Aetherias Moon

by Aetherias Moon

Navina watched her city burn. Her pale hands gripped the gleaming balustrade as her midnight hair blew in the wind. Her navy eyes glistened from the heat. The scent of metallic flames bit at her nose. In the streets priests lead a procession of the weeping as a prayer to the Goddess. Her knuckles whitened.

May She save them.

“When are they to strike again?” she asked.

“At midnight the darkness comes,” the priestess said. Down below, a crying girl looked through the wreckage, for a toy? Her parents? Navina made herself look at each of her citizens. A man walked in a daze down the street, a woman carried a basket of fruit like she was trying to get on with life. It seemed impossible to keep track of all of them. Still, she would record all of them in her memory.

So she would know who she failed.

Take care of my people. Navina bared her teeth. She wouldn’t fail.

“No word from Anadele?”

The Cycle had terrorized Navina from a young age: children’s tales of darkness led her to studying the history of the endless destruction of civilizations, an inevitable annihilation. A scourge that came for the flourishing. Nobody knew why it happened – their Goddess spoke of it to her in hushed whispers, claiming that it was a thing of the past, that she had it handled. Still, Navina had planned, building walls, raising warriors, training her citizens in evacuation tactics. Some had called her crazy, now they looked to her for answers that she didn’t have.

“No.”

“Kien?”  

She shook her head.

“Inor?” 

The priestess looked down. Navina looked back at her city as desperate workers cast water incantations on the shattered homes. Smoke coughed up to the sky. The wall in the distance was crushed in an almost perfect semicircle. Homes sprinkled the ground like litter, the flames trying to erase the sin. They had managed to survive the last attack. Barely. Her planning had been like a stick against a sword, broken easily and leaving a nasty wound as a reward. Navina walked her fingers across the railing. 

“And so we fall.”

“Your Highness, what do we do?”  

She chewed on her acrid tongue, her body leaden with the weight of a thousand deaths. On one hand she wished any other child had been chosen to rule over her, on the other she was determined to fulfill her duty. No matter the cost. 

She looked up at the sparkling heavens, pressed her fingertips against her lips and released them to the sky. Give me strength.

 Navina turned to face the priestess, nobles, and her advisors all who lacked advice now. All of their faces, regardless of skin or age, bore a flushed wish to live and a grimace of resignation. Navina gazed at the pearly white castle she called home. It seemed wrong how pristine it was in comparison to the chars of the city. Still, it was a symbol of hope. Something for her people to look up to even when the nightmares came. The city hadn’t fallen until the prismatic castle crumbled.

Navina pulled her sword from her scabbard.

“We fight.”

#

Ash stuck to her throat, the field of broken homes was marred by blood and black stains. The midnight sky hung heavy over them as the moon rose as a ticking clock towards their oblivion. 

No. She would protect her people. 

The moon’s sheen reminded Navina of her Goddess and the day She had chosen her out of a hundred noble children as the next heir to the Ioran empire. A tan woman with hair like the galaxy and eyes as bright as stars had crouched down and cupped her face. She had smiled and bestowed a kiss on her forehead, whispering something so quietly that even Navina had barely caught it. Take care of my people. 

“Your highness, it is unwise for you to be here,” General Deveren said. They stood on the field of broken homes where the fire had finally died. On either side of her lay the wreckage of her city’s walls, its corridors lit by the abyss. Behind her camped the meager remains of her army dressed in their navy jackets, most of them scuffed and ripped. The warriors jittered uneasily. She glanced back at Deveren but said nothing. He rubbed his scruffy beard and stared at the razed streets. 

“Where else would I be?”

“Your-”

“Keep your mind on the task sir,” she said. “We must find the core, correct?”

“Yes.” He met her eyes unlike everyone else. 

The core was an idea, a hope, a plea, that something could take the nightmares down…the proof of it was negligible. It was something out of fairytales: heroes conquering the shadow by finding the origin of darkness. Her stomach tightened. Their best bet was something read to children at bedtime, but it was all they had.

“May the Astral Goddess be with us,” she said.

“What is the time?” he asked. 

Couldn’t he tell the time by the weight of the moon in the sky? It was full and taking up the heavens until she had to crane her neck all the way to see it. A midnight noon. The time had come.

“A minute to midnight,” a lieutenant answered

“No.” Navina unsheathed her sword and raced forward. “Now.”

She cut through a slimy mass of black as it coalesced from the shadows. Slime pooled at her legs. Inky tentacles ensnared her. She channeled light down into her feet with a burst and jumped away.

All around them the darkness stirred. Tendrils of night rose out of the rubble and shattered outward like a broken mirror at midnight. The sky became a mass of shadows at play, crooked smiles revealing their wicked revelry. Monsters born out of nightmares appeared. Their bodies were all broken angles with too many limbs and crooked faces. Their figures boggled the eye, making her vision blurry like they weren’t meant to be seen or understood.

Inhuman shrieks mixed with the shivering howls of humans.

Navina ran forward, arcing her sword down through a shade and then up through another.

“Your Majesty!” Deveren called. Her guards raced after her. She worried for their safety as they followed her but they didn’t understand. She couldn’t stay back. Couldn’t stay safe.

Their Goddess would come for her.

Neither her scientists or priests could tell her where the core would be other than the place simple logic would conclude. The center. The nightmares spawned in waves. She might be able to make it to the center in the brief moments before more nightmares arrived. She couldn’t hesitate. Navina wasn’t so narcissistic to think she was the strongest warrior nor the bravest, the only thing she had going for her was the power of light to speed forward and the blessing of their Goddess. Still, as she took in the crooked forms of tentacled nightmares she balked. 

