Chapter 1: A Secret Song
"Starfall, through the ashes we endure. Stars fell; we watched as the heavens died that day. Stars faded; we knew then we had only ourselves to lean on. Only the darkness remains, and we are the lights left to find each other once again."
The world broke. Time ceased to mean anything. Every promise to us was lost, every future was lost, every past no longer mattered. Rythia fell to her knees as she felt the rest of her being succumb to the Infection, a mutagenic disease brought about by the Shadows. One that captured the mind, body, and soul to the will of the Shadows, those creatures that defied comprehension. Now, unliving gods to walk the world the gods had made for their children.
Vilorlith lay on the ground before her, her throat opened for the world to see. Her blood, the blood of the god that had raised Rythia from her mortal tethers, pooled on the blessed earth. The world was not built to experience the gods blood, and it evaporated away in shards of power carried away by the winds that Rythia's god once commanded. Her mind wouldn't process it: divinity's death. Questions raced through her mind, "How is this possible? What happens now? What happens to us?"
Shadow Wrath stepped from the mists surrounding them; he stared down at Rythia, her own spear in his hands, the Tuning Fork. Well, half of the spear, as it were; it was a matched set that shapeshifted as she did. The other half, lost somewhere in this final battle, her people, the Quartet, the other races, had failed in stopping the Shadows. And paid the price for that failure.
"Rise." His words radiated throughout her mind, forcing her to her feet. "What has happened to Namix?"
His question only brought more questions; Rythia couldn't take her eyes off her dead goddess, her Mother. Still, his question compelled her to answer. "I do not understand, Sha..." A sharp pain ran through her soul; instantly she understood how Wrath wished to be addressed. "I apologize, Father. I do not understand your question. What has happened?" Tears streamed from her eyes, eyes that were no longer hers. They searched her skin, now green as a northern forest, small claws on the ends of her fingers and toes. Her tail was gone, her ears changed in a way that made the world silent in comparison to what she had experienced before.
"The Fae Queen, Alnya, has fled with a few million souls to someplace we cannot see. She also broke this world; my Siblings are working on holding this world together. Where has she gone? How can we fix this problem of reality breaking?" She knew now that he wanted to be called Bhal, not Wrath. It was a wordless passing of information from him to her through the Infection.
Rythia was a fledgling lord, as the Quartet had called her, along with three others from the other races. The Fledgling Lords were young gods, having ascended from mortality before the war with the Shadows had begun. She just happened to be the only one of the Fledgling gods to become infected, which made her a potent tool for the Shadows to abuse. She knew exactly why she was being asked these questions, having spent much of her own existence inside the Quartet's pantheon. "I did not know Alnya on her own could leave Namix. I do not know where she went."
She attempted to resist telling Bhal more, only to be met with a pain that echoed through every fiber of her being, which dropped her to her knees once again. Gasping for air, she breathlessly told him more. "I suspect that she didn't leave Namix as much as she created something still attached to this reality. Without the other three of the Quartet, she won't be able to create something entirely separate from the void that they, you, all came from."
Bhal planted Rythia's spear in Vilorlith's body again; the corpse's unseeing eyes rolled to look lifelessly at her. Bristling, Rythia was made to suppress the reaction by Bhal: the anger, the fury, the desire to slake her thirst for revenge, suppressed by the Infection. With soft footsteps he neared where she knelt, getting to a knee of his own. He lifted her chin away from her Mother's body to look into his eyes, black and ringed with a golden fire that she had only ever seen in the Quartet's eyes. Another thing they had stolen. "How can we hold reality together? Xelex and Welkford have told me that the Quartet was actively holding it all together. What were they doing?"
While she didn't recognize the second name, Xelex was a name repeated on the lips of all of Shadow Balance's Infected thralls. Though through the infection she understood all the Shadows had changed their names, better said, they had given their nameless existence names. "They used their own Sparks to fuel the Songs. The Songs they made to create Namix," Again, Rythia tried to resist, but was met with the same pain that she experienced before.
