between nowhere and somewhere

[Paragon]

P A R A G O N

Venetia looked back at the glassy path of destruction that had been left in her wake. She then looked to Kala with obvious amusement.

“The battle is over. The demon has been killed. So, in a literal sense, I suppose the answer is yes.” The sorceress chuckled before accompanying them to the Elliador Gate. There was only a moment’s tremor of hesitation before Venetia strode forward to meet the ancient runic markings scrawled upon the tower’s surface. She looked over the many ancient pictographs, her fingers tightening slightly on her staff. After a long pause, the woman reached into her robes to reveal a satchel. A cursory glance would show that it was far from mundane…and there was something inside of it.

Venetia leaned her staff against the nearest surface. Undoing the flap of the satchel she dipped her hand inside then withdrew an object covered in a soft satin cloth that was a deep midnight purple in color. It was large enough that it filled the entirety of Venetia’s palm. Even at a distance, it called to Kala.

The soft whisper of a song whose words only She could understand drifted on the winds, and all of it sounding as though it were coming not quite from the direction of the object in Venetia’s hands. Ever present but slightly off.

It was beautiful but it was alien. It was perfect but it was unsettling. It spoke of wonders but it felt like the breath held on the edge of witnessing some unspeakable horror.

Venetia carefully uncovered the object in her hand to reveal a gemstone that was a perfect sphere. It swirled with colors, each a different shade of the same yet impossible to accurately describe. At the center of the sphere there was a pitch black hole of absolute darkness, around which the swirling mist of that indescribable color perpetually flowed into.

As soon as Her eyes would fall upon it, every fiber of Kala’s being would immediately proclaim that this gem belonged to Her. Whatever it was, it was Hers.

And no others.

That Venetia possessed it seemed the height of blasphemy, a cosmic sin that should be punished.

Should be.

But would She?

[Kala Leukos]

.

Kala smiled; overkill or not, it were better the demon were destroyed than allowed to roam Acillon unimpeded. She had grown to love Aito, but he wasn't quite a demon, rather two disparate souls bound together and seeking a new unity. He was greedy, the demonic portion of him having been a demon of avarice, the summoner having craved the power a tame demon could grant.

She wasn't ignoring Venetia as they approached the tower, but the tower itself did take up most of her attention. It was a puzzle that she was determined to solve, and her mind clung to it...

...until she heard something. It might not have been a song upon the air, but using the aether as its medium instead. She wasn't certain; it was too beguiling to think too clearly except to focus on the desire to own it.

Ink-black pupils dilated until only the slenderest ring of blue separated it from her sclerae, even as the darkness within the sphere pushed back the amaranthine energies. Her focus, when singular, could be quite intense. Unaware of herself, her lips parted and her hand came up as if to take it.

At the same time, five souls bound to hers panicked at her strange reaction and attempted to pull her back from whatever abyss sang siren songs of the Void to her.

Suddenly Asallon and Aito were running to close the distance between them, not caring whether a misstep sliced through a boot. At the same time, three Avialae stooped from above, nearly as fast as a falcon. They weren't threatening Venetia, though perhaps she might read it as such, but rather to restrain Kala, to bring her back to herself.

Kaus, with the deepest, longest-standing bond, felt most clearly of the Silver Wings what Kala was feeling, and even he was struggling with it. A desperate thought he tried not to share: 'was this some Hellmaw bullshit?'

.

[Paragon]

P A R A G O N

Venetia watched the reactions of those before her, eyes coming to focus on Kala. She did not flinch. She conjured no spells to defend herself or ward off any attacks, merely held the gem in her hand. A moment hung in the air before the sorceress placed the satin cloth back over the gemstone. The urge that had risen up in Kala would dissipate as soon as the gemstone was no longer physically in view. The memory of the trance-like grip it held on her however, would linger and that weird music would continue to whisper on the edges of her thoughts.

“Interesting.” Venetia stepped forward, cloth covered gem now cupped in both of her hands. She kept it held before her as though it were an offering being presented before an altar.

“It has many names.” For the first time since unveiling it, her eyes drifted from Kala to the gem. “Solcanam Calastre, Forge of the Stars. Y’kra’tharn Daevos, Cauldron of the Devourer. Ra’manae fa’Vitalis, Heart of the Horizon.”

Venetia held very still.

“In all the world, across the pages of history that yet remain to speak of it, it is singular. Passed from hand to hand across the Ages. Sometimes willingly. Sometimes by force. Some believed it is a dragonshard but no other of its like has ever been found. Some believed it was an artifact, forged by the archmages of the Boundless Empire. Others yet believed it is the heart of a dead god.” She looked up from the gem, quirking her head ever so slightly as she did so. Venetia extended it to Kala.

“I wonder what you will believe of it.” Before any could take it from her, she gave a warning. Her voice was calm, with neither malice nor mirth. Cold and factual.

"It will ruin you. In the most glorious and wonderful of ways."

[Kala Leukos]

.

