Chapter 22 – Sisters

Chapter 22 – Sisters

Liria stood tall and proud, projecting as much dignity as she could.

Impossible magic swirled around her in luminous spirals, ancient formations layered atop divine blessings as reality itself bent and groaned beneath her will.

Others were watching her. Looking to her for guidance, for proof that everything remained under control. She refused to show weakness, or let her body sway from exhaustion.

But at least Liria was not alone.

She could feel Seris’s precocious will straining alongside her, could almost picture the child’s tiny form huffing and puffing as Seris worked hard. Under other circumstances, the image would have drawn a smile from her.

Her customary smile did not come.

The ritual had dragged on for far longer than she had expected, and the resistance from the dead god’s fragment was… significant.

Still, it was almost over.

Her eyes tried to close. She forced them open. The world swam before her for a moment, the gleaming marble terraces of the Font blurring into pale bands of gold and white.

She focused her dazed mind on the ritual arrays suspended in the air before her, but her thoughts kept slipping loose, drifting away from her in soft, sleepy fragments.

Behind her, the Twelve Holy Sword Bearers knelt in quiet devotion. The seven High Priests raised their voices in sacred hymn, strengthening the blessings over the Font of Light. At the distant foot of the mountain, she could feel spatial magic stirring, believers gathering. A sea of humanity knelt, praying for the return of their Saintess.

Her passing comment had become a much bigger deal than she had expected. Her theory was plausible enough, but shouldn’t more people doubt her? This was slightly overwhelming. Surely there wouldn’t be more unexpected surprises… right?

She wanted to sleep.

Was Seris doing okay? She had prepared as much as she could. And everything seemed to be going well. Surely Seris was okay, right?

She wanted to sleep.

With all these people gathered, if Seris turned out not to be the Saintess, or even a girl for that matter, then it would be quite embarrassing for her, wouldn’t it? Or would it be better? Surely no one would mistake her for a goddess after such a catastrophe… right?

Liria wanted to sleep.

Then a tidal wave of malevolence and rage slammed into her.

It came without warning, a vast psychic impact that crashed across her senses. For one frozen, horrible moment, her spell formations lurched out of alignment. The sacred geometries hanging in the air above the Font shivered. The cocoon of light surrounding Seris darkened at the edges. The mountain itself seemed to inhale.

Liria did not exactly snap awake. She was far too tired for anything so dramatic.

But her lethargic mind sharpened just enough to react. She calmly requested support from her sisters through their bond, rerouted more divine throughput into the stabilizing matrices, and tightened her grip on the ritual’s core anchors with detached efficiency.

The Ritual of Inversion ground to a halt. But it held.

The sacred arrays screamed in silence around her, their runic edges sparking white and gold as impossible tensions rippled through them. Light bled from the symbols in thin threads. Beneath her feet, the holy water of the Font trembled in concentric rings.

She did not even have the energy to be angry.

Yes, she was exhausted. Yes, this had happened at the worst possible moment. And yes, it was deeply annoying.

It was also exactly what she should have expected from the dead god, that detestable Voidspawn.

Malignant hatred clawed at her barriers as the thing tried to seize control of her arrays. She could feel its presence pressing against the ritual from angles that should not exist, probing for weakness with stubborn and resilient spite.

For one brief, traitorous moment, Liria was tempted to just let it. She was so tired.

Then she remembered Seris looking up at her with those large, trusting eyes, and she held firm. The next time they met, the child’s eyes would no longer be green, she reflected a little sadly.

Then corruption started pouring from somewhere beyond reality, turning the glowing cocoon around her younger sibling black. The sacred gold of the ritual recoiled from it with furious hissing sounds, as if hot iron had been plunged into water. The corruption writhed over the cocoon’s surface like living tar, trying to burrow inward.

A brief ripple of tension passed through those gathered behind her.

