The Eternal - Prologue

         A risen moon hung sovereign in the dim lit sky, and by its light the world was just another star amidst an endless night. He moved forth into the shadows, the same shadows from whence he had come; he had never known anything more. Beneath him the bleeding earth seemed to quaver with his every step, and above him yawned a broad expanse of darkness, the eternal dusk that claimed his future.
         Xor came to a halt as he approached the looming walls of Zoll Zora. He knew the city well, perhaps too well. The base of the statue guarding the palace was hollow – he had known this since his childhood, when it had been his escape from his father, the only place he could ever be safe. Even now his father was all he would ever fear. Even now, when the fate of the world lay still upon his shoulders, and when his soul was set afire with unconquerable strength. His father awaited him, past those ebon gates, the gates beyond which he had spent all his youth. In the all too near distance, they towered as if they would never fall… and yet he knew they would. And with them would fall the vast empire to which he was the heir.
         He turned to the man beside him, bound in unfastened shackles, who bore in his arms a slumbering infant. Xor smiled.
         “We have come,” he uttered, his words deepening the silence. “To bring the endless to its end.”
         Crion’s eyes gleamed with a light all their own, like the eyes of an eagle; and so he was called. He was the last of the great good men, the champion of Shelta, known for his virtue and his strength. Xor knew him as a brother, as his dearest friend. It was the Eagle who had turned him to the force of good, away from the evil for which he was fated, and for this he was eternally grateful.
         Xor looked then to the man at his left, who had been his comrade since before he could recall. Gorovan was still in his prime, and the vigor of his youth had not yet left him. He stood steadfast before the city of darkness, unwilling to waver in the face of evil, for he had always known that it would soon be overcome.
         And thus this triad came to end the evil reign to which the world had fallen prey so long ago. They led no army save themselves and each other; and yet they would be enough to fell an empire.
         Xor moved toward the towering form of the first King, still and silent on his carven throne, his vacant eyes no different than those of his descendants. He looked upon the statue with contempt, and yet it had been his sanctuary years ago.
         He knelt to displace a panel of the stone king’s pedestal. “She will be safe here,” he spoke. “Once our aim is fulfilled you can return for her. We will need no longer fear.”
         Emergent starlight turned the child’s face to silver, and set her features aglow so as to render her an angel. Crion laid the infant wordlessly therein, and shifted the board back into place. The silence went unbroken but by the soft clangor of his loose chains, which rang in cadence with his heart, and with those of his brothers.
         A ways away, unmoving before the entrance to the palace, a pair of sentries gazed emptily into the shadows. The three intruders, rendered indiscernible by the distance and the darkness, moved unseen, enshrouded by the ambient night.
         Xor turned skyward in gratitude, towards deities he knew not. Everything had been perfect. It seemed there was nothing to thwart him, nothing to hinder his imminent victory… it was close. It was too close; he could taste it now upon his thirsting tongue, and in the depths of his once hollow soul he could hear it sing. This was his night. This was the night the earth would be born again.
         “Fasten his chains,” he bid Gorovan, and his comrade did as told, working fast to bind the Eagle in his fetters. “The hour draws nigh.”
         For a time, no words were spoken save those of the wind, and as the final shackle was set it seemed the very world had ceased to turn. Indeed it was so. It had been still for eons, and it was now that the earth tensed in longing to awaken once more.
         “I remember well when last I stood here,” the Eagle reminisced, his tenor vengeful and cold. “It was to face defeat at the hands of the armies of darkness.”
         “And yet now, we shall know only triumph,” Gorovan uttered, and looked to Xor, his visage set ablaze with promise. “With one stroke, your father so immortal shall taste blood that is for once his own… and the world will be yours.”
         Xor smiled.
         He moved his hand to the sword at his side, and as it came to rest upon the hilt his eyes fell upon the full moon, gleaming through a rift in the overhanging cloud. It sang of hope, and it shone through the darkest of nights with the light of a thousand stars.
         “We are brothers,” he declared. “We are the sons and the fathers of the earth. We are forever bound to one another, and to the world, for we shall lead it forth from the darkness and into eternal dawn.”
         They looked with moonlit eyes upon the city of darkness, and dreamt of the sunlit day when it would be no more.
         “The death of my father,” Xor’s voice was no less lethal than the sound of his sword as he drew it from its argent sheath. “Shall bring the world to life.”
