The Fall of Skyre. 5th year A.B (After Breaching)

On the night that Skyre fell, two visitors came as witness.

Flames had engulfed large swathes of the city by now. The elves that lived here had mostly scattered, although the bodies of their dead still littered the scorched earth, left where they had been cut down. Black smoke filled the sky and turned it fiery orange in the reflected light. The smoke hid much, but not enough to completely hide the hunters who stalked through the city still; their furtive pace and hooded cloaks hinting at their hate-filled purpose.

Above it all, standing in the air, the two visitors watched. Their eyes cut through the smoke as if it wasn’t there at all. They saw the knives flashing.

“How could it have come to this?” asked the first, tears in her eyes.

“Have a care,” her companion said, his voice a mixture of sympathy and reproof. “There is much worse still to see.” His voice clicked as he spoke, as if spoken by large pinching mandibles.

“I just feel so powerless,” the first. She was a woman in her thirties, plump and dressed in fine white silks rimmed with gold. Unlike most humans, however, her auburn hair seemed to float as if underwater, and she glowed a faint golden light. She had looked to be in her thirties for the last five hundred years, ever since the day she was born.

The people of this land thought of her as a god. She didn’t feel like one now.

Her companion hummed and skittered in his strange way. “It is not your fault. You were outvoted. To act unilaterally would go against the duty to which you were entrusted. That is what it means to be a Virtue.”

The woman looked down on the city of Skyre, and her heart broke again. She looked at her companion, uncertain if he really understood.

“It must be so strange to you, an outsider,” she said.

The creature beside her shifted uncomfortably. It in no way looked human, so it was sometimes difficult to read, even for her. The woman tried to find the right words to explain to him what she meant.

“You probably don’t really know these people.”

“I… see their fates. In the strings.”

“But you don’t know why it affects me so.”

Her companion offered a guess. “It is who you are. If your heart did not go out to these souls, you would not be you.”

She shook her head. “I feel them. Every single one of them. And not just the elves. Their attackers too. Every time one of them – any of them – is hurt, it’s like I’m hurt. It’s like… losing a child, again and again and again. I yearn for it to be all right.”

Tears rolled freely down her face as she looked across the carnage. Her aura’s golden glow had begun to fade since arriving here, and at that moment it flickered dimmer still. “But I know it’s not. All I can do is stand witness.”

That was who she was. Such was the burden of being the Virtue known as Mercy.

The creature – Xh’karsh, he called himself – put a consoling claw on her shoulder. The claw was larger than her arm, and was covered in insectile carapace. The entity stared at her with his many, luminous blue eyes, bright as a summer sky and unknowable as eternity.

“There is more that you can do than that,” he said.

The woman accepted the creature’s comfort as she watched the fires burn. She sadly shook her head. “No. You’re right, I can’t go against my brothers. We have to be united on this, much as it pains me.”

“Ah, but that was concerning non-intervention. I mean something different.”

Her companion’s eyes twinkled in the firelight. The woman detected something shifted in his tone, something strange. “What do you mean?” she asked, suddenly afraid. Uncertain of his intent. She was not omniscient – that was Truth’s job.

“Come. We must go down.”

Gently, invisibly to all who might be watching, the woman acquiesced to her friend and lowered them to the city’s floor. Skyre had been built by weaving the forest of Heldsgard into beautiful structures. Buildings had been grown here, not constructed; the trees had been nurtured into the shapes the elves had desired. And yet now they lay splintered and twisted, their walls were blackened charcoal that had given way under its own weight.

Here, in Skyre’s centre, a great silver oak stood untouched by the flames. Protective magics had sheltered it, leaving it alone untouched amidst the wreckage. Many elves had fled here seeking to come under that same shelter, but judging from the bodies fallen around it, the magic had only extended to the tree itself. That was a cruel thing.

There were no people here, save for the dead. As the woman examined the bodies of the fallen, she realised that some of them had been only children.

Her companion stood impassively amidst the carnage, his many legs taking care not to tread on any bodies. His words reached out for her, though. “It was the Breaching that caused this. If the Ka’telva had not come through, this day would never have arrived.”

“So? Doesn’t make much of a difference why it’s happening. It’s still awful.”

Xh’karsh clacked his mandibles for a moment – another strange mannerism he had. “What if that day had never come?”

The woman stared at him blankly. “The past is the past. It cannot be unwritten, not even by us.”

“Perhaps. But perhaps by another...”

The woman’s expression was incredulous. “Xh’karsh, you aren’t making any sense.”

The creature made its way across the clearing, moving past the woman, heading towards the tree. “I suggested we come here not idly.”

He had a strange way of speaking, this Xh’karsh. But this time Mercy grasped his meaning. Golden light flared around the woman. Passion was well within her domain. “Xh’karsh, what are you saying? Are you suggesting that there’s a way to undo these events, now that they’ve happened?”

“It is not without risk, to a mortal. But to a Virtue… Less so…”

Hope flared in the woman’s chest. “Well,” she said, looking at her new friend expectantly. “What is it?”

The Xh’karsh had arrived at the silver oak tree, and was running its claws over its bark. Searching.

“It would not be defying your brothers order, for you will not be looking at this day.”

“Yes, but what is it? Tell me!”

Impatience filled her breast. She wanted to shake her friend for answers and hug him at the same time.

The creature looked at her, searchingly. “Will you be willing to do this even if there is a cost?”

The woman faltered. She clutched a hand to her chest. But then in the city around her, she felt fresh cries of killing and death.

“Yes,” she said. “No matter the cost. If there’s a way, this must be undone.”

Xh’karsh regarded her with his ethereal eyes, taking in her resolve. The woman did her best to show her fierce determination. She would do anything for these people.

Eventually, Xh’karsh nodded.

“This is what I have come to expect from you, Mercy,” he said. “I knew I could depend on you.”

He gestured with a claw at the roots of the tree. “This tree is much older than you. Beneath its roots, there is a hidden chamber. We must go in there.”

It was a testament to Mercy’s wholehearted love that she needed no more answers than that. Drawing on the well of her power (so faltering, in this place!) she pressed her will into the tree. Magical defences rose up to impede her, strong enough to turn a regular being to ash, yet such was the power of a Virtue that she swept them aside with just a word.

“Please?” she asked the tree. She was Mercy, after all.

The barrier that had protected the tree but not the people, parted. The roots of the tree creaked and became animate, slowly unwinding their way through the soil until they’d formed into a narrow passageway, leading down into the earth’s depths.

Xh’karsh drew back at the golden light, awed by her power. “I could not have done that,” he said.

The woman was not certain what was below, but she sensed the power of it. It had been masked, but now radiated freely with the parting of the tree’s roots. It was ancient, and arcane. Alien to her. Not of the gods, but rivalling them in its power. And for the first time, faced with its force, Mercy felt… small. This was a force that could unmake her.

“What are the risks?” she asked.

Xh’karsh nodded, placing a claw once more on her shoulder as they both looked down into the darkness. “Catastrophic, if they go wrong. But don’t fear. I can alter the probabilities. I will keep you safe.”

Mercy turned once more to the sounds of fighting ringing through Skyre, and the roaring of the flames. She steeled herself.

“All right,” she said. “I trust you.”

With slow but steadfast steps, Mercy entered into the passageway leading beneath the silver oak. Slowly, even her golden light was swallowed up in the shadows. Behind her, the large bulk of Xh’karsh – her friend – squeezed into the narrow tunnel and followed, its carapace and skittering legs were soon vanished from view too.

A minute later, the power flared.

Mercy screamed.

And the course of Heldsgard changed forever.