Only this time she tried to fight it for much longer, while Bhal smiled down at her, writhing in the ash and dirt. Her armor was in tatters, Vilorlith's blood staining the odd metal, seeping into her clothes. Her own blood mixed with the mess, her hair tangling the longer she struggled against the compulsion. "You know, Rythia, you are the only one of the Brownies who is still capable of resisting to any real degree." He sighed heavily. "But, in the end, you will obey. Brownie, you are no longer. How does the world sound now without the Great Mother's song echoing everywhere?"
"It's deafening; it makes my skin and mind itch." Rythia blurted out without intending to. The pain just on the edge of making her scream eased slightly as she obeyed his question. It gave her just enough room to breathe without fully stopping altogether. "It's too quiet; it's maddening, Father. I cannot even call on my power, but that is your doing, isn't it?"
"Oh? Still able to have a bit of attitude, I'll let you keep it. You always were a firebrand, and I respect that." Bhal laughed as a crack in the heavens cleaved open the stars, revealing the void behind creation. His laugh was cut short as his eyes darted up to the crack. "How did they fuel their Songs, Rythia? Specifically."
This time the compulsion was far too much; like a collar being put around her throat, she was pulled along without any choice in the matter. "They fueled it with their own souls! Their souls were far vaster than anything else; I suspect that if you used the souls of their Children as fuel, you could maintain them!" She cried out, fresh tears filling her eyes. Humiliated at being forced to answer these questions, brought low at being forced to reveal so much to them.
"So, I could use your soul to fuel the Songs?" Bhal tapped his lip. "Do the souls have to match the Song? Would we need one soul from each race to continue all four Songs?"
"I do not know!" The pain increased, arching her back on the ground as it became paralyzing. "The Quartet only made their Songs different; their souls were all the same, only different sizes!"
The pain stopped so completely, she felt numb. "You will no longer shapeshift, Rythia. You will no longer be able to hear the Songs of this world, nor will your people have the memories of what has happened here. You alone will remember, and you will remain silent about it to them. Regroup with your Family to the east of here; there are a few thousand that survived the battle. You will take command of the Family; you may change what you wish so long as it does not interfere with the previous orders." Bhal's words were absolute.
Breathing hard, she covered her face with her arms, body shivering. The sound of this world was different; the music she once heard from all things was gone. The magic of living was gone. Wave after wave of soul-crushing sob rose and broke, rose and broke. She did not know how long she stayed there, long enough to feel reality stitch itself back together. Long enough to understand some poor Child was no longer. Longer still before she had the strength to rise from the ground.
The ash had fallen so deep that she had to dig herself out of it; feet of the stuff fell from the skies in the fallout of the world that once was here. Looking around, the ruins of the city lay standing in a silent vigil, still and empty save for the sound of falling ash. Crawling her way through the ash until her fingers found what she sought. Brushing the ash away from Vilorlith's body with a word and gout of power, Rythia lay next to her Mother.
Resting a hand on hers, she waited, waiting for the reality of it all to finally hit her. They had lost, lost everything. Now they were left to survive a broken world, left to live without the gods who had raised them from nothing. Left alone in a world filled with monsters, to be the thralls of vile creatures. Yet, despite Bhal's orders, he did not return to command her away from her Mother's body.
She stayed there until she was buried with her, though her command to rejoin the other Brownies compelled her to survive. As the ashfall finally covered Vilorlith's face, Rythia breathed deeply, accepting a few things. She had calmed enough to come up with a few plans of action, a few theories about the situation in front of her. "You aren't dead." She told the body.
"You are simply a vessel. A shell made for us Children to understand; you existed far before you had a physical form, didn't you Mother?" It wasn't so much a question; Rythia had been the one to name her goddess, had been the one to first sing her Song back to her. In a way, she had been the one to give voice to Vilorlith's joining her mortal children.
Despite that, she rose from next to the body, ash falling away from her. With another brief use of her voice, she forced the ash to come to her. Heating it into glass, forming it into a dome over the body. While she worked, she spoke to the open air. "You aren't gone. I do not know where you went, but you will be back."
