Out of Azragoth, there had been four golems in pursuit of the soldier.
Two of these had fallen.
One was taken.
And now, there was only one.
But hundreds more still waited in the darkness below the old city. Waited…to rise to take faces.
The fourth of the ash-covered creatures watched the men from the dark road below. A false twilight had begun to dim the horizon as ash ascended and filled the forest with dense smoke.
When the golems had heard the young man shouting, it had separated from the troop and was circling around behind the soldier on the road when it saw what had become of its three companions. It followed the soldier when he rode up to the tree to free the young man. It had stood quietly in the shadows watching as the two men descended from the tree, below the lowering ceiling of ash.
It passed grimy hands over its face, brushing the coating ash from its cheeks and brow and scooping it out of its eyes. The revealed face beneath scowled in anger. It blinked away the dust that had coated its golem’s eyes leaving only a cataract film.
Its face and arms had dried and cracked with the heat of the fires and it could no longer bear the semblance of the hated one they were sent to resist and betray. The projected image the dragon had captured in the tunnels was a temporary image at best. Not sustainable as long as the man still lived. Only eight wore this face. The face of a man with whom this particular golem inhabitant had a personal score to settle and a promise to keep.
In the past, it had worn at least three other visages of Surface Worlders. And it primed itself to collect and masquerade as many more before it was done.
Its present doppelganger now stood beside the soldier of Azragoth whom they had followed out from the old city. The fires made the tableau above hazy and appear to shimmer in heat vapor, but the creature could still see and identify them as they helped another man from the base of the tree to mount up carefully upon the soldier’s horse. A younger man stood aloof and to the side, now unbound but seemingly uncooperative and at odds with the one called O’Brian. It recognized him, as well. There was potential in the young man. Useful potential. A rage he harbored for all authority figures. With a few more instances of prodding, he could be turned. He was ripe for a bitter harvest. Perhaps, in time, it would wear this young man’s face as well.
When the man, they had assisted, turned in the saddle and finally sat upright, the malevolent presence inhabiting the golem form immediately recognized him from many years before. Its scowl gave way to an expression of surprise as its heavily lidded eyes widened.
“Jeremiah,” it hissed and seethed, its tightened jaw making a popping noise as it spoke. The man it personally hated more than the one it had been initially sent after to deceive, undermine and kill. For somehow, this man had evaded it for years.
“Well, well, well,” it clucked, its voice again accompanied by that jaw popping noise, “What a nice little gathering we have here.”
It would never forget him. Though the man on horseback’s face had slightly changed, and his hair had thinned during the intervening years, the spirit’s sight knew it was the same man who had first dissolved its first clever corporeal shell with one of those accursed honor swords. A covenant sword. A weapon not bound by time, space or physicality.
“Two birds,” it reached into its garment and pulled out a dirty sack, bearing something bulky within, hefting it into its sooty hands, “One stone.”
The time spent digging under Azragoth had proved useful after all.
***
“Mr. O’Brian were you ever in the presence of a dragon?”
Captain Logray’s words had barely been uttered, when he saw the implication and shock register in my expression.
“We should speak more on this. But not here.”
I lifted Jeremiah’s gear-pack from the ground and slung it over my shoulder, wondering at the weight as I lifted it and at how effortlessly he had seemed to carry it with him before he ascended the tree. I eschewed the climbing gear and spikes but Will had acquiesced to follow us at least temporarily and snagged them as he passed by moving towards the road below. I caught a glimpse of a small hilted dagger tucked away towards the back of his shirt, certain that it had not been there before when he had been trussed and deposited at the base of the tree.
The smoke ceiling had descended and threatened to fill our lungs with ash if we did not get to lower ground.
