Savior of Istara Read online

  The resulting shock wave shook as many cities to rubble as it buried in sand and stone. And titanic waves swept away entire civilizations, erasing them from the next cycle of ages. After the home islands of the Nubari sank beneath the sea along with the western half of Moor’Dru, the winters became longer, colder, and darker than in the previous cycle of ages.

  Although history failed to attest to the success or failure of the Ireti devil’s final spell, legends and prophecy have speculated on that nagging detail since that dark day. Though I did not learn the answer during my cataclysmic vision in Eresh’s House of the Dead, I came to know the awful truth of the matter years later thanks to my association with a certain calamitous mage from Moor’Dru.

  But that is another story.

  VI.

  I awoke slowly as if emerging from a fortnight’s slumber, sore, stiffened, and drained by the experience. Fleeting remnants of the vision induced by the mural in the House of the Dead flickered on the backs of my heavy eyelids.

  The priests of Eresh wandered the eastern deserts and coasts of shattered Faltyr. Their power had been restored as soon as Eresh reclaimed Her burgled book from the fallen. And Her clergy set to work immediately, gathering up the remains of the millions dead, processing them, and then securely storing them away in bone repositories like those in Istara.

  The apocalyptic vision faded as I opened my eyelids, replaced by the bright light of the torches ensconced along the walls of the familiar subterranean chamber. The mummified members of Clan Viligotti surrounded me, watching silently as the lone priest of Eresh had earlier.

  Serra was amongst them, staring blankly at me from her coffin. I blinked back at her, bewildered by my circumstances.

  Had it been but a dream? Some cheap trick conjured by a contused mind? Something to steal my time and sabotage my hope? How long had I wasted slumbering on the floor of this crypt while my mother languished in a dungeon awaiting execution?

  In the end, I wish it had been some hobgoblin of the mind. But this isn’t that kind of story. The reality was far worse.

  As I rose from the floor of the catacombs, my eyes never left the face of my fallen friend. I smiled wanly and then promptly stumbled over something lying at my feet. As I pitched forward, I collided with Serra’s coffin, upsetting it. It rocked backward violently, causing me to grab for it. The heavy glass display case proved too much for me to leverage from such an awkward position. Instead I managed to dash myself and Serra to the unforgiving stone in spectacular fashion.

  We landed in a tangled embrace of glass, blood, and bone dust. I never expected to be reunited with my childhood friend, comforted by her embrace once more. For a brief eternity I gazed into her dead eyes, searching for the light and innocence I so lovingly recalled but finding only emptiness inside.

  Instinctively, I drew closer, not realizing exactly what I’d done until my full, warm lips brushed her shriveled, cold ones. I pulled away instantly, recoiling from my hideous deed.

  My breathing was rapid, shallow, and my cheeks flushed hotly. What had I done? I’d embarrassed Serra again, only this time in front of her family. Could she, would she, ever forgive me? I tore my eyes away from hers, unable to bear the shame.

  My gaze settled upon the cumbersome stumbling block now removed from my path. As its true nature dawned on me, horror and bile filled me with equal measure. The book from the dais in the Temple of Eresh now lay at my feet.

  Was this some cruel trick of fate or, worse yet, of the Lords of the Underworld? Had they chosen to play me for a fool like Ra’Tallah? If so, had I somehow offended them by trespassing into their domain? Or were they tasking me to defend the sanctity of this holy city by providing me with a tool to smite the enemies of Istara?

  In my eagerness to believe that I was in some way special to them, I deluded myself into accepting the latter and its blasphemous intentions. I chose to become the Savior of Istara. But I am only a pretender to that title. As I’ve stated before, the true savior was my first love, Serra Viligotti. After she leapt from her coffin into my arms, a masterful plan stretched out before me, grand in its designs, deadly in its consequences.

  After returning Serra to her resting place sans display case, I turned my attention to the contents of the Liber Inferum. The language barrier I’d anticipated evaporated as I flipped through its pristine pages. Its forbidden knowledge filled me as easily as if it’d been penned in my native dialect.

