Chapter 19 – Parallel Lines

Chapter 19 – Parallel Lines

Seris faced the dead god Vhal across the gray stillness of the Ashen Wastes.

The Ashen Wastes were just as awful as Seris remembered. The air tasted like ash and metal. Every breath scratched her throat. Gray dust drifted through a dead sky, and the land stretched on and on in cracked earth and blackened ruin.

Vhal sat at the center of it all on its ugly throne, all bones and green fire and ancient wrongness.

Green fire burned in the hollows of its eyes, and beneath it all lay a presence that had haunted the edges of her mind for as long as she could remember.

Seris was not afraid. Big Sis had foreseen this. Big Sis had prepared her.

“Listen, Seris,” her Big Sister had said while helping her prepare for the ritual. “Mount Aurelis will protect you from magical interference, but that does not mean Vhal will remain passive. It may still try to overwhelm your mind through the connection it shares with you.”

Seris had gone very still at that. Big Sis noticed immediately, of course. She always noticed. Before Seris could even gather the courage to ask what that meant, Big Sis had reached out and clasped her hand. Big Sis’s hand had been warm and steady in hers.

“But you have nothing to fear,” she had said.

Seris had looked up at her. Big Sis had smiled, and Seris had believed her immediately. She always did.

“That is the only thing Vhal can do to you,” she had continued, “and you have already proven that your will is stronger than the dead god’s.”

“I have?” Seris had asked, blinking up at her with wide eyes.

“You have.” Big Sis had said it with such gentle confidence that Seris had believed her immediately.

“You proved it in the Ashen Wastes when you seized control of the Death Knight. You prove it every single day by remaining kind, by remaining yourself, despite everything it has whispered into your heart.”

Her thumb had stroked once across the back of Seris’s hand.

“You can do this, Seris. I believe in you.”

And that had been that. Because if Big Sis believed in her, then Seris could believe too.

“So if the scenery shifts around you,” Big Sis had warned, growing more serious, “and you suddenly find yourself confronting Vhal, do not panic. It will all be happening inside your mind.”

Seris had nodded very hard so she would remember every word.

“The battlefield will most likely become a place you both know,” Big Sis had said. “A place where the dead god believes itself strongest. A place where you have suffered. A place where you once felt helpless.”

Her expression had darkened, just slightly.

“The Ashen Wastes are the most likely choice.”

She had squeezed Seris’s hand once more.

“But remember this above all else. If it is inside your mind, then reality there will answer to imagination and will. As long as you remember that, you will be fine.”

Then, after a tiny pause, she had added in a softer voice: “You will be more than fine.”

And she had been right. Of course she had been right. Everything was unfolding exactly as Big Sis had predicted. She really was a Goddess.

As long as Seris followed Big Sis, everything would be fine.

So Seris stood tall in the dead silence of the Ashen Wastes, lifted her chin, and faced the ancient horror seated upon its throne of ruin.

“Dead god Vhal,” she called across the distance between them, pitching her voice into her best approximation of Lord Aethon’s deep, commanding authority. “I deny you!”

The green flames in Vhal’s eyes shrank. Just for a moment, they became two tiny pinpricks of stunned green light. The thing stared at her. Then, in a tone of complete and utter disbelief, it said:

“What.”

Something hot and happy swelled inside Seris’s chest. For the first time in her life, she had stood up to it. She was done cowering. Done shrinking. Done letting its presence poison every corner of her existence.

She was the Saintess of Light. Ugly skeletons and monsters and everything awful should tremble before her.

“Lingering soul of a defeated Outsider God,” Seris declared, pointing at it as dramatically as possible, “you do not belong in this world. Be gone, monster! I deny you!”

For several long seconds, Vhal did not move. Then its entire frame began to tremble.

A dry, clicking rattle spread through its bones. The sound was faint at first, then louder, until it became a hideous clattering that echoed across the wastes like a thousand loose teeth chattering in a grave.

Seris stared. Was it… was it shaking with anger?

The answer came quickly. When Vhal exploded, it did so all at once.

“YOU DARE.”

Its scream ripped through the Ashen Wastes with such force that the sky itself seemed to shudder. The sound hurt. It made her teeth ache and her head throb, like too many voices were all trying to scream at once.

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“How dare you define me for your own convenience!” Vhal roared, rising partway from its throne. “How dare you define me without understanding!”

The ground cracked beneath it. Green fire poured from its eye sockets in ragged streams as it spread its arms wide, skeletal fingers clawing at the dead sky as if it meant to tear reality open.

“I am no pathetic broken remnant of a slain deity! I am the triumph of the mortal over the divine! I am the answer to human weakness and hypocrisy! I am you!”

Its voice shook the world. Ash jumped at Seris’s feet, and the world around her wavered like it couldn’t decide if it wanted to stay solid.

“I! AM! SERIVHAL!”

“Shut up, ugly skeleton! You’re lying! I don’t believe you!” Seris shouted back immediately.

She didn’t understand half of what it was talking about. Triumph? Weakness? Hypocrisy? What did any of that even mean?

But the one part she did understand, the one part she could never, ever accept, was that thing trying to claim it was her. Absolutely not.

That hideous thing was not her. It would never be her. She would never accept that.

Then reach for it. Reach for the ideal you… I believe in you, Seris.

The memory of Big Sis’s voice echoed through her mind, and with it came clarity.

Seris became suddenly aware of the turning thing within her chest again, the heavy, impossible coin of her existence rotating slowly through the center of her being.