Chapter Thirty-Three

I do not know if anyone will ever find this monolith of stone upon which I have inscribed all of my advice and wisdom. There would be a certain irony to it fading into antiquity forever, the final defeat in my inauspicious career.

Hell

March 8th, 1844

A purple sky, dark with boiling clouds, loomed over a barren, desolate place. The land was cracked with drought, stretching as far as the eye roamed in every direction like the cobblestones of some massive highway. There was no feature which disturbed the monotony of this place, save for jagged peaks which rose from the horizon, constantly belching lava into the basin, and an impossibly straight, calm river, which divided the ground directly before them. The land was not empty, however; it was densely populated with roving bands of white, semi-translucent specters, floating aimlessly this way and that. Ghastly chains hung from their forms, dragging across the dead earth behind them with a haunting, cacophonous rattling. Damned souls.

Hans glanced over his shoulder and saw the rippling portal which led back to earth. It seemed that they had not been detected by their enemies yet; they were spreading out to the alleyways now, hounding the streets to make sure that Thomas hadn't had any allies waiting to spring out of the shadows.

"Come on," Hans said, beckoning for Kariena and Stella to follow him. "Let's get away from the portal."

Hans cast his gaze to either end of the river, and realized that he'd been wrong in thinking the landscape identical. The river ran north to south, and in the far distance to the north, on the horizon, he saw a blazing black beacon shooting into the sky. Hans pointed towards it.

"Well, I'm willing to bet that that's where we want to go," he said.

He heard Stella murmur a soft prayer. Before they could start off along the river, a sloop appeared at the shoreline. In the eerie way that things happened in this place, Hans could not recall seeing the thing approach, and yet now that it was here, he had the distinct sense that it had always been known to him. Aboard the sloop was a startlingly tall figure in a black cloak, its face cast into shadow by its hood.

It extended a skeletal hand towards them, palm-up.

"The last time, I had coins to give it," Hans said, reaching into his pocket. He was unsurprised to find that once again, he had the creature's fare. Kariena and Stella mimed him, and they all gave the creature the coins that they magically seemed to have been carrying.

Then they stepped onto the sloop, and it silently poled them away from the shoreline. For an indiscernible time, they moved towards the temple in silence. Hans felt a powerful déjà vu throughout the experience; it was exactly the same as it had been before, when he first visited hell. The moments whiled themselves away, neither short nor long, and eventually Hades's temple was in front of them, though it did not seem as if they had ever truly approached it.

"What the hell are we doing," Kariena murmured nervously.

Hans grinned, and glanced over his shoulder at her as the yawning portal into the temple approached, and then began to pass overhead.

"Come on, this was your idea."

In fact, as the world around them faded away and was replaced by torchlit walls carved with lurid reliefs, Hans felt nervous. He had not been to Hades's temple for a long time, in fact not since several months before the old master of the Underworld had been killed. He did not know what awaited them.

Ahead some way down the canal that split the building, the flickering glow outlined a room. Hans could not see inside, but he knew that this was the embalming chamber where he'd had his heart removed by the servants of Hades. He checked the safety on his pistols, spinning the chamber in each of them to make sure they were loaded. Kariena drew her knives, and Stella's hands began to glow with sparks.

Their skeletal guide brought them to a gentle stop against the stone pier that led into the chamber, and they stepped through the portal into the room beyond. There were three humanoid figures waiting for them, wearing dark cloaks and glimmering, faceless masks. Each of them held two curved blades at their sides, silent and motionless, almost as if they were statues. They had once been servants of Hades, and Hans wondered if they could be reasoned with.

"Hey, guys," he said as nonchalantly as possible. "Remember me? I certainly remember all of you –"

All at once, the wraith-like creatures charged them. Hans swore and fired several shots into their twisting forms, becoming insubstantial just as the first slung its blades through the place he had just been. Kariena engaged with another, ducking under and around its swords and slashing at it with her daggers, while Stella screamed and sent arcing bolts of electricity through the air into the last. Hans phased in with his swords drawn, and he ran the nearest creature through on one of his blades. It passed through the dark cloak with no resistance, and then the wraith slashed one of Hans's legs with its sickle, apparently unharmed by his attack.

