The Calamity's Reverie

The sky bleeds red as meteors fall, peppering the city with crater kisses and eliciting a chorus of screams from different pockets of the city.

The people run as best they can, but monsters roam the streets, teragris growing from open wounds that dripped black ichor. As soon as one falls, another rises from the corpses of the fallen, twisting their once humanoid forms to crystalline monstrosities.

She stands at the balcony, cradling their baby and watching their city burn before their eyes.

Her silvery white hair caught the wind, and though he hated admitting it, she looked effervescent, as beautiful as the day that they had joined in union. The firelight caught in her hair and made it seem like she herself was aflame like the sun.

“Alyra, we need to go,” he said, grasping a light cube in his hands that held the majority of their personal belongings.

She turned to him then, a gentle smile on her face as her gaze was cast down to their baby, fast asleep with a sleep enchantment cast over her so she would not see the worst.

“I never thought we wouldn’t get to see her grow,” she said, voice gentle like the tune of windchimes, though a melancholy stained it gray.

“We still will,” he insisted, and came to reach out to her. He tilted her head up and met her deep red eyes. Then he grasped her shoulder, giving it a good solid squeeze and smiled reassuringly. “We need to go now though, the others of the Council have a sanctuary we can go to, and they need me to cast the protection.”

She smiled at him, and for a moment he worried that she would lure him in, just as she normally has in the morning, to stay in bed and not go to work.

But not this time. Not if he were to guarantee her another chance to do so in the safety of their blankets, tucked away under their usual idyllic sky.

“Come. We will survive this disaster, and Ordella will see the city we helped raise up,” he said, and looked down at their daughter. He pressed a kiss to her soft forehead, and then pressed a kiss to Alyra’s lips.

Their lips lingered for a second, and then they parted. He took her hand, and began to lead them out of their home.

~~~

The Silver Citadel was a mess, a chorus of sobs and wails as the survivors flocked to their corners, clinging to one another and awaiting the Council’s salvation. What little of the guard remained stood vigilant outside, though their exhaustion was evident in the way they leaned heavily on their conjured weapons.

He led his wife through the throngs of people and made small placations to the people who asked him for guidance, as time was of the essence.

They left the main corridor, and turned to head towards the Council Room. Just as they reached it, he paused, and then kept going to his office a few doors down the hallway. He opened it and guided his wife inside.

With a flick of his wrist, he summoned the light cube and handed it over to Alyra. 

“This will have everything important to us in case the house is destroyed. Keep it safe, and I will be back soon with good tidings,” he said. He gave her another kiss, and then reached out for Ordella. He held her small form in his hands and  gazed lovingly down at her sleeping face. In her sleep, she smacked her lips and smiled and he felt his heart swell, his conviction steeled.

For them, he would put his all into the ritual, to secure Ordella’s future.

“If this is to be it-”

“It will not be. I will be back, stay safe. I will send some guards to ensure your safety,” he said, and he gave them both another round of kisses.

Reluctantly, he stepped away, and began to leave his office. Just as he was closing the door, he caught Alyra’s gaze and he ignored the way she looked at him, eyes soft and pained, a small smile on her lips.

To him, it felt like she was bidding him a final goodbye, unbelieving in the power of the Council and the solution they had for this Affliction destroying their home.

But it wouldn’t be.

It couldn’t be.

He closed the door with a final click, and the sound echoed in his head as he strode to the Council Room.

~~~

The ritual failed.

It failed, and those who were left were dissipating into aetheric dust rapidly.

Across the city, smoke rose from smoldering remains, but when he gazed out, he could see the wisps of his people’s souls flitting up to join the Lifestream, the colors of a pastel rainbow that would look beautiful if he couldn’t recognize his people amongst it.

Even now, he felt himself barely able to contain his corporeal form. Some of his colleagues in the Council had already begun dissipating, their bodies much more slowly fading to dust than those of the common people. They had dispersed, going off to see if they could find their families to spend their last moments with.

Only Andel remained, counseling with his children in quiet contemplation, a serene smile on the seat of Erudition’s face. As he passed the group of four, he caught Altair’s eye and saw a fire burning behind the red pools, even as he held his sibling’s hands, their fingertips just barely held together.

The ritual failed, and he could not find Alyra or Ordella.

He stood numb in his office, feeling nothing. They used his soul to fuel the ritual, and look at where that got him? 

He knows he should feel more, feel a rage, a sorrow, something that would consume his very soul until he ripped it out himself to free him of the pain.

