The Great Pandemonium: Nobilitas Obligat

Part VI. Revenant

Part VI. Revenant

Drystan felt the claw slip out of his chest and was vaguely aware that he was no longer on the ground. When he finally struck the snow again he was a hundred feet away from where Sacha stood cursing at him and Erathi squatted making sure the fire continued to burn Nocis into ash.

He knew his bones were broken; there was no way he could have flown so far for them not to be shattered. But he could feel nothing aside from the warm pool forming at his back as his blood emptied from the gaping wound in his middle. Staring up at the sky, he smiled as he saw Eral floating there amidst the gray-white branches of the tree. It was just too beautiful to let him worry about anything, even his impending and quite likely to be inglorious death.

This isn't such a bad way to go, really, he thought, nodding in his own mind at his decision since nothing of his body was able to move anymore. Crazy Oratio dead and on his way to ashes and I've got the best view in the afterlife. Regret gnawed at the edge of his consciousness. Too bad I won't be able to tell Tier about this place. It's worth the trip.

“I always thought as much as well.”

Surprised by the clarity of the voice Drystan sat up, then marveled at the fact that he was no longer hindered by his broken body. In fact, he was sitting next to himself, and he looked awful. His sandy blond hair was matted with his own half-frozen blood and the scraggly beard he had grown since leaving the Rectory was bloodstained and stiff with his own iced-over breath. One of his blue eyes was blackened and the other had been rendered blind, sliced through by a smaller claw when the creature had struck him.

“You are not like the ones that usually trespass here.”

He looked to his side and saw a man sitting cross-legged there, glacier-blue eyes fixed curiously on the other's face. From his ears he was the same race as Erathi, but he had a wilder look about him than even she did. His bare arms and legs were covered in Enkiri-like tattoos made in rust-orange ink and his reddish-blond hair hung in four braids down his back, woven together with some sort of white vine. He was wearing, of all things, a knee-length plait skirt and soft leather boots that laced up to his knees.

“I thought everyone in the City was long dead,” said Drystan finally.

“We all are,” he replied with a grin. “You yourself are well on your way, judging by just how many different places your blood is spilling forth from your body.”

Drystan looked over at himself and noticed that indeed, there were three holes through his chest, not just one. The creature that had killed Nocis had gotten a good square hit on his back and shredded his torso. There was no way he was going to live, but strangely he found himself unable to care too much about it. “Who are you?”

“I was called Arathron. When I lived I came here to learn from Imbrusil's children.” A rueful sigh caused the wind to shift around them and Drystan was surprised that he could feel such a thing. “I died here, buying the last of them time to escape the Thralls. Now I amuse myself by watching fools like that one blunder through thinking the waters of Leilenheim will make them all-seeing gods.”

“I take it that doesn't happen, then.”

Arathron chuckled. “If ever one succeeded in the drinking they would die, and painfully, too—only those of the City can touch the water without paying a heavy tithe. Leilenheim does not give anything; the well only takes.”

“But he had a Malefor spirit attached to him. Doesn't that make a difference?”

“Of course,” replied Arathron in a scholarly fashion. “After destroying the shell it was attached to, Leilenheim would accept the taint and try to purify it. Since it is not of the City, the Malefor would be reborn from Imbrusil as a Thrall capable of opening the Gate which was sealed by Tou-Rinna. The beginning and end are the same, but your kind seems to place whatever tale they wish betwixt the bookends.”