Black Smoke and the Butterfly

General Summary

Chapter 1: Sacramentum Accessurus Sum

I must take the Sacrament. Eldemir patiently waited as the terms of their boon were accepted. When Lucretia agreed and smiled knowingly, he spoke his request, with more conviction than he could ever recall in the strange and shattered bits of his memory. The saint’s demeanor shifted in an instant. Her once comforting smile fell into a worried frown. “Are you certain? You will change, perhaps become dangerous.” She gently clapped her hands together. “There will be no reversing this decision.” Although Lucretia’s words hammered his resolve, Eldemir stood firm. Perhaps he should have been more fearful of her uncertainty; Lucretia’s clairvoyance had weathered nebulous matters before. But, if she truly was unable to see what his future held, Eldemir’s curiosity would not allow him to stray from this path. “I am. I need to know my past, to choose what I will die for.” “Would you die for this chance to know your past?” “Yes.” The Visionary of the Falling Fire met his eyes with her own, white-gold like a brilliant sunrise. She did not falter, as if she had already heard the answer, but knew that Eldemir’s telling of it was a crucial step towards the Sacrament. “It is too dangerous for any other pilgrims on this day. Prepare yourself and meet me on the other side.” Her face seeming like a solemn mask of itself, Lucretia turned and disappeared into the Haze, leaving Eldemir alone with Peter. Although he was convicted, the saint’s words had rattled Eldemir. He shared his fears, and Peter shared the reassurances that friends can provide with simple truths. Before their farewell, the two men embraced. Suddenly, Peter’s hands glowed, and Eldemir’s rune-scars gleamed with a cleansing light. Again he felt as he had in the holy city of Lumen, wreathed in warmth, ready to confront the dark unknown. Eldemir marched through Champion’s Gate, his skin alight like a beacon. The deadly fog grew impossibly thick, swirling around his footfalls like great purple serpents. He saw Lucretia near the crumbled ruins of the South Ward, facing some faint glow to the northeast. “Follow the light.” As the saint vanished, Eldemir did as she instructed and trudged through the bones of Westemär’s bygone capital. So rampant was the destruction that it was hard to believe that these chunks of rock had once stood as townhouses and saintly statues. Harder still to believe that these grounds teemed with new life. Immediately, Eldemir heard the chittering and skittering of ratling hordes surrounding him. Sling bolts and sludge-tipped arrows crashed into his body, and tiny claws raked into his legs before retreating into the shadows. While Eldemir couldn’t see his attackers, to them he was bright as day. Fighting like this is not an option. Midnight erupted from his spilt blood, and Eldemir leapt onto her back, shielding her from the ratlings’ putrid ammunition and steering her towards that faint light that beckoned to him, like a moth to a flame. Suddenly, the sky slapped against cracked stone, and Eldemir was torn from the saddle and sent crashing to the ground. A stout ratling tore the hooked blade of its guisarme from his chest, and Eldemir heard Midnight’s whine farther ahead. He knew she was an imitation, wrought from blood and ozone, of the horse he left in Elyria. Still, his heart ached as another ratling gutted her with its knife. He missed his old companion, the glint of her onyx eyes, the joyous freedom of swifting alongside the wind together. Enraged, Eldemir cleaved into the ratling, until it was little more than lifeless pulp. He uttered an incantation, catching his sword aflame before turning to face the others hiding in the Haze. However, a hoarse howl cut through the night like a serrated knife, and he soon heard the ratlings fleeing as greater beasts approached. Its rail-thin body was riddled with jagged delirium shards nearly as long as its dagger-like teeth. Loping on all fours, the purple-eyed werewolf led a pack of mangy dogs with the same lust for bloody violence. The first swipe sent Eldemir’s blade clattering to the ground, and the second tore a chunk of flesh from his shoulder. The wound wept with faintly purple blood. Eldemir raised his gauntlets defensively, as the creature slobbered, then pounced. Phantasmal blue light trailing behind, Alystra, for somehow Eldemir knew the blade’s name, glided into his outstretched hand and deflected the werewolf’s frenzied strikes. In that moment, she sang of forgotten spellcraft and of her rebirth. Eldemir saw, but did not hear, the blacksmith Mizzryn whispering to the sentient sword. The communion threw her forcefully back, her armor clanging against the nearby anvil. Her eyes rolled back, gleaming like white-hot molten iron, and her gauntlets sizzled, steamed, and melted. The stories of a legendary weapon, told only to her. Eldemir did not know what magic she had worked, but the Spellthief was reforged. With a practiced slash, Eldemir swung the blade. It flared with bright purple energy and severed the creature’s head from its