19. Void

19

VOID

A feeling of recognition goes off inside me as Lucca, Ariana, and I step through the arch and find ourselves in the city of Florence. But this is Florence like I’ve never seen it; though much of the city is the same as my home in the Twilight Realm, the entire place is luminous and strange.

Its Renaissance and Gothic-Baroque architecture, its cobbled streets and sprawling parkways, all of it is nearly the same, yet almost none of it is recognizable, since it’s all made from the same gold-infused, luminous white stone as the road.

It’s a city that would inhabit no normal plane of existence; as those golden sigils and script scroll through with millions of Ascendant phrases, I see that the magic which once gave this place its beauty and light is mostly broken, just like the road was.

Turrets are toppled; domes are sundered. The streets are upheaved and fountains are smashed. A wild greenery grows here now, swamping the city parks and devouring broken buildings with vivid leaves that flutter gold one way and silver the other, like sunlight and starlight combined.

But the order that was once here has given over to chaos .

It makes a feeling of doom take me now, as I am careful to keep my power free of any Light. Though nothing looks dark here, only fractured and broken, despite the mist that curls through the city, a feeling of intense darkness lingers over everything in sight.

We’re still only seeing pieces of the city, even now that we’ve entered it; as if even reality inside the city itself was broken beyond all ability to comprehend, the streets seem twisted in the mist, out-of-order with anything I know in the Twilight Realm.

I find myself turned around now, countless times, though we’ve taken a straight path. Where I thought we had entered the west side of the city, we now seem to be in the east quadrant, then on the outskirts of the far north. The place where we entered this broken Realm should have been right under the city center; instead, it portaled us to the outskirts, to that overlook, rather than where we should have wound up.

The time of day seems to be changing here, too. As we become disoriented yet again, I feel as if the color and temperature of the grey-blue light has changed from a slow sunrise to a deep twilight, as a cerulean hue darkens the skies above. As we take another few steps, that color darkens again—suddenly, I feel like it is full night, perhaps even midnight, or whatever version of night still exists in this place.

As we see a gargantuan version of the Palace of Light rise before us now, those luminous silver-gold vines and trees absolutely demolishing the front quadrangle and long drive, Lucca inhales. Then we move another step, and we’re suddenly right in front of my own Red Letter Hotel Florence, the color of the light returning to a dawn blue-grey-pink.

Lighting up this version of my home, written all through with gold.

“Portals.” I understand as I blink. “We’ve been walking right through portals this entire time… and we haven’t even felt it.”

“The light, the skies, the streets,” Lucca blinks also, as he gets it. “It all changes the moment we walk into another Nexus Realm. As we’ve been walking, we’ve moved into different versions of this city that are all somehow the same, over and over. ”

“It’s as if whoever ruined this place tried to salvage it countless times.” Ariana gazes at the Red Letter Hotel Florence with us, which is, but it isn’t. “As if they tried to resurrect it from its brokenness by moving it to the nearest, un-ravaged dimension, time and time again. Only to find that version of the city was ruined, too. Irreparably, by whatever happened.”

“Whatever killed this place killed all versions of it in its closest-vibrating dimensions.” I understand now as I take in my home, that is not. “The Twilight Realm and the human world are further dimensions away from this resonance. Somehow, they were not affected by what happened here.”

“Allowing Staphylogenes and Iris to build again, somewhere safe. And establish a new version of Florence, unscathed by whatever calamity killed this place.” Ariana gazes around. “I feel it here… the origin of light, artistry, and song that is Florence. Even in the human world, it has a reputation; a feeling of art, beauty, and music other places just don’t have. It’s a place that glorifies in the beautiful; this city must have been incredible before it fell. Stunning… a wonder of the ages.”

“A place where the gods themselves dwelled.” Lucca growls as his face darkens. “Before they ruined it.”

“We can’t just keep going in circles through these portals,” I say now as I take control of our current problem. “If we do, we’ll never find what we’re looking for—we’ll just keep going, traveling around this fractured city for eons. Until we die, I suppose, or give up. Hmm… let me consult our maps.”

Going deep within, I feel for Iris’ map to Staphylogenes’ heart, stored within my mind. As I feel for it, I also take out the physical maps our Light marked as the way to the heart.

Laying them out upon the broken gold-white cobblestones, I arrange them so the light-lines connect once more. They’re even fainter now than they were this morning; my red pen stands out clearly, however, and I remember how the maps all intersect.

