Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial-Chapter 28Arc 8: : Mandates of a Golden God

“That’s Nath?” Emma asked in disbelief.

I didn’t blame her for being shocked. The thing before us was nightmarish. Nearly a score of huge eyes the color of burnished gold glared from within the hollowed tree, veiled by half as many black-red wings. If there was anything behind that mound of feathers and eyes, I couldn’t see it even with my enhanced vision.

But that voice… Even distorted, warbling and delivered with unnatural volume, I recognizedthe Briar Angel’s voice.

Nath was an old enemy, not just to me but to the Onsolain, the Sidhe loyal to Tuvon, and to humanity at large. An onsolain herself and former handmaiden to the God-Queen, she had turned on her brethren centuries before and become a patron to the wicked elves of the Briar.

Before Reynard and Ager Roth, it would have been safe to call Thorned Nath the greatest villain in the land. Before the crowfriars had returned from their exile, before the betrayal of Alicia Wake and the Great War of Urn, she had been the devil incarnate.

She’d tried for my soul more than once in the years after the war, when I’d wandered and fought alone in my own apostasy.

But then, with crisis after crisis facing the land, she’d returned to the fold and rejoined the Choir Concilium, for reasons I mostly did not understand. She was also Emma’s godmother and the one who’d introduced us, another ploy. While I did not think she was the most evil being in the world, neither was I fool enough to consider her an ally to me or humanity.

Even still, her appearance was a shock. Both this nightmarish form and her wounds.

The many-eyed thing inside the tree shivered, producing a rustling sound, and spoke. “So we meet again, knightling. And your ward as well… It cuts me to not be recognized by my own godchild. Is the sight of my sorry state so abhorrent to you, dear girl?”

Emma recovered quickly and stood straight as she addressed the seraph. “I was only surprised, godmother. You… look quite different.”

Usually, Nath appeared as an inhumanly tall woman of surpassing beauty, with black tresses that moved like liquid shadow and empty pits for eyes. Unsettling, but at least something relatively human and familiar. Had I not heard the voice and recognized the presence with my more magical senses, I would not have made the connection.

“In ancient days, when my kind first appeared to you mortals, one of the first things we were compelled to say was ‘be not afraid.’” The mass quivered again. “As you can imagine, the warning proved necessary then. We have taken fairer forms since, but they are as cloaks to us, and possess their… limitations.”

I took a moment to center myself, to find my calm. That scene before, the false Fidei… I’d known she was false, yet I’d blurted all that nonsense out anyway. It was some property of the spell I’d been pulled into, I guessed, forcing me to speak my inner thoughts against my own volition. Strong magic. Even guarding myself I’d succumbed to it. The illusion seemed to have passed, for now.

It was this place. We were in the center of the Briar’s power. It’s Heart. That’s what this sepulchral forest reminded me of — it was just like the vaults hidden beneath Elfhome.

Inside the tree, four of the huge creature’s wings stretched. Droplets of shining golden liquid dripped from them, adding to the pool forming at the base of the tree.

“You’re wounded,” I said. “Badly.”

Nath’s next word was but a whisper. “Yes.”

“How?” I asked. “What did this?”

“Not what,” Nath corrected. Her next words boiled with so much hate that I felt part of my soul wither, like her voice was an arctic wind stabbing into my very being. “It was Umareon. We quarreled.”

“Umareon?” Emma frowned as she said the name. “That sounds familiar.”

“He’s an archangel,” I said even as my mind raced at this revelation. “The Saint of Crusades and the God-Queen’s First Sword. He’s the one who gave me the order to execute Horace Laudner back when he led that witch hunt in Garihelm.”

Why would Umareon fight with Nath after she’d rejoined her brethren on their mountain sanctum? I remembered something else then, and some things started to fall into place, questions I’d been asking myself for some time.

