Eversolstice V

Chapter Five: Trial 

The sun wept and cried in pain. Dying, she retreated and returned to the place from whence she had arisen, back into the womb of The Horizon. Her mother welcomed her return, and she rested and healed from her wounds. 

-The Great Teacher

The Allfather didn’t say another word, but Celestra could still feel her whole body and

soul trembling and shaking.

She hurried to weave her seal around the Stillness Circle before he could escape. She scrambled quickly, scratching it out with the end of her wizard’s staff.

He doesn’t seem to be moving, she thought. Have I stunned him? Is this really enough to hold him? It may be. He may really just be a man, just a fairy-blessed mortal and nothing more.

She finished the first layer of the seal. It was a lost design used specifically for ancient beings, and each layer represented one thousand years of existence.

I may need at least three of them.

She stopped for a moment and looked up at him. He was still glowing, but he wasn’t moving.

Ho ho ho!

She heard it in her mind. The large, blue drakkish man and his sleigh were still. He was just sitting there watching her with his gleaming emerald eye. He smelled strongly of punch and cinnamon. 

Don’t talk to it, don’t engage with it.

Even without trying, she could sense his massive power. It was like being near a whirlpool. Everything around him was destabilized, solid turning to fluid, to vapor. The falling snow in the air spiraled and whirled around him like a divine veil.

She quickly formed the second seal around him. 

“Child,” he said, this time verbally, “What have you done?”

Something about the way he said it made her want to cry. There was so much power in his voice. But when she looked up at him, she could see his form rippling like a reflection in the water. The seals were destabilizing him just like she had planned. 

She didn’t answer him. She was the master here. She was the mighty sorceress and caller of spirits, and he was in her trap. 

After the third seal, I should see him physically weaken. He’ll either fall unconscious or become like a vapor, in which case I can capture him and take him where I wish.

“Do you know who I am?” He spoke again, his voice like the roaring tide, and her insides began to burn, “Do you really know what it is you are seeking?”

“I do.” Despite herself, she found herself answering him, “I’m doing what I have to to make things right. My goal . . . it’s the only thing that matters.”

He was silent. She drew the third seal but still he remained unchanged. 

Okay, four thousand years.

She had enough materials for this. She began drawing the fourth layer of the seal, although her body was beginning to grow tired. 

“I do not wish to give you this.” He said, his triple-forked tongue curling over his dragon jaw, “For I only give good gifts.”

She felt like she was going to vomit, but she pushed on, drawing out the fifth layer, then the sixth, seventh, eighth-

Eight thousand years? That doesn’t make any sense. Garcigenicus Fabrola was born a little over two thousand years ago.

Nine. Ten. Her mana was straining across all these seals and circles. 

The air shook again. She looked up at him and was nearly blinded by a flicker of golden light. He did not move. It seemed he was being held, but he was still standing firm, not fading away. 

“They all await me. The dawn awaits me.”

Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. What in the hells was happening? 

She would soon run out of materials. Although she was holding him prisoner, she couldn’t seem to weaken him. But it made no sense!

She looked up. His light seemed just a little bit dimmer than it had before, and she dared to look into his glistening emerald eye. Within it, she saw things, things she couldn’t understand at first.

She saw The Night. It was like a black mist covering half the world, only, the night didn’t really go away, not ever. The night moved and traveled, no, that wasn’t accurate either. The light moved and traveled, peering briefly through the dark, but the night was constant, it was always, and, in a sense, it was everywhere. 

Everywhere. A single breath. A single moment. That moment existed everywhere at once, side by side, across the whole world, like a million, trillion moments, stretching into the night sky, into the dark, the endless expanse that dwarfed life and light, breaths and moments lined up in unfathomable numbers. 

Allfather was a single speck of light traveling across the dark, just a glimmer. He swept through the darkness and the sun trailed behind him, a measureless inferno, but still tiny in the vast scope of the True Night. 

How did Allfather travel the whole world in a single night? How? Because it was night, and night was endless. Each breath could bring him to a new home, one of a billion homes, and what was a billion in the face of The Night. 

He was always in The Night. Always. What did that mean?

Celestra saw a child, a tiny drakkish boy with blue scales playing with a rock, which he tossed up in the air and caught, once, twice, three times, but on the fourth time he slipped, missed his catch and the stone fell and struck him on the head. He tumbled over backwards, blood running from his skull, and as he lay in the dirt, he looked back behind him in his own tracks, and there he saw a man. He saw a tall, glorious drakkish man in a silver coat, with a single eye, standing in his tracks.

“They await me,” He said to himself, “The dawn awaits me.”

Always.

Always.

Always.

Celestra came back to herself and found that she was repeating it out loud, “Always. Always. Always.”

She felt like she was standing on the edge of a great precipice, slipping, slipping into something unfathomably vast. 

She looked up and all was the same. She was on her knees scribbling seals around her circle, and Allfather was locked in the center with his sleigh, staring down at her. 

I can’t think about it. I can’t handle it. 

She forced her hand to keep scratching out the pattern. But I have to. I need to grasp and hold it. This is what I wanted! This is what I want!

She started weeping. She couldn’t really say why, but tears were streaming from her eyes. 

I will face it. Eternity.

Then there was a sound behind her. She half expected to turn and see Allfather standing there, like he had been in the vision, but instead she saw something crawling out of the brown sack she’d left by Gaib’s feet. A pest. More specifically, a blond-headed little creature with a flat cap and purple eyes. 

Scobee.

He fell out of the sack and onto his face, then he stood up and hugged himself in the cold.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, her eyes still flowing with tears, despite her best efforts to control herself. 

Scobee didn’t answer. He was staring, mesmerized, at the glowing figure in the center of the circles. He walked over to Celestra’s side, never once taking his eyes off The Allfather. 

“What . . . what are you doing?” he asked in a soft voice. It was the first time she had heard him speak so softly. It was the first time she’d ever heard him say anything that wasn’t somehow a threat.

She focused her mana into the seals and finished working on the fifteenth rotation. 

“Let him go.” said Scobee, then, “Let him go! Allfather!” he shouted. 

He was just a boy. Just a child. He couldn’t possibly know what was at stake. Sure, this boy might not receive as many toys on Feast morning, but he was a lord’s son. There was no doubt he had more than enough toys. That was all so small in comparison to what she’d seen, and to her mission. 

She poured more of her mana into the seal, amplifying it and mirroring it fifteen times. The gold light surrounding The Allfather flickered.

The Father trembled as the power she wielded cycled through his mortal body, burning away at flesh and essence. She grinned grimly.