As I finish laying them out, I tap into Iris’ map inside my mind. I understand it now, in a way I never did before. As that Ascendant map lights up inside my thoughts, I see how she mapped something for us that was not a two-dimensional space, but multi-dimensional. Iris’ map shows us connections up, down, and sideways through vibrational space.

A map through many Realms, rather than one.

“We need to feel Iris’ map with the Music.” I suddenly understand as I see what’s going on. “Rather than simply walking through these broken near-Realms for all eternity, we need to use the Music like a beacon to guide us through the right portals so we can get to the heart of this place.”

“Follow the Music’s resonance.” Ariana picks up on what I’m saying, and I feel her truth-reading power corroborate it. “We need to find the places where the Music is strongest, to guide us along Iris’ map through these portals. We use our intention, which gave us our own starting-point, seek and ye shall find , then let the Music guide us. Through all this cacophonous, chaotic resonance.”

As we all nod now, our trio pulls close. I only have a moment to wonder if we can even raise the Music in this place, when our bodies connect, and the Music is just suddenly barreling through us.

As if it’s far easier to create in this place, with the finer vibrations that exist here, I quickly understand why the masters of that most ancient power made this their high seat and creating place.

As the Music blares through me now like war horns gone amok, and symphonies of ear-splitting angelic bells, voices in that powerful magic overwhelm me. It’s everything I can do to hold on to our intention, seek and ye shall find , as I am disoriented by the Music’s breadth, depth, and towering height in this place.

As Lucca, Ariana, and I are all driven to our knees by this incredible Music now pouring through us, simply from touching each other in this place, I feel like I might be driven mad by it.

As that madness barrels in, I feel how Lucca and Ariana have clapped their hands to their ears, screaming from it, pushed too far already. I know then that I’m the one who has to get us through this .

As a roaring sensation like cannons pummels through me, I take control of our vast Music. I don’t know how I do it; I only focus the entirety of my being like a diamond-bright lance, skewering it into that raging sea of sound.

It ceases swamping us, tuning into the most beautiful delight.

I feel it now, shimmering along the paving stones of this ruined version of Florence as it points the way towards our destination. Seek and ye shall find , rushes through my mind over and over as I push to my feet, helping Lucca and Ariana up as both cease to scream.

I nod to the shimmering line of the Music, pointing our way now in this misty, half-midnight. We say nothing as we breathe in that towering sound, following the bright line of our power.

As if it tethers us to the correct path, we maneuver through dozens of twists and turns in the ruined fabric of reality, and finally manage to make progress. I feel it as the Music strengthens before us now, as if we’re closer to our destination.

As we come through yet another portal, however, we find ourselves in a place where the Music stops. A long hallway of vaulted porticos and broken, gold-white domes with twisting pinnacles that reach to the sky, it has a dark and light checkerboard floor all along its bright reaches.

It’s the only place we’ve seen black here; a dark onyx stone that alternates with the white marble to create the checkerboard pattern, all of it is still scrolled through with gold. I sense a different resonance in this space than elsewhere in the city, however. The opposite ends of the hallway seem to go on forever.

One devouringly dark—the other, annihilating and bright.

“This is where it all started. Where we all met in Florence… like the Pitti Palace, and the Palace of Light,” Ariana says now as she inhales in shock.

As I glance around, I see she is right. Because I recognize this hallway; this is the very same hall within the Palace of Light where Ariana spontaneously broke through Realms when her Dark Fae magic flared after encountering mine for the very first time.

Other than the black and white checkerboard floor, which doesn’t exist in either the human world Pitti Palace, or the Twilight Realm Palace of Light, the hall is the same. It was here that Ariana ran from me and found Lucca in the Twilight Realm on the opposite side of her divide.

It was here we all fought the Gold Eyes.

Where it brought us together for the very first time.

“But this hallway is nothing in the Palace of Light,” Lucca says now as he frowns. “It’s just a through-passage from the Palace of Dusk to the Palace of the Dawn, within the larger palace’s complex.”

“It is also nothing in the Pitti Palace in the human world, just a connector between larger structures of greater importance.” I muse now as I take in the hall we’ve entered. Though smashed fountains and ruined statuary grace its long niches, there is nothing here, except for the unique pattern on the floor. “Even though this hallway is nothing in our worlds, this is where our Music stops. It is here we will find something important. I know it.”

“This is the balance-point of the Realm,” Ariana says as I feel her use her deepest truth-reading power to figure out what is going on. She crouches, setting one palm on the floor and closing her eyes. “This is why the Gold Eyes brought us all together at this point in our Realms. Because it is like an anchor through all our worlds—I feel it, like a place the Music ceases to move. That is why the ancients made it a through-way. To the left lies the darkest places we could ever go from here. And to the right… the lightest.”

