Chapter 15

The eight Unclaimed entered the main quarters together and took the stairs to the room at the top.

The space greeted them with a familiar absurdity, the long table in its center crowded with plates, bowls, pitchers, and bottles. Roasted meat waited in thick slices. Bread lay torn and stacked. There were numerous fruits and vegetables, hues Pyre had never seen before he died. Steam drifted from covered dishes, the smell of salt, fat, and spice settling into the air.

“Perfect,” Balefor said, licking his lips. He rubbed his hands together. “Just what I was hoping for.”

“You don’t need to eat in the Nether,” Windscar told him as he passed. “You’re dead.”

“That’s all the more reason to eat!” Balefor said.

Windscar did not slow. The white-haired man moved down the hall with clipped steps and shut a door behind him hard enough to rattle the frame.

Balefor waved in his direction. “Bah. He’s a bastard for a reason, and not because he’s a literal bastard by title.” The lion-man grinned. “I can’t wait to hear that story, if he ever cares to share. Hey,” he said as Saejin and Urosh slipped past without comment, moving with the quiet efficiency of people who had reached the end of their tolerance for the day. “There’s a feast to be had, men!”

“It has been a day,” Urosh told him. The big man’s voice carried weariness rather than complaint as he moved down the hall, shoulders slumped, where he reached his quarters and shut his door with finality.

Kesh sat at the end of the table and reached for a bottle of black glass, the neck sealed in red wax. “What better way to celebrate or commiserate than with wine?” He looked around for a glass, found one, considered it for a moment, then ignored it and tore the wax free. Kesh tipped the bottle back and drank deeply. “Ahhh, yes.”

“Not a bad idea,” Balefor said as he sat down across from him.

“I’m afraid it will take a lot more of this to bring me to my happy place,” Kesh said, examining the bottle. “Luckily, there’s enough wine here to supply a militia.”

The word struck Pyre harder than it should have.

Militia.

The people of Farreach flashed through his mind. Mud on boots, hand-me-down armor from the guards at the city gates, blunted spears, men and women young and old wheezing through drills they had no business performing in preparation to fight an enemy that was destined to defeat them.

Pyre swallowed and said nothing as he settled in across from Balefor, where he found a glass and held it out to Kesh.

“Wine taken alone is vice; wine taken together is fellowship,” Kesh said, beaming as he filled Pyre’s glass to the brim. “Or as they used to say in my realm: in good company, even excess becomes custom.”

Marrowsven made up her mind with a short nod, her eyes flicking to the table. Without a word she grabbed a bottle, turned, and disappeared down the hall.

“Ah, don’t drink by yourself,” Balefor called to her, but by this point she was already gone. The lion-man glanced up to the only person still standing. “Well, Lyra, what say you? Will you have a seat at our table or retreat to your room?”

“I believe I’ll stay,” she finally said as she sat across from Pyre. She declined the wine, but she did begin assembling a plate of meat, methodical and deliberate.

“No vegetables?” Balefor asked her as they heard another door slam.

“Not tonight.”

The lion-man opened his own bottle and poured himself a generous glass. After finishing the glass, he let out a deep sigh. “Thank the pantheons Domain day is over. And at least we know.” Balefor filled his glass again and lifted it toward the others. “I must admit, and I’m not trying to stroke my own mane here, but I hoped for something like Conquest. So cheers to that.”

“You realize how you sound, right?” Lyra asked him.

“Cheersing myself? Not really, no. How do I sound?”

“Like you’re bragging.”

“I’m not bragging, I’m just relieved. And Reflection is a solid Domain too, Lyra—an interesting one. I find your Sigil fascinating. If there were two of me, I could get a lot more done.” He snorted. “My enemies would rue the day!”

“You know it doesn’t exactly work like that, right?” she asked Balefor, a slow grin tugging at her mouth despite herself.

“Alas, I know, I know. But it could be said that we would all do well to remember that our fates aren’t written in stone. Strange things happen. Look at Pyre here.” Balefor gestured to him with his wineglass. “He arrived with a fully formed Sigil and a Domain that I’ve never heard of, Defiance. And then we have Rinpoche Kesh. I love saying that name.” He grinned at the bard. “Won’t you play us a song and share your Harmony with us?”

“A song, you say?” Kesh asked as he finished his bottle and opened another. “I’ll consider it, and you are bragging, Balefor, whether you’d like to admit it or not. But you have every right to be content: Conquest is a very desirable Domain.”

“Why’s that?” Pyre asked. The word escaped him before he could stop it. He cleared his throat, heat creeping up his neck. Pyre hated that the others knew so much more than him, but this group especially seemed fine with it. “Why is Conquest desirable?”

“Because of its usefulness to the factions that battle on the frontlines of the Nether,” Kesh said matter-of-factly. “Once the Hunger comes to a realm and the race to pillage what’s leftover begins, someone with—”

“So that’s what he was doing,” Pyre said.

“Hmmm?” Kesh asked.

The Swordsman rose in Pyre’s mind without invitation, the barefooted realm raider able to draw his blade so quickly that he hadn’t even seen him move.

“Who?” Lyra asked once he didn’t respond.

Pyre set his glass down before he crushed it.

“Yes, speak, Pyre of Farreach, tell us of your woes,” Balefor said. “Of your past, your glories, and your dreams. Whatever you must get off your chest, now is the time to reveal it.”

Pyre glanced from Balefor to Lyra, then settled on Kesh.

“Go on,” the bard told him. “None of our Domains are judicial.”