“Early last winter, Donnelly found me back at the Fulgurkeep and gave me the order to travel to Osheim. That’s what got me started on that whole mess with the Credo and Lias… He said something else, almost like it was a slip, something he wasn’t supposed to say. I assumed it was on purpose, that he meant to warn me about something.” I lifted my gaze to the injured onsolain. “He told me there was an attack on Heavensreach. Later, when I asked Urddha about it, she said it was more of an altercation than an attack, made it seem like it wasn’t as bad as Donnelly implied.”

I spoke the words aloud even as the truth of what must have happened hit me. “It was you, wasn’t it? You fought with Umareon, and that’s what Donnelly was talking about, why I keep hearing about fracture within the Choir.”

Each one of those manifold eyes fixed on me, a constellation of golden malice. “It is as you say. No doubt that mountain of cowards is scrambling in the wake of our struggle. They have ever been averse to disagreement.”

Why would they fight? Had Nath returned to her old ways, tried some trick or perhaps even attacked Umareon? Was her return to the fold some kind of game all along, a means to access their domain for some kind of coup or even an assassination attempt?

Nath must have perceived my thoughts, or at least guessed them. “Believe me, mortal, when I say that had I meant to slay one of my own kind, I would not have done it in such a blunt fashion. We were made to be eternal, and do not expire easily.”

“Then why?” I demanded. “What is all of this about? Why did you fight with Umareon?”

Not just fight with him. She’d lost, perhaps nearly been destroyed, and retreated here where she would be surrounded by allies and layers of protection. Clearly, she feared pursuit.

“Because,” a new voice said, “even after all these long centuries, my sister remains true to the duty imparted upon her.”

I turned to the new speaker just in time to see a light bloom in the forest’s darkness. This one wasn’t harsh or hateful, but a soft blue like gentle moonshine. At the center of it stood a second angel.

This one bore a more palatable visage, a beautiful woman of a towering nine feet in height, with flowing black hair and eyes that shone like silver stars. She had black wings, their color evoking the warm darkness of a bedchamber shared by newlywed couples, of clandestine meetings beneath sheltering trees. She wore a sleeveless white toga and a myriad of seemingly mismatched items as jewelry — sea shells, rings woven from flower stems, knight medallions, locks of hair. Love tokens, all.

Her voice, while gentler, was almost exactly alike to the monstrous thing inside the hollowed out tree. They were twins, after all.

“Lady Eanor,” I said in shock. “What… Why are you here?”

The Saint of Love stepped into the clearing on bare feet and turned to face her sister, ignoring me. And she wasn’t alone. All throughout the rotted forest, the shadows crept back to reveal many others figures.

Most I did not recognize, though I suspected them to be Briar Elves. They were twisted shapes who blended with fungus and weed, some bearing a darkly alien beauty and others looking like horrors from my worst nightmares, as putrid as any demon. Some looked like classical elves, oddly proportioned humans with pointed ears and shining eyes, either walking nude or wearing elaborate clothing of similar shades to the writhing jungles outside the grove.

There must have been dozens of them, perhaps hundreds lurking further back where the darkness lingered. Among them were armored knights with strangely shaped armor, their faces concealed by helms that evoked the images of predatory plants, insects, reptiles, or fish. More Briar Brothers.

But some of them I did recognize. A slim shape, burnt into an androgynous smudge with eyes of gold glass stood to my left. On my right, another figure of a height with Eanor limped forward, this one a hunched hag with roots growing from her like she were half tree, her aged body draped in layered strips of patterned cloth in shades of gold and green. Her gnarled hand clutched an oaken staff not dissimilar from the handle of the axe I carried.

Maerlys and Urddha, the Queen of Elvendom and the Saint of Curses. Fen Harus and Tzanith were there too, flanking their lady. A larger shape covered in white fur like, some cross between a massive ape and a bear, stood behind Urddha. It seemed to have no eyes, just a shallow skull above huge, flat teeth. It was frighteningly large, a looming behemoth even compared to the inhumanly tall forms of Urddha and Eanor. Draconic tails sprouted from its back, undulating through the air to form patterns I recognized as sacred markings like those I might see in a cathedral.