Hans backpedaled, suddenly on the defensive against a blazingly fast assault from the masked figure in front of him. His leg screamed with pain, but it supported his wait and he couldn't risk hazarding a glance at it. Kariena was also on the defensive against her own wraith, and Hans couldn't tell how Stella was faring; his attention was singularly concentrated on staying alive. It was growing bolder as Hans was forced closer and closer to the wall, its swings becoming more powerful, but less precise. It brought both of its blades down at Hans from above, giving Hans the opening that he needed.

He twisted his right arm and caught both of the wraith's swords on his own, his arm instantly threatening to buckle under the brutal force. He roared with strain as he brought his other sword around and rammed it into the creature's mask. It sundered inwards and then collapsed, exploding with a brilliant light. Its swords clattered to the ground at Hans's feet.

"Go for the masks!" He yelled, whirling around to see that Kariena disappear in a flash of light, popping back into existence just behind Stella's wraith, which towered over her wounded frame at the far end of the room.

Kariena's knives flashed, and the creature's head was severed from the rest of its body; it tumbled through the air for a moment before a knife split it in two. The last specter dove for Hans, plunging both of its blades towards his chest. He attempted to roll, but his wounded leg buckled and he collapsed to the ground instead. He rolled along the ground immediately, and was showered with sparks as one of its blades struck the stone floor. Now on his back, he threw one of his swords at the creature as it stood over him, but he missed, and it passed directly through the creature's insubstantial form.

It raised its swords to strike him down, but then it was struck by a bolt of lightning. It turned, and another took it directly in the mask, destroying it with a final screech. The room was eerily silent after the last wraith's weapons hit the floor. Hans looked at his leg. It had been slashed down the side, and a narrow cut, perhaps half an inch deep and slightly behind his knee, had been drawn. It was bleeding badly, and he thought that one of the tendons in the back of his knee might have been broken.

Hans dragged himself to his feet, and looked over at Kariena and Stella. Stella was slumped against the wall, a bloodstained rag now wrapped around her left arm; Kariena was missing a sleeve. She glanced over at Hans and frowned.

"Guess I'll be losing the other sleeve, too, then."

Hans part-smirked, part-winced. "At least you'll look rugged and adventurous."

He wasn't sure that Kariena would have time to bandage him as well, but things remained quiet as she wrapped her other sleeve around his knee and bound it tight. Whatever horrors awaited them deeper in the temple, they seemed content to allow Hans and the others come to them.

"This is just going to get worse, isn't it?" Stella asked as he stood and rubbed at her arm.

Hans nodded to Kariena as she finished knotting the bandage. "It's tight," he said, and then he glanced back at Stella. "I don't know. The entire time that I served Hades, I only ever saw three of these things, and nothing else living to speak of in this temple."

At least, no one that hasn't been killed.

"So, maybe, maybe not. But there's only one way to find out."

xxx

The world that materialized around Odette was one of fire and brimstone. She and Eleshka emerged onto a porous, maroon rock perhaps ten feet to a side, floating amidst an entire field of similar stones. They rotated slightly as they moved through air thick with swirling embers. Odette lost all her sense of direction, and an overpowering sense of vertigo forced her to her knees.

"Lost Immortals," Eleshka moaned. "This is a horrible place."

Another of the asteroid-like stones collided with theirs, and Eleshka too was thrown from her feet as they picked up speed and began to tumble in another direction.

"Grab on to something!" Odette cried out as the stone rolled. She worked both of her hands into the volcanic holes dotting the surface of the stone, wincing as the rough stone bit into her flesh.

Eleshka did the same, and they hung upside-down for a sickening moment before righting themselves again. Before the stone could turn over again, it ran up against a wide stone platform that emerged, seemingly from nowhere, through the field of fire. A small hut was constructed on this platform, crafted somewhat crudely of clay. Odette stumbled off of the asteroid, Eleshka shortly after her.

What the hell? Odette thought.

Around this strange platform in the center of this horrid place, the air was clearer. It was quiet, too, as if somehow the collisions from the air around them did not make it this far. The hut had an entrance without a door, open and facing them. The interior was cast into shadow, but it seemed to call upon her, drawing her inwards.

Odette slowly stood and made her way to the dark portal.

"Odette," Eleshka said urgently.

