of volcanic glass so dark it sucked the light of Micah's cold-flame from the air around it. An elegant warhammer fit for the wiry beast who held it, and Micah was ready to swing it on Afina without hesitation.
"You are almost worse than the Fiend you are desperately trying to defeat." The words were a challenge, but Afina didn't stand to defend herself against the accusation. "We will not be your Lady Togha or your Gormlaith. We are Nyxara and Micah. If that means we're not enough for you, then I will strike you down here and now. And then every time I see your miserable face from now until eternity." They closed the space to Afina and took her neck in their hand. The warrior woman looked fragile next to Micah's rage. "In fact, tell me why I shouldn't simply do that right here and now."
When Afina didn't answer, the tense moment lingered on for what felt like ages. She just let herself turn paler and paler in Micah's hand. The truth was her burden, and it carried her forward to a future she had to hope would come to pass.
Micah must have seen it too. "You're not worth my conscience," they said at last before loosening their grip and dropping Afina in a heap at their feat. They returned to my side and made their final statement on the matter. "You and I have somewhere to be. As long as she doesn't get in the way, she can follow if she must. I don't care."
Both of us turned our backs on Afina and began walking away from the river and toward the opposite wall of the chasm. They were right. We had a long journey ahead of us. If Afina chose to follow, then so be it.