The young star goddess almost stumbled when the sphere was once more shrouded, as if she had been about to step forward and take the thing. It was the demon indwelt who caught her, getting to her a breath before Asallon. In rapid succession, three pairs of Avialae boots hit the ground, Ceran's cracking glass, all around them. Nobody prevented Kaus from shouldering closer, though Aito didn't let go of her arm.

A moment ago, she had been entranced. The moment before, wondering whether they had destroyed the demon or merely banished it back to the hell dimension; infernal esoterica was not one of her special interests for all that she had read when she realized Aito's nature. Now he was supporting her. Strange how Vicis wove the web of fate.

"What...?" Blinking her eyes back to normal, she stopped talking as Venetia was explaining, albeit in poetic titles for the thing rather than anything substantial into which she could sink her intellect. Some of it sounded akin to Vastian, though she could not translate. If it was the Forge of Stars, her attraction to it made sense.

"Vitalis?" she asked. She had just dealt with a delusional Vitalitasi, and it seemed logical that Venetia was Vitalitasi if not delusional.

She knew better than most that not all stars were bright. Some were so heavy, so massive, they imploded into points of impenetrable darkness, the gravity of which swung the axes of the stellar ballet. And for all that she strove for Unity, she was a daughter of chaos—of Chaos, Mother Naori. Among the stars, there were both order and chaos, structure and entropy. Every day she survived, she grew more powerful, sometimes in subtle ways, and sometimes in ways that demon had fucked around and found out about. It wasn't that she doubted her power, though. She was only aware of her ignorance. Some she had learned by watching Talon from afar. From her cousin moritasi, she had learned more details. She had even witnessed some of Lykos' struggles while in her mortal drag.

But Venetia remained a mystery. So too was this orb of hers. There was a pang of that old need for the thing. Perhaps she would be able to articulate it by the next time she spoke to Eshar, whenever that happened. Kala wasn't confident that power alone would save her when more powerful gods than she had been killed outright, and even those powerful enough to be reborn in lesser power had been incarcerated.

Kala was still deliberating when Asallon got half an exclamation out before Kanedama Aito made a grab for the shrouded orb.

Half his soul, it seemed, remained a demon of avarice, even if he told himself he was doing it for his mistress.

.

[Paragon]

P A R A G O N

Venetia did not stop Aito from taking the orb. As soon as he pilfered it from her grasp however, the weight of it would perhaps be enough to shock him. The sphere was far heavier than it appeared to be, the weight being enough to drag Aito’s arm to the ground and throw his balance off-kilter. The satin cloth remained strangely in place.

The red sorceress clasped her hands together in front of herself, watching the man struggle to lift the orb with a mildly curious expression.

“Careful, demon-touched. It will crush you under the weight of yourself if you let it.” She made no move to assist Aito. Venetia merely watched but the gem’s whispers grew louder, snaking their way into Aito’s mind, offering promises and curses, bliss or horror.

“Master it or be mastered by it.” She looked away from Aito and to Kala. “Be afeared or be fearsome. Which will you choose?”

The pull of the gem grew ever stronger both in mind and body for Aito. Across the bond that Kala shared with those around her, the whispers of the gem were becoming stronger. They slithered their way across those bonds, coiling around the souls of those connected to it. Words of both ruination and exultation became a dissonant choir that demanded to be heard, to be loved or to be hated. It did not matter, all that mattered was that they be consumed.

[Kala Leukos]

.

"Let it take me instead," Aito gasped.

"Aito..." Kala looked pained, and indeed, she felt his internal struggle, felt the whispers sliding along the ties that bound them. She wondered as Kaus had if this was how the Hellmaw had attacked their kind so long ago.

Venetia's words might even have been true, but they were as obfuscating as any Sphinx's from a Hytori myth. There wasn't time to ponder them, and while Kala was growing in power, wisdom didn't always grow apace. While she had managed not to take it when it was merely held out to her, now it was calling to her and threatening one of her people as well.

Kanedama Aito walked a redemption arc, but he hadn't completed it. This orb was dragging him down. They could all feel it.

There wasn't time either to consider whether it were better to sacrifice her secretary or risk unleashing greater woe upon the world; she had to follow her heart. The divine hadn't solidified enough within her that she didn't still think like a woman of two-and-twenty years.

The weight of the thing, real or figurative, had driven Aito to his knees. Kala was short, and so she didn't have to kneel to take his burden from him.

"Remind me who I am," she ordered her men. "And if I become a monster," here she looked most pointedly at the Avialae, "remember that you were created to kill monsters."

"Don't become a monster," Kaus demanded, hand on her shoulder, but she was already gone. Her eyes didn't see; she was looking inward, struggling against—with?—the voices from the orb.

Mastering magic, balancing the push and pull of Avialae bonds, and other experiences in her short life had taught her that even a strong will couldn't accomplish everything. Sometimes, one had to let go, be a leaf upon the wind, if one wanted to survive the hurricane.

And if the winds of fate revealed a monster, she could only hope Wraedan would take her.

.

