12.5.0

On the far side of Grand Kirilia, Zyrdicia watched the sea crash against a cliff. She had left Dirk barking orders at his regiment. His leadership instincts had asserted themselves, and he was now organizing the occupying force and bringing a semblance of order to the chaotic mercenaries. Last night he had set up a command center in the former governor's mansion. It had taken very little time for him to settle into the idea that the province was a new plaything. He intended to use it to launch a full-scale invasion against the soft, undefended sea coast of Camarand. He had spent much of the day conferring about the invasion strategy with his new admiral. Milo's vast knowledge of naval strategy had earned his grudging respect.

Zyrdicia felt rather frazzled. The invasion last night had been perfect, but its planning and arrangement had been harried. She intended to stay on the island instead of returning to Castle Blackpool immediately. When the weather was clear, she could even see her cherished volcano looming in the distance on the Camarandian mainland. More importantly, it was not cold here. The warm sea-air felt good to her. It reminded her of home.

She was in a pensive mood. Something tugged at a shadowy corner of her consciousness. Perhaps it was the general exertion of the past week, which had been frenzied as she packed plans which should have taken months to execute into mere days. She went for a long walk, indulging in her need to isolate herself from the commotion of the inhabited part of the island for a few minutes.

Atop a great cliff, she felt the spray of the sea water on her face in the dark and listened to the churning of the waves below. She inhaled deeply. She sensed that something was wrong. Whatever it was that tugged at her consciousness was not of her making. Someone or something was trying desperately to get her attention. She closed her eyes and retreated into the confines of her psyche. Within her mind she searched for the sensation, trying to isolate it and identify it.

"Azriok taught you well." The Tenaebran words jolted her out of her meditation.

A beautiful, dark angel hovered in the air beyond the cliff's edge.

She recognized the Sephiroth lord from their earlier encounter in the Temple Garden. "Baal."

He smiled handsomely. "Your mind is so much more sophisticated than a mortal's. Your resistance is admirable. I was beginning to think that I would never succeed in getting you alone."

Zyrdicia's scowled as she recognized the psychic trickery. She summoned her sword. The angel hovered just out of reach over the abyss, but she could throw the blade if need be. Baal looked at the weapon and shook his head slowly, as though correcting a misbehaving child. To her surprise, he whispered the very Tenaebran syllable that she used to dispatch it to nether space. The sword vanished from her grasp, ignoring her mental entreaty to stay. "I've known that entity for millennia. You forget how well I am acquainted with your father and his weapons. You surprised me once before. You will not again. Your magic is useless against me, as well."

Zyrdicia realized at that moment how perilous Baal was. Azriok let her slay his physical manifestations, rather than harm her. Baphim had been a lesser Sephiroth, a relative weakling. Baal, however, was a tremendously powerful creature who owed her nothing. The demonologies depicted him as Zyr's general, the commander of untold legions of demons and undead in the Hell's army.

"I mean you no harm," the dark angel coaxed gently. "If I did, I could have killed you before you even sensed my presence. I've come as a friend."

"Liar."

"Perhaps this will convince you," he smiled. He waved his hand and a pair of majestic, silver wings appeared at her feet. She had not seen Seraphim wings since she was a child, when she hunted the white angels with Azriok. "Your lord sent me to fetch them for you in Luminaria, in hopes they will bring back memories of happier times. Did you enjoy Baphim's wings?"

Zyrdicia smiled reluctantly. Of course she had. He did not even have to ask. Absorbing the Sephiroth's magic had been intoxicatingly beautiful. Her power had increased dramatically as a result of the ritual. And it would even more when she devoured the energy stored in these Seraphim wings.

"Why is Azriok sending me their magic?" she asked suspiciously.

Baal's intense gaze locked on her. "Feeding you their power eclipses your mortal blood. Absorbing their magic brings your essence increasingly nearer to us. Azriok wants you to transcend your flesh's limits."

"Why?"