“What is this?” I asked in a small voice as these familiar faces began to step into the circle of light. Emma took a step closer to me, wary of the sudden change in our circumstances. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

“A council that has been a long time in the making,” Urddha said. The Great Hag possessed a rasping, sardonic voice that put even the bile in Nath’s whispering cadence to shame. “But before that, are all in attendance?”

She looked past me to Eanor, who started to speak only for Nath to interrupt.

“With your dupe here, we are complete.”

“Kaharn is not here,” Eanor said sadly. “I had hoped…”

“He watches his borders and lets the rest of us quarrel as we may,” Urddha said contemptuously. “Nothing has changed in that regard, but rest assured that he shall not betray us.”

Maerlys hissed from where she stood with her own attendants. “So you say, but the promises of seraphs have held less water with us of late. Especially when they come from your lips, Urddha Curseweaver.”

It wasn’t Maerlys herself who spoke, but her handmaiden Tzanith. Even though the winged nymph mouthed the words, I recognized the voice as Maerlys’s. It must have been that she could not speak through sheer force of aura here, like back at her court.

The Saint flashed a green-toothed grin at the elf. “I am no seraph! And curses are truths as well, faerie queen. Besides, to lie in this of all places would not be pleasant.”

“Even so,” one of the briarfae said. I turned to look at him, and…

There is something important to understand about elves. There are similarities between them and us. Humans, that is. We both have souls made of aura, and we have the ability to create phantasms — constructs crafted of aura, the basis for Auratic Art.

But humans are beings of flesh and blood and bone. We have cores of aura, a sort of spiritual double that exists in tandem with us. But for elves, they are made mostly of phantasm. They have the ability to define how they look and interact with the physical world, shaping their forms over their immortal lives based on preference, aesthetic tastes, and other factors.

So when I looked at the most prominently placed member of the briarfae, I knew he’d made himself look hideous intentionally. He stood, or squatted, to a hulking eight feet in height even hunched down. His body made little sense at first, with lumpy masses like tumors bursting from gray-green flesh that looked more like reptilian hide than mere skin. His head was toad-like, with a wide slash of a mouth turned downward above layered chins. His ears were likes those of a bat, hanging limp around his shapeless pate and notched from many old wounds.

There wasn’t so much as a strand of hair on him. His arms were long and bony, thin compared to the rest of his bulk, ending in knobby fingers tipped in crimson claws. He sat upon something like a throne woven of thorny roots. He wore a regal gown, high collared and colored in shades of burgundy. The designs on those garments were subtly unsettling, the curves and seams fashioned in patterns that made little sense, like they’d been sewn by a madman afflicted with blindness.

“The Heart of the Briar holds us all under its geas,” the monstrous elf said in a burbling voice as his fingernails scraped at the arm of his seat. His eyes were sunken pits, so deeply recessed I couldn’t tell their color. “Even Lady Nath has learned not to trifle with it. Lie here at your peril, guests.”

I assumed him to be one of the Briar’s nobles. Not far from him, on a smaller but similar seat, I saw Qoth, the elf who had acted as Emma’s familiar in the past. He shared the goblin-like features of the larger one, only younger and more catlike, with large green eyes and gray whiskers around a narrow face.

Sham Dulaan had reappeared as well, standing near those seats with his flamberge resting tip-down on the ground. A guard. Above them, that sphere of crimson flesh had suspended itself on a web of tendrils, where it pulsed like a living heart.

“It has been long since the leaders of the nations of the Sidhe held council like this,” the enthroned elf said. “Or since any onsolain besides Thorned Nath were allowed to draw so close to the Heart.”

The flesh-sphere quivered up above, and spoke with several voices in unison. “Or since a Knight of the Alder Table was allowed so close. Shall we make him one of ours, father? Shall we make him our plaything?”

“He is not for you,” Eanor said in a stern voice. “He is sworn to a different path.”

“Yet his soul has so many open wounds…” Several loose tendrils emerging from the flesh-mass began to whip about in excitement. “We could make such a Briar Brother of him!”

I spoke to Eanor and Urddha, the only two members of the Choir who’d ever been anything like allies to me. “With all due respect, can someone please tell me what the hell is going on here?”