         With this they went forth, towards the ominous gates, and to the waiting guards they appeared as three great specters – one in chains, one in armor, and one bearing a strangely familiar sword.
         The taller of the two sentinels raised his own in menace. “Who are you to come to the Palace of the King?”
         Xor shifted ever so slightly, and in this action his shadowed face was silvered by the moon. He watched their eyes widen in reverence.
         “I am his son, returned from battle, and I bring my father victory. With me is Gorovan the Gold, my highest general, and behold – ” at this he took a firm hold of the Eagle and thrust him into the moonlight. “ – the champion of Shelta, as prisoner.”
         The sentries were overcome with awe, and bowed low as they parted the gates to allow him wordless entrance.
         Once within the palace walls Xor could feel the triumph, not only within him, but all around him. It resounded in the great stone battlements which alas would be soon conquered, in the sharp raven spires as they rose to graze the same-hued sky, and in the broad doors gaping before him as he passed into the hell that had once been his home. He commanded such deference and such utter fear as he moved through the wide, dark halls, unlit but by the dim fire of dying torches… no one dared draw near him. He knew well the way to the throne room. Oft he had been called to his father’s presence, and oft he had been bidden to fulfill his every wish.
         Yet on this night the King would speak his final wish.
         And it would go forever unfulfilled.
         He stopped before the throne room doors, and grasped their black stone handles, one in each callous fist. He stopped as if reluctant, and yet it was not so. No moment’s hesitation would ever quell the fire in his soul. No transient doubt would faze him. In his smoldering eyes one might have seen a world reborn… and yet the dream was distant.
         Slowly, slowly, the doors gave way beneath him; and before him was the King.
         Xor’s eyes dimmed to look upon him. There was loathing in those eyes. Beyond the gilt horizon of the earth of which he dreamt, there lay a seething hatred, and further beneath there lurked a living, pulsing evil, an evil yet to be destroyed – and it would rise again.
         “Father,” the utterance was cold upon his tongue. “I have come.”
         The King was still upon his throne. He was long deceased. He had no more of a soul than the King before the palace walls. He was a lifeless thing, and yet he had given life to an heir, an heir who faced him now and willed him dead.
         His name was Zyrus.
         His eyes were hollow chasms, void of life, and mirrored in their depths was all he had witnessed and all he had known. They were black as death, and rimmed with red for all the blood that stained his hands. Even now those hands were steeped in crimson, white as they were in this hour… white as bone. White as the bones strewn across the dying earth. His wiry talons held relentlessly to his accursed throne, as if it weren’t enough that in their grasp lay all the world. He was an ancient man, and withered far beyond his many years in the name of all he was. It was his time. It had been his time since ere he had been born.
         Xor hated him above all things.
         And yet, before his father now, he flung out his arms and smiled.
         “I bring you triumph,” he claimed in mock pride, and strode forth, beaming like a rising moon. “I have gone to the ends of the earth, and alas I have returned to you.”
         The King’s features knotted into an unsightly grimace which could only be a smile. He could read his son, his stupid son, as if his widespread arms were an open tome. He reclined upon his throne and ran his fingers down his sweeping beard. He reveled in his immortality, and decided to mislead his foolish heir for as long as he might, if only for his own amusement.
         “Ah… my son,” he rasped, and at his voice the air was turned to rime. “It has been long. It has been ages since last I saw you. I thought all had been lost.”
         “No, never lost. Your empire knows no end,” Xor uttered, and his heart hastened at the irony, his fists tensing of their own will. 
         His father’s smile broadened. “You always brought me glory. And now… who is this man before me?” He knew well the answer.
         Those endless, blood-rimmed eyes fell harsh upon the Eagle, and yet he paid no heed to the lethal glare. He was elsewhere; his very soul seemed to have flown, to have escaped his bonds. He gazed wordlessly upon the lady seated by the King, whose downcast eyes were bright, then damp, to look upon him, and whose soul had long since flown. Zyrus had taken her. She was his queen. She was his captive. Her heart belonged to the Eagle, and all the rest of her belonged to the King.
         “He is Crion,” Xor proclaimed, and took a firm hold of his dearest comrade as if he were his greatest foe. “The champion of Shelta, the last of the great good men. The Eagle.”