body. Alystra chanted again, of a spell to quench a blazing inferno, to halt the winds and violent seas, to grind mountains into rubble. Magic of such terrible power that the whole of Eldemir’s vitality, of his blood boiling and his bones churned into grainy dust, would not be enough suffering to channel its might. Such immense power in words. As God has decreed, I will not trade this, or any others, unless She commands it. With the hounds sent scattering back into the Haze, Eldemir marched with renewed confidence. The lambent mote of light called to him, like a whisper on the wind. Although he glowed brightly, his conviction was stronger, and eventually he stood at the Crater’s Edge. It rumbled like a roaring thundercloud, like he was caught in the sea during a storm. Lucretia appeared and told him of the history of the Falling Fire. How the city was demolished. How the Sacred Flame was a promise of goodness prevailing. How the comet shattered, and there were reflections of everyone and everything within the Crater. “You must find that piece which you lost, and return it to its hearth. Your heart.” The abyss was impossibly vast, haphazard shards of delerium jutting from the earth like teeth. All the while, crackling eldritch bolts of lightning lit the sky ablaze. It was impossible to think. Grasping those words, that he should be willing to die for the Sacrament, Eldemir began chanting all the magic that he knew, letting his spilt blood form a path towards his missing piece. As he descended into the Crater, arms heavy with exertion, a stray bolt of arcane lightning chased him and zapped him where he stood. When he awoke, he did not know how far he had fallen. The Crater still stretched far, far into the dark depths below. But Eldemir felt a magnetism behind him. He turned and found the reflection of himself, promised by the Falling Fire. A delerium obelisk, ten feet high, fortuitously wrapped in constellations of glyphs, the very same that marred his own flesh. It was mesmerizing to look into, warping his own awestruck visage one hundred different ways. Then, it grew smaller, a deep groove grinding below. Some grotesque thing, more than fifty feet tall, hauled it away. This creature easily towered over haze hulks, and bits of delerium clung to its aberrant flesh like pox. Eldemir knew he could not fight this thing, but he also knew that his journey could not end here. As his scars bled their fire, he gave this hulking creature his ultimatum. “Leave or die.” Its muscles flexed, and the creature roared, flecks of purple spittle and half-digested meat flying from its furious maw. As it glowered at Eldemir, and Eldemir at it, the beast’s throat glowed dully, and it spat up a rancid beam of concentrated Haze, contamination at its most deadly potency. Eldemir steeled himself and his skin burned. He knew if he showed even a shred of weakness, this creature would rip him apart. He did not falter, and Haze steamed off of him in winding curls of smoke. The giant creature relented and receded into the Haze, where it vanished completely. Here, Eldemir took Lucretia’s words literally. As he scaled the obelisk and prepared to stake himself at the point, another arcane bolt struck him. When he awoke, the obelisk had morphed into a speartip, two feet in length, still decorated with the same mysterious runes. He tightened his grip around this precious treasure, and Lucretia showed him his next destination. Saint Gresha’s Cathedral, so close to the starfall, was unmade. However, the great hunks of marble and jagged shards of stained glass floated in tandem, animated by the strange aura of the Crater’s vicinity. A rubble-strewn bridge of floating stones led to its hallowed halls. Eldemir braved much danger as he circled the mouth of the Crater. Mutants and dregs clashed and tore each other apart, but he paid only heed to his own survival. He ran when needed, knowing that learning the truth was still an uncertainty. In the halls of the cathedral, Lucretia and the ghostly form of Saint Gresha chanted in unison, casting the sacrament of the falling fire together. Between them, a bonfire of silver and gold grew and grew. Its mirror-like sheen drew Eldemir in, and within, he saw the towering heights of fabled Mount Celestia, where angels, in their true and terrifying forms, and heroes who fought on the side of Good moved with strength and grace. So enraptured was he, that Eldemir did not notice as the tongues of radiant fire singed his skin. It burned him, and the saints’ chanting resounded with fanatical volume. He watched, confused, as his fingers, curled around the delerium, plunged towards his exposed chest. Soon, his body began turning to ash, and his soul was torn out of him and consumed by the all-powerful flame. The past crested towards Eldemir with the savage enormity of a tsunami. As it collided with his uncoupled mind, however, time itself seemed to slow, and he was caught in a dreamlike state. He witnessed that which he didn’t know that he had. Sometimes, in what followed, it was difficult to distinguish what he felt as observer and narrator.