Odette stepped over the threshold, breath catching in her chest. She entered into the gloom, and saw a dusty floor, empty save for a small amulet set on the floor. It was set into a fine chain, and the stone was dark and clear. It looked exactly like the one that she and Elsa had found in Ceristo Siguror's tomb, or the one that Everdark's forces had uncovered in Egypt. Perhaps it was that locket?

Eleshka appeared in the doorway behind her. "Odette?"

"I've seen this locket before," she said, kneeling down and picking it up off of the floor. The chain was cool against her skin.

Why does Everdark need it here, of all places?

Odette had the distinct suspicion that she was missing something.

"What is it?" Eleshka asked.

"The Mender who came before me made two of these lockets," she said. "One of them, Elsa and I now own. It ended up with one of her ancestors."

"How?" Eleshka asked.

"I'm not sure," Odette realized. "He had a vulture's head as a funerary mask, so we figured that he was a worshipper of Everdark. But… now that I think about it, I'm not sure that makes any sense. How did these end up getting associated with Everdark?"

Eleshka knelt beside Odette. She tentatively reached out to touch the amulet. When her fingers brushed against the jet, she recoiled. Odette immediately, viscerally recalled the sickness that she had felt the first time she touched Ceristo's amulet, and she immediately placed a hand against Eleshka, flooding her with a bit of magic to burn away the nausea.

"Sorry, I forgot to warn you," Odette said. "It's a bit of an ugly surprise."

Eleshka groaned, and then laughed once. "Boy, I'm starting to regret deciding to come with you guys."

Odette laughed as well. "Yeah, our lives are basically shit. You were out of your mind."

How is this all connected? Odette thought. She felt distinctly that if she could only figure out the reason that these amulets seemed to be inexplicably interwoven with Everdark as well, she could somehow earn them a powerful advantage.

"I don't often get visitors here," a powerful voice spoke from the doorway to the hut. "But I do think that it's about time we meet face-to-face, Mender."

xxx

Elsa landed lightly on top of one of the towers at the front of the Notre Dame. Smoke coiled up in plumes from the narthex below her, and she could hear horrid screams from the ground level as Everdark's minions swarmed into the church to slaughter its occupants. Elsa turned her gaze directly to the pair of airborne wizards flying a dozen or so yards away at the other end of the church, hurling fiery tar onto the building to contribute to the blaze. They noticed her and immediately began to sweep in her direction, and Elsa turned to leap off of the tower.

She plummeted towards the ground, and threw Rimeheart ahead of herself. It plunged into the stone of the porch, and in a small radius around the blade, ice swept outwards and froze the advancing soldiers solid. Ten feet above the ground, a small track of ice appeared, curling into the church itself, and Elsa landed upon it, slinging herself through the destroyed portal at high speed.

Elsa curled over a swarm of enemy soldiers, then over a failing barricade of sandbags, and the diminishing soldiers and innocents beyond it, to land in a lithe crouch in the center of the atrium. She raised her hand, and Rimeheart spun through a crowd of her enemies, taking their heads from their bodies and then hurtling into her hand, landing with a satisfying weight. She threw out a hand as some of Everdark's men started to push through the barricade, and a wall of icy wind blasted them back, sending tumbling bodies into a mound inside the burning narthex.

Two of the multi-story, stained-glass windows that flanked the atrium exploded inwards, showering rainbows of glass on the ground and earning screams from the huddled women and children. The two flying wizards burst into the church, and one of them immediately threw a great spear at Elsa. She twisted aside and it struck the ground next to her, plunging through the floor and slashing her legs and back with shrapnel. She shot a few icicles at each of them, struggling to keep them both in her field of vision as they swirled through the air fifty feet above her.

One of her icy bolts tore through the swirling cloak that hung far beyond one of the wizard's feet, and he tumbled in the air. Elsa turned to finish him off, but lost her focus as she was suddenly ensconced in swirling darkness. It felt as if a thousand knives pierced her flesh at once, and she cried out with shock and pain. Ice coated her skin and then pushed outwards, forcing the nightmarish specters backwards. She whirled to see Mercier and his pair of furies striding past the barricade, the last soldiers lying in pools of their own blood on the floor. The women and children left alive huddled around the walls of the church, screaming with terror.

