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August 4 - August 11, 2025
More than four thousand years ago, the wedding of Tal’kamar Deshrel ended with Elliavia, his new wife, being brutally and senselessly slain. Mad with grief, Tal’kamar drew for the first time on a dark power called kan, killing all those in attendance as he took their life force—their Essence—in a vain attempt to bring her back to life. Burdened with sorrow and guilt over both Elliavia’s death and his own actions, Tal’kamar soon found that he was unable to die: even when beheaded, he would simply wake up again in a different body and a different land. Worse, he eventually discovered that not
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Jakarris proceeded to assist Nethgalla in undermining the Augurs’ rule, using his position to create a series of embarrassing public mistakes that cast serious doubt on the Andarran leaders’ ability to see the future.
you need both Cyr and Davian dead to close the rift, and Cyr is by far the harder of the two to kill. Even more so if you set him free.”
Cyr had gone to his Tributary willingly—had been convinced of the truth about Shammaeloth and had volunteered—but the other Venerate didn’t know that. They assumed that he was a prisoner, as Meldier and Isiliar had been.
the temperature was… perfect. The sun was warm, but the breeze took away its edge and kept the air invigoratingly fresh. Asha started down the winding stairs, between and sometimes beneath the streams and fountains that created the constant joyful dance around her. Short tunnels made of crystal and glass wound through the water, casting a gentle, softly shifting deep blue on the white stone underfoot as the sun filtered through the clear pools.
koth.” “I don’t understand,” said Caeden, his voice almost a whisper. He didn’t recognize the word. Ordan paused, then hung his head. “They have been in Markaathan, Tal’kamar.” He finally looked across at Caeden, almost defiant now. “That is where we go when we die. The Darklands, you call it. And the Forge… the Forge pulls us back here again. Or more precisely, it forces our link to the Darklands to push us back here.”
Or-dan…Or-Koth…🧐
“There is no point in life for the sake of living,
Al’goriat were, supposedly, the rarest and most dangerous of the Banes. According to legend, details about them were so scarce because so few who encountered them lived to tell the tale.
Every time the other man gave him answers, Davian found more questions arising.
Sounds bloody familiar, eh?!
“Sire.” General Vis—a lean man in his sixties, with steel in his hair and a soldier’s hardness to his weathered face—gave him a deferential nod, casting a glance behind Wirr up to the area from which he had just come. “Congratulations are in order.”
It had taken Caeden years to fully grasp why the sha’teth had destroyed the body it had managed to take, sending itself back to the Darklands in the process. Years until the group of young men and women in Andarra had started showing signs of being able to use kan, and Caeden had finally understood that Alchesh’s connections to the Forge had been released upon his death. Each one breaking off, attaching to a new individual. Making it even harder to close the Rift.
Ahhhh!! So thats why there are more Augurs than just the venerate…
Caeden nodded. “I wasn’t much, growing up. An orphan,”
“I wasn’t sure of her reaction up until the moment I told her that I wanted to court her. And then even after the courting, even after all that time, it was hard to convince myself that she would say yes. There were so many others who were interested. Stronger men, more powerful men. But in the end, she said that didn’t matter. She said it didn’t matter because I was the better man.”
Everyone’s equal here. There’s no place of honor, no seniority, no rank. None of these graves can become a shrine.” His gaze traveled the room. “I’ve always liked that. Great people should be remembered for their great deeds, but strangers visiting their graves strikes me as… odd.”
“Aarkein Devaed is on our side,” repeated Wirr incredulously. Scyner’s face was impassive. “More than that—you’ve met him. Devaed was what the Darecians named him. His real name is Tal’kamar,” he said quietly. “You know him as Caeden.”
Faithful people suffer and evil people prosper all the time, Davian—you must know that is true. Besides, if our actions are driven only by reward or punishment—eternal or otherwise—then they are motivated by greed and selfishness, not faith or love. That is where so many people go wrong, even those who say they believe in El. They obey because they think it will make their lives better, rather than themselves. And that is very much the wrong reason.”
like listening to a piece of music and judging the composer by how skillfully the musician is playing it. The question that needs answering isn’t ever ‘who acts better.’ It is easy to seize upon the worst of groups—but every group is a collection of individuals, and every individual is flawed. Some are contrary, some are outright liars when they say that they believe in something. So every action has to be assessed against what someone claims they believe, not simply seen as a result of it.”
You should never judge the sides of an argument simply by who is doing the arguing.”
“They are trying to convince everyone that our creator wished to create a world in which He could not take part. Could not help, guide, or save. In which He was functionally irrelevant.”
‘No decision without doubt,’”
“El could convince the world in a heartbeat—but if He did, it would no longer be our choice to follow Him. Instead, He enables us to choose Him.”
You enshrine those whom you have lost, whom you have killed. You raise them above the living; their voices drown out all others who try to reason with you. They are your gods.”