Chapter 2: Causa Patiendi

Let the cause of your suffering be revealed, someone seemed to whisper. You watch as, when your father first sees you, he is repulsed. His expression soon melts into love and relief for the safety of his wife and child; Héctor Peralez is no monster. But, the way his lip curls, his brow furrows, when he beholds your devil-red skin, when he feels the bumps where your horns would soon sprout is something you will not forget. Memories are fickle, like fallen leaves carried farther and farther away by the right breeze. Perhaps if you had remembered this before, carried it with you through life, you would have justified his reaction as shock. But, you are seeing this for the first time. You know what he felt. Your mother looks at you with such unconcealed pain. Ava von Bahr is the eldest daughter of minor Westemärian nobility. Already she feels the Elyrians’ stigma for her nation’s history of darkness and misuse of magic. Although she converted to their faith, married one of Lumen’s most respected noblemen, and loved him deeply, she fears for your life. If Xandor’s shadow still hangs above her head, she is saddened that you would be an outsider, twice over. You watch the whispers of cavorting with devils, of a wicked child, of your mother’s witchcraft and supposed infidelity. You hear your father arguing with his business partners late at night. You are not surprised when the Silver Order marches onto the family estate. At five years old, you find it strange that you are not sad to be taken away. You meet both your parents’ eyes and see their grief, the loss of their only heir, and the downward spiral of House Peralez. The Flamekeepers are so patient with you. You remember how they smelled of fresh linens, how their hands, suited for healing, not fighting, were so soft. You get in trouble for sneaking out of your room, not because you wanted to leave, but because a place as big as the cathedral is surely chock-full of exciting discoveries. The priests are never cross with you, though. Instead, they praise your curiosity and encourage your growing faith. It is a miracle, in your blue eyes, what wonders the Flamekeepers could work with their prayers. You show an aptitude for divine magic and excel in horsemanship. So it is hardly a surprise when the Silver Order, who escorted you into this new life, welcomes you into their ranks. You remember your tutelage under Master Pedro. The acidic sting of his razor-sharp tongue. The sharp thwack of his sword-cane, until your knuckles are raw with pain. The old man seems immortal to you, as if, to spite his own old age, he refuses to die. But, he teaches you how to be a fearsome warrior, a capable horse-rider, and a better squire. You like him for that. The other knights-in-training resent their chores, but you find them therapeutic, relaxing even. Doing the mundane helps to satisfy the curiosity you still carry within you. Eventually, you are gifted the namesake silver-forged armor, emblazoned with the symbol of your faith. At times, you are unpopular with your brothers and sisters for asking questions. However, you feel your duty is to be a diplomat, as much as it is a protector. You think that knightly might is ill-placed if you do not understand what you are fighting for, or against. The Divine Matriarch, radiant as she is, calls you back to Lumen. She embraces you like a loving mother, and anoints your arms and armor. She even takes a lock of your hair to store in the cathedral’s reliquary, so you can be summoned back in a time of great need. You remember the assignment. A plague-witch, excelling in curses that draw on divine magic, being chased through northern Elyria. You feel bad for her, that she uses magic for destruction. You and your squires join two senior knights to find her before she can cause more harm. She is fast, but your night-black mare is faster. As you finally catch her, the witch meets eyes with you and says, “We are the same.” As she invokes her curse, your vision fades with red. Even now, on the northern coast of Elyria, there are twelve square miles of scorched cliffs. You find it unsettling how your squires stare at you, their eyes bulging and filling with blood. Their armor shrinks around them, and, like balloons, their heads pop, innards and organs splashing out of their mouths. You find it strange that the senior knights do not intervene. Aged hundreds, thousands of years, both men crumple under their own weight, their liver-spotted bodies too weak, too frail to resist blowing away in the wind like dust. You see the bloody splatter of the plague-witch, memorialized on your breastplate. As you realize what you think you have done, your blood crackles, and you faint.

