A Soul Remembers: Chronicles of Akashi - Chapter 7

Seven

The Heralds

Von-wratha could barely keep up with the speed of the snake. Every few moments, she would lose sight of its tiny body as it slithered beneath the maroon bushes and dark tree roots. It led her back to the red gardens close to the Spire. She could even see its peak between the cracks of the trees’ foliage. The gardens were void of light, and her only reliable track of the snake was the Nalax’s thoughts being channelled through the animal. She came upon a small grassy mound. The slithering reptile sped to the other side and vanished. Panic gripped her heart when she could no longer see its scales, nor hear his mind. She crouched beside the mound to find a thick bush covering a narrow black cave behind it. Inside her eyes caught two yellow eyes reflecting in the dark.

Von-wratha, please. She heard his voice again. Von-wratha smirked as she looked back to the Spire. She admired the cultist’s boldness for having their hideout under the oracle's noses. She turned back to the narrow hole and slipped her slender body through it. She mimicked the snake's movement, up and around the damp earth, down into a pool of mud and around again into the ever-narrowing tunnel. Clay found its way around her face, in her navy hair and underneath her sharp fingernails. She could barely hear the serpent’s slithering the longer she followed.

Von-wratha heard the snake stop. Her skin felt a cool breeze come from a foot away. She pushed herself through the suffocating burrow and found a hole the snake disappeared into. Thankful for her small and narrow frame, she twisted herself into the maw of the tunnel and held on tightly to its edges until her feet couldn’t feel the bottom of this mysterious pit. With a deep breath, eyes and nose shut, she released her hands and drew them into her chest allowing herself to fall.

Fresh air flew around her body, and it got louder as she picked up speed falling in the bottomless and lightless hole. She could hear the tube’s walls expand, indicating that she was now in a large underground cavern. Von-wratha prayed to whoever she would end in deep water to break her long fall. Then she heard hundreds of shrieks around her. An intelligent flutter of leather wings grazed her skin as they encircled her form. Her bare feet collided with a cold and wet substance along with the rest of her body. She opened her eyes below the surface and saw the dark water light up like a city. Each rock of the waterbed was covered with an aquatic bio-luminescent fungus.

Her chest tightened and tugged her for fresh air. She leapt to the surface trying to gulp down as much oxygen as possible. Von-wratha steadied herself on the water. She floated as she scanned the unusual cavern above her. The Spire-high ceiling was covered in glowing worms and baby-blue furred mammals that flew around every stone formation. She could have remained in that lake for hours, studying the mysterious ecosystem below Giria, but finding Nalax was her highest priority.

She paddled to a reasonably lit stone shore and found herself in a sea of luminescent mushrooms. They came in all shapes and colours, some of them even reacted to her touch through glowing vibrations. Von-wratha heard of this fungal cave system while at the Academy, it was one of a network of caves and tunnels that crossed throughout the city. Throughout the ages, these caverns were used to gather water. The oracles took advantage of the naturally occurring fungus to improve their connection with the Twins, but they also used these mushrooms to dement the minds of their prisoners.

Von-wratha shuddered at the thought and continued strolling through the mushroom grove. She came across a high ledge with an intricately carved archway to reach another chamber. Nalax must be there, she thought. She crawled up the black stones until she heard chanting from many voices above her. She stopped and opened her mind to sense who and how many were above the chamber. Over a dozen, maybe more. She couldn’t get an accurate reading because of a powerful psychic barrier protecting the group. She could have penetrated it, but her probing might alert them to her presence. Using the power of illusion, she allowed herself to become obscured from their eyes, hoping that it would be enough to enter undetected.

She climbed up the walls and into the chamber to find the entire gathering in dull brown hooded robes surrounding an effigy of a strange being. She pressed against a stone while studying the peculiar ritual below. At the foot of each figure, there was a vibrant blue rune that seemed to fluctuate with each hymn. This scene was eerily familiar. Searching for more answers, she looked to the towering figure in the centre; it was perhaps a male of a humanoid species she had never seen before. It was sculpted from the cavern stones and decorated with detailed paints. This grey figure had straight shins, a square and severe face, black slanted eyebrows reaching up to his forehead, receding hair and possessed an abnormal count of five small fingers on his hands. She almost recoiled at the idea of having additional digits on her palms.

Over here, Nalax’s voice quietly flew through her mind.