“So Staphylogenes hid his heart at this balance-point so he could access it in all other Realms?” Lucca asks, as he scowls now. “I suppose that makes sense.”

But Ariana is already moving forward with her eyes closed, her hands out as she explores the space. Surprised, I realize she’s making for the exact niche where the Gold Eyes once surfaced inside this very hall—the exact spot we all battled it.

As she walks forward, right on the bright seam between worlds her power created, I reach for her—too late. She shrieks; as Ariana’s balanced Animante Dark Fae power flares, she tumbles through a searingly bright, gold seam on the floor, which rips right through space anew from her power.

A seam which is also so very dark.

As Ariana falls through that blazing golden seam in the floor to I-don’t-know-where, I am thrust to the darkest end of the hall by a terrible gust of the most cacophonous Music I’ve ever heard.

At the same time, Lucca is thrust to the end of the hall with the brightest light. As a dark void devours me, and a scorching light devours Lucca, Ariana is swallowed by the golden seam in the floor. I feel it as our trio is sundered, broken apart by the power in this place.

A trap the Gold Eyes set for us long ago—or for any who might make it this far.

It takes us down in this city of death, ruin, and Night. As I’m sucked into a vortex of hell, one of countless hell dimensions I’ve heard about but never had the terrible chance to visit, I feel myself burned alive even as I’m frozen to death.

In an instant, everything inside me is shredding into annihilation as I scream and scream; a tortured sound, it rings in my ears, helpless, even as I make it.

Because this is far worse than being trapped in my Revenant state. This is true hell, where everything is torture, not just my inner demons seeking to make me hate myself until the end of time. Here, I will actually be in hell until the very end of time.

A madness I can never escape.

I only have moments until that happens. But I have weathered the extremes of torture before; I face it now, holding on to my very last shred of sanity as I feel my mind sharpen .

In this moment, I still have my faculties; I still have my thoughts and hard-won mind-control from all those endless years under my father’s unforgiving reign and Emiliana’s endless torture.

As I focus my thoughts like a lance now, sending them not into this space but beyond it, into that otherworld I can still access, I see the Ascendant Sigils waiting for me. I know I can raise the Music without my partners now; hurtling it up in a tirade, I take all the Music my Dark Fae power can pour through me and blast it into the otherworld beyond this hell Realm.

I firm my lance-bright intent to take me to the place I seek and bring my lovers there unscathed. It works. I don’t know how I did it, but I am suddenly hurtling out from that horror-plane, back to the ruined place that is the Ascendant’s version of Florence.

But I’m not stopping inside the checkerboard hall; I’m somehow rushing through it, as if that place is only a mirage, hiding greater things beneath.

As I drop now into an endless tomb of vaulted catacombs high as cathedrals, somewhere beneath where we were before, I feel Lucca torn from some angel-realm where he was tempted to stay forever. Ariana is summoned up from some endless, grey nothingness where she landed. We come together, as my power with the Music shoves us into that endless, vaulted place.

As a pure white tomb shimmers into being right before us now in this endless underground vault, I know to my heart of hearts it is what we seek.

Staphylogenes’ heart’s resting place.

We heave hard breaths as my Music blazes out, leaving us in this space of endless catacombs and vaults. I feel it as a fell air breathes all around us here; death is everywhere, as a slow, terrible sensation of countless beings haunts this nowhere space.

And yet, this place is still somehow beneath Florence; I feel it to my bones as an eerie, low light glows through the vaults. As if even the powerful mist of the ancients can’t penetrate this place, I sense we are completely alone down here, in this cavern of endless dark.

We’re alone in a void beneath the first Florence of the Ascendants—the place where Staphylogenes hid his heart. It is the one place Ascendants would never go, I know, as I feel death all around me in this place.

Because whatever happened to the city above not only ruined it, and this entire Realm—it ruined countless Ascendants, as well. It twisted and morphed them into unknown creatures, as they Fell so abominably from whatever calamity happened in the first Florence they created. They could never be redeemed, even by their own cohort; and so they were banished here, beneath their first city.

Left down here to rot.

Their souls seethe around me now, as Ariana, Lucca, and I draw back-to-back, terrified. We take Faeanic spears from our thigh-holsters, as whatever it is down here spirals in. Whatever still exists here is not even close to perturbed by us. It thunders in anger now that we have entered and desecrated this space.

The space it now calls home.

Forever.