She thought about the war, all the sacrifice she had made only to end up here. Her voice commanding more and more ash to join the glass dome slowly growing over the body. The countless brothers and sisters she had slew just because of the infection, only to end up infected herself. Though her infection was different than the horrors she had put down, she at least retained her sense of self, able to resist its spread to a degree.
The glass ate up more of the falling dust; Rythia's song was quiet, mournful. Thinking back to a conversation she had with the Quartet many years ago, that there was no afterlife. The Quartet saw no need to make one, as they walked on the earth with their Children, as the Children were always meant to become gods themselves. Their fading Sparks in death simply rejoined the Songs to be reborn again as another Spark. "There is no peace in death, only the end of one story, to begin again, to suffer again in this world you have left us in," Rythia spoke to the body.
She could still feel her own Spark, her own soul, feel the divinity still captured there. She was still a god, just one that was chained. Slowly, a plan was forming in her mind as she protected the body from the falling ash. "I'll see you again on the Shores Beyond, dear Mother." Using one of the epitaphs that formed during the war. Without an afterlife, they all told each other that they would see each other again on distant shores, which simply became the Shores Beyond.
The glass dome was dozens of feet thick by the time she stopped, her voice going silent as the ash was cleared for hundreds of feet around her. Trying to ignore the countless bodies that littered the streets now visible without the ash, trying to ignore the warped skeletons and mutated bodies, trying to ignore the faces she recognized.
It didn't take her long to find the Goblins; she supposed they should have a new name now, no longer Brownies. They were camped out over the cliffs facing the orbital platform visible on the horizon, though just barely through the falling ash that never seemed to end. They were digging caves out of the rock face, taking shelter in them.
***
The ash fell, a perverse facsimile of snow. Like everything in this world, a shadow of its former self. Rythia watched as it collected on her unfamiliar skin; it had been years now, yet even still, this new form felt alien. The Shadows came to tithe her Spark many times over to sustain Namix; instead of using other souls, she offered her own power to spare what Children were left in this god-forsaken world.
Alnya and the Fae had abandoned her and the Brownies to their fate. Though, logically, she understood why. The Cradle, this planet where they had been born, was infected to the very last speck of life. There were no uninfected Brownies left, including her, a goddess. "I suppose I am not entirely like them in the end, am I, Mother? Not like you, I reached the heights you set before us, and it still wasn't enough." She spoke to the air.
The former city of Isly Vi, the Citadel of the Brownie home world, lay before her. Half sunken in the ash, as if the land was slowly swallowing it to return to where it had come from. Only the tallest structures remained: the soaring towers, the orbital lift stations, the flight decks of the airborne metropolis she had helped create. Like a desert eroding the past, the life only she remembered was being buried. Along with the body.
The sound of footfalls behind her barely even registered, a single set. Heavy, followed by the dry sound of something being used as a walking stick in the thick drifts. There wasn't much left in this world that could truly threaten her, least of all her Clan, her Family. She had banded them together under Bhal's banner for the sake of survival in this horror-filled place. Only the remains of the Fallen to walk this earth as unliving tools of war, left with nothing left to fight.
It was taking some time, but the Shadows were reverting their tools into things that could live without their aid, and those that refused were hunted down by Rythia and her Raiders. "Mother, you have been up here for a while. Are you well?" Tylic, the first Chief of the Goblins, asked, his mouth covered with a scrap of cloth to keep the worst of the ash out.
His gravelly voice always made her smile, though, remembering what he was before their change. He wouldn't sit with her, simply standing by her side. Few of the other Goblins understood her broken smile these days; fewer still understood the reasons. But Tylic, he knew, she had told him everything. And agreed to play her game, to continue the charade they had set forth. "I am fine enough, just listening to the silence where music once drifted," Rythia answered.
"I wish I could remember." He commented, "Yet, the Great Father would let me know what I need to know." That title Bhal demanded always made her bristle, forced to preach his religion as if it were true. She did her best to hide it from the rest of the Family; it would only raise too many questions. It would get Bhal's attention too quickly.
"What has he revealed to you, Father?" Rythia asked without looking away from the city below her.