"You're doomed, Protector," Mercier said, his voice arrogant and callous. "You may have been able to slip through Novendon's fingers at the Worldgate, but now you have nowhere to run."

Both of the flying wizards dove towards Elsa, the one who had thrown his spear taking another from a bandolier on his back. They plunged their weapons for her heart at the same time. Elsa threw her hands out, and a dome of ice appeared around her. Their spears struck the translucent barrier and with resounding cracks, and spiderwebbed fractures appeared along it. They wound back and struck again, and then again. The witches flanking Mercier charged her, and then Elsa's own shadow sprung to live and wrapped chill hands around her neck.

Mercier clenched his fist, and her shadow's grip tightened. She could not move, lest her concentration on the barrier surrounding her fail, but Mercier's shade was crushing the life out of her. The witches reached the barrier and began to pound it with their own weapons. The cracks continued to form, and Elsa started to panic. There wasn't any way out of this. Irrational thoughts flitted through her oxygen-deprived brain, totally unrelated to the situation.

Images of herself and Anna, rolling a snowman in the foyer of the old castle at Arendelle, long since burned. Christmas Day a year and a half ago, when she'd nearly kissed Odette for the first time. The dream she'd had, where the Lord of the Immortals, the one that humanity revered as God, had spoken to her.

He'd told her that she would sacrifice herself.

Maybe now was that moment.

Maybe…

Elsa's vision grew black, and she fell to her knees. Her barrier was near to faltering, and the magic coursing through her veins grew weak. She wondered if Anna was still alive. How much longer she would live. She wished that she could gaze into Odette's beautiful eyes, one last time. She hoped that by giving her life, she would finally do her duty as Protector.

As she faded towards unconsciousness in this moment spun onto eternity, a thought nagged at the peace that lulled her towards sleep. This wasn't a sacrifice. If she died here, these people would not live. They would follow her, in heartbeats. The slaughter would continue with renewed vigor, that a symbol of hope for humanity had failed. Everdark would win.

This was no way to die.

xxx

Elsa's vision went black, and then she opened her eyes. She was… somewhere else. Sitting in a cave. She heard the sound of dripping water, from somewhere deeper in the cavern. She looked around herself. She was in a small chamber that seemed to serve as someone's bedroom. It was not devoid of material comforts; a curtain of animal skins hung across the opening, and a quilted rug formed a sort of bedroll across from her. She was sitting on a small wooden stool.

Then she heard a high-pitched chink. Then another. Frowning, she stood and drew back the room's curtain. She saw a familiar-looking elderly woman sitting on another stool, this one positioned in front of a tall, stone monolith, in the chamber that lay beyond this room. She held a hammer and a piton with weather-beaten hands, and as Elsa watched she adjusted her grip on them each and etched a new line into the slab. Curious, Elsa stepped into the chamber, taking care to keep quiet, so as not to disturb the woman's concentration. She paced around until she could peer over the woman's shoulder, and now she saw that a dense wall of cuneiform text covered its surface.

This is the Keeper's Stele, she realized. It was being made, right before her eyes. Her gaze turned back to the elderly woman. That that… that's…

"I find this work soothing," Ashanerat said. "It is calm, and repetitive, and slow enough that I have plenty of time to think about what I will say. In fact I must be deliberate, because if I start a sentence, only to find later that I am displeased with what I have written, then I have little recourse to alter it."

She turned and fixed piercing, perceptive eyes on Elsa. "It is good to finally see you with my own eyes, Protector. I have waited a very long time for this."

"What's happening?" Elsa asked. Fright boiled into her voice as she said, "Did I die?"
"Not yet," Ashanerat replied. "Though you are closer to death than you have ever been before, I would suspect. Brains do strange things in the moments before they cease to function, and somehow yours has constructed this."

"But how am I still alive, long enough to have this conversation with you?" Elsa asked. Surely, Mercier's shade should have strangulated her by now.

"You tell me," Ashanerat said. "I have no idea what your particular capabilities are, Protector."

"I…" Elsa said, frowning and thinking about it. As she did, she realized that her brain was still frantic, as if the panic from her fight didn't fade away just because her surroundings did. "I stopped time."

Ashanerat raised an eyebrow. "You sound surprised."

"Well, it's sort of new," Elsa replied. "I haven't been doing it that long."