We moved down the hill, Logray carefully leading the antsy horse around the fires blackening the hillside. It snorted in short breaths, its muscles flexed and tensed, and it rolled its eyes fearfully at the conflagrations all around us, but Logray kept a tight confident hold on its lead reigns. Despite the animal’s fear and natural inclination to flee the flames, it had learned over time to trust the man who now led it through the burning forest. I bore this quiet gentle lesson in mind, thinking of my own personal struggle.
Visibility was minimal, but the further we descended the swirling hot air around us became slightly cooler and easier to breathe.
Logray spoke up as we made our way down towards the carved roadway, “I believe this harpy that attacked you might be temporarily deceived.”
“Tell them, young man,” Logray addressed Will over his shoulder, “What threatened you before I came up from the woods and found you.”
Will had moved slightly ahead of us and acted as if he did not hear the question, refusing to follow, but grudgingly acknowledging that he had little choice if he wanted to survive. It was an act of passive aggression but Logray was having none of it. Logray heard him mutter a growled response under his short, labored breaths. As a respected leader of fighting men, knowing the danger of insubordination and how it subversively affected group morale, Logray pressed him again.
“Tell them,” Logray lowered his voice meeting the young man’s threatening growl with a dangerous but commanding calm, “or you will follow us no further.”
Will knew the man meant it. It was an incontrovertible choice he was giving him, not just an idle threat. This man did not suffer fools and did not give instructions lightly. The memory of the father Will had lost loomed largely in his mind and reminded him of something deep he still admired. Military men knew that to follow or not follow an order, often meant the difference between survival and death when a lifetime was measured in seconds. If he valued his own life or the lives of those around him, he must choose. As resentful as he might be towards O’Brian and Jeremiah, he somehow knew that Captain Logray was not a man he could treat with the same level of contempt.
“I don’t know what they were,” he retorted, “So much smoke was in the air. I couldn’t see them very well.”
“Describe what you think you saw.”
“Four men. Smoldering and fully covered in black soot and grey ash. Their hands, arms, face, eyes all covered in it. They didn’t even seem to have trouble breathing it.”
Logray’s head turned suddenly and he faced Will, “Four?”
Will nodded, “Three came up to me and the fourth held back and disappeared into the smoke.”
“Did you get a look at their faces?”
Will shrugged, “Not really. As I said they were covered in ash, but about the same size. No real difference that I could see in the few seconds before they came up to me. I didn’t know what they were going to do. They just watched me struggle there, and then one of them raised a knife and came at me. He fell on top of me and just sort of dissolved into dirt.”
“Dirt?”
“Yeah. Dirt, powder, smoke, mud, ash, dandruff–I don’t know what the hell it is, but I’ve got it all over me and it itches,” here he gestured towards, Logray, “And then you came up. I didn’t know that you had shot him.”
“You’d be dead if I hadn’t. Those creatures you saw are golems.”
“Three came up to you?” I asked.
“Yeah. When the one with the knife fell on me I did not see what happened to the others, but I heard something. I was tied up, no thanks to you mister tree man, and couldn’t defend myself, so I thought I was as good as dead.”
“Your harpy swooped down out of the smoke and took them,” Logray said, “They can’t see in smoke any better than we can, so it was an easy mistake to make if she was pursuing you down the tree. She’ll figure it out sooner or later, but it helps that they were covered in so much ash. Golems take a while to vocalize and form words. She’ll have to land soon, but when she learns her mistake she’ll be back to hunt you all down if this place is not completely engulfed in flame. The fire and smoke give us some cover, but not for too long.”
“The other one is still out there somewhere,” Jeremiah said ominously, squinting and scanning the smoky woods.
“But what are they?”
Jeremiah answered, “Molded forms that are a mixture of earth, clay and a kind of plasma that only comes from the mouth of dragons. Each is inhabited by evil spirits formed by wind and supernatural fire. Golems are the only physicality they can take in this world, and they rely on dragons to give them form. They feel no pain because the bodies they hold are malleable husks that give the semblance of flesh but not the feel of it. They would not feel the fire as they move through it so it would not matter to them if it destroyed their form. A storm rages within them. They shriek in a terrible howl that can cause sickness and swooning. Often they are a harbinger of death.”