Her attention was drawn to a hooded figure that stood behind the row of cultists. He turned and made haste through a carved archway to the adjacent chamber. Von-wratha swiftly moved across the ceiling above the heads of the chanters. She crawled through the entrance and silently landed on the cold, dusty floor.

The hooded male emerged from the shadows and shoved Von-wratha against the jagged walls that jabbed her muscular back. Shocked, she allowed herself to go limp in case he was to further attack. He put a finger-length glass knife to her jugular. She felt he had pushed hard enough to create a drop of blood. His free hand slid the brown hood from his head to reveal an entirely different face behind it. This was the face of an old Girian male with white stubble that dotted his jaws and cheeks with deep wrinkles across his face. Von-wratha reached behind her back for her daggers, ready to slice this stranger’s hand from his wrist. Suddenly, his face trembled and sporadically waved until it melted away into the face she remembered in her youth.

Nalax’s older and considerably more rugged face had obviously gone through years of hardship. His grey leathery face was riddled with scars and burns, and he even had more tattoos than her which lined the edge of his temples.

“So, they sent the Black Blade for me. You shouldn’t have come, Von-wratha,” he whispered.

Her jaw dropped at his words. Her old friend mastered illusion-based shapeshifting, one of the most difficult telepathically based abilities to acquire, requiring him to alter his own brainwaves from other psychics.

“You summoned me here, fool,” she said, slapping his hand away from her neck.

He hesitated. “I felt you for years, and when you opened yourself up to the city, I knew what you were trying to do. I had hoped you weren’t foolish enough to actually come to me.”

“Is that all you have to say after all these years? Not knowing you were dead or alive, or what that matron witch could have done to you. An imbecile,” Von said.

“You don’t understand; there are far bigger things at play here,” he said, easing back.

“Enlighten me,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Brother Xalan?” a female voice said.

Von-wratha leapt up with her hands gripping her snake daggers at the intruder standing in the archway. Her face was barely visible underneath her oversized hood, but she could sense an aura of confusion as she looked between them.

“Apologies Sister Kara, we didn’t mean to interrupt the ceremony,” Nalax said. Von-wratha turned to her old friend’s face, and it had shifted back into the one from before.

“Is this Von?” she said, walking over with her arm outstretched to Von-wratha.

Her brows furrowed as she took a quick glance at Nalax. His fake mouth widened in a warm smile.

“You know my name?” she said gripping Kara’s forearm as she gripped hers.

“Brother Xalan has been speaking about you for years, ever since he joined us. We are so thrilled to have an underling of the Council with us – an assassin of all things. Thank you for coming,” Kara said, slipping her hands in her loose sleeves.

“What makes you think I’m here to join your cult?” Von said, still with a hand on her dagger hilt.

“Because we know about your… distaste for the oracles and their insidious masters. A wave of change has been sweeping over Giria for decades now, and we are it,” she said.

“I don’t understand,” Von said.

“Come, let me introduce you to the rest of the Heralds and Xolrin,” Kara said opening her arms to Von-wratha and ushering her out from the room. As the three of them entered the main chamber, the others had stopped their chants and smiled politely, some younglings rose their small heads from the circle to see the newcomer. She shivered at their sight.

“The oracles have no interest in the safety of our kind. Every day their mission is to divide us by injecting fear of the Twins and each other, to ensure we do what they want,” Kara said strolling by her fellows.

“That’s what I would do if I wanted absolute power,” Von said following Kara’s stride.

She gently chuckled. “We are all one powerful mind, all of us are connected through consciousness in ways we are forbidden to understand and once we do – the oracles lose.”

“So, you plan to replace one god with another, is that it?” Von said, eyeing Xolrin’s effigy.

“No. Unlike the Twins, who conveniently only converse with the oracles, Xolrin’s thoughts have been made known to us. He lords over rich lands where citizens aren’t being butchered by their kin or dying starving and alone in the gutters, or where unwanted younglings become killers. He offers us a chance for freedom,” Kara said, standing at the base of his feet.

Von-wratha folded her arms as she scanned the statue. She imagined many times what a free life would be like, to not have to gut someone in their own office or be a tyrannical matron’s beating bag. She wanted to believe Kara’s words. Her eyes travelled to Nalax’s unreadable face. Even his mind was shut from her.

“And what does he want in return?” she said.

“Have a little faith, Von-wratha, the whole world isn’t all rotten,” Nalax’s shifted voice said.

