Chapter 16

Light. Endless light. An ocean of it.

Not the blinding sort of light, either. A very soothing, gentle light. The sort of light that filters in through an open window on a breezy summer day. It paints a bright rectangle across the floor, and where it touches down the carpet seems to glow.

An old cat staggers his way over, not in pain, just very, very tired, and lies down in the sun for a nap that, this time, he won’t wake up from. The light is so fine, so right, that you lie down next to him, wrap your arms around him, feeling his rumbling purr deep in your chest.

You drift away with him, and somehow you know–you just know–that this time, he won’t be coming back with you. But in that moment, in the breeze and the air and touched by that light, you’re comfortable with that. It’s alright. It’s just as it should be.

Yes, that sort of light.

That was the light Olyrean found herself drowning in, if drowning was the right word. Probably it was not. Certainly there was the sense of being overwhelmed, of sinking into something greater than herself. And there was motion as well, rhythmic, like waves carrying her…somewhere. But there was no sense of panic and no gasping for breath. She washed away, content, feeling far away from herself and all that was, as in a dream.

And then, slowly, slowly, after who knew how long–it might have been only a second, or it might have been an eternity–she felt…something. She couldn’t say what. She only knew that there was sharp awareness where once there was not, a little pinprick in the great beautiful haze. And then more, and more. Thought came back to her, self came back to her, as though she had melted into something indistinguishable and was now being poured into a great mold to be reformed.

Olyrean opened her eyes.

She was still surrounded by the light. But there was texture to it here, as though it drifted through a foggy mist. And there was more than just light, now. There was, for instance, ground beneath her. She couldn’t see it, exactly, but there it was, for her to prop herself up on and stagger to her feet. It was yielding and slightly springy, like thick, tall grass.

There were also two shadowy figures in the distance.

Familiar shadowy figures.

Olyrean, unthinking, staggered toward them. It was almost impossible to judge how far away they were, or for how long she walked. But the closer she got, the more familiar they became, until finally the mists cleared and she could see their faces clearly.

She gasped. Her heart twisted like someone had thrown it in a washing machine and set it to warp speed.

It took a very long time for her to find her voice. It seemed locked away somewhere in her chest, unwilling to come forth, as if this might all disappear if she dared bring something so mundane as sound to this place. When she did finally manage to speak, she choked her words out through sobs, with tears streaming down her face.

“Mom?” she said. “Dad? Is that you?”

Her mother smiled, that same familiar, wry little smile that Olyrean had seen a thousand times. Whenever she had been reading a book and found something in it particularly amusing. Whenever she had bitten into a Galar fruit, only for it to squirt juice onto the table. Whenever her father had twirled her in his arms for a dance. She had smiled, her mother had smiled. Just like that.

And her father winked at her. Just the way he always had whenever he told a joke or played a prank. He had loved pranks, magic tricks, and all sorts of silly nonsense that Olyrean had always found so obnoxious while he was alive, and which she had missed so, so terribly once he was gone.

Olyrean could remember when she was a child and grounded–she couldn’t remember why–she had been sulking in her room, and he had come to visit her. He had pulled a coin out from behind her ear, only to make it disappear in his hands, and she had asked him to give it to her and he had only chuckled and, faster than her eye could follow, made it appear and disappear every time she had grabbed for it, and finally she had broken out of her sulk to giggle, and then she had laughed and laughed and laughed until her sides hurt and finally he had handed the coin to her and told her not to tell her mother and he had winked, he had winked, just like that, just like he was winking at her now.

It was them, and it was not them. They looked ageless and yet somehow younger, more vital and full than she had ever remembered them being. Her mother, small and lithe, like Olyrean herself, except her golden hair fell in long tresses that reached nearly to her feet. And her father, willowy and graceful and sharp, like a curved blade. And both of them so, so happy.

She realized now that for as long as she had known them, their faces had worn expressions of worry and anger and despair, worn down by the constant war with Um’Thamarr and the orcs. I never knew them as they might have been, she realized. I never knew them without war.

“Well, don’t go acting too happy to see us,” said her mother as Olyrean collapsed into their arms, hugging them, and wept and wept and wept.

“But how?” Olyrean whispered. “How can it be you? You…you’re…” They had died, of course. They had been killed the day that Um’Thamarr and his wretched orcs had come to burn Rymand Vale to the ground. They had died along with so many of her people. Hadn’t they? “Hadn’t you? Aren’t you? You–”

She was babbling, unable to bring herself to say it, but her father understood her. “Oh, we’re very definitely dead,” he told her. “And a terrible mess it was, too. Orcs came busting right through the door and hacked us to bits. Just to pieces.”

