20. Sun

Chapter 20

Sun

E ven on Hadi’s back, the climb was hard. My muscles burned from clinging to him. More than once, Kiar slipped, holding onto the mountainside with bleeding fingers.

Bracken’s wings were covered in frost. The sounds of our labored breathing were just as loud as the gusting winds and the chattering of Clem’s teeth was our percussion.

Kiar grunted, drawing our attention and for a moment my heart felt like it was about to stop when he slipped and kept slipping over the sheer ice.

“Kiar!” I shouted, just as he caught himself on the steep rocks.

My heart was in my throat as I watched him struggling to right himself.

Finally, Bracken jumped down, catching himself with a flap of his wings.

With his free hand, he pushed Kiar up, helping him climb until he could reach the narrow ledge.

“Hurry!” Hadi hissed.

“I’m sorry,” Kiar said piteously. The poor thing was scratched and torn everywhere I looked, but there was no time to do anything about it.

The sun had set hours ago.

Above us, the full blood moon shone, traveling across the sky.

There was no time left. An hour, maybe.

“Keep going,” I said, and Hadi went ahead, leading the way.

I held on tight, squeezing my eyes shut, praying desperately for the end to be near. We had been climbing for hours. Tsuki’s temple must be near–

“Yes!” Hadi cried out. “Finally!”

My eyes flew open as he took us over the edge onto a flat plane and there, standing long abandoned, was Tsuki’s temple.

It was entirely open and made of wood and stone and pillars taken from the very mountain it was erected on and appeared to almost be part of the wilderness despite the obvious structures.

I climbed off of Hadi’s back, slowly approaching the archway.

The others joined from behind us, sighing in relief.

“Here we are, Sun. Summon your God,” Hadi declared.

I looked up at the moon. An hour remained, maybe less.

“The Goddess. Your Goddess, Hadi,” I corrected him. The closer I came, the more I saw that it was in disarray. The temple was smaller than I imagined. It was a relic of a bygone era trapped in an abandoned wasteland.

The wooden, sloping frame was worn and falling apart, and the roof, like an overturned flower, rotted out.

Pilgrimages used to stop here, and the most devout lived in nearby villages before the invasion, inhospitable hellholes in my honest opinion. However, it looked like not a soul had touched this place since well before Taiyo became the sole patron God of Gaulu’s empire.

The emperor had banned her worship and stripped her of deification in our holy texts. But somehow, it felt strange to see an immortal’s place of worship in such disarray, even the traitor Tsuki’s.

“What is this?” I asked, unable to move forward.

At first, I thought the tether had dragged me back as I was lifted from the ground. But to my surprise, I realized that Hadi had grabbed me by the fabric of my robe, holding me still as the others closed in.

He regarded me with hooded, unreadable eyes, crouching as low as he could, which still meant he was lifting me off my feet and I was hovering above the ground.

“Hadi? Can you hear me?” I asked.

His frown deepened as he released me suddenly like he’d been possessed and freed from a demon. He snapped back and beckoned Clem. We all tensed, and Bracken’s fur stood on edge.

What was he doing?

“You’re our court magician, Clem. Help him summon her before it’s too late.”

Everyone looked stunned while Clem puffed up importantly at the recognition.

He strutted over to me, chest out, and I couldn’t help but smile despite my confusion. Put off by that, Clem demurred, trotting beside me as I approached the gateway to the Gods.

A crystal white obelisk stood in the middle of the structure, at the center of a lunar-aligned calendar etched into the stone below it. A black obelisk guiding a solar calendar had been transferred to the human stronghold in Kari long ago.

Clem gasped as we passed over the markings, a trail of light emerging from my chest, connecting me to him, Kiar, Bracken, and…

Hadi. But his was different. It was faint, loose, unlike the thick knotted bonds connecting the rest of us.

The others noticed this, too, as Hadi mumbled something too low to hear.

“Is this… the tether? A physical representation of it?” I asked Clem as my hand passed through the rope like mist.

He nodded, and looked grim, staring at Hadi’s, fingers flexing towards it, before he allowed his hand to rest.

Something to note, I thought as the rest closed in on our destination. We had made it. Now it was time to make good on my promise, to talk to the Goddess and undo the tether once and for all.