"There is another Fallen that needs to be put down."
With a heavy sigh, she rested her head in her hand. "Why can the Raiders not take care of this?"
"It isn't a beast; it is a former Faerie. A pixie that has been burning the ash into glass to the south of here." Tylic told her, planting his spear so that he could use it as a cane.
"Do you still hear her song?" Rythia asked as she got to her feet.
"Who?" Tylic answered, pushing his weight off the spear.
"Forget I said anything," She eyed the crude weapon, still unused to seeing the Family with such simple tools. The Shadows had brought the world low, low enough that it was a great reset in terms of technology. Reduced to such things, the dark night now an all-encompassing thing without the lights of the city, the starships now lost in orbit, all comms across Namix were down or nothing but static.
Hours later, she, Tylic, and a half dozen of the Raiders were stalking through the ash lands. Years after the Shattering, trees were beginning to poke through the dust. Sickly things, too small, things she had never seen before. Broad leaves with a waxy surface that ash refused to cling to; these days the sun would peek through the fog above the world. As they stalked through desolation, they put down any lesser Fallen they came across. Things that refused to die, things that refused to be described beyond unliving former members of the other races.
The Goblins were silent as they went; it took time, but they had adjusted to the muted senses that Bhal had left for them. Their hearing was still far and away the best on the Isly; a whispered word from hundreds of yards away was more than audible. Their voices still held a small amount of power, able to grab the attention of living and unliving things. Beyond that, they were very restricted in the kind of power they could use.
Rythia understood immediately that her magic needed to be used sparingly. Their magic was used through their souls, their Sparks; the stronger the magic, the more sustained the use, the greater the chance they would fade back into the Song. Without the Quartet to sustain their Songs, their own brief notes would readily sacrifice themselves to sustain the song in their absence. She, being a Fledgling God, her soul always seemed to waver, as if it were desperate to return to where it came from.
She had quickly reasoned out that teaching her Family that magic was something that only a few could use was better in the end. They wouldn't risk fading away back into the Song that way, at least that is what she told herself. The raiding party had crested one of the ash mounds to look down into a yawning crevasse in the earth when they smelled it. With a quick movement of his hand, the raiders spread out.
A rot, sulfur. Like a perpetual forest fire, the scent carried on the wind. "It shouldn't be far." He told them all. "Remember, the ash makes a good insulator; it won't be able to sustain its flames for more than a second at a time." The raiders nodded to him, spears in hand; they disappeared behind the dunes.
Rythia adjusted the dress around her shoulders, hood flipped up to keep her hair out of the way. Her old armor from the Legion wasn't in the best condition anymore; the metal was unworkable with the primitive technology they had now. The best she could do was replace straps, but she could do nothing for the dents and scratches. Even the rust was unable to be dealt with; the alkaline needed to revert the rust was a complex chemical operation that needed far more laboratory equipment than her people had any hope of replicating now.
The dress over her armor was a cosmetic choice in her eyes, slit up the sides so she could move better. Trying not to think about the condition of it, she hid it. "Tylic, do you ever think about your death?" She pushed just a small amount of power into her words to let them carry.
"There is nothing beyond, save for our places by Bhal's side. What is there to think about? You are the one who has been teaching us that; why ask?" He answered, eyes scanning the skies above the mounds. He knew full well what Rythia was doing.
"Yes, by his side. But to remember the Fallen is a sacred duty." She sat down on a rock that was poking through the ash. Taking a deep breath, she pushed her voice out just a little further, already feeling the drunk sensation of using the Song. "For those who have Fallen, there is no greater reward than to be granted yet another day."
A flash through the ashfall caught their attention; the smell of sulfur and smoke increased as one of the raiders sprinted out from behind the mound on the other side of the crevasse. With a skillful jump, he landed poorly. Windmilling his arms as he leaned back, losing his footing. Rythia caught him by the belt, yanking him forward where he landed on his face. "Where is your spear?" She asked him, seemingly unbothered by the flashes behind other mounds.
"In its chest, Mother. It didn't quite like that." He sputtered, spitting ash from his mouth.