[Paragon]

P A R A G O N

Kala’s inward gaze was drawn—pulled—toward a world within a world. The whispers of the gem became a thunderous noise that drowned out all other sound. In the world that existed within the Bonds that she shared with her people, she and Aito were being drawn deeper and deeper into themselves. The world before Kala’s eyes shifted. The rock, stone, and glass of the isle began to violently shake and break away, pulled upwards to the heavens. The sky bent and twisted, spiraling in on itself until a hole was torn into the skies above. All around her, the world was being mercilessly sucked into the deeps of this yawning darkness.

Threads of darkness spilled forth from the expanding hole in the sky, limned with scorching lines of molten starlight. Soon, the world began to dissolve, becoming a swirling mist that mirrored the infinite colors that circled the black hole that was the eye of the gem. Those tendrils of dark and starlight lanced forth, infecting the Bonds that she shared with each of her attendants until they coiled around the Bond closest to her…Kaus. Before she could even scream or cry, everyone and everything around her dissolved into dust that was sucked into the hole in the sky.

The final coil speared into Kala, yanking her toward the ever growing darkness. The whispers had become an incomprehensible scream of cosmic noise that grew louder and louder…until Kala herself was swallowed into that dark hole.

…

…

It was quiet.

Wonderfully, painfully quiet. Inside of Kala blossomed a peace born of pristine stillness.

Kala was alone. Gone were the Bonds. Gone was the world.

But in the distance there was a light. Small and solitary.

The only break in the void of absolute darkness that surrounded her.

[Kala Leukos]

.

Aito thought, perhaps, that he was risking martyrdom for the one person who had believed in his ability to be better. Kala certainly thought she was saving him from backsliding into infernal consequences. But by the time she realized she couldn't feel him anymore, there was no sense of Asallon in the back of her mind. As she reached, she felt Ceran and Indric slip away. The world was falling apart, whether she was still at the base of that tower, in the Land of Nod, or her mind was just trying to make physical, visual sense of what she was experiencing within herself, or perhaps even within the sphere. Did any part of her remain behind? She couldn't know.

She was alone in darkness. This couldn't be a dream because even in her dreams, she didn't feel the absence of Kaus.

Now that presence that had been there before she was self-aware was well and truly gone.

That was terrifying.

But even in the heart of darkness, alone and unmoored from the world, she found a light in the distance. Like a moth to a flame, perhaps, she flew toward it. She didn't know what else to do. Kala had not been made for the Void, but always struggled toward a light. Even the reborn god of light said so. She wondered for a moment if she would be able to help with the cracks in his realm or if this was it. Kala hadn't thought she was failing in the divine mission she had been given, but the world was often unpredictable

The whispers, at least, were gone. Perhaps their sole function had been to pull her here, wherever here was. Perhaps here was nowhere, but the light, being different from the endless darkness, was somewhere.

She flew toward the light.

.

[Paragon]

P A R A G O N

The bead of light never grew larger. Nevertheless, Kala grew closer to it. In the endless dark that surrounded her, it remained the only definitive point that could be focused upon. Until finally she stood before it, a single mote of light in the endless dark. Smaller than the nail of her smallest finger, it emit warmth, it emit calm, it emit the faintest hint of joy.

A single bead of light, small and easily snuffed out.

“They always seem so fragile when I look at them this way.” Another form stood across from her. Tall and broad. The voice that of a man. His silhouette was just barely visible at the edge of the light that shone defiantly in that endless space.

“As though I could douse them with but an errant breath.” A hand came up, fingers brushing over the soft light with exquisite tenderness.

“So small but filled with so much.” The hand was joined by another, the two coming together to gently cup the mote of light in palms burnished by shadows. Two eyes ignited, fires that burned with a violet light that was as endless as it was empty. Slowly that dark light wrapped around his form. Wisps of shadow wrapped around him. The man that stood before her bore a familial resemblance to a demigod she knew quite well, like a Shadow cast by the bright Light.

“Do you require assistance, Lady Starlight?” He arched one brow.













.

[Kala Leukos]

.

Star shed some of Her mortality here in this place. Kala was a construct that held Her, but while She assented to that shape, it could not define Her utterly. She was no longer a part of Nazam, but rather a part of Kala, inasmuch as anyone could contain Her. But She was Kala, too. Kala had come here. She tried to retain that shape lest She be unable to return to it to do what Naori willed She do.

Even Kala recognized Shaeoth.

She was Kala. How long had she meditated upon the pinprick of light? How long had she meditated upon the darker version of Arcas?

Her head canted to the side.

"Even You, Dark Lord?" She asked. "Starlight, yes, but also the dark star that implodes in upon itself, the singularity from which light cannot escape."

There were many things she understood now, intuitively, at least, if she couldn't explain them to the scholars in the language of mathematics.

"An orb brought me here, from the hand of a sorceress Venetia. Is she Your creature? I sleep in darkness. You might have reached me more easily than this." She paused. "But yes, I would like to return to my faithful."

She didn't know that her arrival here was by His design, but if this was not the case, it was a strange coincidence. Kala didn't tend to believe in coincidence, especially not since her feet had led her to Atoria, to Garel, and to Naori. But she could be wrong. One of the benefits of remaining Kala was humility; she could be aware of her limits, even if they were only self-imposed. She had a role to play in the grand design of the Great Gods; she did not think this was her end.

But she could be wrong.

.