  If I am nothing else, I am studious, oft times to a fault. Despite my shredded sanity, I plumbed the sinister depths of that folio of fiends and the fallen until I found what I sought, the incantation used by Ra’Tallah to animate and control his legions of undead minions. And now the secret was mine.

  Inspired by novels of mysteries, intrigues, and adventures I’d read in my youth, I conspired to set powerful enemies against those occupying my city as well as their confederates amongst the citizenry. Behind the gilded gates of the Temple of Shamash waited an army of knights hungry for battle, having watched its neighbors and relatives starved and slaughtered by the men of Golthus.

  As a result, the Knights of Shamash—the most feared, yet respected crusaders in the land of Ny—needed only sufficient pretense to enter the fray on our side. And I intended to provide it…by any means necessary, even if it damned my soul to the hottest of the Nine Hells in the process.

  In the aftermath of the Cataclysm, the Churches of the Holy Trinitas swore a blood oath against those using the alchemical or necromantic arts for anything other than healing purposes. Various militant orders of knights and monks considered it their sacred duty to enforce this oath and punish anyone guilty of violating it. Crusaders of Shamash were the worst of the lot.

  In my overzealousness, I failed to consider the far-reaching consequences of my plan of action or the true agenda of my divine benefactors. Instead of the scalpel I required to cut out the infection, I ended up wielding a scythe.

  Despite very little training in the use of Aethyr-magic, especially necromancy and other blood magic, preparing the sinister invocation did not prove as tricky as baiting the trap. I scavenged most of the material components from those interred in the catacombs, the remainder from a few discrete vendors in the marketplace. Having no currency on hand, I bartered items taken from the affluent residents of the necropolis, their posthumous donation to the liberation of Istara.

  With materials procured and preparations completed, I waited for the burning eye of Shamash to fall below the horizon. In the time between Mother Sun’s descent and Her Daughter’s rise, I cloaked myself in the deepest shadows cast by the lights of the city and sought out those who hunted me so fervently.

  When I found Uffu’s nocturnal patrol, a gang of local thugs and foreign troops, I let them think me the mouse and them the eagle. Fleet of foot and quick of wit, I darted from shadow to shadow, luring my pursuers to their final resting place.

  And then the hunters became the hunted. Using my superior knowledge of twisting tunnels below the city cemetery, I stalked them, killing them one by one, until only the traitorous magistrate remained. Rusting swords, axes, and arrows lifted from the resting places of Istara’s dead aided my deadly task.

  Harassing Uffu at every turn, I lured the frazzled magician back to the crypt of Clan Viligotti, to where my Serra and her family awaited the final component to complete the ritual. As Uffu the Unfortunate entered the crypt, he glanced about the room frantically. In his panic, he failed to see my hiding spot, one of the many hollow recesses carved into the walls of the catacombs.

  As the magician spun in my direction, I fired a single arrow. The missile crossed the chamber before Uffu could react. It punctured the mage’s left cheek before exiting gruesomely through his other one. Blood erupted from his mouth, spilling onto the intricate circle drawn into the floor.

  The effect was instantaneous. The dead shivered, shook, and then walked. Although they were many, they acted as legion. And I was their commander; they would do my bidding without qu
estion as long as I drew breath.

  As the others set upon Uffu, clawing and biting at his flesh, Serra paused beside me. Did she recognize me or was she merely obeying my subconscious desire to reconnect with her? Was she truly different than the other mindless dead or merely a reflection of my own desires?

  The vacant look in her eyes told me everything that I needed to know. I could bring back the dead, but I couldn’t resurrect those old feelings, the raw emotions I’d felt for someone when I’d loved them with the heart of an innocent. After all, if my innocence had not perished along with Serra Viligotti, it certainly died the night of her reanimation.

  In life, Serra had been my best friend and first love. In death, she became the spearhead of a terrifying but relatively bloodless attack by undead that would provoke the Church of Shamash to action. And thanks to my intrigues and machinations, blame for it would land squarely on the neck of the true enemies of Istara like the executioner’s ax honed and ready for my mother’s own.

