Beloved, I'm sorry. So very sorry. If I could have warned you I would have. For nine hundred years I have longed for and dreaded this day. My beloved other half …
Near-hysterical laughter mingled with Fritz's sobs. You're the Holy Sentinel. Are we going to have to kill you as well? Grant you mercy as we did to the Great Sentinels? Why would he do this to you? To us? What went so wrong that Teufel would bring all this cruelty to people he was supposed to love?
Drache rumbled, the sound making the Citadel shiver, and bowed his head low. Fritz trembled at the size of him—and the size of his teeth, the longest of which was bigger than his own head. Beloved …
Swallowing his fear, unable to resist that plaintive voice he could not live without, Fritz closed the distance between him and the poor, trapped Sentinel that was the other half of his soul. Drache huffed at him, breath strong enough to rustle Fritz's robes. Still Fritz kept walking, until finally he was able to reach out and gingerly placed his hands on Drache's enormous snout. Fresh tears streamed down his cheeks as warmth and joy and pain rushed through him. "Drache …" he choked out and buried his head in his arms on Drache's snout, torn between joy and pain, the agony of knowing that they were together but would always be apart.
There is yet hope. The child of chaos is here, is he not? And now that you are here with me, the spell of silence breaks and I can tell you all that I know.
Fritz swallowed his agony, forced himself to behave as High Seer, as Priest of Night and Day, and turned to face Sasha and David. "Meet Drache, my long lost other half. He says now that we are together the spell keeping him silent is broken. He can tell us all that he knows of what happened long ago."
"Where is Teufel?" Sasha asked. "He drove us here with the phantoms, so he must be close."
The phantoms always come out at the stroke of midnight and stay until the stroke of dawn. Of Teufel I have felt nothing. If he is here, he is masking his presence well.
"He says Teufel isn't here, or else he is masking his presence too well for Drache to sense him," Fritz said, grimacing.
Sasha sighed. "I like this situation less with every second that passes, but I guess there is nothing we can do about it." He sheathed his sword and gazed around the sanctuary. "This place is stunning."
"It's beautiful," David said. "I can't imagine how it must look in the daylight."
The most beautiful thing in the world, and when we sang the hymns, they could be heard throughout the city, Drache said, and as he said, Fritz could remember it: people filling the sanctuary of the Citadel, voices rising, spilling out across the city where people would pause in their work and sing along until the hymns ended and the last strains faded away.
Sasha finally looked at them again. "You said you could now tell us all that you know about Licht and Teufel."
Drache stirred, rumbles shaking the Citadel, chain rattling, the sound echoing. Fritz …
Yes, Fritz said and placed both of us his hands on Drache's snout as he settled again. Closing his eyes, he poured his magic out, reaching out to Drache's. Tears stung his eyes again as the two halves of magic met, intertwined, and he felt just a hint of what it meant to be complete.
As they worked their magic, Drache's rainbow eyes began to glow brighter, the jewel-tone colors growing sharp and reflecting off the glass of the Citadel windows. Fritz drew a sharp breath as the magic took, poured through him, and then out in the shape of a shimmery, translucent image of the Drache who had always inhabited his mind—an image of the man they had once been before Teufel split Ehrlich's soul in half.
The wispy image bowed to them, seeming to flicker in and out like a candle. Fritz poured more magic into the spell, one hand still resting on Drache's snout, and the illusionary Drache seemed to stabilize.
"Welcome to the Citadel," Drache said, voice soft and whispery. "It has been too long since anyone but Teufel has entered this sacred place. I am limited in what I can do to help, but I will do my best."
"Tell us what happened," Sasha replied quietly. "Tell us why Licht tried to destroy the world."