“However, Andrael also made a number of… unusual stipulations surrounding the blade’s release. The other Venerate had to come for it without the intention of taking it. We could use it against them if they left the safety of the ilshara, but they were to be allowed safe passage within Res Kartha and, once they found their way there, also allowed to return to Talan Gol.”
“Sometimes not wanting to share the burden is a form of selfishness, too,”
Evil men rarely convince others to their side by asking them to perform dark deeds for no good reason. They will always start with the lightest shade of gray. They so often use what seems like a good cause.”
“Gray is the color of cowardice and ignorance and sheer laziness, Davian—never let anyone tell you otherwise. If something is not clearly right or wrong then it bears actually figuring out which one it is, not dismissal into some nebulous third category. If you have a basis for your morality, a foundation for it, then there will always be an answer—and if you do not, then trying to decide whether anything is right or wrong is an exercise in futility and irrelevance.”
If something is not clearly right or wrong then it bears actually figuring out which one it is, not dismissal into some nebulous third category. If you have a basis for your morality, a foundation for it, then there will always be an answer—and if you do not, then trying to decide whether anything is right or wrong is an exercise in futility and irrelevance.”
salacious.”
what’s right isn’t always what’s legal.
“Law is about order, not right and wrong,” Taeris agreed. “And the latter should always trump the former.”
“The Shalis—a people I once knew—called them the Mirrors of Truth. My friend once told me that they were the Builders’ greatest creation. And also what destroyed them.”
“They’re Vessels,” he finally continued. “A grand white hallway of hundreds of the things, lining it. You have to look into each one before moving on, but at the end, you are allowed to remember only one of them. One truth that they show you, personal to you. Your life. And once through, you can never go back. Ever,”
“So what truth did they reveal to you?” she asked, quietly this time. “What did you choose to remember?” Caeden glanced across at her, smiling sadly as voices began filtering down to them from up ahead. “Perhaps another time,” he said gently.
Goddammit not another carrot on a stick
It was hard not to let his failures, and the feeling that he wasn’t going to be able to overcome them, weigh on him.
“Well for what it’s worth, I hope she says yes,” he said jovially, clapping Raeleth on the back. “Even if I do think that it makes you the bravest man alive.” Raeleth smiled at that. “Well it’s either that, or be the stupidest one if I didn’t try,” he observed. “Finding her here has been like… finding a jewel in amongst the dirt. An emerald, dropped into the cup of a beggar.”
“Killing in war is sometimes necessary. That doesn’t mean that war necessitates killing,”
“Now you have your memories back… I have to know,” he said softly, looking vaguely uncomfortable. “Are you… the one who brought Davian to me? When he was a child?” Caeden stared blankly at Taeris, so surprised that he missed a root in his path and almost tripped. “What? No.” He shook his head firmly at Taeris’s questioning look. “No. I would remember something like that.
FINALLLLLLLYYY
the things we crave are wonderful blindfolds,” he said. “When they start to slip, we want nothing more than for him to pull them up again.”
He lived a thousand moments, a thousand decisions, all over again. Some were weeks at a time and numbing in scale, like the War of Theria, or the wiping out of the Jereth, or the destruction of Li Teroth. Others lasted only minutes and were intensely personal, manipulations and lies and ugly losses of temper. The time his bitterness had led to him sneering at young Elina Devries, publicly lecturing her to tears after she had worked up the courage to ask him to dance. The lies he’d told to convince Damon Rel, who had all but worshipped Caeden, to send his son to prison. The four words he had
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“The past is the past, and you cannot break me with it. It has no hold over me anymore.”
Davian squared his shoulders. Vanished. The barrier of Essence flickered, and then the al’goriat began dying. It happened so quickly, and Caeden was still so hazy, that he could barely credit what he was seeing. The creatures hissed and screeched and shrieked as limbs and heads were cleaved in quick succession, an invisible wave of death that rippled outward, an explosion of black blood and rent flesh. Even al’goriat that had stepped outside of time were suddenly reappearing, mortally wounded, some of them flailing and screeching as unseen, powerful blows sent them careening into others and
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Fuck yes!!!
inexorably
Islington really loves this word
“Only because of you.” “Your choices, Tal. Always your choices. Influences don’t get blame or credit.”
A moment later he heard the muted sound of a baby’s cries coming from within. A mother still awake, then, probably nursing her child.
DAVIAN!
“Who are you?” snarled Niha, brandishing a knife with one hand even as she held a shrieking infant with the other.
NIHA IS DAVIANS MOM AND RALETH IS HIS DAD HOLY SHIT
For a long few moments nothing happened, and Caeden’s apprehension began to grow. He took a deep, measured breath. Tried again. Pain arced through him. This was harder than his transformation into his original self.
No way he is going to impersonate Davian and go back to kill himself🥲
“ENOUGH!” Tal’kamar screamed, and as Caeden felt the last of his Essence trickle away he could see that the man before him was lost to his anger now. Blinded by a red haze of enraged denial. It didn’t matter. Eventually, he knew, that man would change. Licanius was out of its sheath. Tal’kamar raised it high. Caeden smiled.