A long moment of silence. Maerlys stared at me with her manic glass eyes, Nath glared from within the shelter of her tree, and all the creatures of Briar and Bane hissed and chittered from the surrounding shadows. Eanor only looked pensive.

Urddha had never been one to stand on ceremony, and she answered my question first. “Conspiracy, of course. What else?”

I ground my teeth and pointed at the scene with my axe. “These elves are supposed to be our enemies. Your enemies.”

“Was it not you who said that we should leave the conflicts of the past behind us, boy?” The old elf on the root throne chuckled dryly. “Mortals. They live such short lives and think they understand hate.”

“He knows what he has been taught,” Eanor told the Briar Elf. “And what he has seen with his own eyes. There is little injustice in his perception of your people’s actions, Lord Chesh.”

Lord Chesh only snorted and propped a cheek on one fist.

“What about her?” The red mass asked as several of its tendrils drew near Emma. Flowers bloomed at their ends, and the voices came from those. “Can we not have her?”

The elf — was that really what it was? — recoiled as I stepped in front of my squire and showed it my axe. “You’ll have neither of us,” I told it.

“Careful,” Nath said with quiet glee. “These mortals are not easy prey.”

“Enough!” Eanor said in exasperation. “Sister, I pray you call your allies to heel, or this council shall not prove fruitful.”

Nath spoke words I did not understand — they were grating, hissing syllables that seemed to stab at my ears. The briarfaerie muttered sullenly and retreated, the red blob returning to its spherical shape.

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“Before anything,” Maerlys said with a flash of her white teeth as her servant spoke her words. “We must know for certain that the knight is not compromised.”

Urddha gave a sharp nod, causing some of the bells and fetishes hung from her neck to jingle. “Indeed! Well then, Nath? What does the Heart show of him?”

Those manifold eyes once again fixed on me, and I felt a creeping shiver run up my spine. Once again, the sound of a massive heart began to reverberate throughout the forest, drumming through the ground, the trees, my body.

Ba-dum. Ba-dum.

It felt cold.

“The Alder’s presence is still within him,” Nath told the others as all of her eyes seemed to go out of focus. “But it is not as it was. The will of the knights of old are drowned out by the voices of the damned.”

“Do they possess him?” Eanor asked. “Has he become Damnus?”

The cold I felt then had nothing to do with psychic intrusion.

“He is tainted, yes. You can see that with but a glance, sister mine.” Nath hesitated, and when she spoke again she sounded both surprised and impressed. “Yet he retains his own soul. It burns bright, battered yet resolute. He has armored himself against the darkness that infests his powers and remains himself, at least for now.”

“How is that possible?” Lord Chesh demanded angrily. “He is but a mortal! How has he even persisted this long without the Alder’s fire consuming him, as it did the other knights?”

A good question, and one I’d asked myself before.

Nath’s spiritual survey continued. I grit my teeth at the sensation, but something about this situation, the surrounding beings, made me think it wouldn’t be a good idea to repel her.

“He has a strong will…” Nath said thoughtfully. “But not the greatest I have seen, not by far… He is stubborn and proud, but he also doubts. That doubt would crack his armor, only… Ah! Here.”

Suddenly, the scars on my left cheek flared with heat. I winced and took a step back, bringing my hand to the old wounds.

“A profane mark. He is protected… Poor thing.”

“So he is compromised?” Chesh insisted.

“If he were a demon’s plaything,” Urddha said, “we all would have seen it already. I saw that brand early on and I do not believe it is a threat. Just one of those creatures marking its territory. He is vulnerable to the Adversary, true, but not consumed by them.”

Nath’s voice suddenly dripped with contempt. “Ah, it goes deeper than that… You poor infatuated creature. No wonder mine twin watches over you. Is this your doing, Eanor? Even by your standards, this is quite the nascent tragedy…”

Eanor pursed her lips. “Focus, sister.”

“Of course, of course… He is subject to the influence of the dead, but has not become their puppet. The Alder’s residue has passed to him. He has tamed it, if not found balance with it. I imagine this is your father’s doing, Elf Queen.”