Drache nodded. "It started small. Licht was always the most … reserved of the pantheon. The dragons loved to play, loved to be involved in everything. The gods have always ruled as equals, but if anyone was truly in command, it was the Dragons of the Three Storms. Chaos, after all, is the foundation. But they grew too close, too involved, Licht felt. He was always of the opinion that gods should hold themselves back, observe and guide from on high. The others sided with the Dragons, living close to their children, accessible and always participating. Little by little, that blinded them to problems …"
"I know a little of that," Sasha said. "Raz explained what the gods do know—that the dragon Raiden was willfully oblivious to the problems created by his lover, and all three dragons neglected the growing problems of their land. Raz grew bitter and cynical with the behavior of his children and turned from them until too late…"
"The Basilisk grew increasingly depressed and isolated himself while secrets and jealousy tore apart the court of the Faerie Queen," Drache finished somberly. "Everywhere Licht turned, he saw the ill effects of the way the dragons and the others had chosen to live. He tried constantly to tell them to remove themselves, to step back, to see what they were doing to themselves and their children. But they wouldn't listen, and frustration turned to anger and eventually turned to hate—and ultimately madness. I think Licht would have moved against them much sooner, save that for a long time Teufel tempered him. Neither of them had always been the terrible beings whom all now fear."
Sorrow filled his face as Drache tilted his head back. Fritz started to reach for him, feeling the pain, the longing, the centuries of sorrow. But his hand slid through the illusion, and Fritz swallowed against the raw pain. He returned his hand to Drache's snout, the scales warm and smooth, reassuring in their own way, but not what either of them needed.
"Licht was often lonely, or so Teufel once told me. Choosing to isolate himself and live apart, he did not often have company—either mortals or his fellow gods. He lived in his tower and left the running of the country to a group of priests with whom he rarely directly spoke. When he did see the others of the pantheon, too often the meeting devolved into bitter arguments.
"One day, after a particularly ugly fight with the Three Storms, Licht retreated to Gold Rock, his favorite spot in Schatten, to lick his wounds. A boy stumbled across him—a young man, really." Drache looked at David. "He was about your age, but regretfully not your maturity. Unfortunately, despite all he said, all the arguments with his brothers, his beliefs … in the end, Licht was no better than his siblings. The willful blindness he hated in them, especially in the dragons, he fell prey to whenever he looked at that boy."
Sasha frowned. "Boy? What boy? I have never encountered anywhere a tale of Licht attaching himself, in any way, to a mortal. Licht was well-known for the distance he kept, as you've said. What mortal?"
Fritz's mouth twisted as he shared the memories that filled his mind. "The boy, whose name was Stefan, did not realize at first who it was he had encountered. He had only skipped away from his chores to have fun for a bit and found a wounded, sad, beautiful man. Stefan took the man to his home where he lived alone and nursed the man back to health. Licht, touched by the boy's kindness, went along with it.
"Licht eventually left, but could not forget Stefan. Time and again he returned to Gold Rock to watch the boy, though he kept to the shadows and had no intention of revealing himself. But Stefan knew he was there and gradually figured out who it was that watched him. One day he revealed what he knew, and Licht ceased to hide. They started out simply talking, being friends insomuch as mortals and gods can be friends … but it was not long before Licht took the boy as his lover. In secret, of course, always in secret, because Licht did not want to admit—to himself or anyone else—that he had fallen for a mortal just as he had raged at his siblings for doing."
"They went on that way for some time—months at least, possibly years, though Teufel never told me for certain," Drache said. "I do know that others in the village become aware of Stefan's lover, saw his good fortune. Many became jealous, some hostile, and one day it culminated in a fight that led to Stefan's death. Desperate to try to hide what they had done, the townsfolk burned the body."
"That would never work," Sasha said with a sigh. "I guess the villagers never knew the true nature of Stefan's lover?"
Drache nodded. "When Licht arrived later in the day, it took him only moments to realize what had transpired. Unfortunately, Stefan's body had been burned. He could not restore him. What he did instead was capture Stefan's soul and prevent it from being reborn as a mortal. He kept the soul and placed it in his own shadow, poured his power into it to give it life, made of it a living shadow."
"Teufel," David whispered.
Sasha shook his head, looking impressed and horrified in equal measure. "Everyone always believed that Teufel was just his shadow. Even the other gods have never mentioned believing differently. How did the gods never realize the truth? Surely Zhar Ptitsa, of all of them, would have noticed that Teufel was, at heart, a human soul."