  My final part in this sick, sordid piece was the hardest for me to play…that of the victim. But I sold it. To rave reviews, as those who found me in the rain outside the gates of the Temple of Shamash accepted what they saw with ease: a gore-covered teenage girl in tears, one nearly on the verge of panic.

  Until now, they believed me to be the victim of evil men using dark magic to ferret me out of hiding. No one was the wiser. Certainly they didn’t see me as the orchestrator of the plot. They were as blind to my role in the affair as I was to the true intentions of Lady Death when she’d loaned me her book.

  Behind me, little Serra Viligotti led the charge of her clansmen in a herky-jerky fashion. Around them, corpses rose from crypt and catacomb, from tomb and temple—even the jumbled mass of bones of those unfortunate souls lost in the Cataclysm had answered the Liber Inferum’s call. For on that moonless night, under the cleansing rains of a storm skirting the arid coastline, all of the dead in Istara obeyed my command.

  VII.

  In the end, I may have freed Istara from the clutches of Golthus, but it took a damning deception to make it happen. And to make matters worse, I’ve had to live with that lie and carry its weight upon my soul every day since. I’ve had to listen to unmerited praise and accolades for saving my city at the expense of another, a Pyrrhic victory at best.

  At least until today. Tired of living a lie, I composed this confessional to set the record straight, regardless of the consequences. In the aftermath of the undead outbreak, I became a hero, a savior to the people of my fair city for raising the alarm. But I, Tameri, daughter of Breuxias, am not the real Savior of Istara. If anything, I was almost its damnation.

  Acting on my commands, my dearly departed friend, Serra Viligotti, led the attack that provided the excuse for Mother Sun’s crusaders to enter the fray against the blasphemers implicated by my acts. She endured the gnawing hunger for fresh flesh that reanimation had created within her. Though she begged me with her flat, lifeless eyes, I couldn’t allow her to feast, not even a nibble. And then she suffered bodily destruction under the shining mace of a Knight of Shamash, a merciful Final Death that sent her soul screaming back into the Underworld with no hope of return.

  A terrifying array of mummies, zombies, and skeletons shambled after Serra, making a good show of snarling, moaning, and gnashing their teeth. But for all intents and purposes, they were harmless as puppets on an invisible string, fighting animatedly but drawing little blood in the process.

  One after another, they fell under the flashing swords and heavy maces of the crusaders. In a measure of moments, my entire legion met an ignoble fate, most cleaved, crushed, or conflagrated by the overzealous knights.

  The gold-clad Knights of Shamash may have liberated my city from the men of Golthus and their confederates, but the witch hunt didn’t end there. As I laid the shattered bones of Serra Viligotti to rest alongside her kin once again, countless others paid an awful price for my blasphemous acts.

  But it was worth it. It’s terrible to say, but it’s true. I would do it all again to save my mother, to save all of Istara, even if it meant Serra had to suffer the indignity of reanimation and destruction every night from here to the end of this cycle of ages. Though I would always love Serra, I loved Istara even more, enough to desecrate the grave of my childhood friend, commit blasphemy, and risk my eternal soul to save my home, all our homes.

  And risk it I did. For all intents and purposes, I’d remained an innocent until the night of my dark deeds in the House of the Dead. Now I’d never be innocent again. The taint of the Underworld would forever be upon my soul due to the actions I’d taken to save my beloved city.

  Though I feel no particular love for Golthus, I regret the Church’s decision to put the city and its citizens to the torch. But I certainly understand it. Nearly sixteen centuries removed from the Cataclysm, and we’re still willing to assume the worst about the living when the dead rise from the grave.

  But can you blame us? We are the bastard barbarian children of a post-cataclysmic age trying to survive in a savage world. And in the aftermath of Faltyr’s Golden Age, few things united its peoples like their common fears, someone repeating the sins of our apocalyptic past being the worst of them.