         Xor gestured at his general. “With the faithful aid of Gorovan the Gold, I have felled the Sheltan empire. I have ended all that dares to challenge your power. And I bring to you the Eagle, the source of all this insurrection, thus you may deal with him as you wish.”
         Zyrus raised his arms high. “Victory!” he called, and as he lowered his left hand it came to rest upon the frail, heaving shoulder of his queen. She shuddered visibly at his touch, and somewhere distant, her lost soul lay weeping. His bony fingers swept over her neck and moved to clutch her trembling chin. A deep sigh caught in her throat as he shifted in his seat to take hold of her, to turn her face toward the Eagle, toward the only man she’d ever love.
         “Anorrah…” he crooned, his whisper sweet yet strident. “How many moons have passed since last you saw this man? Since last you held him? Pray tell how many nights you’ve spent in longing for his kiss… nights spent in my arms, never his.”
         Crion felt his lifeblood coursing through his veins, and it seared him. It was enough to melt his chains and fuse them with his seething skin.
         “Is she just as beautiful as you remember her?” the King lifted a tress of her ebon hair to his lips. “Or even more?”
         Xor knew his comrade’s pain, and he despised his father for it. His hand made for the sword at his side. Gorovan shot him a warning glance; the time was not yet ripe.
         “I have come to know her deeply,” Zyrus spoke through a wicked, cloying smile, and addressed his hitherto noiseless attendant. “Morroph… bring me my daughter.”
         The Eagle blanched to a listless pallor. At these words, the last dim hope of his soul fell softly away, as visibly as the color in his face. The dying embers of his dreams were turned to dust. She had borne him a daughter. She had given to the King the only thing she’d never given the Eagle. The son he loved, he who awaited his father’s return on the golden shores of Shelta, was his only heir. He had no little girl to call his own, no hope of watching her flower into another Anorrah, no hope of seeing her mother reflected in sapphire eyes.
         “Anorrah has been most compliant. She will bear me many children – and she will weep for you no longer, once I have you slain,” the King grinned as a young girl was brought before him, and set her soft upon his knee.
         She was small and gentle, with her mother’s silken hair and deep-hued eyes, and nothing to suggest her evil lineage. If anything she appeared to the Eagle as the sweetest child he’d ever seen. He should have hated her for who she was, and yet he almost loved her.
         “She’s lovely, isn’t she?” Zyrus uttered as he fondled with her raven locks. “She is so like her mother. So innocent. So corruptible. She hasn’t the faintest notion as to what she is fated for. She is my child, Crion. She is borne of the woman you love… and yet she is mine.”
         The champion of Shelta, the unwavering, the invincible, he who had never fallen to the sword of any man, was defeated now by the words of the King.
         “You have tortured him enough,” Xor averred, his scornful tone nearly betraying him, and Gorovan gave a slight nod. “Now won’t you praise me, Father? I have felled an entire force and brought you its leader. Am I to have no words of approval, no reward for my triumphs? Would you at least embrace me, so I may know you are proud?”
         He moved towards his father, his arms spread wide in the pretense of endearment.
         Xor’s heart seemed to pause in its cadence. This was his moment.
         Zyrus knew his little game could only last so long. It had been such fun, watching his son deceive himself into thinking he could win… he had been sufficiently amused.
         “Disarm them.”
         Xor’s face sank, his smile turning to stone, the fire in his eyes to ash. A pair of guards came forth to divest him of his weaponry. Gorovan was rendered defenseless as well, and Crion in his fetters was paid no heed.
         “Father…” Xor’s mock consternation was a poor shield for his terror.
         “I know what you’ve done, Xor. I know what you’ve become.”
         As if she sensed the deathly events that were soon to transpire, the girl descended quickly from his lap and clung to her mother. Anorrah held her daughter close, and tears fell soft from her closed eyes.
         “You cannot overcome me. I am eternal,” the King rose, and appeared now as immortal as his claim. “I know everything, Xor.”
         Xor could feel his heartbeat rising in fear. His hand moved again to his side on an impulse, but there was nothing there.
         “You are too late, Xor. You are much too late. Your brother came back to me, long ago, and told me all.”
         “Borghos?” Xor gasped in disbelief.
         Crion’s fallen heart sank even further. He had never trusted Xor’s brother.
