Regrets
Twentieth Day of the Ninth Month 293 AC
As you wait in the solar, the silence is almost oppressive. It is not the first time that you have to wait for Yrael to finish his duties before meeting with you, but never before have you had to wait this long. At least not since he swore to you. The only company you took along is not in a chatty mood either, Mereth being lost to her own thoughts as she stares out the window. Her black feathers almost gleam in the crisp morning sun, but her eyes are clouded. Why she wanted to come, you did not ask, seeing little reason to pry and none at all to deny her the request.
For once, you are very much at a disadvantage, having never walked the streets of Heaven before, let alone having lived there for years beyond count. And yet you feel that this might be an advantage after all. There are no memories of a home left behind to walk the path of damnation or lost to eons of slumber. Would you see what they once saw? Glistening cities wrought of flawless marble and light itself? Or would your worries be well founded after all? You do not know yet. For now you are still innocent to this grand truth. But it is an innocence you can ill afford, for while it never did so before, that truth might yet become a dagger at your back.
At last the door opens, the Governor of Mantarys stepping into his solar. Or he should be at least. What comes in, though, is Yrael, a man that is not quite one, but with whom you have shared a fair share of tribulations. Now though he merely looks defeated. He bears not even the spark of defiance you saw back when you first met, the conviction to lay down his own life for his duty if he must. The bow he dips is deeper than usual.
"Your Grace. I'm sorry to have you kept waiting." He speaks crisp and clear as always, but you hear the deeper truth behind his words. He would have preferred to never have this talk, not merely to postpone it.
"It's fine. I'm sure you had an important task to finish." The statement is leading, but you need to know. And just like that, the Archon's shoulder slump the tiniest bit, evidence more condemning than any other that could be found. He had been stalling to the last. "I did ask for this report quite a while ago. Likewise for a chance to visit there myself." You try your best to keep the accusation out of your voice, but the words most be spoken none the less. If Yrael shirked his duties willingly, you need to understand his reasons.
Again he bows, even lower this time.
"Said report lies on my desk, yet unwritten. I have no excuse, my liege, but..." Awkwardly he trails off, trapped by his own words. Excuse he has plenty, but none he dares to speak as guilt binds his tongue like a vice.
In his silence comes the voice of one for whom guilt has lost all meaning long ago.
"If you wrote it down, then it would be truth. If you went there, it would be real. You wanted to pretend a while longer." Her tone is flat and the words without emotion as she speaks, not even tearing her eyes away from the window. Yrael just dips his head in acknowledgement while you are left to ponder why she never spoke up before. Mereth knew that you were interested in the matter. Maybe for all the millennia of separation, these two immortals were still very much alike.
While you were distracted, Yrael had stepped to his desk, retrieving a small wooden box fitting neatly in his palm. There is no lock on it that the naked eye could see, but as the Archon's hand takes on a golden glow, you know that there is one on it to which the key might never be stolen. When the glow recedes, he hesitates again, the box halfway thrust your way before he draws it back again. You are just about to speak up when he opens it himself.
Out of the box he takes shard of gold, but is unlike any that you have ever seen. Jagged and sharp it is, a shape this metal would never take without an artisan to work it that way, and stranger still are the mottled patches of brown and black on it. Gold should not corrode, yet this did.
"It is time, then." His bell-like voice seems to ring for his own funeral as he speaks so, grasping your right shoulder as he does. A moment later Mereth clasps your left and you take a deep breath. It is indeed time. And thus you nod and in a spark of sorcery leave this world behind.
When you enter this realm, it is not with the familiar jolt of translocation. Not the time and weightless moment when you cross the borders of reality that always reminded you of missing a step on a stairwell, but a mighty jolt that sends you staggering like a hammer's blow. So the first thing you see of it is sand, washed out grey and coarse to the touch where it spills into your glove. You are kneeling from the transition and your senses still feel dull and even though your reflexes scream at you to move, to look, to do anything at all so that you are not unprepared if some danger lurks nearby, you can't. Something is wrong with you and you can't tell what it is.