  Fear blinded the followers of Mother Sun to my true agenda. And fear bound them to my version of reality, albeit a wildly distorted one. The discovery of the bodies of Uffu and his confederates in the tunnels beneath the cemetery confirmed the validity of my wild tale for the inquisitive priests of Shamash. If any doubted my veracity, they suffered in silence; none of the clergy came forward to challenge the majority opinion. Most of them considered me to be a young, well-meaning patriot who’d been pushed to the brink, forced into the catacombs, and then hunted like a rat in a maze by a gang of unscrupulous men using might and magic to ferret me out.

  Following the night of the attack, the response from the Church of Shamash to the charges of necromancy proved swift and brutal, much more so than I expected. Three days after the dead walked the streets of Istara, the sun rose twice, once in the East and then again in the West. The reflection of Mother Sun on the shining silk sails of a crusader fleet shined like a false sun on that fateful morning.

  The liberation of my home did not go seamlessly or quietly. The Knights of Shamash fell upon our city like ravening birds of prey, slaughtering the occupying army and its coconspirators among the citizenry. The hardest part for me was living with the knowledge that my actions had resulted in the death of innocents, so I must take the blame for any collateral damage.

  In my desperate, shortsighted campaign to rid Istara of its occupiers, I overlooked the consequences of my actions. You have to believe me that it wasn’t intentional. But the results are why I don’t deserve to be called the savior of anything or anyone. The very actions that freed Istara from the hands of its would-be conquerors, the damned of Golthus, made for the sun to rise twice on the same morning over the city as well.

  By the time the overzealous crusaders were finished with Golthus, it was no more than a smoldering crater. And every man, woman, and child within its walls suffered the same fate as their home. Their remains ascended to the heavens in a plume of smoke and ash even as the Knights of Shamash condemned their immortal souls to the Nine Hells of Faltyr’s Underworld.

  Though Istara was free, the cost was high, perhaps too high in the end. Not a day passes when I don’t agonize over the decisions I made that fateful night in the House of the Dead.

  Was I really any better than Ra’Tallah, the jealous fool Darconius manipulated into delivering millions of unfortunate souls to the Lords of the Underworld? Had my dark, desperate deeds damned my soul as his had done in the previous cycle of ages? And what torments would I suffer for all those souls I’d delivered to the Nine Hells, their bodies piled high upon the bonfires built by the shining servants of Shamash, Mother of the Overworld, those I’d deceived and manipulated into freeing my city?

  No one can answer these questions for me,
as I await the personal judgment coming at the end of my own cycle of ages. So I must abdicate my undeserved mantle of Savior of Istara. My dear friend, Serra Viligotti, filled that role much better than me. The horror of her tiny animated form leading the charge against my city’s aggressors made a much greater impetus for the Knights of Shamash to intervene than any crying girl on their doorstep.

  If the road to the Nine Hells is paved with good intentions, surely I belong there more than the men of Golthus or even the traitors from my own city, such as Uffu. So if you meet me during my travels around Ny, I beg you not to hail me as the Savior of Istara. If you must call me something, call me by titles that I truly deserve, such as the Scourge of Golthus or the Fool of Eresh. Either fits me and my actions, for I feel more like a scourge or fool than a savior.

  If you must praise someone, if this story must have a savior, let it be little Serra and the other undead patriots of Istara who stood by me when the living could not or would not. Even if it wasn’t an act of their own doing but the machinations of a headstrong, foolish girl who tampered with forces beyond her ken and brought ruination upon one people for the sake of another, they sacrificed body and soul to save their home.

  They, not I, are the true Saviors of Istara.

  THE END

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  SAVIOR OF ISTARA

  by J. Jeremy Hicks

  Edited by Tommy Hancock

  Editor in Chief, Pro Se Productions-Tommy Hancock

  Submissions Editor-Barry Reese

  Director of Corporate Operations-Morgan Minor

  Publisher & Pro Se Productions, LLC-Chief Executive Officer-Fuller Bumpers

  Cover Art and Design by Jeff Hayes