         “Borghos told me everything. He betrayed you. He told me how you’d befriended the Eagle, turned to good, disavowed your father and your future throne. He told me of Glorion. The Isla Eterna. He told me all that happened there, he told me where it was. Borghos hated you. He knew I had chosen you for my heir. He knew he was nothing compared to you. There are much wiser ways to turn against your father, Xor, than to do it before a brother who has waited all his life to put you to shame,” the King glared malignly at his son, mirroring the hatred in Xor’s eyes. “You made it too easy for him.”
         Xor opened his mouth as if to speak, then brought it decisively shut. There were no words to be spoken. He had lost. He could never bring an end to his immortal father.
         “Borghos brought me Anorrah,” Zyrus uttered. “And he brought me this.”
         Well-armed sentries came forth bearing a lady and two boys in their early youth. The King watched his son’s eyes widen, and could almost discern through the silence the drum of his heart.
         Her name was Gloriel. Once, she had been his. Once, the sight of her had been enough to turn him from evil and toward the sun that was her eyes. She was the only love he’d ever known, and even now in this darkest of hours he looked upon her and knew that somewhere faraway, a sun was rising.
         She was his eternity.
         “Borghos wasn’t entirely truthful in all he said,” the King professed. “He claimed this lovely maiden to be his wife, the mother of his children. I might have believed him, and yet I saw something in the boy’s eyes.”
         Xor looked upon the elder of the two youths, and knew his son.
         He knew his raven mane, his smile so like his mother’s, even now when it had faded to a solemn frown. He knew his eyes, those eyes which had seen and known so far beyond their years. He had only known him as an infant, before he had been borne away from him. Xor had loved him. He loved him still. There was another eternity there, in the eyes of his son… or perhaps it was no different than the first.
         “I saw you, Xor,” the King spoke. “I denied everything, everything Borghos said, because I refused to believe you would betray me so. I wanted you to return to me in all your glory, I wanted you for my heir. I only ever wanted you for my son. And so I killed him.”
         Xor looked to his father, wordless, and saw that he was not eternal.
         “But not before he could leave a child in Gloriel, the woman he had called his own,” Zyrus descended from his throne and strode to the three prisoners, taking up the younger child in his arms. “His name is Garendor. He will grow to be his father. He should loathe me for what I’ve done, and yet he needs never know.”
         He laid a kiss on the boy’s pale forehead, and placed him back in the arms of the sentry who had brought him.
         Silence followed, whose din surpassed that of any deafening thunder.
         “I was wrong to slay the son I should have loved,” the King’s voice was no more noisome than the quiet. “And love the son I should have slain.”
         His hollow gaze fell then upon this son, and it burned him.
         “Hold them.”
         The guards who had disarmed them came now to keep them, binding them fast with their burly arms. Neither Xor nor Gorovan struggled in the least. Their fate was inexorable.
         Zyrus turned now toward Crion, who stood unmoving before him, looking still upon his wife and her child.
         “And unbind the Eagle.”
         Crion’s shackles were undone, and yet he moved not, for all he could see was Anorrah. Anorrah, her sea-blue eyes lowered in grief, her head bowed in despair, her bare arms holding fast to her daughter. The years had withered her, as had the touch of her evil lord… and yet all they had done was faintly silver her flowing hair and dimly soften her features. She was no less beautiful to him than she had been when first he’d seen her. Her ruddy youth had flown, but the stars in her eyes had yet to fade. Her heart beat still, and it beat true, and ever after it was silenced she would love him all the same.
         The Eagle’s reverie was shattered as Zyrus strode forth, a great sword in his fist, which he placed firmly in Crion’s hand. Crion furrowed his brows, and would have run the King through at that moment if it hadn’t been for his utter confusion.
         The King retreated slowly, a heartless smile contorting his mien, till he stood beside his tearstained queen.
         “Come forth, Almighty Eagle,” he bade him. “Come unto the Lady of Glorion, and stand before her. See in her eyes those golden shores. See the Isla Eterna.”
         Crion moved slowly toward Gloriel, reluctant to near her, bound as she was, her soul torn from her and cast to the wind. She would not meet his gaze, and yet he blamed her not. She was a fallen angel. He admired her beyond all else for who she was, for who she’d been to Xor. Their love had brought together the light and the darkness, the good and the evil, the man and the lady whose hearts had always beat as one.
