Chapter Text
Hakram, Masego, and Vivienne travelled north to the borders of Keter. There they found the Grey Pilgrim standing alone. Barring the path.
Callow’s regent stepped forward. “Step aside, Peregrine. We do not have to oppose one another here.”
Tariq Isbili remained silent and Beheld the three who had come to settle the matter of the Sovereign. His heart ached at what he saw. He stood firm.
“It is natural, what you would attempt, but I remind and urge you to think of all you would put at risk for the merest hope of her return to you. Turn away. I will bring her the last mercy that can be offered to one in her condition.”
"Levant would stand alone in the war my people will bring to your land should they find out that their queen was murdered after ending the King of Death’s reign. I may rule them now, but no one would be able to control the fire this act would spark, Pilgrim. Ashur is spent, the Free Cities are squabbling, and Procer owes us for the destruction of their Enemy. Please. I do not want more war for my people or for this continent.”
“A friend whose sight is farther reaching than mine has warned against what would happen if she is left alive. I cannot allow what you would do. I am sorry.”
The Adjutant took up his axe and braced himself. Breathing in. Out. He spoke.
“If you will not let us pass, then you will be moved.”
And he began the battle for Catherine Foundling’s fate.
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The Grey Pilgrim lay defeated behind them. Alive. Yet the hearts of the three approaching the borders of what had been Keter now beat faster than when they fought one of the most dangerous Named on the continent. Battling him had made their blood run fast. But they had not been afraid beyond the fear that came with all instances of fighting for something that mattered.
Hakram Deadhand. Afraid of losing the person he loved most in all the world.
Vivienne Dartwick. Afraid of being unready to rule her nation and of not being able to repay the woman who had fought for the possibility of its freedom and weal.
Masego of the Woe. Afraid of failing his family. Of his family breaking apart. Of being unable to bring back another that he cared for.
The three of them walked with these fears in their heart. Clinging on to a shadowy and near incorporeal thread of hope.
Until finally they were there and they had reached her. The Sovereign crowned in dreadful ice and dark. Weeping still. She raised her head and the sight of what remained of her family sent her drowning in tears once more. Her loneliness killing her, she, unable to die. Blighting the land, destroying any warmth and light and health it held.
The Adjutant knelt with his head bowed. He had failed.
The princess of Callow stood. Vowing to hold their nation together until it could stand on its own.
The Hierophant breathed and cast his spell, binding the Sovereign to him with the contract he had written in desperation. His first great act as a god.
And then they were done. And she was gone. Contained in Twilight.
What remained of the Woe held on to each other as they walked away from this place. Keeping each other standing.
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In a place somewhere very far away and nowhere at all, the Keeper of Stories tuned her lute and turned away her gaze from the girl she had used to slay the Dead King. She had not expected for the Everdark to conclude in the way it did, but she worked with anything she could. Her attention went now to the three stories she would use to break the chains that bound her.
The Tyrant, doomed to die and whose end was the spark that catches and signals Calernia’s death.
The Poisoner, discontent. Seeking for something greater and who would tend to that little flame until it grew to devour the continent.
The White Knight, who would seal the oncoming doom in his attempts to bring salvation to the land.
Yara of Nowhere sighed and began to play the funerary song of her own long dead people, lacing in it all the exhaustion of her soul.
She reached the song’s end. Her last true song dedicated to the prison she had served and loved and hated.
The Intercessor began her last great work and set the Hierarch free.
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Hanno of Arwad stood beneath the corpse of an angel of Judgement. He had tried, with Cordelia Hasenbach all that could be done to curb the excesses and worst actions of her nation’s royalty. They had failed. And the chaos that stemmed from the Tyrant’s death had grown to affect the entirety of Calernia. He had apprehended the Poisoner who had taken up Kairos Theodosian’s legacy of sowing enmity between the greats of the continent but the rot had spread too far by then.
Hanno of Arwad knew what had to be done. The First Prince still believed that order could be imposed through law and diplomacy. He wanted so much to believe her. In Judgement’s silence he had allowed her to use him as she deemed best. She was clever and did what was necessary and still held on as much as she could to what it meant for a mortal to be good. In many ways, she was more clear-sighted than him.
The White Knight knew that she could not triumph over all the mortal folly of this continent. She was one woman and he was only one man, for all the resources and power she wielded. They were not enough. And so in secret he had amassed influence over the House of Light, using the priesthood of Procer to power this impossibility he would use to burn out the dark that shrouded Calernia before it was too late.
He was no longer the Sword of Judgement. But in this he trusted the Choir he had once served to clear the path for the betterment of the continent.
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Vivienne Dartwick remained silent. And then. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Cordelia Hasenbach clenched her fist as she felt the mark of laurels burn her as painfully as when she had caught the coin that would have sentenced the traitors to the verdict of angels rather than the laws of Procer.
“I have no one else I can trust who might be able to stop him. And so now I plead for the help of Callow. I know that I do not have the right to ask anything of you. That you’ve already done much for the Principate and this continent. I have no right to ask more of Callow and the Woe. Catherine Foundling’s sacrifice in slaying the King of Death has not been forgotten. But the angel corpse should not be used for this. Too many would die for an end that can be achieved through other means.”