“Rulers don’t do kind things for people for no reason, they take what they can from everyone. That’s how they reach the top,” her voice rising.

“Brother Xalan, would you please…?” Kara said glancing over to Nalax.

“I’ll explain it to her, apologies to the others for disrupting the air,” he said.

Kara smiled, she gave a small bow to Nalax, which he returned in kind, before giving Von-wratha a lower bow. She had never been treated to a low bow before. Nalax took her by the elbow and gently pulled her away from the chamber back into the smaller room. Once beyond sight from the others, he shifted back into his former self.

“Were you an oracle?” Von asked, taking her arm back.

Nalax sighed. “I remember having a vision before the Trial, it was of a future I dare not see with my eyes. It was of the Black Walls crumbling, and the city was on fire, Girians falling by the thousands. I saw Xolrin standing over them all, but a being stood behind him covered in shadow – I couldn’t see anything except its scarlet eyes. Von-wratha, I still am an oracle.”

Her chest tightened. “Then why did they send me to stop you?”

“Razza sent me here and the deeper I got, the more afraid I became. When I failed to return, she assumed I was indoctrinated, and I couldn’t go back then,” he said.

“What were you waiting for?” she asked.

“A witness,” Nalax pulled down his robe revealing padded armour with a thick belt fitted with dozens of different daggers and two traditional curved blades on either side.

“There are younglings here,” she breathed.

“I know. Damn them from bringing them here,” he grumbled as he kicked the robe from his feet. “You will have freedom, I promise,”

Von-wratha cleared her throat as she unsheathed her snake-handled daggers from her belt. “Let’s kill your boogeymen.”

He smirked. Something he never would have done when talking about murdering people while they were fledglings, but people change.

They bolted through the archway with such speed that they appeared to be blurred shapes to the unsuspecting eye. Slashing, stabbing and jutting their way around the chamber as the cultists screamed and flailed around looking to escape the assassin’s spree. Some of the hooded figures tripped over each other trying to get away, moving their forearms over their faces to gain some protection, while others tried to plea for their lives – but their pleas always ended with a bloody cough and thud.

“Traitor!” she heard Kara’s scream; her feet padded against the dirt as she made her escape to the mushroom grove.

“Get her!” Von called, Nalax shot to her direction and pulled a small dagger from his belt before tossing it to Kara. The short blade spun in the air before it embedded itself into her spine, dropping her instantly. He chased after some cultists that made a run into the tunnel, but his psionically enhanced speed ensured they wouldn’t get far. Bodies and blue liquid littered the ground as Von-wratha surveyed her and Nalax’s work. As she wiped her sweaty face with her forearm, she heard a quiet moan coming from a pile of corpses beside the statue. She thought perhaps she’s missed one, or someone was trying to play dead or suffering slowly from their wounds. She hoped it wasn’t the latter. With her daggers still firmly in her hands, she made her way to the pile and moved limbs out of the way searching for where the sobs came from. Von-wratha turned the last body over to find a female youngling wearing, who was miraculously unharmed. The tear-stained face of this youngling ceased Von-wratha’s rampage, replacing it with sick rolling up in her mouth.

The youngling tried climbing over the bodies to get away, but Von-wratha dropped her daggers and grabbed the youngling’s arms.

Mercy. The little female begged as she held up her hands.

Von-wratha glanced wildly for any other’s left alive and for Nalax. She took another look at the youngling, considering that death would bring her true mercy from life in Giria. She was an assassin that has ended the lives of so many, whose faces had left her memories, but the face of this youngling would forever curse her thoughts.

Don’t move until we are gone, she said.

The female nodded and stopped moving, still terrified, but so innocently trusting. Von-wratha covered the youngling with as much blood as possible before covering her with her assumed mother’s body, hoping it would be enough to convince Nalax none were left alive. She knew he was a strong telepath, but if she masked the youngling’s thought waves, it would be enough to convince him. And he was probably on a killing high, so his senses might be too chaotic. She shook at how much her old friend had changed.

She picked her daggers from the floor and noticed Nalax returning from the chase, bloodier than he was before. “Did you get them all?” Von asked.

“Every single one,” he said as he strode to Von-wratha, “I see that you’ve enjoyed the clearing up here yourself,”

“I did what was commanded of me,” the words escaped her mouth without a thought.

Nalax nudged his daggers back into his belt as he looked up to Von-wratha and smiled. “Just like the good old days, hmm?” his golden eyes intensified.