Maerlys stared at me with glass eyes that almost seemed to bore into my soul, as though she sought to look into me in the same way that Nath did.

“So he is trustworthy?” Eanor asked.

“Not at all. But that is why we have brought him here, yes? I can say for certain that he is not our brother’s creature. He is riddled with doubt.”

“It seems as though your ploy paid off, Curseweaver.” Maerlys gave a slight bow to Urddha, who seemed pleased. None of them paid my confusion any heed.

“What else?” Eanor pressed her sister.

“No other power looks through him,” Nath intoned. “I sense a piece of his soul is missing. That was likely the Gatebreaker’s ability, but it seems another exorcised the parasite before us. It left a wound, but he endures it. We can trust him to follow his… heart.”

“I see.” Eanor closed her shining eyes a brief moment. “And his apprentice?”

“She has no loyalty to any but him and her own ambition,” Nath said. “I will vouch for her.”

“I dissent,” the giant eyeless thing standing behind Urddha said darkly. It had a voice like rumbling thunder, low and so deep I felt it in my chest. “She is a mere mortal and Mara’s Heir besides, not to be trusted. Alken Hewer has inherited Tuvon’s mantle, and his circumstance is unusual, but she—”

“Is friend to the Briar,” Nath said, interrupting the giant. “She remains, Baraqel, or I shall withdraw my support of this council.”

I shivered at the sound of that name as it resonated with the ghosts in my soul and with my own mortal memory. Baraqel, Saint of Storms, Bearer of the God-Queen’s Lightning. So there were four angels in attendance at this meeting.

Saint Baraqel was clearly displeased, but he bowed his head and did not argue further. “And the infernal one?” He rumbled.

“Bound to the Headsman by pact,” Urddha told the other onsolain. “We should consider the crowfriar an accessory to the mortal in this. Whatever we say will likely be passed to him anyway, and he has already seen us. Same for Nath’s godchild.”

Vicar remained silent through this commentary, not even deigning to let his eyelights flicker to life or give any indication he was alive and listening. I knew he was, sensed his awareness.

“What is the meaning of all this?” I asked, finally shucking off the invisible presence rifling through my aura with an effort of will. Nath retreated, not fighting me, though I sensed she could have. “I’m getting tired of asking the same question.”

“We must be certain you are not compromised,” Eanor told me. “That no other power influences you or speaks through you.”

“There are secrets here,” Urddha said as she picked up the subject, almost as though they’d rehearsed. “Secrets no mortal is meant to know. And yet they must be imparted to you, Headsman.”

“So you were all expecting me?” I asked. “Then what was that whole show outside? This place tried to murder me and my apprentice twice!”

“You were expected to arrive here eventually in the course of your hunt,” Urdda explained as she leaned on her staff. “Though we could not be certain when. As for the hostility of the Briar…”

She glanced at the wicked faeries in question. “They are as they are, and not all are in accordance on your participation in this meeting.”

“Even so,” Chesh drawled from his throne. “The Briar has not accepted this orphaned tool of Tuvon... And I did not agree to speak in front of this girl-child, no matter what Nath says! I am in agreement with Baraqel on this matter.”

“She is mine,” Nath hissed. “By her mother’s will and by all the laws that bind the heavens and the earth, she is mine godchild and honorary kin to the Briar. Challenge me on this at your peril, Lord Chesh.”

Chesh grumbled and leaned back in his seat, looking more annoyed than frightened. “Yet she has not taken the Oath of Thorns! This is most unprecedented. I do not like it!”

“We persist in unprecedented times, my lord,” Maerlys told the other elven noble. “We must adapt, or drown.”

“Adapt to your ways?” Qoth asked lightly. He had a smoother voice than the older elf, though he carried a similar rasp. “We have not accepted you as our queen, Tuvonsdotter, and we are aware that many of the wyldefae are similarly ambivalent. Perhaps they will hew to us, instead? Perhaps there shall be two kingdoms of elvendom in truth soon.”

