Part Ten:First court of the Seventh Eden

The voices of the collective ricochet off the walls of my head, I saw a blue flash sunk into my chest as my eyes opened, saw the Lich King's arm outstretched towards me, saw him looked at me. When he dropped his hand I crashed into the ground, ground of the seventh Eden. The pain was a part of me. It was as if I had felt them since the beginning of time. It was there but my threshold had risen. Some parts were numb. I slowly rose to my feet. When my vision cleared my mind stood still.

The columns rose all around us, neatly circling the garden (was this a garden?). There was a light that followed the circling pillars though it faded as you moved further from it to the centre, a light that did not pass the eclipse in which I stood. I would not have seen the columns were it not for their surpassing heights and tremendous girth. A city could be built from the stone they provided and still I would not have seen them for there were others in the garden. 

Their hooded heads were bowed towards the centre, a legion of heads. I saw every fold of their garment but none moved, as if they were carven. But something ancient stirred inside me, that dark shrine of wisdom known as instinct arose and dismissed the notion of these things being merely hewn stone, no, theses things were alive but frozen. 

Reapers, they looked like reapers in vast numbers. What was more disturbing than the presence of ten thousand shrouded beings? It was their order. It was if I had entered a Colosseum except their were no seats no physical structures only the immaculate ascending rows and rows of hooded figures assembled in thin air, in tandem rings, in perfect stillness, in pendant terror.

 "Welcome to the first court, soul bearer." 

I wish I had not a heart for the horror that squeezed it when the voices of the collective broke through my wandering silence refreshed my agony. It was not the sound of the voices exactly. I thought they had moved, the dark ones. I nearly collapsed again. But within the Eden rings their is no time for one shock, nightmares and nemesis were always unscripted and abundant. 

The doorway was summoned to life with roaring fire: "You Fools! You will burn in my judgement!

Fire came for us like we were sniped targets. It spurred forth like flying comets, malefic and enraged leaving no room for hesitation. I did not hesitate. I was now adept in the conjuring of shields and the stone had but to perceive my thought and an unseen barrier was about us. But it demanded the wielder's stamina, this was sorcery beyond me, I felt the effects of every blow in my fibers. The Lich king placed his hand on it. It was like a breadth of fresh air with his fortification. " You are learning soul bearer. Good, let me show you another way to use a shield, release it to me." So I did. When he took it, it glowed white then immediately turned crimson and the flames circled us with hell's fury, the shield was absorbing the hails of inferno, it rose like a spiraling column, the column became motionless and then burst into giant flaming serpents all about us. 

When the purview was once more made lucid battle was again joined, this time betwixt combatants of a legion of wights and a sea of blazing serpents. I rose from the ruckus, it was the stone's doing and I did not contradict it. We ascended above the war. The Lich King had surrounded himself with an army of serpents and was bombarding the Wight King with an unceasing rage of incendiary attacks forcing him into a defensive stance. Then two more portals opened up on the opposite sides of the ring and wights flooded through in battalions. I turned to the right one ready with the closing command when the Wight king appeared in mid air beside me, pushed his hand through my chest and pulled out the light of the command after which he corrupted it to a blue tinge and wrapped my body in it. I revolved helplessly, motionless, sealed by its burning blue flames. In a split second, the Lich King materialized besides us cloaked in a wrathful blue-white aura and attacked the Wight King with a fulminate force from his staff; only the attack was replicated as six instantaneously such that when the Wight King neutralized the one directly in front of him those of the five other Lich Kings that encircled him connected with an equivalent brutality. The Lich King became one again as the body of the Wight King fell towards the ground. His phosphorescent aura rejuvenated itself and the he followed his foe to the ground for a second round.

My body was rendered useless by the blue flames but my mind was still opened and I felt the tremor and saw the eruption when the two kings collided. Had heaven not heard that?! Like the reapers, I was now audience to the betiding battle. Two of the Lich generals had merged into one such that they bore a more intense glow and were as a giant though slender in form wielding a massive whip of corded light. The duel of the Kings pursued and none interrupted nor none could intercede in the contest of the immortal ones. Two generals were down, one had been encased by an enormous wight that pulled him into its body them immediately turned itself into stone. The other was bound to a pillar by a powerful arcane spell, I felt its resonance all the way up here, as if its source was within a deity. The Lich generals were War Lords, they possessed forces of their own not easily reckoned with. We lost two more in their sacrifice to break the bridges connecting the side portals. I saw them rose like burning stars, their light extended to each other like the encroaching dawn but at an unnatural speed and darkness and thunder bore the screams of my soul after their decent. The bridges were no more and no more were they. 

Too many had entered for three to contend with. The wights rose with a jade luminescence of their own and plummeted themselves into the fused generals, light against light. They clung to them like insects and forced their corrupted radiance into the Lich generals, a surge overload. They could not hold the hybrid form, their ivory brilliance slowly dimmed to the viral verdure as it metastasized and sundered them. Their lifeless bodies were flung apart. 

Pain. Six now had sacrificed themselves for me. Undead or alive the pain was the same. We were loosing. So I pulled into myself. If the conscious was useless the subconscious was awaken and far more devastating. My devastation. I folded my chi into a semi-lotus flow and extended the bridge to the sky:" Audi me, domine mi rex de gratia excidistis...Ne confundas nos: rursus!"

I was being reined in. My body was being drawn to the battle of the Kings. It was the wight King, I was in his power. It was a boundless battle within the dooming gleams of the burning door. Staff and sword clashed and swirled, failed curses exploded and missed spells burned out in dazzling flashes. My body was forced to revolve around the battle like an etiolated moon burning blue. I knew what he wanted. He was going to take out the Lich king with the corrupted command. Little did he knew I was also now a master of quantum synchronization. The stone attuned my will to the dark command and its dark instruct replicated itself within me. Their magic collided and forced them apart. The wight king drew me into him took the flames and slammed my unwanted body into a column. It was over. The curse broke through the Lich king's shield and immobilized him. 

They were of a ruinous form, of bones and decay encased in perfected dread by the perpetual ominous green aura rising like flames from their devious forms. Their faces were deformed from torment and hatred, visions of malevolence and corruption. They crowded towards me. "You are alone soul bearer. Your protectors failed you. Let me end your tragedy, give me the stone." He was a majesty of darkness, his threat was palpable beneath my skin, I had the power but not the skill to fight him, why even try, again the dark side was victorious. Still, they had won a battle not a war. Ten thousand wings descended. "This is your tragedy. The stone is MINE!"