“Oh,” said Olyrean, “Oh god…”

“What a bloodbath! Guts everywhere. Also, a little interesting factoid about elf biology–did you know that when our heads get chopped off, we don’t die right away?” Olyrean’s father folded his arms across his chest and snorted. “They never told me that! Most races, that’d be the end of it, but not us! Imagine my surprise when they decapitate me and I’m still conscious, aware and everything. They played a full game of bowling with me before I finally passed on. Can you believe that? Your mother, now, she got off easy. They caved in her skull, first thing. I–”

“Honey,” Olyrean’s mother said sharply, and jerked her head to her daughter. Olyrean was pale as a sheet and currently stumbling about looking for a likely place to vomit. “Don’t mind your father now,” her mother said, laying a soothing hand on her arm. “Your father’s just still sore about it. He complains to everyone.”

“Damn right I do,” he grumbled. “It’s ridiculous. I’m going to get answers from somebody up here.”

“I don’t understand, then,” said Olyrean, once her stomach had managed to recover. All this light was so nice, and it would have been a shame to be sick all over it. “Does that mean I’m dead?”

In response, her father reached out and pinched her nose. She yelped. “Doesn’t seem so,” he said. “There’s no pain on this side, you see. Probably for just that reason. They don’t want people to go around looking all undignified when they stub their toe or something.”

“I see.” Olyrean rubbed her nose. “Then…how is it we’re talking?”

“You don’t know?” her mother asked. “Oh, of course. You’ve got crossover lag. Don’t you remember, dear, you were looking for where The Radiant One came from…the temple, yes…you remember now?”

Olyrean could. Memories of the living world were coming back to her, slowly. They felt strange to recall here, dirty and coarse compared to the loving, beautiful light that surrounded her, and she couldn’t help but feel a little guilty merely holding them in her mind. It felt wrong, like thinking about sex at a funeral. Then something occurred to her. “Wait, how did you know about that?”

“Well, we are watching over you,” her father said. He crossed his arms and gave her a very stern look. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”

Her mother gave him a punch on the arm. “Don’t listen to him! We only peek in now and then, dear. That’s how we knew we’d have a chance to speak with you, if only for a little while. We don’t violate your privacy.”

“Of course. Though I did see you flirting with that lizard.”

Olyrean felt heat in the tips of her ears. “Nothing happened with that!” she shouted. “Nothing came of that! And I was very drunk!” Slowly, what her parents were saying was beginning to settle in. This was where The Radiant One came from? “You know, this doesn’t look much like what you said the elvish afterlife would look like,” she said. “I thought there were supposed to be endless golden forests, and streams of crystal-clear, sweet water, and fluted towers of glass, and–”

“Well, there is that, and also–” her father cut off at a warning look from her mother. “Well. There’s rules against saying too much. But let’s just say that afterlives aren’t exactly exclusive to each other.”

“I see.” If The Radiant One came from this place, then that meant…Olyrean shoved that aside. She didn’t want to think about that right now. Not about the real world, as dirty and dim as it seemed in her memories compared to this place. Not when her parents were right in front of her. Not when she had this miracle, this last chance to see them, a chance that the world, in all its ugly cruelty, had robbed her of.

But no sooner had she thought this than the ground shifted beneath her. She tried to lift a foot and could not. What was once springy and firm fell away into something that seemed more like quicksand, and she was slowly sinking.

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“Oh dear,” said her mother, coming to her side. “Well, we knew that we wouldn’t have much time with you.”

“No!” A thousand thoughts were racing through Olyrean’s head, a thousand questions that she might ask, and in trying to ask them all at once they all got jammed up on her tongue and nothing came out. She tried, frantically, to settle on one. “I…am I–is it right? I…” She sank another inch. She took a deep, calming breath. There was one thing she had always wondered, and this was the only chance she’d ever get to know.

“Are you…mad at me?” she asked. “For leaving home behind?”

Her mother and father looked at each other.

“Are you kidding me? I would have done the same thing,” said her father. “I mean, this America place, they have those–what do you call them, the uh–ah, yes. The giant robots–”

“You’ve seen those?”

“Have I seen them?” her father hooted. “I’d go haunt them if I could! The size of them. The power! And the spaceships, too–amazing! Who the hell wouldn’t want to go jaunting off on one of those? No, honey, you made the right call, far as I’m concerned–”

“It would be nice,” said her mother, “If you went back to visit every once in a while.”

“Ohhhh, here we go. Your mother–”

“I just think it's healthy for an elf to go visit her ancestral forest every now and then!”

“Who cares about the forest, woman? It’s all burnt down anyway. Have you seen the space station she lives on?”

Olyrean slowly sank further into the light as her parents stood above her, bickering. “Mom…Dad….”

“Oh–we’re both very proud of you, dear,” said her mother. “Whatever your choices are.”