“Three,” Urddha noted sardonically. “Draubard has also not recognized your ascension, Your Majesty. You are your father’s heir and peer to those present, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we?”

Maerlys did not have much ability to emote with her false eyes and burnt features, but her shadowy visage looked particularly fell just then.

Emma, who’d wisely been keeping silent, turned to stare at Qoth as he spoke. The cat-like elf caught the look and gave her a smirk. Her eyes narrowed.

In truth, he’d said. A creeping sense of realization was beginning to curdle in my gut.

“Look!” The eldritch thing that was Nath cackled as she saw my look. “He begins to comprehend! He plays the blunt instrument so well, but this mortal thinks!”

“The Briar…” I took a deep breath and desperately hoped to be wrong, to be contradicted. “The Briar is sanctioned by the Choir, isn’t it?”

“And by the other nations of the Sidhe,” Urddha said in a bland voice, callously dashing my hopes.

“For good reason,” Eanor told me in a more sympathetic voice.

Anger was beginning to bare its fangs in my blood once again. “What possible reason?!” I all but snarled. “They are monsters. Real monsters, the worst of any besides the Adversary itself! They devour humans, or torture them and turn them into slaves! The Alder Table fought them for centuries!”

“The Alder Knights were given power to prune qliphoth,” Urddha explained. “It was one of their primary duties. True, the Briar Elves urge its growth and prey on humans — they are not your allies — and the Archon’s warriors would hunt them as they would any demon, and this was accepted by all involved. It was part of the balance to be maintained, part of the narrative we were compelled to weave.”

“The narrative…” I couldn’t even bring myself to keep growling through the wave of disbelief I felt. “What goring narrative?”

“The Briar is a thing that must not be touched,” Baraqel said. “It is forbidden to all, whether they be immortal or mortal, elf or devil, angel or demon. The Briar Elves, the Brothers of the Briar, and the Briar Angel all are its keepers, its guardians.”

“And yet mortals are so difficult to corral,” Maerlys said. “When you are told of danger, you seek to overcome it.”

“When you are given the promise of power,” Nath crooned, “you strive to obtain it.”

“When you suffer from loss,” Eanor whispered sadly, “you will do anything to heal from it.”

“There are threats beside you as well,” Urddha said. “In order to prevent the worst of all outcomes, it was decided that we must create a world in which one immutable truth is known to all; the Briar is anathema, untouchable, all corrupting. Both elf and man who seek it are made into monsters that prey on their own. This was determined to be the most effective means of keeping the Heart safe, by making that idea a reality. And so the briarfae became the nightmares under your beds, the lurking predators in the forests. The Brothers of the Briar were made to be a match to even the Knights of the Alder Table, paladins of thorn and weed who could act as champions to guard this place.”

She swept her clawed fingers out to encompass the alien forest.

“But they lured us to it!” I blurted. “She poached famous heroes, worked to corrupt our best at every turn!”

I pointed an accusing finger at Nath, whose many eyes only narrowed.

“This was allowed to me,” Nath hissed. “If I could make them mine, then they would become as mine. And yet, the choice is always yours. That is what it is to be mortal.”

“Chimera shit” I spat. “If this thing is so important, then you could have just kept it secret.”

“Secrets are so hard to keep,” Urddha said with a heavy sigh as she leaned on her staff. “Eventually they stop being secrets, and then everyone wants to know. By making a terror of the Briar, we created an order in which it is avoided and abhorred as a matter of course. Nath became this land’s personal devil for centuries, and she played the part well.”

“I have even enjoyed it,” Nath said. “And my rebellion is not feigned, before you accuse me of that. Only one ever ruled me, and Umareon shall never replace Her no matter how hard he tries.”

“Much of this was Nath’s work,” Urddha agreed in a sour voice. “She was tasked to be the Heart’s guardian, but she chose to go about it in an… extreme way. The Choir has attempted to dislodge her from the position many times to no avail. How many times have we wasted mortal heroes on you, you wicked snake?”

“It was you who taught me the strength of curses,” Nath told the other onsolain. “So I cursed this land and welcomed it to curse me. And no one has ever come close to touching the Heart… My oath is kept still.”

