Edge of Extinction war story/Chapter 5

Cagliari stopped at the place that Lady Cenara had indicated with a frown. There did not appear to be anything particularly special about this particular glade of trees that set it apart from others in the Darkovian wilderness. Not for the first time, Cagliari worried that his journey to this place was in vain, but in the absence of Commander Paladin’s leadership, Cagliari found himself faced with the prospects of once again leading his brethren, and he felt it important to remind himself the reasons why he remained with his charge.

“Uh... Abode?” Cagliari began uncertainly. Before the words were finished being spoken, Cagliari noted with surprise that the trees of the forest had metamorphosed around him into an elaborate hall dominated by a large quantity of odd-looking doors.

“Yes, Brother Cagliari Lux.” A voice seemed to come from every direction at once. “Welcome to the Hall of Memories. How may I assist you in your journey?”

“You can trace any memory?”

“Any for which I have a record, which, given that I access the prime memory store of the Astral Plane itself, is virtually any memory. Some extremely potent entities have been known to interfere with the effect, but such is very rare.”

“I wish to see the final fall of Luminovia into Darkovia.”

“That is a fairly broad request, brother... Do you perhaps have a specific place we can start?”

“Shortly after Commander Paladin’s undeath, when he assumed control of the Lady’s armies...”

A door further along the hall swung open, a series of runes glowing lightly on the surface before fading into darkness.

“Proceed at will.”

Cagliari dug up his courage and entered the door, and all at once the present ceased to be and Cagliari found himself returned to the past from whence he had come.

A small sunlit grove of trees shrouded in mists took the place of the Hall. It was at once similar and yet very different from the grove in which he had stood before entering the Hall of Memories in the first place.

Cagliari recognized the scene, but not the perspective, and turned around, a bit confused...

“I am the Commander,” Cagliari said.

“You are the Commander,” a voice answered, and Cagliari realized with a start that it was his own younger self that was answering. “And the downfall of Seth Cay Dhows has already been set in motion...”

“Brother,” the older Cagliari, in the Commander's form, began, “it will not be that easy... Our efforts against Father Dhows may take a very long time to come to fruition. I would not want to give you false hope.”

“Any hope at all is not false hope, Commander,” the younger Cagliari responded.

“Cagliari,” Paladin's voice answered, “beware of letting your desire for vengeance cloud your vision. Such must never be our purpose. Our form may have changed, but our charge has not.”

“I know, Commander. Our purpose is the protection of the innocent... as it always has been.”

“Quite so, Brother. Quite so.”

“Good day to you, my children,” a melodic female voice spoke.

“My Lady,” Cagliari said, his younger self echoing his words nearly immediately.

“Brother Cagliari Lux,” the Lady spoke, “how well have you served me...”

“Service to your person, my Lady, has been my honor and my life’s work...”

“And your unlife’s work, too, it seems, Brother Lux...” Another voice joined the Lady's, as husky and reverberating as the Lady's was dulcet and mellifluous.

“Yes, sir.” The younger Cagliari answered the Lord of Darkness with deference and respect.

“Would you be free of the burden of your service to us?” the Lady asked then. “Your obligations have more than been fulfilled, and the Commander has assumed his proper role at our side...”

“Lady?” the young undead priest answered. “Do you mean, do I wish to die?”

“Of course not,” the Lord of Darkness answered for his consort. “What sort of payment for the service you have done the Church would your death be?”

“They do say that there is peace in death and freedom... He may wish such...”

“I...” the young knight began.

“If such were your desire, brother,” the Lord continued, “we could accommodate you, though we were thinking that perhaps what you would really prefer would be a return to your life as it would have been had the usurper not interfered.”

“You have earned this. Take it,” Commander Paladin said. “But you must act quickly; in short order, the armies of the king will take this forest and bring it under the control of the crown. When that event occurs, its fall into corruption will have been completed.”

“Drageth Slugwrath is no king...”

“Of course he is. A petty tyrant... but nevertheless a monarch. Luminovia has already fallen, Cagliari. Time has just not caught up to the shade’s plans yet...”

“But the Commander? The armies?”

“The showdown between the Commander and Dhows will take place at a place and time far removed from this one. Long will the Commander prepare at our side in Aloria, and when the time comes, the gateway will be reopened for his return,” the Lady responded.

“But what of the people here? What will become of them...?”

“That depends entirely by what you mean by that query, my priest. The humans will adjust, as they are prone to do. Dhows himself, we are now certain, will proceed to that very future to which we have tracked him, as for him that moment and this one are forever linked.

