Re: Epilog Dying Light 2
Abele Beardsley
Fading, as it crossed hundreds of miles, becoming eddying gales, freezing winds turning into cool air and gasping, faltering, dissolving into a hundred thousand wild breezes that took to every direction and losing cohesion until one gust of air reached the shore.
He supposed he deserved to be on that list as well. The [Journalist] tried to smile, and he was aware of the skin on his face stretching. Scars. One of the [Cameramen] winced as Rmi Canada had his moment on television.
The young man kept speaking, aware that this was his big break. People had already read the Chandrar International, and they had name-association with his reporting from the war in Tiqr and the newspaper. Ksmvr of Chandrar had made him a worldwide presence.
He felt nothing. The [Journalist] stood in front of the cameras, spoke the truth as he saw it with as much evidence as he could find, interviewed witnesses as hard as he could press them, and then took a break for advertisements.
A few people standing in the crowd looked over, patently relieved to see someone normal, even if Salvia herself was unexpected. She hesitated, then removed her helmet and half-bowed from the saddle as her horse pawed the ground.
Then five thousand [Riders] slowly broke from formation and came riding four-abreast in a column down the street. Hooves clattered like distant thunder, and Salvia raised her sword again and looked past the cityfolk and citizens of Vaunt.
The tradition was to get stinking drunk after a funeral, and regardless of nation or species, the [Soldiers] honored that. Salvia told her people to report back tomorrow morning, not to cause a fight with other groups, and left it at that.
Vaunt, the City of Rinds, might never understand what they had lost. And they had already lost the man before they realized part of who he had been. By the time they had begun to mourn, two weeks had passed, and it was too late.
It would haunt her for the rest of her life despite her not even having known him as well as some. The sword she kept touching at her hip seemed to weigh her down. It felt like the wide-eyed [Riders] under her command sneaking glances at it could see some brilliant light.
The nobility rarely gathered in such numbers, but when they did, it was at First Landing. The auspices of such meetings were usually banquets and dances, ballroom politics and veiled threats over veal.
Ulva Terland found the entire Conclave of Ships, the ruling body of House Wellfar, present and already arguing by the time she arrived. First Landing was the seat of power in the north, which meant that most nobles stayed close to it.
One of the Terlands had their mouth halfway open as they realized what Cecille was saying. Ulva just felt that prickling down her back intensify. You heard rumors about the Reinharts, but they had always been like that.
The nobility had sweet tooths, and Reinharts, like Magnolia herself, did love a good treat. The bakery, a lovely place with an open stall of samples, new frosted glass windows, and a full set of orders for the day, had told the noble that they would have to come back another day and send someone to line up and collect an order.
At least, when you were shot with a cursed piece of lead. Magnolia lowered the report, which had a very vivid [Magic Picture] of the destruction. She waited for a response from Reynold, but the [Butler] kept his head bowed.
Magnolia could tell spite and sarcasm apart from genuine letters, even when Cecille sent a letter completely devoid of actual insults and wished her the best of health; the letter was the insult, coming from her.
Perhaps she had allies. Enough for a [Priest of Wrath and Sky] to offer the services of a few acolytes. A Goblin Chieftain had even sent her schematics for a giant crossbow. Given recent events, Magnolia was considering having it commissioned and put on top of her mansion.
That pretty much encapsulated all of them. Like Rmi Canada, like many others, Magnolia Reinhart had tabulated lists of survivors and losses among her own people, like Bekia, as well as allies and enemies.
At this moment, only one Hive had taken them. The other Hives had not exactly refused the offer, but rather been more focused on a pressing argument that had enveloped the Hives: the censure of the Flying Queen and her Hive.
It had taken the Grand Queen making her fourth ultimatum before the Armored Queen finally pulled her forces back, and the Flying Queen had collapsed every single tunnel linking her Hive to the Armored and Silent Antinium and evacuated her entire Hive forty miles away.
She had been routed, betrayed, defeated, and her very source of power, her very nature, torn from her. A retribution so devastating from mortals, from ghosts, from the wily Faerie King himself that even the other dead gods might crouch to avoid such a deathblow.
They were not part of her Kasignel. Or rather, the Antinium had been birthed as a species after the races of this world. Some species, like Sephids, Fraerlings, and Stitch-folk, had eventually found Kasignel, but the Antinium of Rhir had different rules. They had lived and died on Rhir for most of their existence.