         “Such beauty, such perfection… my son turned against everything he knew for this,” Zyrus rasped, his tenor almost rueful, as if he weren’t entirely dispassionate. “He turned to another world. The world of good that died ere it had risen. It will die again tonight.”
         Xor dared to look upon his father’s eyes and saw only the truth.
         “And now, O Champion of Shelta,” the King rasped, and brandished a sword of his own from his cloak. “Slay her.”
         The Eagle stilled. He would sooner set his heart afire and watch it burn than lay a hand upon her. Behind him he could hear Xor’s heartbeat raging.
         Never would he do such a thing. Slay the one for whom his dearest comrade lived, and turn against the friend who had become his brother. Gloriel would be safe. He dared not harm her. He turned now to the King, ready and willing to lay down his life in place of hers, eager to bring this endless torment to its end.
         Zyrus took his queen and put his blade against her throat.
         In that instant, everything, everything changed. Crion knew death, now as he saw it mirrored in her eyes. He could feel it rise within him, swelling in his chest and surging forth to devour him whole. The sword in his hand grew suddenly cold.
         “Slay her.”
         He would not look away. Anorrah, her sea-blue eyes gleaming with unwept tears, her life resting now in his hands, the hands of he who loved her more than life itself. All his days he had longed to die for her, but never once had he dreamt of slaying for her; and yet now, in this hour of endless night, he dared not do anything else.
         He looked upon her now and knew it was the last of times, and bid her sweet farewell… whatever happened now, the end was soon to come. She was doomed; they were all doomed. All he wanted was to keep her alive for as long as he might, if only for a moment. He forgot all else. He forgot the fallen angel he was soon to slay, he forgot the brother for whom he would have given all the world, and yet would never give Anorrah.
         He raised his sword.
         “Yes…” the King uttered, his voice rending the heavy silence. “Drive it deep, drive it endlessly into her heart, and watch her bleed through the wounds of your sunlit world.”
         Xor cried in pain. It was a deathly sound; it drove far deeper than any blade, and resounded ever afterwards through Crion’s soul. It burned him. It killed him. He could feel himself bleeding through the very wounds of which the King had spoke, and for a moment, an eternity, he remembered his brother. But never again. He knew only his heartbeat, and the tears he wept fell soft from sea-blue eyes.
         He would not look.
         His blade he lifted high above his head, his strong arms moving of their own will, and shut his eyes against the world which fell upon him. He struck her, his sword swiftly rending her heart, and even as it did he cried out in his brother’s voice. He drew the blade fast from its place, steeped in angel’s blood, as if he might undo all he had done and mend the life he’d broken. He fell to his knees, and let fall his cursed blade. His heart was set afire in despair; he watched it burn.
         She did not moan in these her final moments. Her silence deepened, and she bled from a wound that had been there forever. A sigh coursed throughout her dying frame, so soon to be a corpse, hardly anything more than a specter.
         Xor was wordless. He could feel his soul fly forth from his body to forever drown in hers, to ascend to the heaven of which he had dreamt for so long. Gloriel, she who could never again be his… he watched her fade away.
         Ever so slowly, an eternity came to its end.
         “O Eagle,” the King spoke. “I knew you would not fail me.”
         Crion raised his eyes once more to look upon his murderer.
         And watched his blade turn crimson at Anorrah’s throat.
         Any man should be grateful to die but once… Crion had lived through one too many deaths. This was his last. From here he could fall no further.
         Zyrus rose, the bleeding body of his queen falling limp to the floor, and approached the silent Eagle from behind. Crion knelt before the woman he had slain, his head upon his knees, his empty hands clinging now to his bloodstained mane. He was a thing deceased, and yet the King wanted more than anything to kill him. So many had fallen at his sword, but to him this was nothing. He wanted Eagle’s blood upon his hands.
         He raised his sword, and brought it swiftly down…
         And yet it was not swift enough.
         Crion turned and drove the blade through the King, into the void which should have been his heart. It cut deep, stained alas with the blood of its wielder, the immortal blood of an all too mortal King. Zyrus sank to his knees before the champion of Shelta, this single deathly stroke enough to end him. His eyes had always been hollow, and now their depth was endless. The Eagle saw Anorrah, so heartlessly slain, in those night-hued depths.