“I think we may have encountered one before,” I said, “Are they called by any other name than golem?”
“Aye,” Logray rejoined, “They have many names. None of them good.”
Will turned and looked back up at me, descending the hill to the left of Logray and Jeremiah.
He knew of whom I spoke, and he remembered Begglar’s story of a creature he had called a Banshee.
Jeremiah watched Will move ahead into the smoke and he nudged the horse to follow. He knew that it was unwise to let the young man get too far ahead, and he had wished Brian had not been so quick to untie him. But he held his tongue, knowing that there was a competing reason for it. Will was a part of Brian’s party of travelers, and he was trying to give the young man the benefit of the doubt, but there were things Brian did not know.
He had set his bow and quiver aside when he had ascended the tree, but it had not been at the base of the tree when he returned. He suspected either the golems or Will might have had something to do with that, and he hoped it had been the former rather than the latter, but he could not be certain. Aside from the dusting of golem ash, he had noticed an underlying golden powder that had transferred from the young man’s body to his shoulder when he’d carried the bound man to the base of the tree. A powder which, unless he had missed his guess, was evidence that the man had recently been under the influence of a rutting dryad female. A grisly process, to say the least. One in which the unsuspecting male victim, becomes inebriated by the pheromone-infused pollen dust of the females and lulled into a pliant and yielding euphoria. It was a deadly mating ritual whereby, post seduction, the male victim was summarily eviscerated, decapitated and devoured. Having his head, spinal cord and entrails pulled out from his body, twisted and braided around a dryad vine affixed to the dangling head, with the female’s now fertilized eggs packed into the cranium. The resulting dryad cradle, comprised of the entwined entrails, were then hung from the tops of the forest canopy until the female’s seedlings sprouted from their erstwhile father’s dangling head and fed on their sire’s composted brain matter.
There was no telling how long the young man had been free of the dryad’s lair before he had been recovered or interrupted by the harpy he had witnessed contending with the dryad when he had intervened. So, because of the potential latent effects of the dust, when the young man briefly awoke from his stupor, he found Jeremiah reinforcing his bonds, rather than freeing him from them.
It was just as likely that without the restraint, the young man would run back to the dryad female he had unwittingly escaped from. The dryad dust acted as both an aphrodisiac stimulant, but also inhibited the victim’s ability to sense their own peril and respond aggressively for self-preservation and flight. The dust was highly addictive, if deeply ingested. It also made the victim behave subversively, if not given the time to be observed, isolated and monitored until the effects of the dust completely wore off.
By the time he and O’Brian had made it down to the bottom of the tree, Logray had already cut the boy’s bonds and had not known about the dryad dust, because the coating of the dissolved golem obscured it, and the haze of the smoking fires around them made it difficult to recognize. But Jeremiah was not about to lose sight of the boy.
***
The golem seethed as it watched them move through the rising and falling smoke.
It had indeed followed in the wake of a dragon, swept from the in-between by the flashing of its forming tail caught up in the swirl of a vortex in the ethereal passage that led to this Mid-World prison.
It had no use for a corpus in the world of spirit, but within a world of human flesh, it needed and hungered for a corporeal form. It was now trapped here and the cause lay at the feet of one man.
Jeremiah–the same man who had also slain and butchered its former dragon master with that pirate captain who now called himself Begglar. Only that time its dragon master did not dig beneath the ground or dwell in caves or roam the land unseen. Her master then had pierced the mighty depths of the mountain fjords and plumbed the darkness of this world’s seas.
It had also been a sentient dragon crawling onto this plane from the inter-dimensional realm beyond what this and the Surface World laughingly called their realities.
