23
Arise to the dusk and fading light
Coronus opened a bleary eye to a still and quiet red sunset. The waning rays of his gaze spilled across a ruinous landscape of broken trees, rotting plants, bloody sand, and gruesome death. Strewn about the wreckage were bodies of the devoted, invading soldiers, beasts, fiends, and undead—still and lifeless them all. The only motion was that of a solitary figure stumbling through the wasted land.
In dazed silence, a blue ethereal Vantaiga limped and clutched her abdomen with one hand, vainly trying to hold back the burning pain that radiated over her with each step. The other hand reflexively wiped her face, trying to rub away the memory of Festor’s filth. She stared unseeing into the distance, unaware of the death around her save for the trail of bodies she followed.
Too numb to cry or speak, she made her way through the ruins of her forest, occasionally flinching at a flashing memory of Festor’s assault. She walked along the path of bodies, but she knew where it would lead. It would have been the only place to provide any safety from the ravage of her forest.
The trail led to the foot of her mountain fortress. But instead of the lofty terraces and sculpted windows majestically rising above the arched portal before the grand stage, there was only rubble and wreckage. Her great keep was reduced to a pile of broken boulders. Her beautiful cavern paradise was lost to the world. Both were brought to ruin like everything else she beheld.
There was then only one other place to go, although there would be no salvation to find there. Vantaiga made her way to the shrine of her old homestead. There, she found the final stand of her faithful, their faces frozen into the last pleading cries for the aid she could not give. Her old home was smashed and there remained only a pile of broken bricks. The fountain shrine was collapsed and shattered. The polished and intricately carved marble crumbled into more of the debris that surrounded her.
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The water still flowed from the fountain, running over the broken stones and the broken body of Syffox. Hydar’s gift washed the blood away from his gashed body into a red-tinted pool. Syffox’s quiver was empty, and his bow lost somewhere among the wreckage. One of his short swords was still clasped in his hand. The other sword was missing, along with his arm, among the dunes that engulfed her failed domain.
She pulled his body from the water and managed a sense of disgust for the rain god that he should keep the spring flowing. Whether he kept it running to insult her, pity her, or show he still cared, she was not interested. She only wanted to be done with a life she was not allowed to keep. She summoned up her magic to restore Syffox’s battered body.
Holding him close, she poured her love into him to soothe away his wounds, but nothing happened. Too feeble to be upset, she tried even harder to force her magic and life into him. But still Syffox’s body stayed cold and pale. She had no magic left to save him. With all her worshippers dead, she had no one to draw power from. She was a helpless immortal, depleted of both power and faith.
The defeat settled in her and drained away what little strength she had left. She lay over his body and held his head tightly. Through her sobs, a dark, eternal void opened up within her and sucked away her spirit and any last hope she had of redemption. Without being able to restore his life, his soul was gone. There was nothing left to merge with.
A sob choked in her throat as she pulled his head to her gemstone, but nothing happened. No stingy snap of heat, no touch of his mind, no sense of his spirit. He was finally gone and out of her reach. Vantaiga clenched him tightly as she let out a gasping wail, her body heaving with sobs as despair overwhelmed her. It was all gone. No forests, no followers, no Syffox. The time to complete the ritual she had withheld for so long was gone. She was left as desolate as her realm.
Through gasps and tears, she pulled up Syffox’s body and leaned back against the shattered wall of her old home. She remembered back to the days on her small farm when she would hold him this way, the way they would watch the winds play over the fields of grain, the way they would watch the sunset shimmering in the last heat of the day, the way she wanted to be together that could never be again.
From her tears, a seed fell from each of her eyes. They tumbled to the ground and sprouted into two trees, a willow tree and a Syfus tree. They grew and entwined to engulf Vantaiga and Syffox’s bodies. In the vast wreckage of the forest, the two trees would stand by the spring as the only remains of her dominion, a final monument in the time of gods, to the ones that dared arise a Goddess.