         This was what he had come to do, this was the moment for which he had spent his life in waiting… and yet at this moment his life was no longer his.
         The King had yet to die.
         “You have not won,” his words were low, borne along the stream of claret which stained the edges of his grin. “You will never win.”
         “Xor will rise to the throne,” Crion muttered, his voice heard only by his victim. He buried his sword ever deeper. “Xor will be King. Your reign of darkness shall be no more.”
         Zyrus leered at his killer, even as he felt his heart begin to wilt.
         “You wretched fool,” he rasped. “You turned him away from me. You showed him all the glories of your dying world. Everything good he has ever known, he’s learned from you. And now your hands are stained with the blood of his lady. His beloved. He loathes you, Crion. He loathes everything you taught him, everything you are.”
         The Eagle shuddered at the truth. He would not hear it. His brother would not turn against him now… not now when all the world lay in his hands. Not ever.
         “My son will be as evil as his father,” the King’s final words rang with triumph. “He will be all I was and more. Through him… I am eternal.”
         Crion saw a lifeless life come to its end, and watched a soul descend to hell.
         Behind him stood the risen King. Xor was still. A shadow fell across his shadowed face.
         “I am your King,” he spoke in his father’s voice. “I am your King!”
         His captors held him no longer, for he was their lord, and they were his captives. The world was his captive. Xor knew now what had come to pass. His soul would never lie to him. It had claimed that the earth would be his on this night. And so it was.
         She was no more. She was only an illusion now of all he’d ever hoped, the world he longed for, everything he loved. She was fading fast. He ran to her, and fell to his knees at her side, in vain pursuit of a soul long lost. Gloriel… he held her for the last of times, clung to the echoes of her slowing heart.
         A smile set her face aglow, even in its pallor, even as the sun set in her eyes. Her features were gilt with the light of heaven, which shone before her now.
         “This is not the end,” she whispered. “There is no end. I love you still… and even when this heart shall cease to beat, still it shall not cease to love you.”
         He kissed her, and remembered when first he had kissed her, and known what it was to love. He knew no other love in this heartless world, and never would he love again.
         “The world is yours, as always it has been,” Gloriel was glad to look upon him, if only in her dying hour. “This is when you will truly live. Don’t let my death kill you, don’t let it kill the world. And don’t let it kill Crion.”
         Xor seethed at the mere utterance of the name, and yet his flaming rage was nothing when put to the fire of his love. He nodded, though his head was heavy.
         “Promise me you won’t,” she implored, her breathing shallow and frail. Love kept her alive for a moment more. “And promise me you won’t hurt Garendor. I know you hate his father, as do I… but he is my son, and I love him. Promise me, Xor.”
         Xor looked upon the two youths, bound still by the men who had brought them, and felt how he loved one and loathed the other. But he saw his lady withering, and forgot all his hatred, all his fury… he would have promised her the world, now as it lay in his hands. “I promise.”
         One might have seen a glimmer in the vacant gaze of the King deceased, and yet no one was watching.
         “I love you,” Xor uttered, as if he hadn’t said it and known it forever. “Our love will bring light to this world of darkness. It will never end.”
         Gloriel smiled again. “There is no end,” she spoke. “To eternity.”
         This he knew, as he watched his fallen angel rise again, and as he saw the sunrise in the eyes of their son.
         All was silent save for the words of the Eagle, which had gone unheard till now. He had flown to Anorrah and shared the tears of his brother the King, tears wept in the name of love, and in the wake of angels.
         Her daughter knelt beside her, holding fast to frigid hands. Anorrah looked once more upon her lover and their child.
         “All is not lost,” she spoke. “Our son lives still… as does our daughter.”
         Crion stilled to look upon the girl, for he saw who she was. That fateful night when Borghos took her mother, she had been conceived, the beginnings of her being coming into form within her mother’s womb. She was no progeny of darkness, but the daughter of the Eagle and his lady. She was borne of their love, of their consummate union, and she was Anorrah reborn.
         Gorovan, all but forgotten in his silence, had been unbound upon Zyrus’s death, and yet stood unmoving as if still in the keeping of his guards. He looked at Crion, at his daughter, at the new King, and he knew the child was not safe.
         “You are my Eagle,” Anorrah uttered, and smiled through her fallen tears. “My everything. The world would die without you… and you are my world.”
