The Forsaken Hero

”Arantius,” Fate said, ”You know better than any that demons are driven by their lust for power and evolution beyond everything. We, I included, made only one mistake: assuming that they wished to bind themselves to Xiviyah so that they could manipulate her toward whatever end they desired. But that is where we were wrong.”

”You? Wrong?” I gasped, twisting to gape at her. ”But you’re Fate.”

Suddenly, I realized the context of what they were discussing. My surprise dropped with my stomach, becoming heavy, bitter apprehension.

”Are you saying Fyren is like Rash’alon?”

Arantius’s eyes narrowed. ”No, you’re saying that isn’t his aim.”

The remnant stiffened. His eyes darted to the painting of the Realm War, focusing on the depiction of the first demons.

”No, that’s not possible. You think getting her to mark them was the end, not the means?” He shook his head. ”Even I would have long forgotten primordial marks were it not for living ever in your presence. Besides, the Lord of Ash met her before she inherited your Divinity. He couldn’t have known she would develop an attributed soul!”

”Not by himself, he couldn’t,” she said.

”That’s even less likely. Even you couldn’t speak with him directly,” Arantius argued.

”Yet look at her soul. Can you deny it? That’s no infernal mark.”

I stumbled back a step, staring at my chest, as if I could see right through it to my soul. The infernal mark pulsed gently, filled with Fyren, Borealis, and the two demon lords’ presences. It was definitely a mark...wasn’t it? Fyren had said so, and even Fate and the remnants had–”

”Xiviyah, would you please call Fable?” Fate asked.

I wasn’t sure if I should have been more scared or confused by what they were discussing, yet I trusted her enough to obey. My staff appeared in my hand, and I opened a gate into Enusia. Through it, I could see Fable lounging before our tent, guarding the entrance to Haven. He perked up as I called, and promptly leaped through the gate. I caught a glimpse of Elise staring through, open-mouthed, before it closed.

Fable padded to my side, regarding the remnant and the goddess curiously. He preened as I started to pet him, rubbing his head against my palm.

”By the gods,” Arantius whispered, staring at the wolf. ”It can’t be.”

”H-He’s just a unique monster,” I stammered, ”That’s what the Shard calls him, at least. He’s not...whatever you think he is.”

”No wonder Villie loves him so much,” Arantius said. ”He’s all she ever talks about.”

”Xiviyah, you thought you discovered how to cure corruption, but that was only half-true. It wasn’t until you and R’lissea developed the spell Requiem that it was finished.”

”But I didn’t have to heal everything. The corruption hadn’t reached his body. All I did was purge it from his soul. There wasn’t, and still wasn’t, any infernal mana at all. He’s not infernal!”

Fate gestured to Fable’s horns and his silver, star-ridden fur. ”Those would suggest otherwise.”

”His horns are just like mine, not a demon’s,” I said, touching them self-consciously. ”And the stars...oh.”

”If you had cured him, he would have returned to being a normal wolf, just like you returned to yourself after the Life Hero healed your sun purge,” she said gently.

”The ice demon wasn’t the first, then,” Arantius said. ”I should have noticed it, too. An infernal mark cannot be placed by accident. It requires intent and understanding. You had to have something to inform you at that time, something so fundamental to your soul you drew upon it unconsciously.”

My grip on Fable’s fur tightened, turning my knuckles white. ”You mean I marked him?”

”Yes, but not as demons do. They implant their mana within the demon’s soul. But you did far more than that. You implanted your very soul.”

I turned back to the painting, my heart fluttering, breath short.

”You mean to tell me that the same thing that happened to the souls that followed the Emperors is happening to Fable?”

”Happened, I’d say. The transition for those souls took a thousand years, over the course of just as many battles. But you must have expedited the process by literally overwriting his soul with your own.”

Arantius snorted. ”I can’t believe a mere wolf survived that. The demons only did because their souls were immortal, and their minds were warped beyond recognition.”