I had more bitter words, more angry questions, but Emma spoke before I could find the breath for them.

“What is it?” She asked. “What is the Briar?”

It was a good question, one I probably would have asked if I wasn’t so spitting angry and horrified at what I was being told. I managed to clamp my jaw shut and wait for the answer.

“Power,” Urddha told us. “Long ago, before the God-Queen left this land in the care of the Choir Concilium, She fashioned a number of seals that would keep the chaos cascading across the wider canvas of Creation at bay. These seals are what blocks the Wending Roads, what cuts us off from Onsolem and keeps even the Zosite from intruding.”

“For a time,” Vicar noted dryly. “We found cracks. It wasn’t even that hard.”

“Quiet,” I muttered to him, and the pelt fell silent. The last thing I needed was a congregation of wrathful demigods smiting my devil.

Urddha only lifted a single wispy eyebrow as she continued. “As the crowfriar says, this was not a complete solution. The Heir of Onsolem was powerful, but She had little time in which to work and was busy waging war against the Cambion King at the time. She put many bindings in place in order to stabilize Her realm here in Urn and create a lasting order that could persist even in Her absence. She spoke into being the laws that bind Sidhe and Onsolain, wove the conditions that make the rites of clerics and knights so potent. Her power is what prevents the dead and faerie-kind from intruding into your halls and villages with impunity, what forces demons to crawl in the shadows and hunt with caution. She wove her power into the land, the seas, and the sky, creating the order that persists today.”

“She turned the subcontinent into a fortress,” I said in realization. “She wrote all the rules you immortals live by.”

“And mortals,” Maerlys said. “You are also punished for blaspheming, but you have a choice in the matter. For us, it is rather more… strict.”

I recalled once that Catrin had described what Urn looked like from the outside, how there always seemed to be light spilling out of our mountain fences. She’d had to smuggle herself in on a ship to avoid the spirits guarding the land’s borders. Individuals like Dead Casimir had to live constantly wary of being caught by the shepherd-reapers of the Underworld, or hunted by clerics and paladins. For many apostate souls, even speaking the holy names of the archangels or the God-Queen was punished by pain.

But it wasn’t just renegade undead who had to abide by this order. Elves literally could not break certain rules, such as guest right or failing to make good on a bargain. They were made to heed a summons if proper compensation was offered, and could be warded against by those with the right knowledge. They could not tell direct lies and were compelled to act under certain rituals and traditions.

I’d experienced some of that myself as an Alder Knight, those same rules becoming part of my being as a tradeoff for my powers. Delphine had used this against me in Tol when we’d first met.

“She passed her strength to you,” Eanor told me. “To mortals. There is a reason why auratic abilities are so prevalent here in this small corner of the world, why your lands are so bountiful and your lives long and healthy. It is not so in the rest of the world. My Queen blessed you, blessed this land, and shared Her own essence, Her own aura, with the peoples who followed Her out of the devastation of Edaea.”

The angel pointed at my chest, and a blue light clung to her finger. “Aureia — my beloved lady — enveloped Her mortal followers with Her very soul and in doing so fragmented it. It has empowered you against the darkness for all these long centuries. The Alder Knights inherited the bulk of this gift, as they were allowed to bind themselves to the wellspring that Tuvon’s people were tasked to guard.”

“A means to keep you and the elves from slaughtering one another,” Urddha said in her less tactful way. “Mostly to keep the elves subdued, really. They did not accept the God-Queen as their God so unconditionally, so She had the good sense to leash their mischief.”

The elves present did not seem phased by this. I got the sense they knew all of it already.

“And the elves agreed to this?” I asked.

“We were given little choice,” Maerlys said quietly. “But it was not entirely against our will. Many of the laws the God-Queen’s edicts enforced were our very own, ancient traditions we abided by and based our own power off of. She simply… How shall I say? Reinforced what was already there, extended it to the dead and other beings who are similar to our nature. It benefited us as well, in the end.”