"Lend me just a bit of your voice," She asked him, already humming a strange tune to the air. The Spark in his chest became visible as she drew a quick circle and rune on his shirt. "Just a small amount." She said sweetly.
Tylic drew the same circle on his own shirt as he too opened himself to her magic. The first few notes of something she was working on; they had long since known that their Sparks recovered, but drawing on multiples let them use more powerful spells without the drunk and lost feeling from using Songs. The chord she hummed connected their souls together briefly, offering her just enough of their power to let her do something a bit more powerful. She whistled, calling the Raiders back.
One by one they appeared, sprinting back to her. Seeing the circles on their chests, they too began copying it as the fluttering sound of insectile wings filled the air. "Sweet Child of Syn, come to me," Rythia whispered as her humming changed.
Gossamer fields of energy swam around the raiders, Rythia excluding herself from the spell. The wavy feeling was already beginning to set in again; she connected her soul to each of the raiders. Quickly taking just a small piece, the smell of sulfur was becoming overpowering. Taking the small shields off their backs, the spell would protect them from the worst of what was about to come. Arranging themselves around Rythia in a shield wall, only a few spears were left to offer a meager deterrent.
A soft amber glow grew brighter as something banked toward her voice from behind the mounds. "Be ready to plant those shields in the ground." Tylic barked, voice muted from behind his own; small metal spikes plunged into the ground.
In a flash, it appeared like a dying sun. A once glorious being, its wings nothing like the monarch wings it once had. Now clear and angular, built for maneuverability and speed, devoid of color as it tried to blend into the backdrop of the skies. Humanoid in shape, save for the three-foot claws on its hands and feet, no mouth to speak of. A vacant hollow where all its organs should have been.
It banked hard straight toward them now, its wings gathering a light in them as flames flicked between its claws. Several spears stuck through its chest, one through the neck as some fluid that had no right to be called blood dripped from the wounds. A pixie, former member of the Faeries, the Children of Syn. Now nothing more than a remnant of a war no longer being fought. Rythia closed her eyes as she sang the last note of the chord, as light filled the world around them.
When her ears stopped ringing, her vision still pink from the bolt of lightning she called from the heavens, they stood over the pixie. With smoking, charred skin, its wings had been burned away as it made contact with the ash, grounding itself as the energy passed through its body. Its eyes were spared for some reason, disturbingly familiar; those sick Shadows always knew how to dole out psychological trauma. Let those they fought think that the soul they had warped had a chance of being saved. Only to let the smoking corpse of a former friend remind them that there was no peace in death, and a false hope clung to.
"What did you say these things used to be used for?" One of the raiders asked her.
"Suppressive fire. They'd stay high, just outside of ballistic range and rain hellfire down on the frontlines. This one must have been weakened from having to fend for itself for so long." Rythia told them, kneeling down and closing its eyes. "For those we leave behind,"
"For we remember the Fallen." The raiders finished the short prayer.
Spotting a silver glint on its wrist, she turned the arm in her hand. "A dog tag, former soldier then. Fused to its skin."
"What does it say?" Tylic asked curiously, peering at it over her shoulder. "I can't read what is written on it."
"Colonel Awyan Sunlove. Third division, Delta company. Mother, Daughter, loyal soldier." She pulled it from her charred skin, flipping it over; she read the scratched message on the back. "Please don't forget me, Syn. Please don't leave me behind."
A wave of dizziness washed over her, pushing her hand out to catch herself before letting her face tenderize the ground. Several hands caught her from the other raiders, only a single pair of strong hands pulling her to her feet. With a deft motion, she was on Tylic's back being carried like a child.
"It's the song sickness again, isn't it?" He asked, "You used too much of your own, how close do you think you got before you faded away?"
She nodded into his neck, planting her chin on his shoulder to watch the world as the rest of the raiders began to file in around them. "Wait," The raiders halted at her words. The mounds around them whistled as the wind began to pick up, throwing ash over the corpse. "Bring her. I want to bury her. This is a fate she never chose."