“The werewolves and the vampires will grow in strength and number, the war which the usurper started growing with them. The children and grandchildren of Luminovia will see other forces rise to take the place of ancient evils.”

“And the armies I have led here, the people that have joined us. Will they join the Commander...?”

“On that point, I am afraid that I can offer no answer of reassurance... A few will come to Aloria, but we cannot transport them all, and the longer we fight the shade in this era, the more powerful he will become in that one. We cannot afford to focus our attention for too long here, knowing that it is not here that the discord shall reach its culmination.”

“There is another option,” the young priest answered. “I remain here as their leader, awaiting the Commander’s return. I live through that which is to come.”

“To live that long, Brother, you would need to remain undead,” Paladin spoke, Cagliari already knowing what his younger self would answer.

“And so I remain as the undead. I still live, I still hope, I still dream.”

Paladin nodded his head respectfully as Cagliari continued his soliloquy. “All that has changed for me is my form. How could I, as a faithful servant to the Lady, turn my back on these people, on my charge, and still call myself a communicant of the Light?”

“You have earned your freedom and your life already, Cagliari...”

“No... Commander. You have your destiny. I have my own. This is my destiny. These people are my fate. I know their plight better than any other who would take up their cause because I live it daily... My Lady, with respect, I wish to remain in Luminovia. This is my home, and these are my people.”

“We had suspicions that you might answer that way, Brother,” the Lord of Darkness replied kindly, “but once closed, it may be that that door can never again be reopened. Do you know what you are saying...?”

“With every fiber of my being, my Lord. I know it. I accept it. These are my people. This is my home.”

“So be it, then,” the Lady said. “You may return to your tent, Brother. One last thing, though. There may come a time when you have cause to regret your decision. To doubt that you will ever hear my voice again.”

“As you live through the ages that others pass through in moments, you will do it for long stretches alone...” the Darkness Lord continued.

“Know this, my priest. You are and have been loved, and I will ever return for you. Even when it seems hopeless... Trust in the Light and you shall never be truly alone. Trust in the Darkness and you shall always have comfort.”

“My Lady, my Lord, Commander Paladin... it has been an honor.”

The young priest left then, and Cagliari was startled to see the Lady of Light and Lord of Darkness made manifest in the grove very directly. Their demeanor and gaze instantly told him that this was not merely a memory that he perceived but something more than that.

“I never regretted,” Cagliari said. “Not even when the Uncreator came, or the Brilhado or other necromancers cast us under their thrall. I never regretted. Questioned my sanity a time or two, yes, but never regretted.”

“All this we well know, Father Lux,” the Darkness Lord answered.

“With respect, Lord, after the fall of the church, I never rose further in station.”

“Didn’t you, and who is better equipped to promote you than I am, my communicant?” the Lady answered.

“None, Lady; I did not mean offense. It is only that Dhows so tainted that title...”

“Erebus so tainted the title that it will take a truly great man to reclaim it. You are that man, Cagliari Lux. You are that man if only for the ages you served here.”

“The door has reopened to you now,” the Darkness Lord added. “That door we were uncertain could ever be opened again.”

“Things once again teeter on a precipice, and once again we offer you release from this. Release as the living, or, should you choose, release as the dead.”

“No, Lady. I am no less alive today than when I joined your church. In fact, in many ways, I only began to learn to live when I died...

“I do not seek to change what I am, for in doing so, I would change who I am.”

“Yes, we suspected that you would answer that way. Yet the offer still needed to be made, as the offer was earned.”

“The journey to this place has been hard for you at times, Father Lux. The journey ahead may be harder still...”

“And as before, there will be times where we will be unable to answer,” the Lady said, completing the idea her husband had started.

“The future is never certain, Lady, but this is certain: I will always be true to myself. This world is my home. These people are my family.”

“How rightly we chose you, brother, so long ago.”

“Very well then, priest, you must return to your encampment. Your people need you now more than ever. When our powers fly out of control and those who wield them have lost their way, someone must remain a voice of reason.”

And with that, the voices fell silent and Cagliari noted with a start that he was no longer in the Hall of Memories, nor indeed even in the grove by which he had entered the Hall, but rather had been transported to within a stone's throw of the encampment.

Cagliari moved toward the camp with a surprising grace for a skeletal figure and with a renewed sense of purpose. There was a war on now, but no war lasted forever. The conflict always ended, and in the aftermath, there were always messes left to clean up.

And cleaning up messes was something Father Cagliari Lux was very good at...