Page 56 of Dark Fae's Destiny

And we’ll take that chance—however slim it might be.

“You call him the Golden Child of Light, Staphylogenes. Why?” I take up Quinn’s cue now as I address the creature and its cohort.

Because once, he was the most sublime among us. That voice slithers through the darkness, tightening in an invisible knot all around us. Once, he was the most beautiful creature to Ascend through any Vir, anywhere. Aching to look upon, with a voice drawn from the most supreme ancients themselves, he was of the Music, and he was in the Music, and he was the very essence of the Music, as he rose to become the most profound creator with it. He was of the highest resonance with the Music—his very heart was Music, song, dance, and all the various arts of Creation.

“He created… but something went wrong, didn’t it?” Lucca asks now as we feel the noose of the void around us pause, thinking.

Hubris began to devour him after he created this place. I feel the black serpent of emptiness regard us. He meant for it to be the most sublime seat of all creation, anywhere—a place of the greatest art, song, and dance, just like he himself was with the Music. What he didn’t know is that there are beings far more powerful than us, who created works many times greater than he or I could ever imagine. He began to think himself infallible with the Music. It was so much a part of him, he believed he could do anything with it. But thence came the Child… and forever after, he was dissonant.

“The Wanderer. Cereus. His daughter.” I recall Staphylogenes’ horrible history with his quasi-immortal daughter.

Dissonance devoured him after he co-created the Child of his loins with his beloved. The voice circles in again, as if eager to tell us its tale—then eat us. He did not understand there are laws that govern physical form, even for us; disappointed with his Child’s creation, he tried to change those laws with the Music, and it ripped this place apart.

“It ripped apart you and the others who are bound down here, forever locked inside this place, didn’t it?” Lucca says now, knowing like Quinn and I do that every moment we stay alive in here is another moment for us to make our escape with the heart.

If any escape is even possible from this place.

For his Music was terrible in its sundering, that voice says now as it tightens around us, closer. He was the greatest creator with it we had ever seen; thus, he was the greatest destructor with it we had ever encountered. Many of us tried resisting his madness; it ruined us. Then we were trapped in here by our still hale brethren. To rot for all eternity… while the Golden Child went free.

“You want to keep the heart,” I understand then, as the deepest truth of my life hits me. “You hate Staphylogenes so much, you never want him to get his heart back, because of what happened to you. You glorify in the fact that he can’t make it back here anymore without his Light. That his heart is yours now, forever. Lost inside this place with you.”

Clever child. That voice seems to come from all around me in the semi-dark now, as it cinches in. It feels like a massive boa constrictor of the coldest midnight has coiled all around me now, speaking right into my ear with its terrible, ancient voice. You differ from the others… strong, like we once were. For our Light and Night were once harmonized, as yours are. Though you can see now… that is no longer the case.

As the voice in the void rises up, I see it flare to life in the semi-dark. Like an endless Revenant smoke, it fills the catacombs’ highest vaults, tall as the Cathedral of Notre Dame, with its presence.

I feel it as millions of red eyes, each more massive than the last, pop open, pinning me with their horrible gaze. They all weep blood, as terrible black and crimson blood-oilslick sigil phrases write and rewrite throughout the thing’s terrible reaches.

I understand what it is, as it reveals itself to us—a Descendant Revenant, an Ascendant fallen, then gone utterly mad into a total Revenant state, over countless eons. Beyond terrible, a sound like breaking skies thunders me to my bones as it shows itself. But that vast, wrenching sound goes further than just break the skies.

It breaks all of creation, as I feel myself being torn apart to this thing’s vast, immortal delight.

Quinn, Lucca, and I don’t even have a moment as we all scream, inundated by the Descendant Revenant’s destruction. As the others in this nowhere-hellhole join in, we’re hammered by sheer power—which launches all three of us off our feet.

Tossing us like rag dolls, we slam against the side of Staphylogenes’ white tomb. Everything is chaos, then, as a massive sound rings from the tomb like a furious bell, a thousand universes high and a thousand universes deep.

The tomb explodes out behind us. Shrapnel of white stone written all through with golden sigildry hammers into the black creature of a million eyes and its cohorts. They scream with a million voices of unending torment as they’re pummeled with it, those chunks of blazing white stone ripping through them, tearing their most horrible Night apart.

We’re in; somehow, Quinn, Lucca, and I were not damaged when the heart’s tomb exploded. A many-faceted crystal lies within the shattered white stone, covered in golden Ascendant’s sigils.

Which contains a slightly larger-than-normal, human heart.

That heart still beats, still pumps as if it was pumping real blood, though we see only a strange, shimmering liquid full of golden light, which flows inside the box.

But as Quinn, Lucca, and I touch the heart’s crystal case, a tremendous intent moves through us. As one, we scream to our deepest minds, hearts, and souls, save us!—suddenly, it’s like a bomb of the Music goes off inside us, though it’s not outwardly manifested in this endless, still-point space.

But as the Music rushes through our bones now, united by our trio’s bonds which are renewed by our touch upon the heart’s crystal case, a towering Ascendant Sigil roars up inside us. It’s all through the crystal case of the heart, also, as I feel the heart respond from our new, internal Music touching it.

Because it is the heart of an Ascendant, still filled with the Light of Staphylogenes, which has forever left him. As if feeling our plea, responding to that towering sigil of the Music we just manifested and our dire heartwish, the heart flares to life.

Where it was calmly beating with slow, endless beats, it now hammers hard, fast like it’s in some tremendous race. The heart screams with energy, its entire reaches flaring with golden sigils and the purest white Light, as the many-sided crystal case it’s in responds.

Both the heart and the case seethe with Light now, tremendous, making their own endless complex phrase of the Music as Ascendant’s Sigils pour from it in the semi-dark. As the Descendant Revenants with their million eyes surge in, furious at how the tomb damaged them and ready to finish us, we’re suddenly being portaled out.

Ripped through endless worlds—as the Ascendant heart finds its way back to its maker.

We’re hurtled through countless Realms of destruction in the ruined city of Florence, as the heart finds its way back to Staphylogenes. I finally feel us hit the ringing tones of the Seventh Vir that is the Twilight Realm, and I know we’ve made it; we’re through, as the portal the heart made chucks us out.

It’s night. The air is crystal clear all around as a glowing blue-white nimbus fills the sky. We land in a tangled heap somewhere, the crystal case of the heart thudding to emerald grass beside us.

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