“In my realm,” Pyre said, “we prayed to Karastella of the Heavenly Host. She did nothing to save us. Nnothing. But an angel did come in the end, Daedalus, and he tried to stop the Hunger. It didn’t work; Karastella appeared and scorned him, then Daedalus killed himself, and it all went to hell from there.”

“I can only imagine,” Kesh said.

“Then I encountered this strange swordsman. He’s the one who killed me. Before he did, he told me to find the Shepherd, that the Shepherd owes him a favor. Now, at least I understand why the asshole was there—he was in my realm to pillage it of its resources.”

“Why would a raider tell you to find someone?” Lyre asked.

“I don’t know.”

“And he beat the factions to the race, it seems,” Kesh added. “Which is odd considering your mention of Karastella already being there. I don’t know where her reasoning lies, or anything about the Heavenly Host, for that matter. In my realm, we didn’t worship any of the factions and only saw the pantheons as something that we had no control over. Well, unless we were able to ascend.”

Pyre stopped himself short of slamming his fist against the table. “They do nothing and pillage the realms once the Hunger comes? Nothing!”

“Is that you or your Defiance that speaks, Pyre?” the lion-man asked calmly.

“I… I don’t know.”

“Eh. Either way, you are right to be upset. I would be too,” Balefor told him. “I think we all would. But I would also say this: look where you are, where we all are. This was our destiny, and it remains our destiny to join this fight when we are able.”

Pyre’s expression darkened. “Answer me this: if any of you understand how this works, especially after all your years of preparation, why are the pantheons fighting each other instead of stopping the Hunger? With all that power, why do they choose endless war?”

“Because there is rarely profit in unified solutions,” Kesh said simply. “Power, and the pursuit of it, rules the Nether. We are but reflections of this truth, sadly. It is not something that sits well with me, mind you, but it’s something I’ve come to understand with my years of practice.”

“The factions that make up the pantheons war for Anima and power,” Lyra said. “It really is that simple. Sure, Domains can change, but they rarely do; changing one means changing who you are. And even then, it doesn’t matter. Hierarchy holds, in life and in death. I hope you can see the meaning behind my words.”

Kesh leaned back and drained the rest of his bottle. “What a profound way to put that, Lyra. And I was unaware that Domains could change, but I suppose if you truly put the work in, it would make sense that this could be the case. Then again, you could always just add an additional Domain. Maybe that’s the musician in me. A lot can be said about accompaniment.”

“We can have more than one? How many can we have?” Pyre asked.

“More than three if you’re a Divine Being,” Balefor said. “But most have one, perhaps two if they really have the drive. None of it is simple, and I should say this, Pyre, because I like you: seeking revenge or trying to better understand why these things have happened to us—or, more specifically, you—may be a waste of your time. You have been given a chance most souls would kill for, even if none of us knows what it will cost yet.”

“Most souls do not even know this exists,” Lyra told Pyre, gesturing around.

“Correct,” Kesh said. “Even realms that have reached various stages of enlightenment have their doubts.”

“And those of us that do understand this expect hierarchy because it comes with power,” Lyra said. “Look at those you have seen here, the other Unclaimed. We are all ambitious, driven to greatness.”

“So that’s why you all are doing this?” Pyre asked. “For greatness?” He laughed, sharp and humorless.

“Easy, Pyre,” Kesh started to say.

He leaned forward. “You spent your lives to come here and join some endless war that has been going on for all eternity, a war for Anima and resources stripped from realms that have been ripped to shreds, lives lost, whole worlds of memory and knowledge destroyed. You do this for greatness?”

“That,” Balefor said calmly, “and, well, since we’re here in Aevum, to avoid the Hollow.”

Pyre turned to him. “The Hollow?”

“Within Aevum, there is a district known as the Hollow,” Balefor said. “Most of the texts in my realm mentioned it. So while we haven’t been outside these walls yet to see it, I’m sure it’s here.”

“I’ve heard of it, too,” Lyra said. “The Hollow is a place for broken or incomplete souls. A reminder of failure. If you don’t fully survive Shriving, that’s where you go. That’s where you would have gone for the rest of eternity. It’s where that one fellow went, the one who was with us at the start.”

“Anru, the Tide Bound,” Kesh said. “A man clearly from an ocean realm.”

“What about the souls along the path to Aevum?” Pyre asked, remembering as he walked over them, how they reached for him and how he had used his Sigil to beat them back. “I saw them.”

“Ah, those,” Kesh said. “They were the first to go during Shriving.”

“And Anru, how do you know the Hollow is where he went?” Pyre asked. “I thought…” He huffed. “I don’t know what I thought.”

“We know because his Sigil shattered,” Lyra said. “It didn’t just crack. There’s a very big difference.”

Pyre drank again. “What about the Shepherd? I know you said you hadn’t heard of him,” he told Balefor. “But what about the two of you?”

“I can’t say I know of any Shepherd,” Kesh said.

Lyra shook her head. “Same. It is a name I am unfamiliar with.”

“Perhaps when you head out to Aevum, you can ask around,” Balefor said. “But it is a big place, and there are areas that you will not be allowed to visit, parts run by various factions from what I’ve read. As much as I hate to be the one that says it, for now, especially with all that has happened today, I’d suggest drinking more wine and getting some rest.”

“I can help with that.” Kesh set the bottle down and called his transparent lute to hand. He touched the strings once, a quiet, unfinished sound that lingered.

Pyre felt his breath slow, the pressure behind his ribs easing as he exhaled.

Kesh met his gaze and smiled faintly. “When you’re ready, let me know.”