Illusion. A grand, mystical illusion. The physical realms were a mere half-life, gravely inferior to the fullness of the expanse of existence. Temporal, transitory and passing. But the touch of one of those accursed swords bound it to this pathetic plane of existence. Limited her fullness and made it a beggar and a borrower of sand suits.
Bodies. It both loathed and desired them. Their only use was in how well they deceived these “called” ones. But with each iteration of the sand suit it wore, there was a memory of form, a lingering taste of the image of death. A memory that allowed it to alter its corporeal visage internally by diverting the stream of air flowing beneath its pliant, faux skin. Every iteration of form granted by these magnificent dragons, allowed it to serve the great Serpent even more.
Gender made no difference to it, but it liked wearing a female visage more than most if given a preference. There was a certain sweetness in the terror of women before they died. And feminine horror had a particular flavor it craved. Something peculiar in their prospective loss of beauty and the knowing surrender to ultimate decay and rot. Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes. They all fall down. But some of these souls in sand fell harder than others.
There was something spiritually terrifying to them, that was ineffable. Something precious lost to them when both time and tragedy carved away at their perceived self-value.
Fluidity made deception palatable to the masses and further eroded their self-worth and made them seek identity of form, rather than the created purpose which might have led them to Him. Confused them and further isolated them from connectedness to one another.
“I feel therefore I am,” it muttered under its simulated breath, and then almost laughed aloud. From this, they had caused people to question the existence and the benevolence of the One. If the One did not make them feel pleasant, then the One could not be called good.
For when the identity of form rules their mind, then feelings are everything and emotion is the only real truth. And in such mindsets, these foolish creatures chose to serve themselves and their own fluctuating passions, rather than to acknowledge an external truth that did not make them see themselves as in desperate need of a Savior.
As much as it loathed the Words of the Ancient Text, it could not deny the perceptive wisdom of the Ecclesiast as he observed all mankind in their pursuits to find meaning in their lives and his discovery that in most everything, these beings were in a frantic and monotonous chasing after the wind.
As it watched the men gather together and begin to leave, its face shifted, its brow smoothed and once more it grew younger. It sloughed off the ash flakes from its shrinking body, as its big blue eyes blinked away the gray-brown hazel that had once colored its irises. It became, in visual form, a female.
Wiping the grit away as the excess skin peeled from her and appeared as cloth, she folded and tucked the coloring layer in around her with an almost modest fastidiousness. She couldn’t wait to see the shock register on the face of O’Brian when she showed up again. Couldn’t wait to see the fear rise as he realized that there was no escaping the swirling pursuit of the wind.
Azragoth would soon fall. The heart of the resistance would be plucked out and the gate to Excavatia would never be opened again.
Now that the Surface Worlder had found her name, she would make sure he never, ever forgot it.
***
We eventually found the continuation of the road, covered as it was by embers and burned leaves.
We had moved a little faster, as the meandering mountain air currents moved more freely through the charred woods, liberated from its leaves and brambles.
Jeremiah began to set up higher in the saddle and Logray allowed him control of the horse’s reins so that he could rest his lead hand easily along the protruding pommel of his angled sword. Both Logray and Jeremiah sensed they were being followed, and that it was only a matter of time before The Pan and his half-bred horde discovered them as well.
When both Jeremiah and Logray turned right down the road toward the place where I’d last left my team but went beyond the road and into the remaining woods beyond it, I realized they were not immediately parting our company.
“Where are you taking us?” I finally asked.
“As we told you. To the Faerie Fade.”
“But, what about the Cordis stone? We need its power to carry out the mission and bring it to the gate.”
“We may need the stones, but we do not need their power. That is where you are wrong, Brian. These stones do not contain power. To think they do is to ascribe them to sorcery. These gate stones are mere vessels that focus the authority you have been given to carry out your calling. If you are seeking or relying on the stones to protect or empower you, you had might as well give up the quest right now. That thinking will lead you and everyone who follows you to death’s door and death’s kingdom. What you and Caleb and the others failed to understand is that those of us who are called to lead are not doing so to gain personal power or ability or authority, but to learn to give all of that up. To lead by surrendering and sacrificing themselves to the will of The One who called them. To become emptied of themselves. All their goals, schemes, plans to prosper and subdue, and to learn to fully trust in the Goodness and Perfection of all mankind seeks within The Will of The One.”