And then you notice the stillness. It is not your senses that are wrong. You feel the grains of sand grinding against your skin and hear the faint sounds they make while doing so, but it was the other sounds that felt so out of place. A beat, fast but steady. The flowing of water. The rhythmic blowing of air. That is you. The beating of your heart, the rushing of your blood, and the breath going up and down your throat, they all sound so impossibly loud, but they are not. It is the silence of this place that makes them seem like thunder to your senses. No sound there is that you have not made yourself, no man or beast to be heard, not even wind to whisper around you.
For a brief moment you fear, no, almost hope, that all this is a mistake. Never before have you missed your mark when walking the planes, but in this one moment you wish you have, that this is just some broken shard drifting through the endless void and not your destination. So you lift your leaden eyes to see this place. It is your goal. And it is broken.
Before you rises a mountain, greater then any other you could ever have conceived of, but it is not in the gentle golden light you had imagined. Only a baleful orange glow comes from the horizon, painting the world as if an endless fire was consuming it all. There is no sun in this sky, just a black and empty disc you see to the left of the mountain which seems to drink in the flames hungrily, the light clumping into tendrils like paint in water before being consumed. What this is you do not know. Maybe you don't truly want to know, for it hurts to merely look at this thing, not in your eyes, but somewhere deeper, and so your gaze falls back onto the stone.
The impossibly huge mountain itself lies shattered. Almost a third of it is gone, only jagged debris silently float in the place where the left flank and summit should have been, others having been drawn much farther towards the hole in the sky. Clouds of dust you can see, snaking around shards so titanic that you can still make out broken buildings resting on their sides and tiny shapes in between that your eyes thankfully can't make out clearly. You know what they are, what floats there in a endless tumble forgotten by time itself. Most of them are near the broken buildings, but it is easier to just know instead of having to
see.
Involuntarily you take a step, the stillness making you yearn for motion. Even your breathing has gone faster, your lungs burning from exertion as they greedily gulp in the still air that makes you feel as if you suffocate. You take a glance behind you, looking for any sign of something you can't even name, but whatever your mind yearns for is not to be found. Only sand you see, stretching out to the burning glow of the horizon, the colors mingling after a while until it becomes impossible to make out a difference.
You stumble over something in your aimless steps and as you look down you see it. A broken blade lies half buried in the sand. Once it must have been of gleaming gold, though now it is dull and blackened, the runes carved into its length warped as if they had burned from within. And as you stare down on this script, other words come back to you. You've read them what seems like ages ago in some dusty tome, yet they haunted your thoughts for a long while after. Now, though, they return like a specter, the blissful ignorance shattered in truth. "All is lost. The gates of Heaven lay broken."
"Do you now understand? This is why we do not speak of our home." The sound of his voice is pained. Never before have you heard one as him so small and lost.
"There is no more home to be found on the flanks of Mount Celestia."
As your gaze wanders further to Mereth, you see not the pain and loss that so clearly grasped Yrael, just a weary acceptance. To her, this home had been lost once already. "Some of us came here afterwards. Few of them returned or were ever seen again." She pauses then, eyes roaming over the remnants of the mountain, then lingering on a spot somewhere up high. "I wonder what became of Istvar."
"He goes by The Blind these days I've heard." A mirthless chuckle escapes Yrael's throat and draws your eyes back to him and as you look upon his face, you see something that all your power and knowledge left you unprepared for. From the golden glow enshrouding his face falls a single speck of liquid light. Then another. Then another. And as they fall, they drift apart, blown to a fading wisp by a wind that does not exist, the light slowly dimming before being snuffed out.
"We all were blind. We wanted to be blind. I still recall Damerrich speaking about the damnation brought in tiny steps and how the wicked walked it without knowing their destination."