“What good old days?” she looked to her bloodied hands, needing to break eye-contact for a moment.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t reach out to you for all these years. Believe me, I desperately wanted to tell you what happened after the desert, but I was sworn to secrecy,” Nalax was now towering above Von-wratha. She felt like a beetle beneath his shadow.

“I thought you were dead. I thought Matron Aeos had done something to you,” her voice was so shaken that it surprised her.

He brushed his maroon hair with his fingers and sighed. “In a way she has. We’ll talk more when we get back to the Spire-,” Nalax stopped suddenly and started frantically looking around the chamber.

Von-wratha’s heart began thumping, hoping that he had not discovered the youngling’s thoughts.

“I’ve missed you,” she said, stealing his attention.

His face snapped back, and his eyes widened. “And I’ve missed you.”

They paused for a moment. Von-wratha considered seeing her old friend again would never have come to pass, but here he was – standing before her. She wanted to say more to him, but a metallic stench in the cavern had begun weeding its way into her nose.

Nalax inhaled, preparing to say something, but she was first to break their long silence.

“Let’s get back to the Council before they think I was converted.” she said.

He nodded before turning to the exit tunnel, Von-wratha’s eyes glazed over the mound of parts where she left the little female. If the Twins were just, the youngling will be strong enough to come and extract vengeance from Nalax and Von-wratha. She hoped for this future before turning to leave the cavern with her only friend.

~

The early sun had simmered the horizon, where Girians would awake from their slumber. Von-wratha remained awake. Her and Nalax snuck into his chambers after the massacre to find his furniture, clothes and other artefacts rummaged through by the rough hands of zealots. She was the first to make toward the bathtub, filled to the brim with sun-warmed water. She submerged herself beneath its surface, trying to enjoy one of the many privileges of an oracle. She pulled herself out of the water and breathed deep. Her mind wandered to the youngling, careful to make sure Nalax wouldn’t overhear her thoughts in the next room. Even with him asleep, she didn’t bet he couldn’t be roused by what happened in the caves. Von-wratha shivered in the water, recalling butchering the youngling’s mother right in front of her. What parent would put their offspring in danger?

“That’s what happened to you,” she whispered. That youngling might end up at the Academy and become another assassin who kills a parent in front of their youngling – and so the cycle continues. Perhaps the little female might have enough rage to finish the ritual and call ‘Xolrin’ to come and destroy Giria. It would be understandable. Perhaps, ending her there would’ve been the best alternative, Von-wratha thought.

“No, Von. You’ve done the right thing,” she said to the rippling water. The youngling will likely be adopted by a commoner family and raise it away from all the pain she had to endure at her age. It happens all the time in the outer suburbs of Giria, she tried telling herself.

Von-wratha pushed the youngling from her mind and focused on a cleansing sponge resting on a shelf, far beyond her physical reach. It trembled from her psychic influence; with her outstretched arm the damp sponge flew into her palm.

The sound of knuckles banging against the thin wooden door brought her attention to it. “Von-wratha?” she heard Nalax’s voice from beyond.

“I’m here,” she called, the wooden latch clicked, and the door creaked open, revealing Nalax in a traditional oracle attire, with a black and navy dress robe dangling over his forearm. He didn’t hesitate when he saw her.

Von-wratha chuckled and shook her head as she dipped the sponge in the water. “Not shy anymore?”

“People change,” he said sharing the smile. He strode over to the tub and pulled the dark garment from his arm, placing it beside her.

“Where did you get that?” she said eyeing the robe.

“It’s something that the zealots didn’t destroy; the wardrobe was less fortunate. You’ll need something decent to wear before the Council.” he said, resting his thigh against the tub’s edge.

Von-wratha smelt the age of the material. “They can wait, we still have time.”

Nalax cocked his head to the side. She laughed and tossed the soggy sponge at his face. He slapped it away before his arms dived in to grab at her. She playfully kicked them away as her hand clasped around his collar, pulling him into the tub with her. Their lips locked as they pushed closer to each other, Von-wratha felt her body being lifted from the bath and embraced tighter in Nalax’s arms. She could feel her skin soaking his robes as he hastily pulled the fabric from his form and dropped it to the cool stones. Her breath quickened as she pulled her lips away and pushed his shoulders to the ground. Her legs wrapped around his waist before leaning in for another kiss.

It’s just you and me.

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