The group looked at her, a mix of things passing through their eyes. Some agreed, some were indifferent, while others it was clear they thought she was too deep in the song sickness to be thinking clearly. Nodding to the shawl across her back, one of them took it from her shoulders. A quick amount of work later, a stretcher was made with a few of their spears. The corpse was laid on it; what was left of its wings lay gently below it.
The cliffs that the village was being carved out of came into view quickly enough; Tylic shifted her weight on his back by bouncing her into a better position, his hands landing awkwardly. "Looking for a reward, Chief?" Rythia whispered into his ear.
She felt his neck and cheek grow warm at the comment, but she and the clan wouldn't have made him Chief without his confidence. "I wouldn't say no to a little reward." The buildings being carved into the cliffs were hidden to anyone who didn't know what they were looking at. They planned on the ash filling in the lower levels over time; they figured future generations would never even know a city was below their feet.
"I was unaware that you felt that way." She responded, still feeling the sickness linger like a bad hangover. It was similar as it were; the deeper they strayed into the song these days, the drunken sensation became more and more potent as their souls cried out to rejoin the Quartet's songs. Either way, she pressed her lips to his cheek.
"Now I know you aren't feeling well." He laughed, "We’ll get a few of your priestesses to assist you when we get to the village." He paused for a longer moment; something passed between them. They had known each other for far longer than he remembered, for longer than any of them remembered. Only she was allowed to keep her memories; Tylic wasn't his real name; it was a guttural thing Bhal had forced on them. He was far older than he remembered as well, nearly as old as she was.
Several thousand years of knowing each other, she had seen these sparks of life, these new stars grow from the darkness to become their own suns. Since the day she had first given Vilorlith her name, she knew them all. "Did you want me to assist you?" He asked, breaking the quiet moment.
Smiling, she held onto him just a little tighter. "I think I'd like that."
Both fear and relief ran through the Clan as the raiders made their way through the village. Fear for the pixie's corpse being brought there, relief that they had made it back. Rythia's acolytes hovered around her like a swarm of gnats, dotting on her while Tylic tried to ignore the pestering. She had ordered the pixie to be brought up to the chapel, a massive cave that was being carved near the top of the cliffs.
There, in that place, Rythia was creating her new magics. She called them Keystones, where the names of the fallen were written on them, and their sparks were hidden inside them. Silenced so that their songs could not be heard by Bhal or the other Shadows, sequestering power to save her people from being used as fuel to keep this broken world alive. She told them that with a certain ritual, they may be spoken to again for a short time, a ritual that currently only she knew or understood.
Tylic finally put her down at the mouth of the chapel, then immediately had to catch her from wobbling straight to the ground. His laugh made her smile, a slight flush to her face. "If this is how you are drunk, remind me to never give you anything stronger than beer."
"I'm not drunk," She said, grabbing the spear in his hand for balance, though she never let go of his hand either. "Maybe a bolt of lightning was overkill, but it was effective. I'll be fine soon enough, hopefully before the Great Father returns tonight."
"Ah, he still needs to take his tithe, doesn't he? Will any of your priestesses be joining you?" He asked with a certain sense of reverence in his voice.
"Likely they will all join me," Her voice was flat as she answered. Unwilling to talk about it much beyond that.
The raiders laid the pixie down on the slab they used as an altar. On the journey back to the village, they had removed the spears from her body. Rythia also gave the command to not be disturbed by anyone during her examination and subsequent burial of the Fallen. With a sharp look, she stared at Tylic until he remembered that very command. "Is that wise, Mother? You are still unwell."
"There are some things that no one should see, hear, or understand. I do not want my research falling into false hands; there are Fallen who are still intelligent, intelligent enough to use what I am doing here. Stealthy enough to get in and out of the village without ever raising the alarm as well." She didn't need to let Tylic know that she was hiding all this information from the Shadows, let him think up his own monsters.
With that, he left, barking orders to the raiders to increase patrols around the village. Turning back to the Pixie, she opened its eyes again. Having gone pale already, turning her head to the sky in the way the Legion always did for the Fallen. "Dear sister, look on the skies one last time. I'll see you again on the Shores Beyond." Countless times she had done this during the war; countless times again she saw those honoring the dead attacked again. The Shadows got smart then, sending the Infected to attack again for the inevitable. All it managed to accomplish was push the Quartet further back from the fight. All that was left were the Children to fight their battle, to die and never rest for what?