         “As you are mine,” the champion of Shelta watched the sea in her eyes turn to ice, and claimed his love for her once more ere she had gone.
         It was now that Xor, his lady lost to him, looked on the man who had slain her.
         He hated him above all things.
         In an instant, the embers in his eyes blazed into flame, and a long brewing evil was now reborn. He knew only the blood upon his brother’s hands. He rose, unarmed and yet ever so dangerous, his wrath more lethal by far than any blade.
         Xor moved slowly towards the kneeling Eagle.
         Crion heard and felt the footfalls of the King behind him, and dared not turn to see what he’d become. He steeled himself for death, though he had died so many times before.
         “You killed her.”
         The truth rends deeper when already known. Crion shut his eyes against the evil which approached him, then opened them to look upon his wordless daughter. He knew he could not die now, not again, not when she needed him so – and yet it seemed he had no choice.
         Xor drew nearer till his looming shadow swallowed his prey.
         The Eagle rose and turned to face the man who once had been his friend, and had become his greatest foe. He met his fiery gaze with one of sea-blue water.
         “You killed her!” the King struck him hard against his face, and felled him to the floor, a floor stained eternally crimson.
         The champion of Shelta knew his pain, for he was bereft of all Xor had lost and more. He took the almost deathly blow without a word, without a sentiment, without a thought.
         “You killed everything I loved! You killed her!” Xor’s words were slurred with sorrow and with rage, and there was murder in his raven eyes.
         Crion looked skyward through eyes damp with blood and with tears, eyes he willingly closed as if in death… but he had yet to die. Xor towered over him, and would have stricken him far past his final hours were not the words of his beloved ringing still in the depths of his heart.
         Gorovan moved now, unseen by King and Eagle as they watched each other fall apart, and took up the silent child who clung still to her mother’s hands. She did not speak, nor think to doubt the man who bore her swiftly away, for in her fragile youth she knew nothing but shadows. Her mother had been the only light.
         Her mother, and the boy.
         Xor’s fists unwound as he lowered his head to look upon the Eagle. “You killed me.”
         He turned his back upon his brother. He moved toward his son, and toward the accursed nephew he had promised not to kill. He had had enough blood for one night. For an eternity.
         A deep hush fell over the throne room, over the city and over the earth, as the lord of the world’s throne looked now upon his heir. His son… the son in whom resided all he’d ever loved, the son in whom a light still dared to shine amidst the endless night.
         He knelt before him, gazed into the moonlit depths of his eyes. He was so like his mother, and yet so like his father, in the vastness of his fate and in the goodness of his heart. Xor would be good no longer. He knew only evil now. The earth sang soft his silent requiem, an elegy for all that had been lost, a lament for the sacred dead and damned souls of the living.
         Xor knew well that the darkness had devoured him, though it had yet to curse his son. His son was righteous still. Within him lay such promise and such hope, and yet he was to live a life of shadows… all the light he knew had faded when the girl was borne away. The King would have wept for his son hadn’t all his tears been spent.
         He took the hands of his angel’s children, one in each of his own, and now began the reign he’d hoped to end.
         The fires had died, their guttering flames burnt low, and the stone vault overhead was gilt with their quavering light. The Eagle gazed unmoving at the yawning dome above him, beyond which lay the raven wing of night, lit only by a setting moon, and felt the young earth bleed beneath him. He had lain for hours upon this bloodstained floor, unseen, unheard, and all but dead… yet he lived still, although his soul had faded.
         Crion rose in the smoldering torchlight and took leave of this hell. He bled through his own wounds, through those of his lady, his brother, his world… never had he been so mortal. He was an eidolon amidst the noiseless deep, in the starless inferno that was the earth. He was the ghost of all that might have been, who now went forth through the benighted city. He stopped only to take up the infant beneath the stone King, and with her in his arms he merged with the ambient shadow.
         The almighty triumvirate was felled at its own hand, its leader now fulfilling his father’s endless reign. Three great men were brothers no longer in name, though in their hearts their kinship was eternal… it would be ages ere they knew how bound they were to one another, and the world. They were the sons and the fathers of the earth.
         The moon fell low and set upon a once eternal night, and beyond the dim horizon the sun began its glorious ascent.
         It had never set upon this world, and never would.
         There is no end to eternity.