“When you go back–listen, I’ve thought of this really amazing idea,” said her father. “These Americans all use guns, right, but like–what if there was a sword that was also a gun?”

“Dad…”

“Like both put together. You know what they can build, I’m sure they can make one–it would be great. Just tell someone about it, and give me credit for it when they start selling–”

“Dad,” Olyrean said. She was now almost up to her chest in the light, and she felt herself fading away once more, her consciousness beginning to drift. But she thought of one last question she wanted to ask.

“By the way,” she said, no longer aware whether she was speaking with her mouth or whether she was merely thinking the words, “The name you would have given me, after my coming of age ceremony…was it Olyrean of the Lilied Pond?”

“What?” Her father frowned at her.“Oh, no. It was Olyrean the Sunflower.”

“Oh,” said Olyrean. “Uh, why?”

“Well, because of the color of your hair, dear,” her mother said. “Also, because you were such a gangly thing, growing up. And your posture! We always had to tell you to stand up straight. You remember.”

She did.

Olyrean the Sunflower. A nickname that called back to her forgotten youth, when she had felt like a too-long, too-thin mess. When she had not so much as grown, it seemed, as she was stretched out like taffy. Every time she thought of her nickname, she would be reminded, forever, of the most awkward time in her life. She hated it.

It was perfect.

“Thanks, Mom,” she said, and even as she spoke she heard her own voice trailing away into something thin and fading. “Thanks, Dad. I love you.”

“What?” said her father. “Speak up, I can’t hear you.”

But she was gone, fading away, down, down into the light.

***

Olyrean was lost within the light again, but now she did not merely drift. She felt as though she were being pulled, soaring over vast distances. Pulled with purpose.

And this time, the light was not empty. Something was there. Something wrong, something sour. A pinpoint of blackness that grew as she soared toward it, menacing and wicked, a vast black terror that gripped her heart in a primal fear that was very familiar to her. It was a fear she had felt for much of her life. A fear that she had hoped she would never feel again.

The black point grew into a stain, took on form, familiar and terrible. She knew what it was, now.

It was Um’Thamarr. The Enemy. The Ravager. The Scourge of Souls. The summoner of demons, the lord of the orcs, and master of dark and wicked magics. The dread shadow that had been cast across her life, the one that she had thought she would never, ever escape.

He stretched before her in the sea of light, miles long. Longer. He was the size of a planet, all by himself. A star system. The glowing fissures of lava running through his cracked skin, obsidian skin were as wide as entire moons. He was terror, he was absolute, he was death on wings…he was…

He was…

He was wrong. Or, rather, something about him was wrong. He wasn’t quite as she remembered him to be. She struggled, in all that light, to recall when she had last seen him, and all at once she knew what the problem was.

He still had a head, when in reality the Americans had ripped it off. That had been pretty funny, she thought.

Hilarious, actually.

The moment she chuckled inwardly at this, she realized that Um’Thamarr was not miles long. He was, in fact, a bit smaller than a horse. And the terror she felt was nothing more than an echo, a memory, foul, blackened water that drained away and was gone. There was nothing to fear from him here.

Really, there was barely anything left to hate.

She (walked? swam? waded?) her way through the light over to him. The dragon-god eyed her with a fiery glare as she approached. He appeared to be sulking.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Being a lazy good-for-nothing, overgrown rock-lizard,” said a familiar voice.

Out from behind Um’Thamarr stepped Marius, the ancient sun-elf who had spent the last moments of his life being defiantly obnoxious to the dragon-god.

Olyrean knew it was him, though she wasn’t sure how she knew, for Marius had changed drastically. He was no longer the revered elder that she remembered; rather, he was a bronzed, chiseled and statuesque warrior-elf, with raven-dark hair that flowed down like a waterfall well past his waist and eyes like blue fire.

He was, Olyrean realized disconcertingly, extremely attractive. And wearing only a loincloth.

To her dismay, he noticed her looking. “Hah! This is how I was back in my prime!” he laughed, striking a pose. “Not bad, eh? Even I forgot how fine I was. No wonder all the ladies wanted to frolic with me.”

“O-okay,” said Olyrean. “But, um…uh…stop posing please, you’re distracting me. Look, why are you here? Why is he here?”

She motioned to the dragon. Um’Thamarr gave her a petulant look. It was hard to tell, but she thought he might even be pouting.

“I was told by some higher powers to bring you where you wanted to go,” the dragon-god grumbled. “And not given much choice in the matter.”

“And I’m here to remind him what a worthless, sorry magma-sack he is,” Marius said cheerfully. “But I also wanted to check in on you.” He put his hand on her shoulder and stared deeply into her eyes. Olyrean breathed deeply and tried to remind herself that this was an old man. “You went off with those Americans, after all. They were the ones that killed me.”