And though she did not kneel, it was the closest she would come to begging without outright saying those words.
The regent-princess looked away, her eyes inscrutable. She nodded her assent and turned away from the scrying mirror.
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“So what do you think? Can you disable it?”
Masego looked up at the angel corpse then back at Hakram and Vivienne.
“Yes. I cannot destroy it, but if the White Knight is fool enough to use it, I can render it inert.”
He paused. Inspiration. Madness. Hesitation.
Then he spoke of hope to his family.
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Light began to emanate from the bones as Hanno triggered the ealamal. He stepped back from it, his heart heavy and weeping. He watched it grow brighter and felt the power of the Choir of Judgement manifest in the sky high above the temple.
But just as it was reaching the zenith of its radiance, another light started to bloom around what remained of the corpse. The White Knight cast his eyes around the room searching for whatever was interfering with the weapon and found the Vivisector of Miracles on the other side of the angel’s bones.
“I know of you. Stop, please. This does not have to end in blood. Let the ritual finish. Calernia must be renewed.”
The Hierophant turned his glass eyes for a moment upon the hero, glowing with the weight of the eldritch knowledge he possessed and returned his gaze upon his working. He spoke, then.
“I am a villain. I have never claimed to care over much for the lives of those I do not like nor love. But even to me, it is clear that what you have done is not the correct thing to do for this land we share. But it is an opportunity I can use, so I suppose I must thank you for that.”
Hanno unsheathed his sword and strode towards the mage. “What you are attempting is blasphemy. It will kill you, lesser god though you might now be.”
“Your will is not the will of the Gods, Hanno,” a voice said, ringing. Vivienne Dartwick stepped out from behind a pillar with the Adjutant behind her.”
The lights intertwined and became one.
The White Knight breathed out and jumped into action, to incapacitate the Usher of Mysteries. He sped past Callow’s regent-princess and cut apart the weapons the Adjutant wielded. But just as he was about to reach the mage, he felt a hand on his shoulder that infected him with cold he felt to his marrow. He strained as he felt himself buckle under its influence. But though he flared Light he could not chase away the bleakness that grew in him that sapped away his will to action. Black ice grew from his feet until it covered the entirety of the hero, rendering him unconscious.
The Sovereign stood without will nor desire, even now still buried among and under the devastation of her heart.
“Get back, Hakram! Vivienne! I’m not certain how well I can control the focus of the power’s release!”
All the gentleness his fathers had given in raising him. All the warmth he had been given by all who loved him. All the paltry kindness he had in his heart. As much as he could, he imbued all of it into the power he had usurped.
The two administrators of Callow ran as far back as they could without leaving the temple.
Staring.
Watching in trepidation.
The manifestation of the power of the Choir of Judgement finally stabilized in the sky. And though the Hierophant felt another entity attempt to take over the control he had imposed on the angels, he held on to the leash he had made.
Masego’s glass eyes turned dim, for a moment invaded by his fears and regrets. He breathed out and reminded himself of the person he was now fighting for. Not his fathers, out of reach for as long as he lived. For his friend. Still alive. Someone he could still take back from the grasping darkness.
The Hierophant breathed in. Steeled by love.
When he felt the leash he held fraying, sensed the being try to change the effects the emanation would have...
Wrest.
And his third aspect finally crystallized in his fight for the restoration of his living family.
As the Light finally streamed down rather than thunder to the earth in a blast, he saw a woman screaming soundlessly, and at the sight of her, Masego knew more problems would arise that they would have to overcome.
But he turned his gaze away from her when the Light finally reached the corpse-still Sovereign. The three of them who had come to usurp the hero’s use of the impossible weapon looked at the Sovereign’s body. And though the illumination that came from the sky was not violent, she shook and seemed as if she had been possessed, her limbs twisting in near-unnatural ways and then in such directions that it was unnatural. They could hear her bones break and snap until everything returned to normal and out of her eyes came forth black water that hissed and turned to smoke as they reached the ground.
On and on it continued until finally the crown of thorns fell from the girl’s head and broke into two pieces.
Masego was the first who ran to her, observing with his glass eyes to ascertain her condition. Hakram and Vivienne remained where they were, paralyzed at this moment by the fear that it had not worked, that their last desperate measures did not bring back their friend.
Then the Hierophant raised his head and beckoned to them.
What remained of the Woe cradled the girl who had bound them all together as she cried. Crying not in the way she did as the Sovereign of Moonless Nights, but as any mortal would after being returned to those she loved and coming from a long, brutal separation. Lucid for the first time since the death of Indrani the Archer. Returned to what manner of sanity she possessed when she had only been the Squire and not a lesser god of Winter and the Night.
All of them, they held on to each other. Breathing freely at last. Freed and passed from the grief that all consumed them.
Catherine Foundling had been returned.
Mortal. And so, so gloriously.
Human.