"So that you can join us. You are already more god than human. You deserve to take a place among us, rather than to languish among the flesh vermin."

"Since abduction failed now he is trying to lure me to your world with promises of godhood?"

"No. Your paranoia is of your father's making. Azriok cherishes you. No Sephiroth has ever cared for a mortal as he does for you. He is the only one of our species who has ever known what it is to be loved."

"That was a mistake I have since learned to rectify," Zyrdicia countered defiantly.

"You are an addiction to him. He craves your companionship, your adoration. You showed him what loneliness is, and now he cannot rid himself of it. There is nothing he would not do for you. He already has given you access to more Tenaebran power than any human in history. And yet you scorn him."

"It has been a century since we parted. Why is he doing this now?"

"Seeing you again affected him. Your new fear of him causes him great distress. He has not been as grief-stricken since you plunged a dagger into his heart the first time."

"Spare me the tragic blather."

"Zyrdicia, do you think we do not feel pain?"

"I have no idea what you feel," she sneered.

Baal's voice became soft and his enormous eyes filled with all the sadness of the cosmos. "You forget that pain was given to the human species by Zyr. Just as human magic is but a pale reflection of our own, so too is human pain. Azriok's anguish over his separation from you is a constant, encompassing torment. His tears flow like molten stone, stinging his face."

It had never occurred to her that Azriok, too, might suffer from their estrangement. She knew the banishment annoyed him, but pain was never an emotion she had imagined causing him. "Sephiroth are incapable of tears," Zyrdicia responded, her tone subdued.

"Untrue!" Baal whispered, looking quite stricken. His wings fluttered, and he flew nearer her. He held out his open hand before her. Two perfect, tear-drop shaped diamonds glittered in his palm. "Azriok's tears. For you."

Zyrdicia reached to take them from the dark angel's outstretched hand. His long fingers contracted to close gently around her much smaller hand. She winced at the feel of his touch. Its silken iciness felt like a sudden electric charge upon her skin. The chilling tingling was painful in the same breath that it was divine. The familiarity of it sent a shudder down her spine. She was no longer in her dreamworld with flesh that was but a mental projection. There was no surreality to insulate her consciousness from this experience of a Sephiroth's unholy grasp of her warm, mortal frame.

A flood of memories long since abandoned gushed out of the place in her psyche where she kept them locked away. She tried to pull her hand away, to sever the touch that triggered the memories. Baal's fingers tightened with a calm, effortless strength that defied comprehension. It was the strength of Death grasping at the souls he reaps, the strength of Creation's antipode. He stared at her with eyes blacker than any darkness in the material world, eyes that had born merciless witness to every horror and atrocity in the universe since time began.

Seeing inside her mind, he coaxed, "Yes, remember! Remember all of it!" He drew her nearer to him, alighting upon the rocks so that he could enfold her in the velvet of his wings. She shivered helplessly as he held her, overcome by all that once was and would never be again.

When he released her hand to encircle her in his frigid arms, he pressed Azriok's tears into her fingers and folded her hand shut as though entrusting her with a secret treasure. The gems were unnaturally cold upon the skin of her fingers now.

Within the darkness of his wings, her face a mask of sadness. As the memories afflicted her with her life's emptiness, she pleaded, "Isn't it enough that I have been miserable for a century? Must you do this?"

"Your misery - like your loneliness -- is of your own making. Azriok never turned away from you, never tried to harm you, never did anything but adore and protect you. After all he gave you, you pushed him away."

"Stop it!" Zyrdicia whispered desperately, her head bowed. It was all there in the unwanted memories. Hearing it from Baal's lips made it only made it more painful.

"You spurned the only being in the cosmos who understands you completely. You know that no mortal flesh-vermin will ever stir your soul or fully comprehend the majesty of what you are. Why do you torment yourself and torment the only entity you are capable of loving?"