Rythia closed her eyes, refusing to relive the memories again. "Let me use you to give those before and after a chance, let me use your Spark, dear Child of Syn, let your fall not be in vain." With one of her voices, she called to the Spark in the Pixie's chest.
A soft glimmer of where life once lived, the corpse opened its mouth in a soundless scream. With her second voice, she called to her own Spark with a new Song, one not heard in the gods' gardens. The corpse turned its eyes toward her, tears welling in them. The light of recognition glowing like a mad dream, Rythia had always been a public figure, even before the meeting of races, the creation of the grand civilization the Quartet had built.
"Will you let me try?" She asked the corpse, "Awyan?" The pixie nodded in death, having pulled the soul from the Song where it clung to the flesh. Where the Songs faded, the flesh remembered; where the gods failed, where the Shadows refused to aid, Rythia pulled the soul away from Awyan.
Only now, like winter blowing through the cold withered trees of life, did Awyan's corpse cease moving. The light in her chest faded not back into the Song of her Mother, but condensed into the Spark held in Rythia’s hand. Like seeing the stars through the tiny vista of a telescope, it was the beginning of its own Song, writing just the first few notes of something that would have been great one day. "I will not let your sacrifice be in vain, but I need to use what is left of your Spark to test the next few notes of a new Song. Will you let me do so?" Rythia asked the tiny cluster of stars in her hand.
It played back the few notes it knew to her; taking that as a sign of acceptance, she felt no negative in the short series. She was steadfast in her refusal to use souls that wouldn't aid her; having done this particular ritual dozens of times now, several had refused. She let those rejoin the fading Songs; using their life for something without their consent felt far too wrong to her.
Coming up with this ritual had taken years; after the first Spark had agreed to aid her, she was able to create the first few notes of the new Song. Using their own power to hide behind, using their nature to keep the Shadows from hearing it, as well as the Quartet. She had no doubt that they were not truly dead; how does one kill a facet of reality? They would return in time, whether that is weeks from now, or many hundreds of thousands of years would be anyone's guess.
The first spells she had made using this new song had been about using the Sparks of others to keep her own new Song hidden. It didn't take much tuning to change that spell into one that allowed her, with consent, to use the Sparks of others to let her use more potent magic so as not to put herself at risk of fading. She smiled as the little star cluster flushed with light in her hand, thinking of how she realized that using the Sparks of other souls also hid the notes of the new song from all too omnipotent ears. Proving them false in that regard, no matter how much they forced that doctrine down the throats of the survivors.
Awyan's Spark faded as she used it to forge the notes of a new facet. One that connected the soul not to the Songs but to themselves. She hoped that this would let the souls retain their individuality in death, thinking about the Keystones, thinking about the future of the daughters of the acolytes in the future. She had hoped that they would seek the advice from those who came before, a stopgap in a larger plan. As Awyan's stars faded from existence, Rythia dried her eyes with the hem of her dress. Using the same theory as the Shadows to slavishly maintain what was left of Namix, she shuddered with a sensation that rattled her bones.
The corpse shuddered one final breath, the one that was denied. That one that it needed, filled with as much grief as it was gratitude. She had no name for the Song, just as the other Songs had no real name save for the being in the Legacy of those that made them. Vilorlith's Song of sound and air. Syn's Song of warmth and fire. Kyln's Song of patience and water. Alnya's Song of logic and earth. Finally, the last song so easily missed, The Shadow's Song of entropy and change. Rythia sighed as she rose to her feet; if the quartet had simply acknowledged the Original Shadow's divinity then, then maybe none of this would have happened.
