Chapter 148 The Right Hand Of Darkness

Chapter 148 The Right Hand Of Darkness

The Psych-Beast slipped through the shadows of the enchanted predawn, pouring itself down the gloomy paths of Ayasha territory like liquid dark, slipping past sentinels and Selkaharin warriors without disturbing a single torch.

It scaled mountains and broken ground as though the land itself had agreed to let it pass, eyes burning with purpose, breath measured and silent.

It kept moving, away from Wolf territory, down into caves that swallowed even starlight until the darkness closed over it completely.

It emerged into a cavern vast enough to lose an army in, and stopped before the mouth of a stone ziggurat. Twin fires flared in the black: its own eyes, hungry, ready to strike at the first wrong sound.

The Psych-Beast drew itself up to its full height and spoke to the dark above.

"Lord Erebus."

Its voice broke like surf against rock.

Atop the ziggurat, shadow gathered itself, folding, twisting, thickening, until it wore the shape of a man.

He stood impossibly tall, built like a mountain, dark energy pouring off him like smoke off a dying sun.

"This world is already lost." Erebus's voice was a low, satisfied rumble. "My dominion runs too deep here. No god watches it. No guardian stands for it. It will fall the way all the others fell, and the great dark will take it, and fold it back into the Primordial Darkness where it belongs."

The cavern answered him. Torches guttering to life along the walls, burning black and wrong, revealing what had been waiting in the dark all along.

Draugr. Millions of them, packed shoulder to shoulder, each one larger and hungrier than the last army Erebus had sent north.

Mallus, the Psych-Beast, stood among the noise and let Erebus finish absorbing it in before it spoke again.

"Lord Erebus." Its voice dropped lower this time. "Word from the north."

"They're doomed the same as everyone else." Erebus's laughter hadn't finished leaving his throat.

"The Prince of Darkness wakes." The words landed and the laughter died with them.

The whole cavern went still, every snarl and clamor choking off at once. Erebus's eyes sharpened on Mallus with a weight the creature felt in its bones.

"It isn't only Khonshu, my Lord." Mallus pushed on despite the pressure bearing down on it. "It's the Darkmoon. Trivia has woken too. I saw the Darkmoon's full essence with my own eyes, in the wolf lands."

"Say that again." Erebus was suddenly in front of it, no distance crossed, simply gone from the ziggurat and present before the Psych-Beast, which flinched and lowered itself instinctively. "That's impossible. Khonshu has been buried inside that cursed child for a generation. Trivia with him."

"Trivia woke at first light, my Lord. Her waking shook the world hard enough that half the north felt it. Perhaps the Primordial Darkness had its attention elsewhere."

"Nothing escapes my notice." The cavern shuddered at the force behind the words. "How did I not feel this?"

"They march for the Temple of Fallen Stars even now, my Lord. The Darkmoon means to wake whatever still sleeps there and turn it against you. I saw this myself. I heard it spoken."

"The Darkmoon is a problem." Erebus's hiss carried through the cave like something crawling. "Even dwarfed beside the Primordial Darkness, it threatens everything we've built. It has to be ended."

"It is far beyond a problem, my Lord. In half its strength, it erased our forces at the twin peaks with barely a gesture. I watched from as far back as I dared and still felt the ground answer to it."

Erebus's gaze twisted, ugly, like the failure belonged to Mallus alone. "Half its strength. Explain that."

"It hasn't claimed its full essence yet, my Lord. It marches for the key that would complete it, buried in that same temple. If we move now, while it's incomplete, it's as vulnerable as it will ever be."

"Then it's vulnerable." Something almost pleased crossed Erebus's face. "Weak. Easy prey."

"Trivia walks beside it, my Lord." Mallus tried again, careful. "She's an army by herself. Even split in two, together they could turn our forces to dust before we reached the temple gates. I don't believe we can win that fight. We are weak against their might."

"You don't believe." Erebus went very still, and that stillness was worse than the shouting. "I gave you power beyond your kind, Mallus. Power to shake mountains from their roots, to pull tides out of oceans that have never known a moon. And you stand in front of me listing every way we might fail?"

"Forgive me, my Lord, I only meant..." Its body seized mid-sentence, a sound tearing out of it that wasn't quite a scream.

"You were never worthy of what I gave you." Erebus raised one hand, almost lazily. "You've failed the Darkness itself."

Mallus came apart in a single breath, dust and shadow scattering into air already thick with rot, and then there was nothing left of it at all.

Erebus closed his fist and exhaled, long and slow. "I am Erebus. Right hand of the Primordial Darkness. No power in this world or any other stands taller than mine, not even the Darkmoon."

A dozen more Psych-Beasts emerged from the dark at his word, taller than Mallus had been, built for war rather than errands, and knelt before him without being asked.

"The Darkmoon marches for the tomb of fallen stars," Erebus said, "that graveyard of dead gods. Go there. Show it exactly what the Primordial Darkness is made of. Neither Trivia nor the Darkmoon reach that threshold alive. End them both, and usher in the last age of darkness this world will ever see. Go."

The cavern detonated into motion, every creature snarling, scrambling, pouring toward the exit in a single starving mass until the dark swallowed them whole.

"You are no match for me, Darkmoon," Erebus said to the empty cavern. "Watch. You'll see."

\---

PEAKS OF THE FALLEN STARS

Zuri and Yuna stepped back into the world at the ravine below the temple, the cold air parting around them like something reluctant to let them through.

"At long last." Zuri's cape snapped in the wind. "Mons Aeturnus. The eternal Temple of Fallen Stars, buried under snow and mountain for longer than anyone alive remembers. I don't know how I'd have found it without you, Trivia."

"Don't start with the Trivia thing." Yuna shot him a look. "It's Yuna, or you keep my name where it belongs, in your mouth, unspoken. Understood, Darkmoon?"

Zuri laughed. "Understood. I can't help it, the Darkmoon in me defaults to it. Though I've got a new name I'd like to give you instead."

"And what's that?"

"My queen."

"You're serious right now?"

"Dead serious. Let's finish this and get married already, my blood's been singing about it since the longhouse." His staff—Yuna's staff, lent and humming with borrowed power, pulsed in his grip. "The land's starting to feel familiar again. Though it seems to have forgotten who its master was."

"The ground's weathered, Zuri, but it hasn't forgotten. Earth's memory runs deeper than any root." Yuna studied the buried temple ahead of them. "Ten thousand feet down, sealed under the strongest binding anyone's ever cast. Should be simple enough. Step into the sigil, and the seal breaks."

"I know how it works. I don't need reminding." His jaw tightened. "The Darkmoon's memories keep surfacing whether I want them or not, and it's...disorienting, if I'm honest. Sealing this place felt necessary once. Now I wonder if it was the mistake that made the world what it is. A ruin."

"Then let's unmake that mistake." Yuna set her palm against his chest. "You and I, the Darkmoon's army behind us. Let the storm rage."

Light gathered around them both, pushing back the cold.

Then something moved on the far ridgeline of the Himalayas, too loud, too fast, too deliberate to be weather. Both their heads snapped toward it at once.

"Zuri?"

"You feel that too." His expression went hard.

"Of course I do." Yuna's glow sharpened, brightening past anything the cold could touch. "They're here. The army of Darkness has found us first."