* * *

You awaken, once again, to the scent of washed linens and the gentle hands of Flamekeepers. But these priests are draped in jet-black robes, their faces covered in steel masks. It is hard for you to believe. You had heard about the Smokekeepers, but thought they lived only on the conspiratorial tongues of heretics and dissenters. You discover this wicked rumor about the Church of the Sacred Flame is very much true. How much time passes, you do not know. Confined in a dark space, these priests torture you with dark prayers, wielded like hot pincers, and strip you of your precious oaths, your very essence as a paladin. The pain is so great that you wonder if your life was all fiction.

"Magic is a force of creation. It is truly terrible when it is misused."
— Unknown

You clutch that saying, hold it against your still-beating heart. Your curiosity is the only thing that keeps you sane as the pain returns each day. Your agonizing excommunication is halted only when the holiest person in the world comes. Except, she seems different. Not as if something changed, but something is gone. The mask of beneficence worn by the Divine Matriarch is not there, and her chilling visage nearly breaks you. She looks at you behind an upturned, hawkish nose, and her eyes glow as she purges you. The last shred of hope you have is turned to weightless, meaningless mist. “I want you to break him again. Do everything you can to awaken the second font, even if it costs you your lives. The Weave shall be useful, but I have enough fire-mages as it is.”

* * *

In the scattered islands between Elyria and Caspia, there is a small islet, which you will not find on any map. There, with prisons carved into charcoal-black stone, you and your ilk are confined. Sometimes, you watch buckets of gray slop clatter into the central pit. Masses of emaciated, naked prisoners crawl towards this paltry meal. Some are too hungry to wait for the buckets. Occasionally, knights, and it feels like dirt in your mouth, of the Black Order round up a prisoner and carry them to the barracks on the other side of the island. Their tortured screams haunt you. One day, before you think you will break, you see a butterfly escape through the cave’s mouth. You watch it, weary and uncertain, but your dried, bloody eyes do not deceive you. “If he can make it out, why can’t we?” A woman holds your hand. You do not know each other. You do not remember her name now. Something about her words, her act of genuine kindness, reignites the embers of your spirit. Hope is perhaps too idealistic a word. She saves you, with something beyond friendship or love. Your bond is simple and wordless, but it is strong. You spend your days with her, content with silence. When you must sleep, the two of you do so, back to back, just to feel that you are not alone. To feel the warmth that was forcibly taken out of your soul. Sometimes, she is taken away from you, by the brutes in black armor. Her screams enrage you, but she is not like the others. In her pain, there is a sliver of belief that things could still get better. You decide to stay strong because of her. As time crawls by, you see Smokekeepers and the Black Order take prisoners for the “graduation” ceremonies. Some don the silver armor. Others wear white robes. Strangest of all, others assume the motley garb of Caspian pirates. It is as if every shred of humanity is carefully carved out of them. All that is left is an aimless, empty husk, a hollow-eyed thing, suited to whatever purpose the Divine Matriarch ordains. She does not let you become an empty thing. Her impossible cheer does not allow you to hang your head low, even as your blistered back hunches over. Every so often, she uncups her hands when only you are looking, and releases another moth or butterfly.