Summon the Goddess. Survive the night. Slay the King of the Nocs.

Months ago, I would have died happily knowing I’d achieved these things. Now, my heart was so uneasy, my palms shook as I removed the stone from my pocket and held it to the obelisk’s peak.

“What now?” Bracken asked as Clem clutched his hands together as if praying. Bracken had to duck to peer inside but couldn’t fit. Hadi was forced to remain on the outskirts of the temple as well.

“How do we meet her?” Kiar asked, unable to contain his excitement as he surged inside, wrapping around the clock, enthralled.

“Enough chit-chat. Hurry Sun,” Hadi demanded, his pincers and arms threatening to tear the flimsy wood asunder.

Hearing my name from his lips for the first time just before we intended to fight to the death gave me whiplash, but I was too fed up with their demands to care.

“Shut up!” I shouted, all of them getting on my damn nerves. “Prepare for when the portal opens. Who knows how she will react to our intrusion.”

I raised the stone above the obelisk high. We waited, waited, and waited some more, impatient as time was running out.

What was going on? Why wasn’t it working?

Unless…

Had I bet wrongly? Was she sealed off from us for eternity?

That couldn’t be right. Even minor gods and goddesses, who had lost their veneration, could still be summoned. Hadn’t Atlan fallen over in shock, to my amusement, as Jia regaled him with tales of soldiers accidentally summoning goddesses when washing the blood of nocs off their clothing at a river once? Of the nymphs chasing them, begging for more devotion, more food, more mana as the soldiers screamed in terror?

So how was it so hard to summon an abandoned goddess, forgotten for twenty-five long, hard years, with her moonstone as an offering!? I must have been the one at fault. I had to be doing something wrong.

I wiggled the stone, wondering if it wasn’t in the right position. But it was not working, and my heart clenched, fearing we’d miss our window of opportunity.

I could feel Hadi’s anger boiling over, seething, whispering, “Are you worthy or not, vermin? Prove your worth, or else.”

Worthy for what I didn’t know, not sparing him a glare as panic coiled in my gut.

Clem rubbed his temples with one set of hands, clutching his chin, his fourth hand holding my hand above the stone. Kiar looked between us, his frown hard.

“...Do they say anything when they summon her? Your priests?” Clem asked, and I would’ve punched myself if we had time for me to recover from the blow.

“Of course! You’re so smart, Clem,” I gushed, taking a moment to kiss him.

He beamed bright pink as I stumbled over the summoning prayer. It was one that we used when we wanted the Gods to listen. I had always thought it was for show, but hopefully it would work now.

“B-Blessed be the Son of the Sun and Moon and Stars, creator God of Naran, ruler of the Sky and Sea–”

“It is ’ruler of Naran, creator God of the Primordial Sky and Eternal Sea,’ young champion and dearest companions.”

We all turned at once expecting a fight, but I was thrown off by who greeted us, shocked beyond belief as a gravelly voice corrected me.

A monk and his acolyte stood before us if the coloring of beads on the younger pupils’ arms was any indication, snow white compared to his elder’s blacks and gray.

They were tall, rather pale, and plain, wearing matching large straw hats, worn white robes, the elder wielding a staff. If I were still a child, seeing them would be commonplace. But not anymore, especially not here in this forsaken place.

Who the hell are they? I thought as we all backed up to shield the moonstone. Bracken and Hadi still stood on either side of the temple, dwarfing it.

The youngest monk chanted the same verse I had said before, correcting my mistakes, before adding, “Dio welcomes thee to his mother’s temple.”

Despite the easy, fluid way the monk recited the old saying, I wasn’t fooled. Whoever they were, they were imposters probably after the stone. They certainly weren’t of the priesthood, because as the younger of the two raised his head, I saw the outline of a gruesome scar on his face that could have been from an animal or a noc.

Either way, a normal human couldn’t have survived that type of wound. No doctor could heal that. Unless they dabbled in mysticism even our priests did not have access to…

Unless these things weren’t human at all, but spirits, ghosts who had once served Tsuki’s temple. But that felt wrong too.

The pretenders bowed, the eldest, the chief cultivator smiling, black eyes twinkling with delight. I could see his magical energy leaking out, ruinous and jagged, a faint golden hue seeping into the snow.

