[M] Runes

[Minkasha]

The north slope of the mountain range was a scrub of heather and gorse bushes, none tall enough to shade against the sun’s glare. Behind the Leveler, smoke coiled lazily from the volcano peak that had given the Ash plain its name, the city itself hidden on the far side of the mountain. Ahead, the Beyond stretched away as a hungry desert of cracked earth, until finally it blurred away into the blue of the horizon. Some said that the ancestors had struggled across the Beyond to found the cities of the Valley - if that was true, then the Beyond had to end somewhere.

Everything has an end.

A phantom pain tugged at the Leveler’s stomach, drawing her black hand over to the spot where the Moonstone sat embedded. She thumbed the rough material of the tunic Hole had found for her, without feeling it. She could feel her power coming back to her, slowly, but she had not bothered to will away the char-black flesh around her fingertips. What would have been the point? The regrown limb was a lie, like the Moonstone itself; its power in the end as limited as her own.

And yet she was here, staring off the edge of the world after fleeing the Immortal’s coterie...and all the other mages who would no doubt want to tear that same Moonstone from her body, now she had lost her power to defend it. She was free for now, but what was it worth?

Freedom from responsibility; from power; from any voice in the world she had wanted to change. Once a physical god bound to the fate of the whole Valley, now she stood bound to no-one...and with nothing.

The Elder Brother had but one brother to follow him...and now I only have the Hole, one left from what used to be legions. She dug her feeling hand into the ground, raking the dry earth with her fingernails. Maybe we’ll tear each other apart, like the Brothers did.

Even the Apprentice, her faithful Apprentice, had betrayed her. And worse, she knew that he was a good man. A man who had believed in protecting the innocent and striking chains from the fettered. He would not have turned away from her out of ambition or petty jealousy.

And so the question had continued to work on her mind: why had he turned...and might he have been right?

“Evelyn?”

Her name smashed through Leveler’s thoughts like a fire rune through a pane of glass. It made her shiver to hear it aloud, but it was something she had resigned herself to getting used to. Half the Valley will know by now that the Leveler is really Evelyn, daughter of Iona.

Only the gods were nameless.

The Leveler turned her head from where she sat slumped on the parched grass, and saw the Hole blinking wetly back at her.

“What will my legacy be, Cara?” she asked her last remaining disciple.

Evelyn was able to see her question bring a painful fire into Cara’s heart, the brown-skinned woman shaking as she listened. The Hole’s wet face cringed.

“Legacy doesn’t matter, they are all forgotten in the end. But...no one else will do what you have done. Please get back up, without you the world won’t understand how to keep freedom. We need you to show us as you have before...You can win, you always did.”

She grasped onto the Leveler’s arms, falling painfully into her lap.

The Leveler fought the urge to flinch back from her follower’s distress, her frenzied scrabble for reassurance. She had found the Hole by turns an enigma, an annoyance, a useful tool and even, sometimes, a reassuring voice. Now, in the midst of her panic, Hole’s desperate faith in her felt somehow pitiable, even repulsive.

My last true ally, she thought savagely. A fucking lunatic.

Cara’s lips muttered noises of entangled confusion. “You are the symbol everyone must see, or they’ll forget!”

She almost wanted to accept the comforting lie. It can’t end this way. she wanted to rail. I am the Leveler. I’m the one who builds the new order!

No longer, said a small voice at the back of her head. If she didn’t accept the truth, she was as deluded as her mind-broken disciple.

“See me.” she repeated, hissing the words bitterly. “To what end, Cara? They know my name. They might not know yours, but even you can’t defend me forever. Sooner or later, and probably sooner...someone will attack us.” She pulled her hand away from Cara’s scrabbling grasp and cupped her belly again. “And they’ll take the Moonstone.”

“The sky,” the Hole said, “You rule a land but when did you search the sky for power?"

The Leveler scowled. “What are you talking about?”

Lifting herself from Leveler, Cara’s shaking body gradually stilled. For a moment the lingering stare had a touch of the otherworldly; staring into her leader's eyes and simultaneously somewhere else. Within the shroud of Cara's clouded thinking was the visceral fear, the phantom dwelling in the great distance of space.

"The Moonstone is only a tool," Shaking her head slowly, the light of faith opened the mixed woman's face. "Above us something more than the Moonstone exists. Why do we not go into the sky where no one else can follow and gain the power they could never have? When you have the sky's power, you will be yourself again, and better."

“Go into the sky?” The Leveler looked up, towards the burning blue sky, and exhaled down her nose. “We might as well wish for the Brothers to spin backwards around the earth, Cara.”

She had used the Moonstone to shift her form into that of a bird, once, but she had lacked the creature’s instinct for flight. That embarrassment, and the pain of keeping a form other than her own for any length of time, had dissuaded her from trying again. The sky belonged to the birds, and to the lonely satellites where the gods had once lived.

And yet, there had to be some truth to her disciple’s ramblings. Her own unique runes had fallen from the stars, after all.

Yes. And snuffed the candle of her mind the moment she touched them.

But had the same not been true of the Moonstone, when a lesser man had touched it? The sudden thought gave the Leveler pause.

There was an abrupt cold, Hole's fingers releasing hold of her mistress. The act of separation made the star-struck woman eye Leveler with pain.

"I've been in the sky many times." She pressed a finger to her temple. "If I fly and gift you that far away power...You are what the world has never seen before, you should have what the world has never been given. Let me serve you again." Her most prized killer lowered herself to grovel at the weakened woman's feet. "Please."

Part of the Leveler wanted to dismiss it as the latest ravings of a mad woman. Another part of her desperately wanted it to be true. She clenched her left fist, feeling her nails dig into her palm. It can’t end here. It can’t!