Olyrean withered beneath his gaze. “Ah, well, you know, that was an accident,” she babbled. “I mean, they were really there for, you know, him.” She nodded towards the scowling bite-sized dragon-god.

“Oh, well, so long as they shot me with good intentions,” Marius said.

“They really–it wasn’t–I–it was all for the greater good,” she mumbled. Marius arched an eyebrow at her. “Not shooting you, I mean–that was just a mistake–just–look, they did manage to kill him.” Um’Thamarr snorted.

“Oh, I know–I got to see the replay later on.” Marius gave the dragon an unfriendly punch on the shoulder. “What an idiot you were, man! All you had to do was fly away! You’re a dragon, that’s like, half your whole advantage! What a maroon!” Um’Thamarr just took his abuse in sullen silence. Olyrean got the impression that, however long they had been dead to her, in this place Um’Thamarr had been putting up with this for a very, very long time. “But,” Marius continued, “well, a man can’t help but hold a grudge. I’ve got a haunting permit out of the whole thing, you know.”

“The Americans are good people,” Olyrean said. She was keenly aware what it meant to say that to someone the Americans had disintegrated, but felt it must be said anyway. “In the grand scheme of things. A bit weird, but they’ve been good to me.”

Marius watched her quietly for a moment. The intensity of his stare unnerved her. “Do you really think so?” he said eventually. “I certainly hope they are. Because one thing they most definitely are is powerful. Power has a way of magnifying even the smallest evil in people’s hearts, and it can be hard to see when you stand within its shadow.”

That was some real bonafide Sun-Elf elder wisdom, and though she had never been exceptionally respectful of her elders, there once was a time when Olyrean would have pondered these words very seriously. Now, though, she just snorted. “Oh, I think I would have noticed. No, no, they’re very strange, but nice.”

“Ah.” Marius sighed. “Well. If you say so. I am a bit surprised you’re so fond of this…America. They let orcs sign up with them, after all.”

“Ugh, yes, well.” Olyrean wished that he hadn’t brought that up, not here. She didn’t like being reminded of Brugga while being buoyed by a sense of eternal, universal goodwill. “Even so.”

“Elf,” Um’Thamarr growled, interrupting them. Smoke curled from his jagged nostrils and his eyes burned, focusing on her. “Tell me. These Americans. Are they proud of what they have done? They vanquished an eternal darkness the day they struck me down. Few are the warriors who can boast of that. Tell me of the songs they sing of their victory over me. Tell me of the stories they speak among themselves, of the day they killed a god.”

“They never talk about you,” Olyrean told him. “They don’t even remember who you were.”

Um’Thamarr stared at her for a long, quiet moment. Wisps of smoke curled from his nostrils. Then with a growl, he turned away and knelt down. “Get on,” he snapped. “Let’s get this over with.”

The idea that she might ride the dragon was a strange one, but Olyrean paused only a moment before clambering onto his back. It was fairly uncomfortable. Lots of sharp, pointy bits poked into her. Marius climbed on behind her and wrapped his hands around her waist and she tried very, very hard to picture him as the old, wrinkled man she knew him as in life. “Do you know where you want to go?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she said. “Take me to where The Radiant One sends people on vacation.”

With a flap of his wings, Um’Thamarr took off.

It was a curious flight. There was no sense of up or down, and no wind streaming past them as they traveled. Um’Thamarr held his wings out at a glide, flapping them occasionally, but other than that there was barely any sense of motion through the endless light. “You know,” Olyrean said eventually, “It still doesn’t seem right that you’re here.”

“Me?” asked Marius.

“No, no–this–this one,” she said, slapping the back of the dragon’s head. “I mean, I know you’re here to torment him, Marius. But it still really doesn’t seem right. I mean, this place is so nice otherwise.”

The dragon turned his head around to look back at her. “Does it seem nice to you?” he said, his voice a low and wretched whisper. “Well, I suppose it’s just the way you look at it.”

Slowly, imperceptibly slowly, the light faded, and the silence gave way to the susurrous whisper of restless waters. A touch of wind turned into a steady gale, sending her hair streaming behind her, until they flew beneath a fair sky, over the blue-green waves of warm and sunny waters.

“Where is this?” she shouted over the winds.

“The ocean,” Um’Thamarr shouted back. “Obviously.”

“Well clearly it’s an ocean, but which one? Is this–is this real?” She leaned down and squinted. “Is that an island?”

“Fallingelfsayswhat?”

“What?”

Um’Thamarr shrugged his shoulders with a quick roll and threw Olyrean from his back. She plummeted, not even having time to take a breath and scream, as white sands rushed upwards at her.