Still, turning back to the mouth of the Chapel, she repeated the entire Song of her own, what few chords there were for now. Then, just to piss off the Shadows, she sang the entirety of the other four Songs out to the air, eating away at her power to do so. By the time she had finished Vilorlith's final verse, Xelex and Azu sat on top of the cliffs looking down at her, amused. While Welkford and Bhal were furious, staring her down only a few feet from her. Kinlith looked annoyed at the sound; Azulu didn't care, standing behind Welkford and Bhal. While Vilroeth and Koroth simply didn't have an opinion on the matter.
The eight new gods of this world were to be summoned by such simple songs. "My, my, my Rythia. Tempting fate today, aren't we?" Xelex, in his silver mask asked, dark tendrils expanding out from his own shadow in the moonlight.
"Alnya never created fate, refused to make it happen. Besides, she escaped all of your clutches despite your best efforts, didn't she?" She spat back. Xelex only laughed as he pulled Welkford back with one of his many tendrils, hand poised to strike her.
"Why have you lessened your tithe to us?" Bhal asked calmly, though that calm was belied by the fury plastered across his face as well as his twitching left eye. The second half of her former weapon, the Tuning Fork, clutched in his blasphemous hands.
"Yes, why make us have to take another Child's life? I was under the impression that you volunteered yourself to spare them?" Azu asked in her bird-like fashion; she had maintained her harpy form, despite the entirely unaerodynamic breasts proffered like ripe melons.
"Must you always appear like a nymphomaniac, you soaring cow? You can put those things away; you won't get me to sleep with you the way you forced Syn to." Rythia snapped back.
It was Bhal's turn to intervene as the Tuning Fork speared Azu midflight to the ground, caught through her wing as a talon lashed out at Rythia's chest. "Is there a point to your token insolence?" He asked, his voice more like roaring fire than actual voice. The twin curled horns on his head glinted light like metal.
"Only to remind you all that I am also a god, one collared, but still divine regardless. Beyond that, not a single one of you can maintain the Songs on your own power; you need me." With a gesture back to Xelex and Bhal, she added as rudely as one could, "Thank you, you two for proving that."
With a wet slurp of the spear being pulled from Azu's wing, Bhal sighed. Running a hand over his face. "Report, Mother. How has the Goblin clan been growing? Having you all been hunting down the Vestiges as ordered? We couldn't help but notice that Pixie on the altar," With a compulsive wave, he added, "Tell us what you were doing with its body."
With all their eyes on her, she could not hide the fact that she was resisting their orders. Through the pain, she picked her words carefully, trying to balance between misdirection and truth. "Honoring the Fallen the way I was taught by the Legion." Rythia gasped out, "It isn't right to let these tools lie forgotten in the ash; they are still those I fought alongside, they are still the bodies of those who fought against you all."
With that, the compulsion ceased, along with the pain from the infection. Bhal knelt down next to her, placing a hand on her shaking shoulder. "I wish you would just accept that this is the world we are left with now. We didn't know about the Songs; we didn't think Alnya would break the world. We are trying our best to make things livable; we are not asking you to forgive us, just work with us."
"By using the souls of the living and the dead to keep together a broken prize." Rythia snarled, pulling her own Spark from her chest and offering them a massive portion of her power for them to use. "This is what you care about; do not pretend to care about the livelihood of those that have survived. The Humans, as you call them, the Mistwalkers and the Trolls, certainly not us goblins. Do not lie to me again; I am done with the lies."
He frowned as the other Shadows disappeared in a haze of darkness, reaching a hand out to take the portion of Rythia's soul she offered. He did not miss the hate in her eyes, nor did he miss the blame in them as well. As soon as he touched her soul, he used it to fuse the cracks in Namix. The breaking physics to amplifying the echoes of the Songs. The ashfall from the sky lessened again, though that novelty was lost as she fell to her knees, as all her energy was drained from her body at offering so much power all at once.
"Three more times I will show myself to the goblins, tell them what you think they would need to know to continue hunting the Vestiges. So long as they maintain their raiders and military prowess, I do not care if you keep that Brownie culture of yours. Our business here is done; I will return again in five years." Bhal scattered away like leaves on an autumn breeze.
"You only give me time. Quite wrong of you." Rythia spat out the blood in her mouth as she blacked out.
