Savior of Istara (4 page)

The priests of Eresh
wandered the eastern deserts and coasts of shattered Faltyr. Their
power had been restored as soon as Eresh reclaimed Her burgled book
from the fallen. And Her clergy set to work immediately, gathering
up the remains of the millions dead, processing them, and then
securely storing them away in bone repositories like those in
Istara.

The apocalyptic vision faded
as I opened my eyelids, replaced by the bright light of the torches
ensconced along the walls of the familiar subterranean chamber. The
mummified members of Clan Viligotti surrounded me, watching
silently as the lone priest of Eresh had earlier.

Serra was amongst them,
staring blankly at me from her coffin. I blinked back at her,
bewildered by my circumstances.

Had it been but a dream?
Some cheap trick conjured by a contused mind? Something to steal my
time and sabotage my hope? How long had I wasted slumbering on the
floor of this crypt while my mother languished in a dungeon
awaiting execution?

In the end, I wish it had
been some hobgoblin of the mind. But this isn’t that kind of story.
The reality was far worse.

As I rose from the floor of
the catacombs, my eyes never left the face of my fallen friend. I
smiled wanly and then promptly stumbled over something lying at my
feet. As I pitched forward, I collided with Serra’s coffin,
upsetting it. It rocked backward violently, causing me to grab for
it. The heavy glass display case proved too much for me to leverage
from such an awkward position. Instead I managed to dash myself and
Serra to the unforgiving stone in spectacular fashion.

We landed in a tangled
embrace of glass, blood, and bone dust. I never expected to be
reunited with my childhood friend, comforted by her embrace once
more. For a brief eternity I gazed into her dead eyes, searching
for the light and innocence I so lovingly recalled but finding only
emptiness inside.

Instinctively, I drew
closer, not realizing exactly what I’d done until my full, warm
lips brushed her shriveled, cold ones. I pulled away instantly,
recoiling from my hideous deed.

My breathing was rapid,
shallow, and my cheeks flushed hotly. What had I done? I’d
embarrassed Serra again, only this time in front of her family.
Could she, would she, ever forgive me? I tore my eyes away from
hers, unable to bear the shame.

My gaze settled upon the
cumbersome stumbling block now removed from my path. As its true
nature dawned on me, horror and bile filled me with equal measure.
The book from the dais in the Temple of Eresh now lay at my
feet.

Was this some cruel trick of
fate or, worse yet, of the Lords of the Underworld? Had they chosen
to play me for a fool like Ra’Tallah? If so, had I somehow offended
them by trespassing into their domain? Or were they tasking me to
defend the sanctity of this holy city by providing me with a tool
to smite the enemies of Istara?

In my eagerness to believe
that I was in some way special to them, I deluded myself into
accepting the latter and its blasphemous intentions. I chose to
become the Savior of Istara. But I am only a pretender to that
title. As I’ve stated before, the true savior was my first love,
Serra Viligotti. After she leapt from her coffin into my arms, a
masterful plan stretched out before me, grand in its designs,
deadly in its consequences.

After returning Serra to her
resting place sans display case, I turned my attention to the
contents of the
Liber Inferum
. The language barrier I’d
anticipated evaporated as I flipped through its pristine pages. Its
forbidden knowledge filled me as easily as if it’d been penned in
my native dialect.

If I am nothing else, I am
studious, oft times to a fault. Despite my shredded sanity, I
plumbed the sinister depths of that folio of fiends and the fallen
until I found what I sought, the incantation used by Ra’Tallah to
animate and control his legions of undead minions. And now the
secret was mine.

Inspired by novels of
mysteries, intrigues, and adventures I’d read in my youth, I
conspired to set powerful enemies against those occupying my city
as well as their confederates amongst the citizenry. Behind the
gilded gates of the Temple of Shamash waited an army of knights
hungry for battle, having watched its neighbors and relatives
starved and slaughtered by the men of Golthus.

As a result, the Knights of
Shamash—the most feared, yet respected crusaders in the land of
Ny—needed only sufficient pretense to enter the fray on our side.
And I intended to provide it…by any means necessary, even if it
damned my soul to the hottest of the Nine Hells in the
process.