But nothing sat in his chest save for an inkling of a feeling that there should be something else there.

He left his family behind for nothing. It was for his people, but it was all for nothing.

He lingered for only a moment longer before he left the office and began to travel the barren halls.

Where once chaos sang, it was eerily quiet. Some of the refugees that had taken shelter here still remained, but they were quiet, silent tears tracking their dirty faces as they watched their bodies fade before their eyes. They didn’t seem to see him as he walked past, and thankfully, they did not seem to be in any pain.

He pushed past and continued forth. The streets were mostly empty, save for a few other survivors quietly sitting and observing the burning sky above.

Somehow, someway, the monsters seemed to be gone, clusters of teragris scattered to the ground in ichor pools, the only sign they ever existed at all.

At least the meteors seemed to have stopped, but that did not stop the sky from burning a bright red, clouded by smoke from the destroyed city.

He kept going, aimlessly, simply observing the soon to be forgotten wreckage before him.

Idly, he wondered if any of the other cities will survive this calamity, or if their skies are peaceful and unbothered by the destruction of a society.

He doubted they would care if they were untouched; the other cities always coveted the grandeur and resources that Utole held and all too likely wished to see them burn.

He thought that maybe in another life, he could’ve worked harder to establish better relations with the other cities and civilizations across Terayule. That if they had a better unionization, calamities like this could be prevented, or at least contained and endured.

The Karalines could have provided brute force to keep back the monsters, the Rendils could have provided the odd, herbalist healing, and maybe the Ocholins could have-

His wandering thoughts were interrupted by his wandering legs, and then he was standing before the large fountain piece that once sat at the center of their town.

Perina Utole, the founder of their city, once stood tall and proud, her long flowing hair carved lovingly into marble and teragris treated with different elements added glowing bursts of color throughout the statue. Gold covered her long curving horns, a brilliant aquamarine made her eyes shine, and stones of a rainbow of colors decorated her long robes. And in her outstretched hands, a concentrated ball of aetheric water would spout out and fall into the pool at her bare feet.

Now, though, she was in ruin, like the city named after her. Her head laid in the pool, an eye cracked and spilling black ichor tears into the once crystalline water. The water enchantment had since been dissipated and the pool was clouded with blood and grime along with the black ichor sitting at the bottom like a snake waiting to strike.

The teragris pulsed ominously, black cracked into the once beautiful and pure crystal. 

An incomprehensible noise rang in his ears to his right.

He turned and there, standing ethereal, was Alyra. Her hair flew behind her, the tips slowly dissolving away and her robes were transparent near the bottom.

Her arms were empty, and tears were falling down her face though a pained smile spread across her face.

The noise came from her mouth again, and she walked to him.

When she reached a hand up, her hands were stained with red, and she pressed it to his cheek, thumb sweeping over a beauty mark there.

“You’re still alive,” she breathed and he nodded his head. He couldn’t feel anything as she pressed a kiss to his lips.

When he did not reciprocate, she pulled away and looked at him with her brows furrowed.

The noise came from her mouth again, and belatedly he realized that that perhaps was his true name - irrelevant noise in the grand scheme of their demise.

She tilted her head at him and gave him a pitying look. Her eyes searched his, for anything that was his normal self, but that man felt like a long forgotten memory in the minutes it took for them to condemn their own people.

“Oh, what have you done?” she mumbled, and she dropped her hand. “You’ve given a part of yourself, haven’t you?”

“The ritual called for my soul,” he said, and he pressed a hand to his chest. “I think it took more than what we had originally thought it would. It was all for naught though. Everyone’s fading away.”

She gazed at him, her hand twitching at her side.

“And with it, it took you. Oh, we could have spent the last few moments together as a family,” she whispered.

“Where is Ordella?” he asked instead of responding to her. 

She smiled ruefully at that. She held up her bloodied hands, and at this moment her fingertips were starting to fade.

“What I had to do to make sure she wasn’t taken by a monster. When I saw the flash and everyone beginning to fade, our beautiful Ordella starting to fade…” she trailed off, fresh tears gathering in the corner of her eyes.

“Where is she?” he repeated.

“I laid her at the feet of the God of Rejuvenation, for hope that her soul be carried on to the next life,” she said, and an image of a marble temple with very few patrons flashed before his eyes.

“You know the Gods won’t listen,” he said. “They have their greater affairs, they do not care about us mortals.”

Alyra sighed.