"He was always a self-righteous one." The Fury speaks with a trace of honest mirth, quickly squashed out as more drops fall. A faint recalling of name they speak of tries to draw your attention away, but you push it away. For these ageless beings who stand with you, Damerrich is not a name gleamed from a dusty tome, but a person. A face. Someone they know. Or knew, as the case might be. Then Mereth unfolds her wings, giving a lazy beat as the burning horizon dips the black feathers into a sinister cast.
"He was not wrong, you know? We knew not where our path would lead to."
At this, Yrael shakes his head and with a start you notice that you can almost see his face beneath the fading glow. Even his wings slowly loosing their color.
"But he did, or he would not have held that speech. And yet he advocated to cast you out. To keep the light of Heaven pure and untainted by your deeds." He looks over to the Fury, asking her almost pleadingly.
"Was it worth it? Shall we be proud now that it stood pure until the day it was snuffed out?"
You struggle to find the right words, or
any words for that matter. How would you feel when you came upon your city, seeing it a lifeless husk and knowing family and friends to lie broken beneath the ruins? The clenching of your gut at the mere idea is but a pale imitation of what the Archon by your side might go through. "Have you not fought for that light? Don't you still fight for it? It must be worth something or you would have given up long ago." The words ring true enough to you, but there is a hollowness beneath them all the same. You never fought for the light of Heaven. Never from the goodness of your heart. You fought for your throne. For power. Not purely, not always, but the crown you bear was never necessary if kin and friends were all that moved you.
"And yet for all out struggles, it fell all the same. Because we only ever asked what was right, but never what was necessary." As his face turns to you, you see it clearly for the first time. Beneath the golden glow that slowly fades, one tear at a time, you see a man. His face too perfect for any mortal, as if chiseled from marble by an artist.
"We stood proud. Prouder then any other, for we knew that we were right. And when someone spoke against us, we cast him out. Him who was our greatest and who could have always been our greatest, had we but listened."
Past him you look at Mereth, who bears a look of utter shock that slowly gives way to weary acceptance. It is not hard to guess who Yrael meant. "You know what he has built when he was cast out. Do you really think that would have been the way to preserve this realm?"
"Yes. I know what he has become. But it is also what we made him." His eyes return to the mountain, locking onto a spot that seems to hold some meaning for the troubled Archon. His wings are almost gray as he slowly lets them drop at his sides.
"When I swore to you, my liege, I knew what had become of Heaven. And as you spoke of what you would do to preserve the light in the world, I remembered another speaking the same words so long ago. I regret not that I did not follow him, for now I know where his path would lead, but I do regret that we left him no other choice. We could have aided him. Moderated him. Accept that he did what we were not willing to do, but stop the acts that we could not accept."
For a moment, you grasp again for words, but deep down you know that it is much too late for that. No words will turn back what has already happened. His wings are no longer gold, but grey as steel. Resolute, but without the luster they once bore. His face is bared for all the world to see, the last drops falling from them mere embers.
"We lost this war the day we threw them all away like faulty things not belonging into our perfect vision. And when we made the pact, it was no less than surrender. The light of Heaven was snuffed out already when the gates were broken. It was also our choices that made Baator and the blood stains our hands too, ever since we gave it our blessing."
When Mereth speaks again, it is in an almost hushed tone. She keeps the pity from he words, but you see it in her eyes all the same.
"And what now? Tears bring no redemption and fulfill no wishes." The last is spoken as if well rehearsed, maybe a saying older than any realm of man.
"I will do what he promised us all those ages ago." Then he turns to you. There are no more tears in his eyes, all of them shed already.
"What our liege promised us to. Whatever is necessary to see the light guarded, no matter what the price might be."
Yrael turns Lawful Neutral.
What now?
[] Say something.
-[] Write-In
[] Explore Heaven
-[] Write-In
[] Go home. You have seen enough.
-[] Write-In what to do next
AN: This has been a long time coming.