In the aftermath of the
Cataclysm, the Churches of the Holy Trinitas swore a blood oath
against those using the alchemical or necromantic arts for anything
other than healing purposes. Various militant orders of knights and
monks considered it their sacred duty to enforce this oath and
punish anyone guilty of violating it. Crusaders of Shamash were the
worst of the lot.

In my overzealousness, I
failed to consider the far-reaching consequences of my plan of
action or the true agenda of my divine benefactors. Instead of the
scalpel I required to cut out the infection, I ended up wielding a
scythe.

Despite very little training
in the use of Aethyr-magic, especially necromancy and other blood
magic, preparing the sinister invocation did not prove as tricky as
baiting the trap. I scavenged most of the material components from
those interred in the catacombs, the remainder from a few discrete
vendors in the marketplace. Having no currency on hand, I bartered
items taken from the affluent residents of the necropolis, their
posthumous donation to the liberation of Istara.

With materials procured and
preparations completed, I waited for the burning eye of Shamash to
fall below the horizon. In the time between Mother Sun’s descent
and Her Daughter’s rise, I cloaked myself in the deepest shadows
cast by the lights of the city and sought out those who hunted me
so fervently.

When I found Uffu’s
nocturnal patrol, a gang of local thugs and foreign troops, I let
them think me the mouse and them the eagle. Fleet of foot and quick
of wit, I darted from shadow to shadow, luring my pursuers to their
final resting place.

And then the hunters became
the hunted. Using my superior knowledge of twisting tunnels below
the city cemetery, I stalked them, killing them one by one, until
only the traitorous magistrate remained. Rusting swords, axes, and
arrows lifted from the resting places of Istara’s dead aided my
deadly task.

Harassing Uffu at every
turn, I lured the frazzled magician back to the crypt of Clan
Viligotti, to where my Serra and her family awaited the final
component to complete the ritual. As Uffu the Unfortunate entered
the crypt, he glanced about the room frantically. In his panic, he
failed to see my hiding spot, one of the many hollow recesses
carved into the walls of the catacombs.

As the magician spun in my
direction, I fired a single arrow. The missile crossed the chamber
before Uffu could react. It punctured the mage’s left cheek before
exiting gruesomely through his other one. Blood erupted from his
mouth, spilling onto the intricate circle drawn into the
floor.

The effect was
instantaneous. The dead shivered, shook, and then walked. Although
they were many, they acted as legion. And I was their commander;
they would do my bidding without question as long as I drew
breath.

As the others set upon Uffu,
clawing and biting at his flesh, Serra paused beside me. Did she
recognize me or was she merely obeying my subconscious desire to
reconnect with her? Was she truly different than the other mindless
dead or merely a reflection of my own desires?

The vacant look in her eyes
told me everything that I needed to know. I could bring back the
dead, but I couldn’t resurrect those old feelings, the raw emotions
I’d felt for someone when I’d loved them with the heart of an
innocent. After all, if my innocence had not perished along with
Serra Viligotti, it certainly died the night of her
reanimation.

In life, Serra had been my
best friend and first love. In death, she became the spearhead of a
terrifying but relatively bloodless attack by undead that would
provoke the Church of Shamash to action. And thanks to my intrigues
and machinations, blame for it would land squarely on the neck of
the true enemies of Istara like the executioner’s ax honed and
ready for my mother’s own.

My final part in this sick,
sordid piece was the hardest for me to play…that of the victim. But
I sold it. To rave reviews, as those who found me in the rain
outside the gates of the Temple of Shamash accepted what they saw
with ease: a gore-covered teenage girl in tears, one nearly on the
verge of panic.

Until now, they believed me
to be the victim of evil men using dark magic to ferret me out of
hiding. No one was the wiser. Certainly they didn’t see me as the
orchestrator of the plot. They were as blind to my role in the
affair as I was to the true intentions of Lady Death when she’d
loaned me her book.