"I don't know," Drache replied with a shrug. "I would hazard that the soul changed so much, became Licht's shadow so completely and lost any traces of its mortal origins, that there was no humanity left for even a god to detect. Given how distracted they all were back then, it is not out of the realm of possibility that he simply never noticed the soul had vanished. Sometimes they tire of being reborn and drift back into raw chaos."
"So Stefan became Teufel," David said, looking stunned.
"Yes," Fritz said. "Stefan became Teufel, and together Licht and his shadow were happy again for a time."
"But … " Sasha said.
Fritz grimaced. "At first, everything truly was well. Licht was so remote, so reserved, that Teufel was good for him and for Schatten. Licht had always been content to keep his distance and let his children manage themselves for the most part. The most he offered was occasionally visiting his priests, to whom he had granted the infamous power of Seeing. Once upon a time, people from all over the world visited Schatten to hear their possible fates. I would be surprised if anyone beyond Schatten remembers that."
Sasha shook his head. "I certainly did not know it. We know of the Seers, that they were admired and feared and the most powerful of magic users, but I never knew the other four countries had sought Schatten out for visions. It makes sense, though."
Drache said, "It was Teufel who found me, gave me power, raised me up to be the Priest of Night and Day. He picked out my twelve Priests, six of Night, six of Day. Together we ruled the country and told the fates of the world. Teufel helped Sonnenstrahl flourish, built up Raven Knoll after Licht gifted him with Unheilvol, made Schatten great. Licht, all the while, kept his distance, content to watch from afar like the sun to which he is bound. Always, he regarded Teufel as his moon.
"What Teufel wanted, Licht let him have. Rare was the occasion Licht denied Teufel anything. Eventually, the power began to corrupt Teufel. Licht might have stepped in if he had been around more, but by the time Teufel began to shift from shadow to darkness, the problems in the world had gotten much worse. Licht spent more time beyond Schatten, trying to make his brothers see reason … and then later, working his plots against them. Teufel loathed being ignored and neglected. He became obsessed with Schatten, with controlling it. I think he believed that if he could not have Licht, he would have Schatten. He poured out his love and his rage on Licht's children.
"Those of us who should have better seen Licht's descent into madness, the true depths of Teufel's lust for power, the way their connection meant they were actually poisoning each other, instead kept our heads down, too cowardly or captivated to stand up and fight back. By the time we did make a stand, it was too late.
"Licht's rage turned completely to madness, which manifested as a desire for destruction, and so he set about causing it. In Kundou, he taught the Priest of Storms how to steal the power of the Three Storms and seal the dragons away. He provoked the riot that's resulted in the death of Zhar Ptitsa and manipulated the Faerie Queen into giving him a poison that would allow him to steal the destructive powers of the Basilisk."
Sasha frowned. "How do you know all that?"
"Because I Saw it," Drache replied. "My power … what you see now, between Fritz and me, is paltry compared to the Priest of Night and Day we once were. As Ehrlich, my powers were nigh unstoppable, gifted by a beautiful shadow who once, in his own way, cared for me. The past, present, and future were mine to see, and I had the strength to sustain most of the visions. When I could no longer deny that everything was going wrong, when I felt the world scream as chaos lost its grounding, I went to the top of the Citadel and I Saw. But I acted too late, and when my priests and I finally stood against Teufel we lost—brutally, humiliatingly—and suffered cruel punishment for our defiance.
"The only good that came out of the entire affair was that the Basilisk stood strong. He killed Licht and gained the world enough time to fix itself. But the death of Licht broke Teufel, and he surrendered completely—irrevocably, I fear—to his own black heart and the madness that had been slowly infecting him because of his bond with Licht. With nothing else to lash out at, he turned on Schatten. That is when we defied him, or tried to, and there was no one to stop him when he struck. He murdered the residents of Sonnenstrahl first and bound them as phantoms just to break us. It worked.
"After that, he turned my twelve priests into the Great Sentinels, created the Great Wall, and bound them to it. Me, he saved for last, after I had been made to watch all the rest of Schatten suffer. When there was no one else left to break, he broke me—took my life, captured my soul, and tore it two. One half he bound forever as you see me now, the Holy Sentinel chained for all time to the Citadel. He cast the other half out into the world where it was cursed to be reborn again and again into a life of madness and misery."