"So, Protector. Tell me why you are here."

Elsa shook her head. "I have no idea. I didn't do this, whatever it is."

Ashanerat tapped at her chin. "Well, perhaps it is the will of the gods. Or perhaps aid came from somewhere else entirely."

Elsa could think of no one who could have intervened on her behalf, but she realized that perhaps she could make something of this.

"Well, as long as I'm here, wherever here is, perhaps you can answer some questions for me. How did you defeat Everdark?"

She had learned in some of her visions of the past that the Consulate of Celestus had planned to perform an arcane ritual to trap Everdark somewhere it could not harm the world, but she had no idea if this ended up actually being successful.

"We did not defeat Everdark," Ashanerat said, voice shameful. "One of my companions, a powerful wizard named Circu, was able, with our assistance, to bind the Dark God in a demiplane in the realm of the Immortals. Our bonds could hold it for only so long, however, and in time, as you well know, its strength overcame ours, and it was released into your world again."

"Its realm is in the Sea of Stars?" Elsa asked. "Why didn't the other immortals just kill it when it was weakened?"

Ashanerat shook her head. "It is doubtful that they could. Everdark was not weakened by our ritual, only confined. You might think of it like this: we put the God of Darkness in a very complicated maze, one that it could not possibly ever solve. Eventually, it was able to exploit enough weaknesses in our maze to break through the walls."

It had assistance from a powerful necromancer as well.

"Alright, how am I supposed to beat Everdark?" Elsa asked, fearing that she knew what the answer would be.

"I am unsure that such a thing is possible," Ashanerat said. "I had hoped that my predecessor would be the beneficiary of millennia of learning that I did not have access to."

Elsa shook her head. "Once Celestus fell, the world no longer celebrated magic. When the Dark Ages came, all of your knowledge was lost. We have nothing."

"In that case, I don't know that I can offer you hope, Protector."

"But then why am I here?" Elsa asked. Against her intention, annoyance crept into her voice. "You don't have anything to teach me that could help? You just think that I should give up? What the hell happened to your oaths?"

Ashanerat looked as if she had been physically struck, but Elsa found it hard to feel remorse through her overwhelming, incendiary frustration.

Ashanerat's voice rose as she replied. "I was never a good Protector. My career was riddled with failure. Why do you think that I've spent decades in this cave, carving a record of my regrets into this stone? You were supposed to be better than me!"

"I am better than you!" Elsa shouted. "Better than you could ever hope to be! If I have to do this myself, then so be it!"

Elsa stormed from the cave without another glance at the broken woman who had preceeded her. She expected to weave her way through tunnels as she left the cave, but to her surprise, she rounded only one corner before she stepped into brilliant sunshine. She looked around, startled to find that she stood in the Hall of Glory, her own domain in the Sea of Stars. Sunlight streamed down upon her through golden clouds, reflecting an injured, war-weary woman back at her.

Elsa stared at her own reflection. Her face was smudged with ash and blood, and her clothing was torn in places where she'd been slashed. Her hair was ragged in places where it had been burned with confrontation with a pyromancer earlier in the day, and her neck was black and bruised from being strangled. But despite all of this, her back was straight. She stood tall and proud, even now.

Especially now.

She looked back, to the cave that she had left, and wasn't surprised to find that it was no longer there. Somewhere inside, she knew that none of this was really happening. She was lost in her own mind, frozen in time on the floor of the Notre Dame, stretching out the moments in which her life slipped away. But she felt a powerful freedom, something liberating like a new dawn after a long night.

She had spent so long looking to the past for answers, when in truth, there wasn't any there. Elsa wasn't going to win her battles by walking the same path as Ashanerat, and there had never been a silver bullet that was going to defeat their dark enemy.

But she wasn't helpless. Elsa had no idea where Hans, or Odette, or Kariena, or Eleshka, or even her sister were. She didn't even know how many of them were still alive. But they had fought with her, laid down their lives with her, and they would continue to do so until they could not any more. Ashanerat may not have proven to be her ally, but Elsa was not alone.

And as long as her friends continued to fight, then so would she. Elsa reached inside of herself and let loose the inner blizzard. Her vision warped, and then the Hall of Glory faded away around her. Time unspooled, and she re-entered the world with a flash of light.