“The Great Hole.” she murmured. “I’ve heard you speak of it before, Cara. That people don’t matter there...that names don’t matter there.”

She lunged forward with her blackened hand, seizing the aquamarine necklace that hung around her disciple’s neck and jerking the two of them face to face.

“Tell me the truth.” she threatened. “Can this power help me win, even now? Can it kill them all?”

“The Great Hole has power beyond the Moonstone.” Cara answered grimly, swallowing down her fears in the close space between her and the mistress. Within this distance, the Hole saw much more potential in the Leveler. Each twist of her face was an idea seeking a rebirth to greater heights across the world. The Leveler’s urgency was freedom, renewing itself for another wave across the globe. “Your thoughts are beautiful, lead me again.”

Lead. The Leveler slackened her grip, just slightly. If there was even a chance that the Hole was right...people always flocked to the strongest leader, and the Leveler already knew how to make herself one of the common people. A grievance she could harness; a division she could exploit. Ash or Light or Rise, she could lead again.

“They said the Moonstone was a myth.” she mused. “Why not prove them wrong a second time?”

Anything would be better than this ignominious end.

She seized Cara’s hands. “Show me this power. Take us to the Great Hole!”

In a knowing yet youthful way Cara looked up.

"We have to follow where my runes descended from. Beyond the blue is black, and the black goes on far longer than the land of our world."

Better than wandering the Beyond. “As long as it takes.” the Leveler stated. “Let the Immortal’s bastards think that they’re safe.”

Smiling with rapturous praise of her mistress, the Hole raised herself to her feet, pulling on the other woman's hands to bring her up.

The world flashed white, and then dark, and then white again - a great white disc that surrounded Cara like a halo.

The soft ringing of the spell in Leveler’s ears was instantly deadened, as if someone had clapped a pillow over her head. The strange feeling of suffocation was amplified as her breath left her of its own accord, sucked from her chest in a long sigh. She tried to draw another and it was as if her diaphragm had frozen, her lungs turned to heavy black sludge.

The rigning returned, heavy now with the thump of her heartbeat as she began to panic. When she blinked she saw Cara drifting before her, still clutching her hands, and behind her...behind her…

Traitor!

Leveler’s mouth formed the word, but the only thing that came from it was a cold, fizzing sensation on her tongue. She let go of Cara’s hands and the other woman began to twirl slowly away from her, crystallizing eyes holding dearly to the Leveler as the two of them drifted apart..

There was heat on her back, intense heat that was beginning to prickle into pain on the nape of her neck. There was pain in her stomach too; in her elbows; in her fingers as she thrashed helplessly amid a sea of nothing.

There was only black - and Cara, spinning almost lazily away from her across the face of the white disc. And as her burning eyes resolved, the Leveler saw the white transform. The disc became a marble, swirled with pale bands that cloaked expanses of blue and smaller islands of irregular green and yellow.

Darkness came suddenly, like a gust of wind snuffing a candle. But the Leveler’s final thought was of those pale bands as oblivion rushed up to take her. Why, she thought, they almost look like clouds.

[Azazeal849]

The autumn rains had come to wash away the dusty summer, and winter had followed with cool winds from the sea and cloudy days that cloaked the sun in grey.

Illusion had heard nothing from the Wraith since their parting - nor of the Leveler. The Leveler’s freedmen armies had withdrawn to their homes, leaving turmoil in the city of Light. A new council of mages ruled there now, or so Illusion had heard - the Blue Lady having chosen to share her runes with a dozen faithful rather than face annihilation by the first mage who tried to steal them from her. The Ashmen had fared little better; they had lost their leader and their Moonstone. The Apprentice and the Grey Sisters had worked endlessly to pacify the city and dismantle the last of the old slaver order, and in that at least they had succeeded. The Ashmen were tired of war.

Illusion didn’t blame Wanderer for wanting to get away from it all.

The Risemen, as always, kept to themselves, and Illusion had seen nothing of the Mer since she and Wanderer had returned to the sea to give back the Book and the body of the Ambassador. Illusion exhaled quietly as she remembered their first meeting, and the name that Wanderer had given them. Simply to avoid revealing her own, Illusion had thought at the time, though now she understood that that name had been even more valuable; the most valuable thing in the world.

Illusion carried the name with her up the garden path. The small croft ahead was perfectly placed against the painting of grey clouds. The cliffs stood nearby. It sat completely alone, save for a small garden and a few farm animals that littered the nearby greenery. The loneliness of the croft was exactly what Aggie wanted. It was difficult to sneak up when there was so little to hide behind. Even with the ticking months of continued safety, it was a constant presence in the back of her skull. The house looked rather plain. It had coarse stone walls and wooden planks hid the windows from view. The house almost looked abandoned excluding the small flower garden that was very well tended. It sat only a few meters from the entrance of the croft and was surrounded by flat stones. The flowers were cheerfully bright and took strangely out of place. But...whoever sat on the wooden bench near the flower garden, clearly adored the flowers and their colours.

“Cian, son of Agrona.” Illusion said quietly, and placed the flat stone with the name etched upon it down amid the flowers. She turned to Wanderer. “What do you think?”

The older woman rested herself on her knees beside Illusion. A thin hand patted the young woman’s arm and a small smile drifted onto her lips.

“I think it’s perfect.” she replied softly, she tried to pretend that tears were not collecting in her dull green eyes. “It’s perfect.”

The words stained her lips as she let herself take in the garden. Stones littered the garden. Names were crudely written on large flat stones. People they had lost during their travels. Their bodies may have faded from this word but their name would remain. No, not their real name. The name she knew them by, the names that made them the heroes they became.

THE END