“The mainstay of this order were the Seals of Aureia,” Urddha continued. “One lay in Seydis, guarded by Tuvon and the Alder Knights. Another lies in Draubard, which was fashioned to hold the dead since the rest of the cosmos became hostile to mortal souls with the fall of Onsolem, a proxy afterlife. And a third…”

“Is the Briar,” I said in realization.

“It is the greatest of them,” Maerlys said, spreading her hands out and grinning her shadow grin. “And a very clever solution on the part of Queen Aureia.”

“She tied many of the Wend’s most prominent causeways into a knot,” Urddha explained. “This caused the flow of power to loop upon itself, and that formed qliphoth… centuries and centuries of it, building into what you know as the Briar.”

“Which would make those same paths impossible to traverse,” Emma said with an appreciative nod. “Like putting a deep jungle in front of an army. It’s not just the thicket that will stop you, but the marshes, the diseases, the constant rain, the enormous reptiles…”

“You have learned our nature well,” the Briar Angel said with an appreciative sigh. “Such a sweet child. But qliphoth is not just a ward. It is ever growing, ever accumulating power.”

“Much like my father’s Table,” Maerlys added. “Both structures grew in power over time, added to by generations of guardians.”

It all made a sort of sense… What didn’t was why they were informing me of this now. “Why am I here?” I asked. “No, that’s not the right question. Why are all of you here, telling me these things?”

I knew why I was here — I’d chosen to come here — what I didn’t understand was why all these powerful beings were already gathered and letting me in on this great, dark secret.

“We are not only here for you, Alken Hewer.” The towering figure of Baraqel fixed his eyeless gaze on me, and his bovine teeth parted. There was a light inside, much like in my eyes, only brighter, harsher. It felt like having the midsummer sun suddenly look at you, blinding and painfully warm.

Was that what it felt like for others when I placed the full weight of my own gaze on them?

“We have much to discuss,” the Saint said, “yet have taken the time to inform you of these matters.”

“Why?” I asked.

“It began when you became Headsman,” Urddha told me. “At first, your role was simple and the expectation was that you would likely die in the pursuit of your duties. But some of us believed that your status as the last Alder Knight who was not mad or traitor held significance, and so we have been grooming you for greater responsibility.”

“You claimed the remaining power my father guarded,” Maerlys said and leaned forward, almost eagerly. “I sensed it before, when I tried to bind you and failed. You kindled the Alder with the strength of the dead and now you wield that power within yourself, freeing it from the demon-infested ruins of my people’s city.”

“He does so crudely,” Nath commented. “But his strength will grow with time and experience. Or it will consume him.”

Eanor spoke then over their vagaries. “You are here, Ser Headsman, because you have become a Power of this land in your own right. And yet, despite that, you are still human.”

The way she said this caught my attention — there was an emphasis there, a way her shining gaze met mine pointedly. And in a rush I felt some gratitude to my patron onsolain, despite this situation and these evil truths. She wanted me to know that I wasn’t lost, that I was still myself.

“You can choose,” the angel continued. “We are bound by these laws body and spirit, we cannot break them. One of those rules is that we may not take mortal lives directly except under very specific circumstances, nor can we directly involve ourselves in your conflicts.”

I nodded, understanding this — it was the whole premise by which they needed me as their hatchet man. “Like last winter, when the Choir appeared to fight the Gatebreaker. He wasn’t just a demon, but a former angel too, so his involvement allowed you to fight.”

“Indeed,” Baraqel growled, his angry words reverberating throughout the forest. “I was at Tol.”

“You are correct,” Urddha told me. “Ager Roth has since gone back into hiding, but make no mistake — he has started his war, and we are only seeing the beginning of its horrors. As for you…” The Saint of Curses inspected me for a moment. “We are telling you this because of the Choir’s disillusionment. If you don’t know these truths, then you cannot understand what is at stake, and you cannot choose.”

“Choose what?” I asked.

Urddha smiled, a terrible and monstrous expression on that broad, wizened face with its glowing golden irises and pointed green teeth. “To help us defend the natural order, before our foolish wayward brethren destroy it. To defy Umareon.”