“Seek anything else and you will most assuredly fail and all you set out to do. You and I are blind and in darkness. We cannot lead ourselves out of the Eternal Night. We cannot fumble our way through it. We must surrender and listen to the only One who gives sight to the blind and makes the lame to walk again.”
“These stones are mere vessels like you and I are mere vessels. They are symbols of us. Surrender your Hope in all else and place it firmly in the Gate to Excavatia and you will find that it is a light that will shine from the horizon into darkness and whatever dark valley you are led into. The Praesperos stone is firmly embedded in the Gate to Excavatia. I told you this long ago, and you have the testimony of others who you have no reason to doubt. You know and have met the two Ancients I mean. When you surrender to the Will of the One and experience the quickening again you will be able to see the shine of the Praesperos stone on the horizon. Its light will find you in the darkest places.”
“Besides, the bearing of the Cordis stone is not your burden to carry. It is mine. The call still beckons me to return to the quest I abandoned. Yours is to find and bear the third stone. If you follow in obedience to the calling of The One He will ensure that the third stone comes or is brought to you. You need not seek it. It will not come in a form in which you expect. Often it comes wrapped in tragedy, pain, suffering or even within the form of something monstrous seeking to harm you. A gift that turns what others intend to harm you into triumph. This is what Joseph meant when he admonished his brothers who tried to murder him and sold him into slavery. The Ancient Text says:
“20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people.” [Genesis 50:20 NLT]
His opportunity to fulfill his calling to save his brethren and people came through a series of terrible events. He was betrayed, enslaved, falsely accused, imprisoned unjustly, forgotten and then raised from the dungeon to be set in a position of authority over all of the kingdom. His focus was on The One who promised him in a dream as a young boy, that the promise made would be kept because the One was good and honored His Word and Promises. Joseph saw Hope in the darkness of his tragedies, and opportunity beyond his ability to comprehend arose out of these events.”
“Then why did you leave the quest unfinished?”
“Because I let the injustice of the world fill my heart with rage. Instead of allowing myself to be emptied, I gave place to wrath and could no longer lead a company without endangering them. I knew the truth and the Words burned within me, admonishing me of the danger of my choice to vent aggression, but I could not surrender it. The Ancient Text is clear:
“24 Don’t make friends with an angry person, and don’t be a companion of a hot-tempered one, 25 or you will learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare. ” [Proverbs 22:24-25 CSB]
If I allowed the others to follow me in my rage, I would lead them into wrath that would destroy them and we would be of no use in the quest. Forgiveness was not something, I felt I could reach for at the moment. That eventually came later. A heart filled with rage allows no room for Love to co-exist within it. So by giving the place reserved for Love within me to my anger, I could no longer easily carry the Cordis stone. It felt unnatural in my hand. It no longer served as a conduit of power. I had to take it someplace where I knew I could leave it in safety and that was a hidden place deep within Azragoth. And there it resides in an ancient place that was the very foundational site of the city. I left it there so that someone more worthy than I could eventually come and take it up again and complete the second quest. I walked away from it, but now… Now I know I was wrong.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Nor did I, until just recently. You were called, but not to complete the quest I failed at with the Cordis Stone but were given this present calling to bring the last gate stone needed, the Fidelis Stone, so that the success of both my mission and yours will fulfill what we are jointly called to do.”
I pondered his words, feeling the rightness of them stirring within me, knowing that what Jeremiah was saying was not of his own perspective, but of the intention of One greater than both of us, speaking through him, affirming and clarifying what was needed.
