Of Truth and Beasts

Wynn realized the old one hadn’t heard the leaf-wing.

“Why would I?” the elder went on. “You—you did this to us, traitor. You and your brother ... made them come for us!”

“No,” he groaned. “My brother has no part in this.”

“More lies!” shouted the elder, jerking his blade from its sheath.

Do what is necessary and come to me.

At the sound of that leaf-wing, the young stonewalker closed his hands tighter on his head. And the elder dropped his torch and charged.

“Keep your treachery,” the old one shouted, raising the dagger. “Byûnduní!”

Do not listen. Come to me.

The young stonewalker squeezed his skull ever tighter, trying to crush that voice from his head. But Wynn didn’t feel the pain. She only shriveled within upon hearing his name.

She tried frantically to escape once more to the real world, to escape this memory of Byûnduní—of Deep-Root—of Thallûhearag, the Lord of Slaughter. 

Sau’ilahk raced down the tunnel, following a conjured servitor of light to break the darkness. The tunnel began to intersect with smaller, branching passages, but he kept to the main one, always heading downward into the mountain’s depths.

His servitor shot into a small cave, and Sau’ilahk halted at the dead end.

Upon seeing no breaches, passages, or another way in or out, his frustration threatened to boil over into rage. Where could he look now? How many narrow tunnels had he passed along the way? The orb had to be here somewhere!

Then he saw the bones.

There were so many, and they were so old that they blended with the loose stones and rubble on the cave floor. Some were still embedded at the base of the far wall, and he wondered how this could be. Had the rest that were lying about been dug up? Curiosity quelled frustration as his thoughts turned to what little he knew of this place.

Beloved’s forces had breached the seatt, and then a catastrophe struck. The mountain peak had collapsed, killing both sides during the siege. He had wondered over the centuries what could have created such devastation.

Sau’ilahk had seen no more bones along the tunnel, but he was deep down now, and the bones here were numerous. Something had happened here, something had been ... dug up? Turning one hand corporeal, he began digging, scattering loosened debris and bones. Then his fingers scraped something hard and dense.

Calling up his reserve of consumed life, he turned his other hand corporeal and began tearing away more loose rubble and dirt. He kept clawing and scraping on something hard as stone. The more he dug around it, the more he felt it was too round and almost smooth.

He frantically brushed the dust from its gritty surface.

It was a globe slightly larger than a great helm, made of dark, near-black, stone. Though faintly rough, its rounded surface was too perfect to be natural. The large, tapered head of a spike protruded atop it. When he rolled it slightly in the rubble, he saw the spike’s tip sticking out through the globe’s bottom. Spike and globe were one, chiseled from a single piece.

Waves of joy inside him mixed with an unexpected outrage.

Made by his god, by Beloved’s own will, the orb ... the Anchor of Spirit had been left like forgotten rubbish among dirt and bones. Perhaps the catastrophe had caught the Children who had brought it. That they had been buried among Beloved’s minions, his tools, brought some satisfaction to Sau’ilahk. And the anchor had remained where it had fallen in a long-forgotten time, waiting for him to claim.

He would be beautiful again and forever young. The promise made to him so long ago would be fulfilled. This time, he had not been betrayed.

Beloved, he whispered with his thoughts.

Through that whelp of a sage, his god had led him to his own salvation. Drawing deep on his reserves, he turned his whole body corporeal and picked up the heavy orb, finally, after a thousand years. As his cloth-wrapped arms closed around it, he just stood there, and relief made him almost wearier than anything else.

He looked down at what he held and went numb inside.

In those ancient days, he never actually touched the anchors. Only the Children were so privileged. He had seen one on rare occasions when one of them carried it out for a purpose his god had commanded. But he knew of them, all five, each one an anchor binding one Element of Existence. Each one enslaved a different primal component for his god’s bidding.

Although the orb lay dormant in his arms, he should still be able to feel its essence. Through his Beloved, through his own nature as an eternal spirit, he should feel the core of its elemental nature and the spark of Spirit trapped within it.

The spark was not there.

Sau’ilahk stared at the orb in his arms. He sensed something from it, but its presence felt deeply ... grounded? There was nothing within it close to his nature as a pure, undying ... spirit.

He looked about the cave. Anguish returned, swelling into horror.