“Enjoy your communion,” the younger one with the gruesome scar said.

Before I could react, Clem tugged on my robe, whispering in my ear as my harem closed in to shelter us.

“Do human monks have wings?”

I blinked slowly at him, confused, as the stone trembled in my hand before flying out of it, to my amazement, back into its proper position.

“No,” I whispered back as the stone shook and spun on the tip of the crystal tower. “Why do you ask?”

Clem’s eyes widened, pointing over my shoulder as he said, “Why do those monks have no footsteps?”

What!?

Tensing all over, I turned around, checking for myself. Sure enough, there were no footprints in the snow with a human shape other than my own. I looked into their faces again, horrified to see their eyes had shifted from black to an unnatural golden hue. They hadn’t felt like nocs, and now I wondered if they were something else, something more powerful than spirits.

The eldest monk tapped his staff on the ground, and my heart sped up.

“Enjoy your communion, Batu Sun,” his elder with the ghoulish voice repeated, who apparently knew my name!

They smiled, too broadly to be human, with a mouth full of pointed teeth. As many sets of eyes opened in the brush, it was as if a gigantic evil entity watched us. And then a scream pierced the air, and then another, a symphony of suffering shattering the silence.

“Shit. It’s a trap. Run, everyone, run!” I shouted, sure now that we had been ambushed by demons.

Who else would still serve the false goddess? I had been a fool not to cut them down right away.

But it was too late. Pillars of light closed in like a folding lotus, pressing into us, threatening to kill us all by smashing us to death.

That dreadful bitch and her servants would never be forgiven if we survived this trap. I would make sure of it!

“Sun! Sun!” Clem screamed, reaching for me before he disappeared in a pillar of smoke, here one moment and gone the next.

Bracken was next, followed by Kiar, as the temple snapped under the impossible pressure of the transparent flower petals crushing us.

Charging forward, I swung wildly at the barrier, but Hadi caught my fist with his web. I was shaking, terrified, but his face was a mask of serenity, and he glared at the stone and then down at me with a sneer.

How? His servants, his friends had disappeared into thin air! We were about to die before we had a chance to speak to the goddess or break the tether. How was he so calm?

“You’ll break your fist fighting against this ancient magic,” Hadi said confidently, and damn it, he was right. “For a supposed hero, you don’t know when to use your head. Weaklings like you should step aside.”

With a flourish, he broke through the front walls of the temple with a set of his human arms, while the other two held me, pulling me along with him.

“Speak, Tsuki! Use your words or your visions like you have been doing with Clem. Reveal yourself and separate us now!”

I would’ve bowed to Hadi’s bravery if we weren’t trapped in a nightmare on opposite sides of the war. I knew no man who would challenge a vengeful goddess, especially one in the process of murdering us.

Like right now.

I gasped as darkness flooded us all around until it was like we were in a pit again, only this time surrounded by…

“Kiar? Bracken? Clem!?”

At least, mirror images of them greeted us. They banged against glass-like walls, screeching, hissing, and screaming, but to no avail. It wouldn’t crack. They were trapped in a realm that couldn’t be reached.

“They will be alright,” Hadi insisted. “Trust me!”

“You don’t know that! We have to save them,” I cried out as Clem glowed bright white and then went totally still, stunned, like he had been before when he had gone crazy, besieged by visions in the Celestial Forest.

“No,” Hadi spat curtly, looking up as more mirrors descended from the heavens. “You will learn to speak when spoken to. To serve without questioning me once you are subjugated. For now, you will sit and be patient while I commune with Tsuki.”

Huh?

I gazed up at him in confusion, but Hadi refused to elaborate. Did he no longer wish to kill me? Did he plan to keep me?!

Hadi’s gaze locked on the mirrors that flipped sideways, a hard set to his jaw, ignoring me now.

Heart racing, I waited helplessly, frustrated as hell as Tsuki finally came to us. Her radiant moonlight was blinding, all consuming, and I could not tear my eyes away.

She was walking down translucent stairs, her pure white gown glittering like starlight. I had heard of priests going blind from her beauty if the imperial records were to be believed.

But I did not see an all-powerful gorgeous goddess before us as she came within striking distance of Hadi and I, cradling her moonstone.