Jeremiah continued, “Mattox and I met in the woods of Kilrane before he and his scouting party returned to Azragoth. He reminded me of a truth I had forgotten or was unwilling to see until now. I did not want to hear it, but I needed to hear it. The timing was right for me to be able to hear it. I have followed my own way for far too long, and the journey always leads back around to the crossroads and a binary decision: My way or His. Resist the truth or surrender to it. The truth that The One will not abandon us, even if we insist on proceeding into our own folly and self-destructive path. His is a love given fully, once accepted, persists unwavering without conditions. He sees our end from our beginning and is not fooled by the low points of our journey, nor surprised by them. Like the father of the prodigal son, He watches for our return upon the horizon and meets us joyously at a run when we surrender our ways and come back home.”
I thought about that and felt encouraged by it. Then my mind went back to the problem of the keys and the nature of these gate stones we were meant to recover and bring into the distant mountains.
“So let me get this straight in my mind. You say these keys, these gate stones should not be viewed as having some sort of power in and of themselves. If these are merely conduits of the power to complete the mission, do we even need the keystones at all? Can we tap into this power some other way and open the gate?”
“It is still a meta-physical gate in the Mid-World, my friend. Any locked gate with form and substance needs a key and these three stones joined together are both the symbolic and physical keys to the kingdom.”
“Well, then can we use a replica of the Cordis Stone, like Caleb and I took? Perhaps, duplicate the Fidelis Stone key as well?”
“These original keystones are not manufactured by mortal hands. No effort of man is sufficient to open the gate. The gate belongs to The One and He alone defines how it must be opened. No, a replica will not do. I do not fully understand why the One allows the Cordis stone to be replicated. It is still a mystery to me. But I suspect that only the original stone will do.”
“So what then? You said the third stone would be brought to me, that I don’t necessarily have to find it. Do I sit around and wait for the Fidelis stone to just roll out of a cave and make its way here so I can pick it up and continue the quest?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he fixed me with a chastising look, “You are not hearing what I said. You and I need to listen to the guiding of The One, then obey it. The power to accomplish what needs to be done and to find and recover what needs to be recovered will come in surrendering and obeying what you are told by The One. Your task is to follow His leading, to acquaint yourself with how it sounds in your spirit so that you will be able to recognize it among competing voices. He will accomplish in and through you, what He has called you to do. This is how the quickening is actualized. This is how you will always know that what happened was not because of your own effort, but because of His empowerment and the authority, He has delegated through you to accomplish what could not be done any other way. That is the secret to leadership. It is in full surrender, becoming a faithful servant to voice and guidance of the One.”
“These gate stones…do they ever exhibit any traits or some sort of power over nature?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because,” I reached down and untied the pouch from my belt and opened the drawstring.
“You asked me about this when we were coming down from the tree,” I said as I drew out the giant pearl.
Jeremiah stared at it and then took it from my hand.
“Where did you get this?”
“Like you said,” I nodded toward it, “It came after me, wrapped in the body of a monster that almost killed me, but for the power of the quickening.”
“How were you able to get it?”
“I was led to sacrifice myself and allow that beast to take me into its jaws.”
“Where exactly was this stone?”
“It was in the tongue of a Dust Dragon. I was told that this one followed me through the portal. That it held me in its thrall. Nem told me I had to confront it because it was destroying the foundations of the city. Everything they had built was being compromised by its furious digging beneath.”
“The that explains the presence of golems. Golems do not exist without the aid of a dragon, dust or otherwise. They are constructs of the creature. Dragons can form their own armies given enough time.”
I indicated the pearl. “Maeven had me release it and allow it to roll down to the water’s edge of the basin lake below the Trathorn Falls. As soon as it touched the water it flash-froze the surface of the lake solid and froze the water pouring over the falls. I was afraid I would lose it into the water but that pearl seemed to operate on its own. It raced across the surface many times and was drawn to every place we fought and cut the creatures trapped in the clutches of the ice. Every time their blood was spilled this pearl raced into the spray and pools and absorbed the liquid.”