Consider, then, in that moment what a dead goddess could do. She could not manufacture a specific soul if she did not have it. Yet she was determined to give the Antinium a gift to win their supplication.
Embraim, one of the first Antinium [Knights] of the Order of Solstice, was dead. This knowledge was bitter to her, and she spoke to Antherr, whose body she had begun creating, though she had less talent at it than the Silent Queen.
The Armored Queen knew well the weight of his despair, for she had held it and used it like an armor against adversity for her long ordeal. She was, perhaps, the wisest of all the Queens in this moment, against grief, though she would never have thought that.
The Antinium never came here. Here had been where they landed, shattered, and the ocean was vast and horrible to them. Yet, today, the Armored Queen sent her Prognugator to look across the beach. Antherr, who shared the joint vision, saw something strange.
The [Pyre-Knight] had fallen, and his lantern had slipped into the sea. The odds of anyone finding it on this beach when it might wash up anywhere, after months or years from the deep sea, were remote.
Antherr needed a body again, for he had [Squires] to train. Gently, the Armored Queen moved around her soot-laden halls; the foundries of metal and the enterprise of war were all she had made herself into.
The Twisted Queen did not hope as the Armored Queen did. She acted. She could be crueler than the others, who still valued their Soldiers and Workers. To the Twisted Queen, the things she created were, in a very real sense, nothing at all.
They were experiments in a war that had little meaning beyond preparation for the next conflict, and she had determined Izril would be too difficult to take. If she could have created simple weapons without minds or wills or the need to suffer, she would have.
However, there was a benefit to being the bad one, the one who lied and told harsh truths and whose Hive was reviled, even feared such that no other Antinium willingly visited. Her Twisted Hive had been largely quiet, though she had supplied the necessary Workers and Soldiers of acceptable quality to the Grand Queen, as well as foodstuffs and material.
It had been a busy time of late. Her body hurt all over, and she knew she was old. Her words came out broken, unable to parse into fluid speech as she mumbled to herself and the Workers meekly working around her.
Credit where credit was due. The Twisted Queen had stolen as many designs from the Silent Queen as the eager little experimenter was willing to give out. Tweaked her own Antinium to see how they could infect or explode or amplify certain qualities.
Intriguing. Was this hallucination, the telepathy of the Workers, a false memory, or this Heaven of which they spoke of? The Twisted Queen replied evenly, continuing to work. She sensed microtremors from Antinium digging around her, but they had reinforced this room a thousand times over, naturally. She would sleep and live here until the regrowth was complete.
The Twisted Queen made no answer, but a gleeful bubble escaped her in a fluttering, broken laugh. She rocked back and forth as, around her, Antinium dug. Dug and dug through sandstone, exploring this new place they had come to inhabit. Not higher; downwards and out.
It seemed, now, that all things that were set in stone and taken for granted were shifting. The Kingdoms of Terandria could, perhaps, all have been said to be like the Restful Three of the north. Each and every nation had been complacent.
Many things the Lucifen had thought were urbanely stylish about himself he now regarded as pathetic. Including his conviction that his people, and therefore he himself, did not obey the laws of Terandria.
Prince Iradoren was dead. He was not the only heir to Erribathe. But he was the sole living descendant of the current, old King Nuvityn. If the [King] were to die tomorrow, the Kingdom of Myths would doubtless persist; the bloodline was sprawling.
There was no longer a spread-out species who needed to organize meetings. Nor had the Infernal Gatherings of the past ever had the white-haired, pale-skinned Agelum present, sitting in their wheelchairs as witnesses, except as prisoners to be tormented or avenging enemies bursting into the gathering to continue their endless war.
It would doubtless come up again once the colonies were established, but Visophecin did not point this out or raise his head. He longed to tell the younger Lucifen that their forebears had been more retiring and blunt.
Like a desperate Devil reaching skywards, trying to understand the light. A group of young people taking the mantle from their elders and trying to figure out how it should weigh on them, feeling their way forwards blindly and pretending they could see the answer, let alone the question.
A single Lucifen left House Shoel, and the remaining Lucifen looked at each other. The Agelum got up, slowly, to bow to their counterparts, and Paxere let out a ragged breath as the others offered her handshakes and nodded at her.
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