”There’s no point dwelling on it,” Fate said. ”If he weren’t supposed to survive, he wouldn’t have. But now, looking at your wolf’s soul, I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner. I can only blame myself for being so unaware.”

”No, even a goddess can’t shoulder the blame for missing this,” Arantius said. ”The last Primordial Mark was severed shortly after the Realm Wars began. Even you couldn’t have foreseen a mere child could stumble upon it.”

”What’s a primordial mark?” I asked tentatively.

Fate sighed. ”It’s the reason I brought you here, to hear the story of the beginning. You asked me if demons still used the same method to mark their underlings, and the answer is no. The kind of mark that corrupts and changes the soul is called a Primordial Mark. It was this mark we gods first used, the same that drove us to create the Cycle of Reincarnation. But the emperors cared not, for it was far more efficient in granting their followers power. They used it until the last of their souls had fallen beyond salvation, until nothing of the soul and spirit of our children remained.”

”That’s why all demons have attributes,” Arantius said. ”But the Primordial Mark is permanent. It cannot be severed without severe backlash to both the emperor and the demon. It made coordinating invasions on many worlds at once impossible, as demons couldn’t accept orders from any but the one who marked them, which was the emperor. Like gods, emperors cannot descend in a mortal world lest they destroy it by their very presence, effectively crippling the demon hierarchy.”

”As the gods created the shards, the emperors came up with a new kind of mark, one that could be removed without impacting the soul of the demon. The Infernal Mark, they called it,” Fate said.

”So what did they do with the Primordial Mark? Every demon must have had one, right?”

”They cut it out. The emperors were strong enough to withstand the backlash, and the demons...” Fate shook her head sadly. ”They didn’t care. It broke their hordes, reducing all but their strongest servants, the first demon lords, to a mindless, feral state.”

”The scions,” I whispered, horrified.

She nodded. ”It was a tremendous loss in the strength of their forces, yet they took it in stride, having an eternity to wage their war against the Divine Council.”

”But there are still so many scions,” I said. ”Why haven’t they all evolved by now, after so many years and wars?”

”All immortal beings are subject to the same law, ” Fate explained. ”Just as I lost power and fell from grace, so can anyone, from the strongest archon to the weakest scions. They use power simply by existing, and without gaining more or at least replenishing it, they will sink back to the mindless state of scion.”

”That’s why the other heroes, the ones in all the rooms we passed, aren’t remnants?” I asked.

”Something like that. Either they grew weary of the immortal life and willingly departed into Oblivion, to be scrubbed clean and reborn, or they lost power until I made that choice for them,” Fate said.

”There used to be many more,” Arantius added. ”But when our Divine Kingdom fell, man made the choice to leave. It was uncertain, then, whether you would survive and open this realm back up. Without that, we wouldn’t have a stable source of strength and would slowly waste away. So we few continued with nothing but hope and a prayer, sustaining ourselves off the sacrifice of our comrades.”

”All of that because you trusted me?” I asked.

He chuckled, shaking his head. ”Hardly. We’d all been on enough worlds to know trusting a mortal is rarely the best idea. But we believed in Fate.”

”And I trusted in you. If you were meant to save us, you would. And you did.” She flashed me a smile, but it faded again, her gaze returning to Fable. ”But the question remains: Did the...Devoted know of Xiviyah’s Primordial Mark?”

”I’m still against the idea,” Arantius said. ”There’s simply no way they could have predicted Xiviyah would develop an aura. Even if they just got lucky, they couldn’t have planned for it. Only the emperors could possibly remember its existence. Even the few demon lords who were there, and survived the severance of their own primordial marks, wouldn’t remember, much less trust a child to create one.”

”Perhaps,” Fate murmured. ”But there is only one demon in a position to do such a thing. The only question is whether he actually pulled it off or not.”

Arantius’s eyes narrowed. ”The Lord of Ash.”