Jeremiah considered this a moment. “When you released the pearl, what did you feel?”
“That I was being foolish and giving up something we needed for the road ahead. We were told to buy a ship and hire a captain to get us across the fjord-lake Cascale at Skorlith.”
“Then why did you release it?”
“I don’t really know. It felt right, somehow.”
“Perhaps, it was a test to see if you would rely on your reasoning or act in faith to what may not have made sense to you at the time.”
Jeremiah lifted his eyes and looked directly at me, “There is a verse in the Ancient Text that says:
“The stormy wind comes from its chamber, and the driving winds bring the cold. God’s breath sends the ice, freezing wide expanses of water.” [Job 37:9-10 NLT]
He cleared his throat, “As I said, these stones are mere conduits. Empty vessels that focus the intentions of The One in such a way that we notice them. There is no power within them. To possess them, we must believe that they serve only the Will of the One and that in Him they have the power to accomplish all that is needed to serve the calling. If we hold on to them, they cease to have value. But when we release them, they move in wondrous ways to make our way to serve Him possible.”
Jeremiah’s words resonated true within me, such that I found myself nodding emphatically.
“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” I said, “Yes. I am the emptied vessel, yet He dwells within me and I within Him. The authority is given and transmitted in my obedience to the call.”
“And that is why,” Jeremiah said gravely, “Even if you had taken the real stone, it would not have changed the outcome. Power over darkness comes through the stone. Not from it. Mankind cannot stand against the kingdoms of darkness as long as darkness maintains an anchor hold within their souls. This is why the deceiver had to take on the form of a serpent and get mankind to yield to the root of deception and allow it to be implanted within their hearts so that they and their generations to follow would all bear the root of death and never be able to resist the prince of the power of the air. This is also why you have to be grafted into the Vine that draws from the innocence and perfection of a life lived perfectly, but taken unjustly. As a graft takes its power and life from the established and strong vine, so too you and I get our power from being ingrafted into the Forgiveness and the Final Payment made upon our life debt by The One. No power in heaven and earth, below or above or in all time and space, can resist a vessel filled with the Life breathed by the Breath of The One. It is by Faith and the grafting alone that you are empowered to do and accomplish miracles in the obedient service to the call of The One. That purpose will bring you past all of your doubts, raise you above your tragedies and restore unto you all that you may lose in its pursuit.”
***
The canopy roared with raging flame. The air was acrid and thick, shimmering with heat thermals that distorted the way ahead. Black billows twisted and punched the air with swirling waves that erupted and split and stripped.
Out of the gnashing teeth of the inferno, Dellitch emerged, like an undulating dark cross, smoke poured off her singed feathers as her wings pumped up and down dragging her remaining captive through the smoke, its form blackened and gray with ash. Her face was reddened by the heat, her eyes squinted and appeared almost black, streaked with sweat and ash. She grimaced and scowled with the effort of having flown through a sea of twisting fire.
She could barely speak, struggling enough to breathe, sapped her flagging effort to stay aloft and above the reaching tongues of fire. The exertion was taking a toll. She flew lower and lower, unable to gain altitude.
As the smoke thinned she entered the area where the slough waters began to pool and widen, with a grey film of ash over the oily skin of the murky water.
The Pan and his retinue, his satyrs and dryads, had moved away from the area where she’d last observed them. She tried to call out, but her throat was scorched and raw from the fires.
“My Lord Pan!” she hissed, painfully, unable to make out much through watering eyes.
Fire-blackened brambles clawed into and out of the filmy water’s edge as Dellitch released her golem captive and dropped it onto the withered reeds along the soft bog. She alighted next to its body, exhausted and wheezing.
Smoke stung her eyes.
“Lord Pan!” she croaked, blinking and searching for his large form among the sickened swamp trees.