A group of soldiers to her right screamed in horror as tendrils squeezed their torsos. Their swords were impotent. Could she spare time to save-

They ruptured in a spray of blood and bone.

No. Navina would remember them. All of them, she decreed. She turned her vision away as tears streamed down her face. When had she started crying? She should be strong enough not to sob, she had to be strong; strong enough that people would follow her into hell. Men would fall today but her empire wouldn’t. Her Goddess wouldn’t fail them. 

Take care of my people. The words echoed in her mind. 

The darkness swam. She threw herself backward just in time to escape a tree trunk of a tentacle as it slammed down. Tremors cascaded through her body as she tried to calculate how to evade the shade but couldn’t process it, the darkness too complete. So deep as it climbed up and around her it blocked out the moon like the last glimmer of hope. Once so bright, snuffed out in an instant. 

Navina realized the naivety of her plan. The hubris of it all. Beyond her may have been the core, but how far did the darkness stretch? The waves seemed faster today as if oblivion hungered. She dodged another tentacle. 

Navina carved her sword on an angle, arcing light at the monster. The ray extended a hundred spans into the air and for one brilliant moment it revealed the nightmare. She recoiled. The void echoed into infinity. Its body was a mash up of limbs and angular bulges jutting out of its stomach. The slash didn’t even begin to reach the height of it. The towering beast seemed to be made of the heavens itself. 

Metal and urine scented the wind. The earth trembled as other nightmares marched towards her city. Please. 

She sent out another ray of light with a crack.

The darkness enveloped her like sludge creeping back into place after it had been disturbed. She had gone too far, and for what? There wasn’t a core. Her sword jittered in her hands as nightmares closed in on her.

Please.

Take care of my people.

Where was She? Her soft smile reassuring her that everything would be fine? 

Another light ignited the battlefield; a land of twisted nightmares and crimson desecration. Flame danced and ripped apart nightmares.

“Your Highness!” Deveren cut down a twisted form leaving a pool of black around his feet. He had cleared a path back for her. Navina paused. Could she really give up so easily? Iora would fall if she didn’t push further. Decay weighed down the wind. 

Shadow and blood squirmed into an S shape like a snake without a head. 

“Dev-”

His eyes widened. 

Crunch. 

Deveren’s body slumped to the ground. Her vision blurred and she swayed as she ran. She sliced the creature with a slash that ignited the night. It cut down ten more shadows in its path, but it didn’t change anything. Deveren was dead. He had a little girl. What of the girl in the city? Where were they now? Praying that Navina would save them? That their Goddess would?

Take care of my people. Navina’s people. Her people.

A kiss on her forehead. Quiet words. A radiant smile.

Their Goddess had abandoned them.

She retreated. Some of her men broke rank, some threw themselves further into the fight. Even if the chance was one in infinity she would keep fighting. 

“Iora will stand,” she shrieked.

Her warriors rallied around her, bringing up the cry and standing their ground. The hair on her forearms stood on end. On instinct she launched backwards.

A titans maw shot out of the ground and swallowed the ragged band of heroes whole. 

There hadn’t been time to say anything.

She landed on the rubble of a house. Chunks of wall flung into buildings made of ash and desperation. A piece lodged into the Prismatic Castle. Her home. The symbol of the Ioran empire. Shadow titans stomped on buildings, working their way towards the palace.

Her screeches fell incoherent. Shouldn’t it have gone differently? In stories the valiant empress steps into battle and saves the day. 

Navina simply lived the longest.

Darkness blotted out the stars, tentacles whipped through wisps of clouds. Her knees hit the ground. Her sword clanked on the cobblestone. It was over. Something like a face bent downward in a mass of breaking undulating limbs. A maw opened. She saw a malicious destiny, and knew her time had come. 

A flash of light so brilliant it burned sent her backwards. Navina turned her eyes on a tan woman in a flowing dress the color of a blue moon, her hair a blanket of stars. The Astral Queen. The Goddess held out splaying fingers.

Pinprick stars descended on the battlefield and went nova. Indigo light tickled the air. The Goddess screamed her incantation over and over until the moon could be seen in the sky.

The desolation ended. Navina stayed frozen like a moon in an untouched pond. A once colorful skyline now lay a wasteland of red splotched rubble. The radiant star-speckled sky seemed to mock her as it stood unchanged. She looked around for survivors and could see none. The Goddess quieted; the silence burned her ears. She wished for screams and crying. Where were her people? The wounded? 

The Goddess walked over to Navina, tears streaming down her beautiful face. The Astral Queen fell to her level. She wrapped her arms around Navina and sighed.

“At least I saved you,” she murmured.

Navina couldn’t say a word. She couldn’t bring herself to be angry. Her heart thumped heavily in her chest, the feeling alien and wrong. Her body should be silent like the town around her. Treacherous heartbeats thundered in the broken city.

“Late…too late…” The Goddess said. “Why does this always happen? Over and over…”

“Take care of my people,” Navina said.

The Goddess pulled away and looked at Navina, her bright eyes now dim. 

“I couldn’t do it,” Navina said. The endless horizon, the city ashes, the towering castle now razed to the ground. A cracked doll’s head laid in a pool of blood.

“Neither could I,” the broken Goddess whimpered.