“I know that better than anyone, you know this. It was my area of study, the Gods and their indifference,” she said. She brought her hand up and smiled ruefully at what remained of her wrist. She looked up at him once again, and he found himself distracted by the spark that seemed to light in her eyes.

“Oh Guardian,” she mumbled. “I know you feel nothing, but would you please hold me? Let me believe that you were once my beloved?”

He didn’t move at first, but slowly, he wrapped his arms around her in a familiar motion, one that elicited decades of memories to flash before his eyes.

Unbidden, he felt his eyes begin to water, though he knew nothing was caught in them, and nothing stirred in his breast.

With well practiced motions, he began to pet her head, though with only the palm of his hand, for his fingers were gone as well now.

“Would you tell me how the ritual goes?” she asked.

He didn’t see why not. There would be no one left to spill the secret to.

“With my soul as the anchor, we would channel all of our aetheric energy into it. Then, I would use the Book of Gaia, the collective power and knowledge of all who have ever served the council, to cast a spell that would give a protective barrier over all of our souls using mine and the aether stored within as the powersource,” he said mechanically, still petting her hair. His palm was gone, so he made do with his wrist. His other arm held her tighter, but there was no other hand to grasp her waist.

“And? What do you think went wrong?”

“I don’t know. Altair - I mean, Erudition’s protege, swore up and down this would work. Erudition checked it over and confirmed its validity,” he said. “It should have worked. Even those not as knowledgeable thought so too.”

Alyra did not respond.

They stood in silence within each other’s arms, her head pressed against his chest as the sun began to break the horizon in the distance.

The incomprehensible noise went off again against his chest, and he tilted his head down.

They both have long since lost their arms and were nothing much more than a ghostly torso with their heads left.

She was looking up at him, eyes glittering with unshed tears, acceptance gracing her beautiful features.

“Maybe,” she said, voice barely a whisper. “Maybe in another life, we would have gotten to see Ordella grow. Maybe, we would have been able to escape. Or we would have transformed into those creatures. Maybe, in another life, we would have spent the last hour of our lives reminiscing and in one another’s arms, Ordella nestled between us.”

She smiled at him.

“I hold no grudge,” the noise again, “I love you. With all of my heart. I hope that, maybe in another life, I will get the opportunity to love you again.”

She reached up and kissed him. He closed his eyes, leaning into the kiss, until he felt no pressure any longer and when he opened his eyes, he caught the glimmer of the last bits of Alyra and her soul fading on the wind.

He turned, and watched the sky as the sun began to make it’s crawl to it’s place at the top.

Then, he closed his eyes, and whispered, “Maybe in another life.”

Then he was gone.

~~~

Except, he wasn’t.

The time passed in darkness. He was…aware of being moved, but he could not ascertain much else, just the general motion of being in one place at one moment and then the next.

He could sense another soul every once in a while, one that was so incredibly familiar a part of him ached. A warmth spread through his consciousness and he could find some comfort in the familiarity, an anchor to which he surrounded himself around.

He could hear strings of conversation sometimes, the voice not so familiar though. The words were gibberish to him, though he could tell they spoke warmly to him, like a mother soothing a distraught child.

Perhaps this was the afterlife, floating through a whole lot of nothing until something caught you and carried you along, but he could deal with it for now. He could handle the familiar presence, so long as he wasn’t alone.

And then, the presence left him, and he was alone for some time.

Centuries, eons perhaps, could have passed and he would not be able to tell.

There’s nothing for so incredibly long, and he’s left to his thoughts to begin to obsess over his failure to protect his people, the one thing he had sworn when he took his seat as Guardian.

What he used to feel was indifference, nothing, when his soul was used as an anchor for the ritual, but now…

He felt an all surging pain and anger at the failure. The burn to make things right, to bring his people back growing and growing as time marched on.

Another presence touched his, and he turned savagely on it, seeing the frightened face of a lizard-like person. Without a second thought, he devoured it whole like a wolf would devour a rabbit.

Aether surged through his consciousness, changing the inky black to a blinding white, and he gasped awake, chest heaving and pushing air into his lungs like he’s forgotten how to breathe.

“Another life,” he gasped, and when he wretched his eyes open, he saw the Book of Gaia opened up in his lap. He traced his hands upon its open pages and saw a scaled hand, the colors similar to the bright red on the lizard-like person’s face that he had destroyed.

His mind whirled and whirled, and he felt a smile break across his face.

“To my people,” he wheezed, a maniacal smile coming to his face. “To my Alyra, my Ordella…another life has begun.”