* * *

On that last day, you are all summoned outside. You are unchained, because you are no threat. How could an animal, beaten down so thoroughly, have the strength, much less the will, to bite? The hot sands burn the soles of your feet, and you watch as two prisoners are given new roles, atop the Smokekeeper’s black-and-gold galleon. No one cheers at this graduation, and even their eyes are vacant. You can’t help but wonder why she didn’t free a butterfly that day. You ask her, because it has become a sign for you to keep going, a compass to the salvation she seems to believe in. “Today, they come to us, and it’s our turn to be free.” As she raises her arms, hundreds, then thousands, of different butterflies rise from the sea. Although each is the size of a housecat, you can close your eyes and still imagine the havoc caused by their rapier-like proboscises and knife-sharp wings. The Smokekeepers’ silent masks scream that day, and the Black Order’s impervious armor is split open. Before you understand what is happening, she takes your hand and pulls you out of your daze. Together, you scurry through screaming crowds and, feet slapping against the rain-slick stone, find your way to the northern cliffs, where a huge white butterfly waits. Your shoulder screams as an incredible force yanks your arm back. You spin, and he is there. The one-eyed Knight-Captain of the Black Order, Theodore Marshall. You watch as he throws his flaming warhammer aside and beats her with his gauntlets. Between heavy thuds, she pleads with you to leave, but you do not listen. You ball up your fists and charge this insult to what a paladin should be, but she does not let you die for her sake. “Eldemir, be free.” And your Beacon summons a gust of wind to carry you far, far away, into the Caspian Sea. The rest of it is how you remember it. How you awoke with strange powers. How the voice returned to you, outside that lead-lined prison. How it led you back to your mother’s birthplace, into the ruin-strewn streets of Redgaard, to the Falling Fire, not the Sacred Flame, for answers.

Chapter 3: Incendium Ferre

To bear the burden of fire is no small task. As Eldemir’s eyes opened again, he knew that he was almost whole. His body, sizzling like heated iron pulled from water, and his soul, pounding with the frenetic beating of his own heart. Lucretia and Gresha watched him, their eyes betraying no fear, no emotion. On one side, a shadow of himself stood with Alystra pointed at his throat. Arcane lightning crackled and glided through the runes etched into his skin, and his eyes were intent. On the other side, he saw himself with purified golden delerium driven through his own heart, chest and arms cleansed by the Falling Fire. In his eyes were untempered passion, zeal. You must choose who you are willing to die for, Lucretia’s voice echoed.

“Like Saint Tarna sieged the Red Keep to capture Xandor, a mage will pay the Divine Matriarch what she is owed—retribution. God, I will not leave you now.” In a dizzying flash, Eldemir found himself standing where that shade was. The other nodded, and summoned a sword of flame to his outstretched hands. “You are my inner darkness.” Shocked, Eldemir weathered the other’s swings but his skin burned from the paladin’s might. His blood seared the Falling Fire’s champion with necrotic energy, but he was unrelenting, and his charred skin hardened like a shield, even against Alystra’s glinting blade. In a moment of desperation, Eldemir called upon his own faith to shield him, his own foretold suffering to delay his ordained death. Nothing happened. The paladin’s aura, one of heresy against the Church of the Sacred Flame, completely nullified Eldemir’s own magic. That base power, relishing in its own zealous defiance, sent shivers down Eldemir’s spine. Then, the paladin blasphemed, “Why do you think she even cares about you?” His words raked through Eldemir’s mind with the slow agony of a nail pressed through skin. Whether or not he thought them true, Eldemir found himself deafened to the world around him, except to this flame-wreathed possibility of himself. Their battle was a thrashing. Although Eldemir survived longer than could be expected at death’s door, although his few swings and drawn blood slowed the other’s step, the paladin of the Falling Fire marched inevitably towards him. Standing over a shattered bridge of crumbling, floating stone, he spoke. “You must be purged for me to live. You are no match for me, but people will know the truth of today.” The paladin grasped Eldemir by the throat and threw his inner darkness into the Crater below.

* * *

The inky-black darkness around you is suffocating. Your vision narrows to a knife-thin line, where you see Lucretia kneeling before your form and sighing with relief that you still breathe. You don’t know if you are still deafened. You don’t know if God does not speak to you because you cannot hear her, or because She chooses not to. The last thing you see before everything fades is Eldemir, prideful heretic, the paladin of the Falling Fire, rising to stand beside his saint. In that moment, you fear that you have become like your old brothers in the Silver Order—capable of great destruction, before understanding. The part of you that swore vengeance is stronger than the part of you that hunted secrets. You awaken in a sea of oil. This shriveled, bruised part of you waits for days, years, lifetimes. Perhaps time has no meaning in this place, where souls are forgotten. The cold is unbearable, but you scarcely have the strength to keep your eyes open, much less protest. Your strength, your sense of self, are all carried away by the frigid, unending, meaningless waves of this place. Did I die to become him? Before your eyes close, perhaps for the last time, although this will not end, you see a butterfly glide past and disappear into the oil.