Ususi responded. But she did know. It was the doom she and her sister Qari had shared since they were children. They would one day face darkness, irredeemable and absolute. And here it was. "Ususi, we must press forward if we are to breach the weapons cache," Iahn said, taking one of her hands in both of his own. "Dissolve this magical gloom and reveal the threat Pandorym truly poses. Are you truly so afraid of the dark?" "It's not the dark-it's what the darkness hides!" she yelled in the vengeance taker's face. But as she spoke, she wondered if it were true. Her lifelong nightmares had conditioned her to quail in the face of utter gloom. Pandorym's mind and essence were things of darkness made manifest, and it blocked her way forward. She took a deep breath, fighting to impose calm. She could flee, true, and let Deep Imaskar fall by allowing Pandorym to go unopposed. Or she could deal with the murk that blocked their way. It couldn't hurt to try to dissolve the gloom in greater light, could it? Ususi reached up and tapped the jewel that hovered overhead, muttering encouraging thaunemes of amplification. Responding to her magical plea, the illumination of her orb waxed. Ususi swiveled to face her nemesis.
Radiance poured from her free-floating light, meeting the darkness like an ocean wave meets a rocky coast. The gloom splintered and fell back… then drank down the light entirely. The distant wind suddenly screamed in Ususi's ear, and the darkness pounced. Light guttered and failed. Ususi's voice choked up, and her limbs were swaddled in oblivion. Her lifelong nightmare was back, this time all too real. The darkness, after these long, empty years, finally got her. When the wizard was snatched away, Iahn yelled "Ususi!" and plunged into the blackness. Warian moved forward, but his uncle held him back. "What can you smash if you can't see?" The elemental lord thundered at the swordswoman, "It obeys the rules of darkness, I deem, even if it is possessed of something more nefarious. Burn it away with Angul!"
Kiril's hand went for the lesser blade she carried on her belt.
Monolith cried, "It must be Angul. No time for half-measures!" The elf's hand wavered, then diverted to Angul's sheath. Kiril pulled Angul forth and gasped. Runes on the unclothed blade burned with blinding intensity and blue flame. The advancing margin of darkness reversed itself. With a posture forged from blade-given surety, the elf stepped forward a pace, then two. The darkness roiled and flailed against the perimeter of Angul's glow, and Kiril moved forward another step. Here and there, the sphere of brilliance surrounding Kiril dimmed, and lightless tendrils slid inward along invisible fractures.
Another step forward and the sphere shrank to half its size.
Undaunted, Kiril advanced. The roused dusk swallowed her. As if energized by enclosing Angul's brilliance, the face of the black wall swelled. Zel, Warian, and even Prince Monolith fell back, but too slowly. All were engulfed. When the perimeter receded to its original position, the hall was empty. No evidence of intruders remained to mar the ancient stone floor of the Purple Palace.
Ususi rolled over and over, impelled by a force with no substance.
She spun through a screaming void of spiritual emptiness. How had she escaped the darkness during her last dream, when wakefulness had been denied her? Qari! Her sister had come into her dream, saving her.
Would a memory of her sister offer aid now? She fastened upon the idea of Qari and tried to shout her name, though the use of her voice was denied her. A glimmer of cool, blue radiance broke upon her mind. It wasn't true light-it seemed more like a species of understanding.
Spiritual illumination, perhaps. In its glow, she grasped the vague, ill-defined connection that she and her twin sister shared since childhood, and retained still. Following the connection down its ill-defined, looping path, she found at its end a silhouette. It was Qari. Qari spoke. "Years have piled on years since last we talked, Ususi. I'm glad, even as this focal event of your life, and mine, overtakes us, that we have this brief moment to talk once more." Her sister smiled and held out her hands. "What… are you here with me, in the darkness of Pandorym's veil?" Ususi strode forward, her arms and legs suddenly resolved in Qari's aura. Qari grasped Ususi's hands. Warm and vital, her flesh seemed real. "In a way. My mind is with you-my percipience. My physical form, despite its faded claim on reality, remains in besieged Deep Imaskar, where the fires of Pandorym's vengeance have breached the Great Seal. Slaughter walks the streets. Our chat must be short." Too much information, too many implications-even the nature of their connection. Nausea threatened to overcome the wizard, the result of understanding her sister's words.
She had so many questions for Qari. "Your 'faded claim' on reality-what are you talking about? And the 'focal point' of our lives-you mean Pandorym?" Qari laughed, but sadly. "All these are connected. The dreams that plagued us since we were children were more than a presentiment of what you would one day face, and fail to overcome. You see, my very existence is a direct consequence of Pandorym's meddling in its future, our past." Ususi feared her sister had slipped into insanity. Or she had herself and merely dreamed all this. But she said, "Time is sacrosanct. No one may alter its flow, everyone knows this. The mage-researchers of the Arcanum spent enough time proving it…" "Mortal rules do not apply to beings that exist outside of the world, and so outside of time. Pandorym is such a creature. Even as it was caged, it saw ahead to the moment of its release. In that chance for freedom, it recognized a possibility that, along a minor timeline, one would be born who might find herself in the right place at the right time to stem its reemergence. That person was you." Qari forestalled Ususi's next question, speaking over her.
"Hush, let me finish. Time is not so elastic for you and I." Ususi reluctantly nodded. "Pandorym took steps to prevent you from overcoming it. It reached forward, imparting what influence it could, hoping to create deterrence enough to prevent she who would one day threaten its bid for freedom. But the mere act of its temporal reach forged two competing possibilities. In one case, it succeeded, and Ususi was born to dread the darkness. But every coin has two sides.
Pandorym's meddling also caused Qari to be born, whose congenital blindness limited her world, but gave her an ability to pierce any darkness and to see even where no light may ever shine." "Two timelines? But we exist together-you are my sister!" "I am your twin to a greater degree than you have ever imagined. I am an alternate you." "This is a dream! Or you are crazy. Or I am. Has darkness driven me insane with fear? How can you be an alternate version of me, yet have grown up with me in Deep Imaskar?" Qari cocked her head and said,
"How could I not? But moments are precious right now. We've come to that crossroads-you must accept my gift. You must accept my percipience. With it, no darkness will ever blind you again." "But you need it…" "Everyone in Deep Imaskar will be dead soon, and me with them, if you do not press forward now. If I give up my vision through the darkness, I may perish, true. But listen. Everything-hopes, worries, fears-all these pale in the face of death. Only that which is important remains." Qari released Ususi's hands and held hers up before Ususi's face. She put her palms over the wizard's eyes and said, "See, as I have seen." At long last, Ususi saw again the high, hard celestial lights that haunted her days and nights since she nearly perished on the ship. Beneath their elysian clarity, Ususi's perception would never again be impeded.