Sasha sighed softly, face full of sorrow as he looked at the glass ceiling and the endless dark beyond. "Some loves are panacea, some loves are poison. Bad enough when an ordinary man cannot see his love for which it is. All the world suffers when the gods refuse to see the difference." He looked at them again, reaching out to gently touch David's cheek before he said, "At least we know what really happened back then. Armed with that knowledge, we should be able to figure out how to stop Teufel and set all to rights again. Which raises an interesting question: Teufel is the Shadow of Licht. He's not human; he's a human soul sharing Licht's life and power. He should have died with Licht, but did not. Why? Answering that question will tell us how to kill him, but where we can find the answer I don't know."
"Come, now, your Majesty. Are you so easily flummoxed as that?" Drawled a cold, derisive, and familiar voice.
They turned as one toward the sound of it, and Fritz's mouth gaped when he saw who had spoken, who stalked toward them like a Sentinel that had scented easy prey. Sasha immediately went for his sword—
"Enough!" The word boomed out, making the Citadel shake and groan even as it filled with brilliant, blinding, pale lavender light. Fritz screamed in pain and tried to shield his eyes, but found he could not move.
A cold, mocking chuckle filled the Citadel as the light slowly faded. "Now that is a Light of Truth." When the light faded away entirely, Fritz saw that even Sasha was frozen in place, gold eyes blazing with fury.
Still laughing, Killian walked up to Sasha and smacked his cheek sharply, then trailed one hand down his chest. "You tried, fire child, I will grant you that, but chaos does not mean that I lose all ability to make people dance the way I want." He drew the sword from Sasha's sheath and walked over to David.
"Killian, what are you doing?" David asked, tears falling down his cheeks.
Killian stroked his face, then leaned up to kiss the tears away. "Do not trouble yourself, pretty. All will soon be well and as it should be." He kissed David's lips, then turned away and walked over to Fritz and Drache.
Though he still appeared to be a young boy, Fritz would know those hard, frigid eyes and cruel smile anywhere. He had gazed upon them countless times when he was still Ehrlich. "Your eyes, your smile … but you wear a different face. How?"
"Ehrlich, Ehrlich … so beautiful and talented, in the temple and in bed. If you had but stayed obedient and willing you would not be suffering so. I could have used your help all these centuries, you know."
"We would rather die," Drache said and growled.
"You know very well I would never grant you anything as easy as death," Killian replied reprovingly. "I thought I had taken care of you, but I see that you've been very naughty, communicating with each other. I'll have to think of another way to break you to obedience."
"I wish we had defied you sooner," Fritz whispered as Drache roared in agreement so loudly that the glass ceiling cracked in several places.
Killian laughed and the sound of it seemed to make the room grow colder. "But you didn't, and here you are, still trying too late to be something other than a priest and a whore. I think a grander punishment is in order, but I have other things to do first. Until I feel like dealing with you, be as stone." He waved his hand dismissively at them.
Fritz made a strangled noise and nearly fell to his knees as the Light of Truth released him, catching himself on Drache. In the next moment, he felt hot and cold all at once—except for his feet, which had no feeling at all. The numb feeling creeped up slowly, and Fritz's eyes pricked with tears. Drache …
But there was no reply, as Drache too began to fall to the spell, both of them paralyzed again as the spell crawled up their bodies, turning flesh to stone.
He watched, helpless and afraid, as Killian turned to Sasha. "I suppose I should be honored that those fools sent not just a child of chaos, but the Tsar of Pozhar to stop me. How does it feel, your Majesty, to die so far from home? To die knowing that you have not just failed, but by handing yourself to me have doomed the world to return to the dark times from which it is so desperately struggling?"
"What—" Sasha's question was cut off with a pained cry as Killian abruptly plunged the sword into his gut, then viciously yanked it out again. He watched, unmoved, as Sasha fell to floor, blood pooling out all around him.
"No!" David screamed, and Fritz felt it when he broke the hold of Teufel's magic.
The last thing Fritz heard before the spell claimed him completely was David's wracking sobs.