No, she looked like a blindfolded slip of a woman, maybe an older teen, frail and weeping incessantly.

Hadi and I looked at each other, and he grimaced, disgusted.

“You are our creator? I thought you would be more awe inspiring, more ruthless than this,” he barked.

There he was again, mouthing off in front of certain death.

“This… is not my will. Together, you will rebuild my dignity and restore my divinity,” Tsuki murmured nervously, like a lost little girl lashing out, searching for safety. Then she spoke to someone else. “It took so long, but I brought them together. Can you hear me now, dearest husband?”

She clutched her face, black nails digging into her snow-white skin, leaving behind red marks on her cheek.

“I saved our champion. I raised his knights from the grave and selected a chosen one from my nocturnal children. I gave my emissary the power to bind them! I have set their crossed stars in motion, on the same path! I have done everything you have asked of me! Now give me the key so we may have our reunion.”

She waited for a moment and then suddenly laughed, twirling, dancing in the moonlight that flooded her realm within the mirror.

“Darling I will return to you. Noc and human, living as one. We will right this wrong.”

What the hell is she talking about?

I shifted, still held firmly by Hadi as she ranted and raved like a lunatic, like Clem had. More red light flooded the space we stood in, sharper, brighter, manifesting near my hands.

Shocked, I looked down at what she had placed into my hands with her magic.

Both the moonstone and the sunstone shined up at me.

“Sunstone?! Moonstone?!”

I gasped as Hadi’s voice overlapped mine. Why were we speaking as one? I glared at Hadi, who returned my scorn tenfold as I gripped the stones and held them away from him the best I could.

“I was betrayed. My legacy tarnished. He must be destroyed in order for the world to know peace,” Tsuki said, lifting her finger toward Hadi, I assumed. He tensed. Bracken and Kiar’s thrashing renewed. Clem gasped awake.

I stiffened, not expecting her to turn against Hadi so suddenly, her chosen one as she put it.

Nothing she was saying or doing made any damn sense. But if she gave me the power to destroy the nocs, I would have to cut them down.

My heart ached, but I steeled my resolve.

Right now, I would end Hadi! I had to. Despite my legend, I had consistently failed those closest to me. First, my family and then my dearest friends who fell on the battlefield, or more recently, when they were captured and enslaved.

I refused to be a hostage to my failures a moment longer. I held the keys to ending the war in my hands. I just had to be willing to open the lock, to remove the tether.

“Undo the tether,” growing a backbone stronger than blood onyx now, I implored Tsuki to give me the power to end Alhayda, who simply frowned, chin raised, defiant even now. “So that I may end him without perishing.”

“You will perish with them if I do, or if I don’t,” Tsuki whispered eerily as her face pressed against the mirror, melting, pushing through the magical glass as it rippled like water. “The tether, strong or severed, binds your souls. But when it is strong, ohh, you can become the conqueror of realms! Your bonds will reshape the world. You, Sun, given to the King of the Night. You are Hadi’s blade that will usher in a new dawn.”

This was news to me. This time Clem wailed, banging against his glass tomb, but I shrugged.

“So be it. I will end him as you commanded, even if it ends me.”

She clenched her blackened teeth, the gnashing stinging my ears, blood leaking from her blindfold until it stained her dress.

“That is not my will! Listen and hear me, Sun. Destroy the one who betrayed me. Destroy the false emperor who occupies the chosen’s rightful throne. The false noc king Daaku and his followers will fall beneath your feet, cut down like blades of grass if you remain united. Bring me back to my husband. Save us all, Sun, before it is too late, and I am banished from this realm!”

“Stop!” Hadi shouted as I was yanked from him by a supernatural force, my body suspended mid-air in front of Tsuki’s portal.

“G-goddess!” I screamed, immobilized, as her cold, withered hands broke through the glass and clutched at my face.

It was like her whole body was decaying before my eyes.

Hadi was moving, his legs stroking the air behind my head. But she must have put up another shield to stop him, and now I was completely under her control.

Tsuki’s blindfold slipped away, and I wailed, her face indescribable, a swirling mass of darkness that could not be perceived.

Yet, she still wept like a child.

