"We are in the Throat, and the Blade Cerulean has joined with the unused portion of your soul! From that union, your spirit emerged, or its memory. ." Kiril trailed off, confused. The image of Nangulis before her couldn't sense his surroundings, but she could, if she chose. Even with just her peripheral awareness, she knew the mad Keeper Telarian yet wielded the conjoined blade Angul-Nis. Which meant Nangulis's soul wasn't actually free of its soulblade confinement.
"You said we succeeded in stopping the Traitor."
"Ten years ago, but now-"
"And now. .?" Nangulis prodded.
"Now we are called again to defend Stardeep. The Traitor stirs, and his agent this time is nothing less than a deluded Keeper!"
"Then I must go back into that gulf of unknowing darkness?"
"I. . perhaps if we. ."
Nangulis said nothing, merely looked into her eyes, trusting her. It was her decision. She knew he'd accept whatever course of action she suggested. A hollow bloomed in her heart so vacuous she thought her chest would collapse. Her body knew; if she didn't relinquish Nangulis, ask his higher spirit to retreat to the blade physically housing it, Telarian's scheme would succeed.
"Nangulis, you know I love you, and I always-" Her voice broke, but she continued, "I always will. Know that. Know that if. . when you leave me again. ." She sobbed, unable to verbalize how she imagined her life would cease.
She said instead, "Cynosure's statue in the Throat just fell to Telarian."
"What must I do?"
"Return to the dark gulf. You must return to the sword. Find Angul! Find him, and yourself in him-pull away from all that is dark, undecided, and nihilistic. Be Angul again. ." A sob escaped her, breaking her soliloquy.
The shade before her said, "I don't fear to return-the sacrifice was already made. I merely thank the guardians of Sild?yuir and the Sign that we were given this moment. Remember me, Kiril Duskmourn."
As Nangulis turned away, she murmured, "Until the day I die."
Telarian grasped a font of puissance, wondrous and overwhelming. He couldn't contain his joy as he wielded the conjoined blades. He'd never felt so free, so alive, so compelling. It was intoxicating!
He would have jumped and yelled in triumph if not for Cynosure. It had landed a strong initial blow, but Angul-Nis wiped away the damage before the crumpling pain could propagate through his flesh. His shredded clothing revealed fresh scars twining his forearms. He laughed-emblems of his coming triumph!
His eyes found the construct as it finished healing Delphe. He frowned. It charged him, one hand out as if to embrace him in a grasping palm. The idol moved swiftly for something that should have been slow and ponderous. But Angul-Nis revealed what Telarian must do. He thrust the blade forward cross-body, its tip down, deflecting the fist to the right and scoring it with flame.
The construct pulled its hand back, but not quickly enough to prevent Telarian from whipping Angul-Nis around and delivering a tremendous stroke to its wrist, severing the hand.
"Telarian, you are misled," came Cynosure's voice. "Can't you see it? The Traitor has you in its grip. You do not hinder him; you aid his greatest hope!"
Telarian suspected Stardeep's warden attempted to distract him. It knew it couldn't stand up to the wielder of Angul-Nis. He laughed, advancing. Delphe and Cynosure truly believed he was misled. Their lack of imagination and foresight was the reason he'd been forced to act alone. They were the ones responsible for aiding the Traitor by their opposition to his plan. Through their policies, if left unchecked, Xxiphu would eventually rise. They would never have allowed him to release the Traitor to his death-they would have argued that few alive could stand against him. True. But with Angul-Nis, few things were impossible.
He swung the conjoined blade in a scything whirlwind. Cynosure couldn't retreat quickly enough, and was caught in the blade-vortex. An explosion of blue-white flames and stone shrapnel heralded the statue's dissolution. So much for Stardeep's security.
To Telarian's right, the monk wielded an amulet of the Sign as if a cestus. With Delphe's aide, he was successfully staving off a Well-born avatar-a dream of the Traitor's hope of freedom. By the same token, the avatar, with its evolving form, firmly focused Delphe and the Sign-wielding monk away from him. Telarian's path to the Well was unimpeded. He walked to the edge and peered down.
All the previous times he'd glanced into the Well, he'd seen only empty space, and at the bottom, fire. With the conjoined blade in hand, he saw deeper, heard clearer, and understood more. Tentacular shadows streamed up the well, thick as sea grass. Abolethic melodies brooded and cajoled, swelling into a chaotic babble of sound that clawed at his certainty of purpose. Visibly containing and constraining the horror were the chains of Stardeep's bonds, those which kept the Traitor secure. Bonds that could be severed.
He saw where he must cut to end the Traitor's confinement. Even as understanding flooded him, Angul-Nis bucked and shuddered in his hand. He fumbled the blade and nearly dropped it down the Well.
Telarian swore, but retained his grasp on the blade. As his heartbeat stuttered in response to the slip that almost cost him everything, he appreciated what had just occurred. Fusing the two blades had also joined the two halves of Nangulis's spirit. The man, though formless, remained a Keeper of the Cerulean Sign. Somehow, despite having no physical shell in which to observe the world, Nangulis had learned what transpired in the Throat, and sought to oppose him in the only way he was able. Nangulis sought to rupture his own temporary existence by throwing himself back into dissolution. He was trying to break himself in two.
He would fail, decided Telarian. The conjoined blade enjoyed a power fueled by two soul halves, but the consciousness of the conjoined soul had little power over the blades. Nangulis's return was a surprising new element, certainly, but one with no ability to affect its physical shell, Angul-Nis. He was merely a ghost without form, a will without the ability to achieve an end.
The diviner laughed. While he wielded Angul-Nis, the blades would remain conjoined. Nis was more than a tool; it was also a trap. "Fight all you want," he whispered, "it'll do no good. I'll not let you go." Telarian tightened his grip and once more fixed his gaze into the swirling abyss before him.
The ethereal chains remained visible to him, five in all. The chains secured the Well, and the Traitor's ultimate prison. With Angul-Nis, he began to cut them. He sawed through the first one, and the swaying shadows choking the shaft increased the pace of their obscene undulation. The babble only his ears apprehended doubled in volume.
He sliced through the second phantom chain and paused. Something shrieked far down in the Well, something that had clawed at the boundary layer far past the limits of sanity.
The diviner smashed the third chain to shrapnel. A stroke like lightning leaped up the Well and shook all Stardeep. The light glared off the faces of Delphe, her mouth open in a hopeless shout, and the Sign-wielding monk, whose efforts were overcoming the avatar. Too late.
Something stirred in the Well's bowels, a shadow anticipating its release. A shadow that no longer retained elven shape, but instead pulsed with blasphemous abnormality. He was the High Priest of the Elder Ones, first servant of the vanished Abolethic Sovereignty, who had looked up the Well for a thousand years, who had tasted the blood of his betrayed kin, who sought to lead all star elves to extinction, and who was cast out of Sild?yuir for eternity. He sought to awaken the slumbering lords of Xxiphu from their lair in the nethermost craters of the deep earth. He was the Traitor. And in another few moments, Telarian would end the Traitor's life on the edge of-
"Remember me?" came a half-familiar voice behind Telarian as heart-stopping pain blossomed in the diviner's kidney. "Your spy returns for his payment!"