Behind me, little Serra
Viligotti led the charge of her clansmen in a herky-jerky fashion.
Around them, corpses rose from crypt and catacomb, from tomb and
temple—even the jumbled mass of bones of those unfortunate souls
lost in the Cataclysm had answered the
Liber Inferum
’s call.
For on that moonless night, under the cleansing rains of a storm
skirting the arid coastline, all of the dead in Istara obeyed my
command.

In the end, I may have freed
Istara from the clutches of Golthus, but it took a damning
deception to make it happen. And to make matters worse, I’ve had to
live with that lie and carry its weight upon my soul every day
since. I’ve had to listen to unmerited praise and accolades for
saving my city at the expense of another, a Pyrrhic victory at
best.

At least until today. Tired
of living a lie, I composed this confessional to set the record
straight, regardless of the consequences. In the aftermath of the
undead outbreak, I became a hero, a savior to the people of my fair
city for raising the alarm. But I, Tameri, daughter of Breuxias, am
not the real Savior of Istara. If anything, I was almost its
damnation.

Acting on my commands, my
dearly departed friend, Serra Viligotti, led the attack that
provided the excuse for Mother Sun’s crusaders to enter the fray
against the blasphemers implicated by my acts. She endured the
gnawing hunger for fresh flesh that reanimation had created within
her. Though she begged me with her flat, lifeless eyes, I couldn’t
allow her to feast, not even a nibble. And then she suffered bodily
destruction under the shining mace of a Knight of Shamash, a
merciful Final Death that sent her soul screaming back into the
Underworld with no hope of return.

A terrifying array of
mummies, zombies, and skeletons shambled after Serra, making a good
show of snarling, moaning, and gnashing their teeth. But for all
intents and purposes, they were harmless as puppets on an invisible
string, fighting animatedly but drawing little blood in the
process.

One after another, they fell
under the flashing swords and heavy maces of the crusaders. In a
measure of moments, my entire legion met an ignoble fate, most
cleaved, crushed, or conflagrated by the overzealous
knights.

The gold-clad Knights of
Shamash may have liberated my city from the men of Golthus and
their confederates, but the witch hunt didn’t end there. As I laid
the shattered bones of Serra Viligotti to rest alongside her kin
once again, countless others paid an awful price for my blasphemous
acts.

But it was worth it. It’s
terrible to say, but it’s true. I would do it all again to save my
mother, to save all of Istara, even if it meant Serra had to suffer
the indignity of reanimation and destruction every night from here
to the end of this cycle of ages. Though I would always love Serra,
I loved Istara even more, enough to desecrate the grave of my
childhood friend, commit blasphemy, and risk my eternal soul to
save my home, all our homes.

And risk it I did. For all
intents and purposes, I’d remained an innocent until the night of
my dark deeds in the House of the Dead. Now I’d never be innocent
again. The taint of the Underworld would forever be upon my soul
due to the actions I’d taken to save my beloved city.

Though I feel no particular
love for Golthus, I regret the Church’s decision to put the city
and its citizens to the torch. But I certainly understand it.
Nearly sixteen centuries removed from the Cataclysm, and we’re
still willing to assume the worst about the living when the dead
rise from the grave.

But can you blame us? We are
the bastard barbarian children of a post-cataclysmic age trying to
survive in a savage world. And in the aftermath of Faltyr’s Golden
Age, few things united its peoples like their common fears, someone
repeating the sins of our apocalyptic past being the worst of
them.

Fear blinded the followers
of Mother Sun to my true agenda. And fear bound them to my version
of reality, albeit a wildly distorted one. The discovery of the
bodies of Uffu and his confederates in the tunnels beneath the
cemetery confirmed the validity of my wild tale for the inquisitive
priests of Shamash. If any doubted my veracity, they suffered in
silence; none of the clergy came forward to challenge the majority
opinion. Most of them considered me to be a young, well-meaning
patriot who’d been pushed to the brink, forced into the catacombs,
and then hunted like a rat in a maze by a gang of unscrupulous men
using might and magic to ferret me out.