Her tears fell into my eyes like shards of starlight, unraveling the past, present, and a strange future that blinded me to all else. A book held by my emperor, a spell with creatures of the night thrown into a cauldron, a secret that sparked a war without rhyme or reason, leaving our world in ruins. The truth was before me, and it was undeniable.

And it could not be true!

“Unhand me! Unhand me now you lying harlot!” I screamed, crushed in her grasp. I kicked and fought and denied her revelations.

How could I trust her? I couldn’t! She was lying. Why would the emperor create these monsters, and use them against us? Why would the nation’s father do such a thing?

How could Emperor Gaulu be the creator of the nocs? It simply wasn’t true!

“No… No!” I cried out, falling to the ground as Tsuki retreated, fading into the inky void, her body crumbling away.

And then, Hadi’s manic laughter took over all else.

“Can you feel it Sun, the truth flowing through our veins, through the tether, through her memories? I knew my father had to be more ruthless than this wench.”

“No! Shut up! You–” I shouted but was silenced by her continued wailing.

“ENOUGH!” she bellowed, as the mirror world too faded away, her glass portal shattering from the force of her scream. Only her voice remained.

“Emperor Gaulu must face punishment! Balance can only be restored by my chosen acolytes! Only you can carry out my will before all of Naran perishes!”

Bloody moonlight flooded the world, and we were thrown back into the snow in a heartbeat. Hadi caught me, holding me in his arms for a moment before he just as easily tossed me aside.

Kiar, Bracken, and Clem were suddenly beside us, and Tsuki’s temple was no more as snow drifted down from the pillar of light left behind, blood red, shrinking faster and faster until it was gone.

The demons were gone too. The blood moon had passed. And yet, I was still tethered to Clem, Bracken, Kiar, and Hadi.

And everything I had ever known was a lie. My entire life, my sense of self, everything I believed in, all a joke.

“Well… that was different,” Bracken exclaimed, brushing himself off, then shaking out his wings.

“That is an understatement,” Kiar said, rubbing his bruised fists. “That was worse than when Clem summoned our spirits. My stomach’s still churning.”

Clem, for his part, just stared at all of us in open wonder.

As for me? I didn’t know how to react or what I was going to do until I was falling to my knees, slamming my fists until they were raw in the snow.

But I never let go of the stones. I couldn’t, even though I wanted to cast them aside and fling myself from the peak.

The world’s fate hung in the balance within the palms of my hands. Victory. That’s what the stones represented. And vengeance. Up until now.

I was born into a world without nocs, and I thought I would die in one that was rid of them.

But now… now, I didn’t know.

Without thinking, I stood and ran, like a child. I stumbled down the snowy pathway, ignoring the warning bells ringing in my ear, because I was unable to tell where I was going.

No matter. My shadows gained ground and approached me as I descended the mountain mindlessly.

My family cried out to me from their graves. My men. My people. My friends. Even my damned horse neighed for my attention, all screaming inside of my mind!

I could not allow myself to be swayed. Tsuki had to be lying. Why would the emperor set our patron and patroness against one another? Why ? It made no damn sense! And yet, as I faced my nocturnal court, coming to a stop halfway from the peak, I could feel myself spiraling into the blackest, deepest pit of despair.

Hadi grimaced before murmuring the words that were my undoing.

“Cease your futile retreat. Your emperor is no better than us nocs. He is worse. So, stop running away like a child and face the truth. He’s a scourge on humanity who summoned us on this course of mutual destruction we have walked for many years. He must be eradicated.”

And there it was, the truth laid bare so plainly I could not summon any more defenses to deny it.

It consumed me, so much so the world began to melt away. Bracken and Kiar’s eyes widened in shock, mouths gaped, and Hadi hissed before falling silent.

They watched me as I sucked in a shuddering breath, understanding still fleeting.

“Are you alright?” Clem asked, blinking, his skin shining green and then blue.

I shook my head yes, determined to hide the turmoil inside. Until it hit me. Clem’s glassy black eyes reflected my face.

I was crying, sobbing, really, and allowed myself to crumble to the ground as I succumbed to my disgrace.

What champion was I? I served a crook, a monster worse than the ones descending on me now.

The source of all my despair, the totality of my losses, began and ended with a man I swore to serve to the grave.