The memory of the grieving father's death left a taste of ashes and copper in Bastun's mouth, but unlike Athumrani he did not bring sorrow with him to place upon a frozen altar in an uncaring hell. Stygia devoured sorrow, ripped away love and compassion.
Bastun imagined himself a vessel. He allowed the power to tear through his body and spirit. Long jagged wounds opened and closed in his skin as he pulled the power into himself, denying it entrance to the world. Each rip brought tears to his eyes, yet focused them, sharpening his vision as he spent his rage. Slowly, the cold reseating of his skin became less painful and more numb. Stygia accepted the currency he had brought, though he wondered what he had purchased in return.
Several strides away, on the edge of the ice, the durthan stirred beside the black waters of the Stygian ocean. From the limitless depths of that dark sea, he sensed the attention of an ancient mind and felt its touch flow through the rush of power in his body. Malicious thoughts marched along his arms like an army of needles.
The reasonless tempest of Stygia's power became a living thing as evil caressed and crushed all at once. It whispered loving words in his ears, crooning and cajoling him to release his control, to open the doors of his willpower and loose hell upon a world that had no use for him. It shouted and screamed, the thunderous voice echoing as if submerged, tearing at the insides of his flesh in frustration to free itself.
He could see it, buried somewhere in the ocean's dark-a glacier bearing a dark blot of the prisoner within: Stygia's frozen devil-prince, Levistus.
The ice shook and cracked around him, geysers of water bursting from beneath. White faces of the damned sobbed and screamed from within the shifting blocks. Anilya rose on her hands and knees, crawling away from the rising waves of the ocean.
Despite pain and the croonings of that evil, Bastun held back the tide that swelled to break him.
This had been the failing of Arkaius. The long-unanswered covenant he had forged in Ilythiiri runes had been too much for Shandaular's king. His desire to save his people had driven him to desperate measures, pitting devils against the Nentyarch's demons. In the end he had turned away from the call of that dark mind in the depths, horrified by what he had created.
Bastun knelt alone on that precarious perch, resisting the weaknesses of his own humanity in order to hold the edges of the Word intact for those he left behind. The power that Arkaius had denied, Bastun reluctantly accepted.
He felt a measure of control transferred to him as strength flooded through his arms and legs. The wound. in his side disappeared. His aches and pains fell away. Spent rage left him hollow, and he sensed the sighing approval of Stygia and its hidden lord. With a strained thought he willed the ice to stop its quaking, and an ominous stillness settled uncomfortably within him.
Anilya approached slowly, shaking with cold, though Bastun sensed little more than a cool, gentle breeze. He looked up, coursing with a torrent of borrowed power, and only faintly felt the desire for vengeance. All doubt and things unnecessary, emotions that could unbalance his control, he made a space for them within. She had chosen her path, and he would make sure only she suffered for that choice.
"You killed him," he said, voice low and growling, amplified into an inhuman sound that grated in his ears. The last memory of his master's face, dying in the snow, flashed through his mind.
Anilya looked at him in fear, then over her shoulder at the nightmarish landscape that surrounded them both.
"You opened the Word, vremyonni," she said, straining to breathe the cold air. "Do not accuse me of trifles like murder!"
The durthan lunged, dark flames spitting from her hands as she sought to take hold of the Breath. The spell licked painfully at his hands and arms, hissing where it touched the buried blade. He stared curiously at the effect as if outside of himself. Anilya pulled and scratched at his fingers, finding them as hard and immovable as stone. The shadowy flames disappeared, leaving bits of his skin brittle and peeling, blackened and steaming. Looking into the durthans crazed eyes, he watched her confidence waver and fade to fear.
"What's wrong?" he asked. "I thought this was what you wanted."
Force gathered around him, and he willed it outward, watching as Anilya was slammed backward. Her body flew through the air and crashed against a spire of ice, then slid to the ground. The sound of breaking bone echoed, the reverberations tingling across his skin.
As he witnessed the violent effects of a mere whim, he wondered what he had done to himself. The swirling power clenched on his innards, twisting and stretching as it sensed the presence of his doubt. Gasping in pain, he pushed away his brief fear and breathed heavily as the pain subsided.
Anilya coughed, blood staining her lips as she pushed herself to a sitting position. She cradled a broken arm and one leg was bent at an unnatural angle. In the distance Bastun could see shapes diving and winging through the clouds. Black feathered wings bore tiny figures ever closer. Waves rolled in the ocean as beasts rose to the surface, spiny backs breaking the water before submerging again. Wiping her mouth on het sleeve, Anilya turned and saw them as well.
"They're coming for you," he said, shaking with the strain of maintaining the caged chaos that flowed from the Breath.
"So it seems," she replied, shifting her shoulders and looking away from the awakening denizens of Stygia, "though I suspect they'll have an eye for you as well." She shook with cold, frost forming in patches on her face and arms. "We could leave together, use this power for the greater good."
"I told you once before," he said. "Your passion lacks sincerity-and there is no good in this."
Pale arms, encrusted with ice, broke the ocean's surface and gripped the edges of the small island. Humanoid bodies, their faces frozen in grotesque expressions, pulled themselves sluggishly onto solid ground, flopping and sliding as they piled over one another. Dark angels, screeching hideous dirges overhead, circled and cast black eyes onto the procession of the damned.
Slowly, Bastun turned his head downward, unable to look upon the foul souls as they sought purchase on the ice. The slight weakness pained him, but the unnatural strength did not fade. The power did not so quickly punish this flaring spark of humanity. Claws scraped and drew his attention to the left where he spied a serpentine monstrosity writhing over a distant block of ice. Its pale blue eyes met his and he found a part of himself hiding in its multifaceted gaze. He shuddered, and the pain grew a bit more, but subsided more swiftly as if the power of Stygia were reshaping each lapse to its own design.
"Don't look away, Bastun," Anilya said hoarsely, and he looked at her blue-tinged lips, frozen droplets of blood clinging to her chin. "Remember this. Remember all of it."
The first of the condemned souls grasped her ankle, and she winced as her injured leg was tugged. Try as he might, he could not look away, could not abandon the need to see the fate of his friends' murderer. He whispered under his breath, in equal parts praying to the Three and recounting all that had brought him to this moment, this choice, this grim acceptance.
Anilya had not the strength to scream or cry out, but the damned did it for her as they pulled her inexorably to the ocean. Bastun heard in their voices a lament for their own existence, the dim memories of lives and deaths and torments suffered. He realized the curse of Shandaular and its Shield was birthed in the depths of this place, in the unceasing repetition of a frozen hell. Its power rushed in his ears, leaving him numb as a tangled mass of limbs and faces engulfed the durthan.