A strange, misshapen lump floated in the filmy water. She hopped forward for a closer look and realized the form was a floating body, its face bowed and buried in the water, unmoving. She looked up searching the irregular shoreline, her watering eyes beginning to clear.
No satyrs emerged from the brush, no dryads uncurled and spun back into simian form to threaten and challenge her.
They were all gone.
She heard movement behind her and turned.
The golem had arisen and stood to its feet unsteadily. It opened its eyes and stared expressionless at her. It twisted its neck from left to right and gaped rotating its jaw. For the first time, it spoke to her, its jaw making an odd popping noise.
“Take me to The Pan. I must speak to my queen.”
***
We moved down the winding road in thoughtful silence.
I considered what Jeremiah had told me, and realized I had gotten so far off in my thinking that I had been missing the bigger picture of what I had been recalled back to the Mid-World to do. I had to learn to trust The One in all things and not rely on the distractions of gate stones or reasoning out the where and how of this mission.
The giant pearl was a conduit, as I was. It was, Jeremiah concluded, the very stone I was sent to carry to the gate. Something within me responded to this. A part of me that knew that this strange orb I carried was none other than The Fidelis Stone. The Faith stone. The one stone which was symbolic of actualizing transformative power into circumstance. The Praesperous stone, the Hope Stone gave a promise of a future, just like the portentous dreams of Joseph. The Cordis Stone, the Heart stone, symbolizing the Love of The One, the Creator, revealed the Heart of Him who sacrificed and demonstrated the reason for all Hope. A Love that was extended to us even though we were not worthy of it, affirming the Good intentions and the plan of The One to redeem the peoples of the Worlds back to fellowship with Him. And finally the Fidelis stone, the concluding stone which required us to choose belief in both the promise of Hope, the intentions of Love, and the application of those Truths into our own circumstance. The symbolic concepts of each were powerful and worked together to jointly open the final door to the greater Kingdom promised to us. It all made sense on many levels. Together these made Truth accessible. To fellowship with the Truth of the One, we had to allow that Truth into our lives and live under the revolutionary implications of it. The key to all of it was Connection. All things severed from connection to The Source, The One, were in death throes. Life comes through connection to The One and through direct fellowship with The One. The Honor Sword exhibits the power of the quickening when it is bound to the arm of the one called to lead, and by their connection to obedience to The One. The Dust Dragon would not have been defeated without my yielding to The One and so being quickened by Him. The stones had no power until they were released to serve, rather than possessed and contained. The people in my company become more than a crowd when I took the time to know them by their names. Names were connections. I had told them. Names given were a connection to the quest and the mission. As long as the others whom I did not know by name, remained nameless to me, it was hard to know and feel a commitment to their loss. It had to be personal for us to feel a connection. This was the whole point of The One’s mission to the Surface World. He came to know us by experience and calls each of us by name.
What’s in a name? The answer was as clear to me at that moment as it could ever be: Connection.
I was mulling these thoughts over in my mind when a voice called out to us from the smoky road ahead. We turned and saw a small figure standing in dappled shadows amid billows of swirling smoke. The voice sounded female and young but something about it was familiar and disturbing.
As we cautiously approached, the figure became more defined. Small frame, long wispy straight hair, eyes large and blue beneath a tilted brow, as if she looked out from under something.
Her words were repetitive, in almost a sing-song monotone chant, as if she were talking to the air. Yet, upon seeing us approach, her voice grew in volume and distinction, accompanied by an odd sort of popping noise.
The haze of smoke made her face still indistinct.
Her mouth parted, and her pink lips paled, as she spoke once more, this time with exaggerated pauses between each word.
“Say…my…name.”
She raised her tilted head and as her hate-filled eyes met mine I immediately recognized her. Before I even knew what I was doing, her name came to my lips and I did the very thing she was asking of me.
And then the storm broke.
Excavatia 