With a distant corner of her consciousness, Liria felt her elder siblings stirring beside her. Felt them tense, readying themselves to intervene. Behind them, the priests and paladins drew in sharp breaths, their voices wavering for only a moment before their prayers swelled once more with solemn conviction.

She absentmindedly directed the holy mountain to purge the corruption before it could take root. The black patches on the cocoon sizzled and evaporated, and she thought she could hear Seris gasping in pain. She probably should feel something about that, but she was just too tired.

Her siblings beside her settled and returned to their respective tasks with admirable discipline. She thought she heard Sir Theron mutter, in a tone of almost worshipful disbelief, “As expected of the Goddess of Life.”

Liria chose to ignore him. Not now.

She moved in a haze, tracing the corruption to its source, and frowned lethargically inside her mind.

The dead god was… in a strange state, existing somewhere between reality and unreality. It existed nowhere and everywhere all at once, trapped in an eternal paradox. It strained against its prison with desperate, hateful force, reaching for Seris.

But the effort cost it dearly. Its spectral form flickered and wavered as reality itself resisted the intrusion.

Liria poured Mount Aurelis’ holy wrath onto it for good measure.

Divine judgement roared from the Font of Light into the heavens above. Striking at nowhere and everywhere all at once. Striking at the dead god trapped beyond existence.

It resisted her. Somehow. Liria couldn’t bring herself to care. But its form flickered and wavered even more. Was this good? She just wanted it to go away. She was so tired.

…

The stubborn thing did not go away.

Seris’s cocoon of light continued to blacken and then sizzle clean under the mountain’s purifying radiance. Divine wrath continued pouring into the heavens above. The dead god’s spectral form continued flickering violently, twisting and warping like a broken reflection in shattered glass.

But. It. Just. Would. Not. Go. Away.

Liria’s fingers twitched at her side. She wanted to sleep.

So she reached out with her mind across the real and unreal and finally addressed the thing directly, her voice short and clipped.

“Dead god Vhal. You cannot win. Be gone.”

She would have liked to add that she wanted to sleep already, but she decided she was still dignified enough to keep that part to herself.

“My. Name. Is. Serivhal,” it ground out at her, voice seething with rage. “Do not define me as you please, harlot.”

Its voice sounded just like the Lich King’s. Even its spectral appearance looked just like the Lich King’s. So the thing had completely remade Seris in its own image in that bad future, leaving no trace of her cute younger sibling behind. Liria should probably have felt something very strong and dramatic about that revelation.

Instead, she just felt tired and offended on Seris’s behalf.

“You have bad taste, dead thing,” she replied dully. “But you will never be Serivhal, because I will never let you take over Seris. Be gone, broken remnant of a dead god.”

And let her sleep already.

“I! AM! SERIVHAL!” It roared at her with incandescent fury. “I have always been Serivhal! I am the original! Your ‘Seris’ is an abomination! How dare you!? Liria Yggdris…”

The thing continued ranting. Something about cosmic war crimes, violations of primordial law, and her perversion of the true and proper order of existence.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Liria decided she did not care much.

“What have you done to my Seris?” She cut it off mid-rant.

There was a sharp pause.

“Your Seris?” Vhal bit out. For some reason, it sounded even angrier now.

Liria considered that.

Had the Lich King she had known ever been this angry? Or this verbose? Or this embarrassingly rant-prone?

Oh.

So the focus and restraint must have been stolen from her Seris, then. That abominable thing. How dare it.

Vhal had started ranting again. Disgraceful, really.

About how its infinite legions must have already killed “that lowly broken vessel” by now, and how Liria had failed, and how all her interference had accomplished nothing but delaying the inevitable.

Liria did not believe a single word. Her Seris would never lose to this broken thing.

Perhaps in a bad future, if the poor child had continued to be isolated and ground down by an uncaring world, then yes, maybe. Maybe eventually. But not now. And Liria would never let that happen. Ever.

Then something in the air shifted.

It was subtle at first. A change in pressure. A softening in the resistance of the ritual. A resonance beneath the mountain that had not been there a moment before.