His words carved their way into the innermost regions of her psyche. She knew it was all true. Everything was entirely her fault. The memory of the awesome splendor of being with Azriok in her dreamworld and in Tenaebra so recently joined the memories of the distant past in searing through her heart like acid dropped upon it. She missed him terribly at this moment. She wished it were he who were now holding her, he whose wings enfolded her.

She felt Baal's chilling lips touch her neck very delicately as he sensed the pulse of her jugular vein just below the skin. She knew her mortal blood called him. Its nearness quickened his hunger. Were she not Azriok's, she had no doubt that Baal would have ripped open her throat and gorged. Blood sacrifices to the Sephiroth had become far too infrequent in the present age. The need for heat never really left them now. Her blood was forbidden to him, though. Azriok's lesson to Baphim assured that none of the dark angels would ever dare to spill it. Its taste was a secret known to Azriok alone. Zyrdicia whimpered as she remembered begging Azriok to take it from her, to drink from a sliced artery like a fountain. She vividly remembered the sensation of her lifeforce flowing into him, of trusting him enough to have no fear that he would take all of it, and loving him enough not to care if he did.

Baal whispered, "It is not too late, Zyrdicia. Devour the Seraphim magic, and use it to come to Tenaebra. Choose to abandon your fetid flesh-world." Baal caressed her pale cheek delicately with his long, coal-colored fingernails and smiled fondly. "Azriok can no longer live with the knowledge that you fear him. He will never again risk frightening you, here or in your dreamworld. The choice is yours. His tears will guide you to Tenaebra. He awaits you there with open arms, just as he always has. Go to him. For your own sake. For Azriok's sake. Join us, and you will never know loneliness again. Claim the power that is your birthright!"

Baal touched his lips gently to her forehead, then released her. He vanished, leaving her alone with the roar of the ocean. She collapsed to her knees upon the soft, downy silver wings at her feet and buried her face in her hands. Guilt, regret, self-loathing and agony overwhelmed her. She felt Baal's lingering presence in her mind, relentlessly ripping apart what was left of her resistance and ego. She wished desperately that she knew the mortal secret to shedding tears, if only to let the anguish afflicting her escape. Her world collapsed upon itself at that moment, imploding until nothing remained but anguish.

She knew but one way to give voice to it, to allow it to escape. She removed her long leather gloves slowly, her eyes glassy and hollow. Taking a small, bejeweled platinum knife, she sliced open her left wrist, pulling the sharp blade from the base of her hand all the way down the underside of her forearm. Through sheer force of will, she grasped the knife in her wounded hand and made an identical incision in her right arm.

The soothing delirium of physical pain obliterated all other sensation, relieving her of the need to feel anything else. The blood flowing out of her body carried the grief with it, purifying her soul of its suffering, of its agonizing ache for Azriok. She knelt before the edge of the cliff, stretching her hands before her above the abyss. She watched her blood stain the sea foam below a deep crimson, and willed her misery upon the water. In the Tenaebran tongue he had taught her, she whispered, "For you, Azriok! Always, it flows for you."

Each beat of her heart forced more of her lifeblood out of her body. Tragically, there was more misery in her soul on this night than there was blood in her body to carry it out of her. When she was a child, spilling her blood always brought Azriok to her. That was impossible now. This time, not even Death came for a customary, flirtatious greeting. In deference to Azriok, her old friend turned a blind eye to her loneliness tonight.

Since she had absorbed Baphim's magic, her lifeforce had become much stronger than it had ever been. Even completely void of blood, her body was very much alive. In the past, such an activity would at least have catapulted her into the peaceful oblivion of unconsciousness. Now she merely lingered exhausted, mentally and physically drained, artificially empty emotion.

Feeling the immortality of her Sephiroth vigor at work in regenerating her flesh reminded her how alien she was to this world. As she watched the wounds slowly close, she noticed absently how black the blood looked in moonlight. The sound of horses interrupted the serenity of her seaside perch.

"There she is! Hey, Zyrdicia!" Geoffrey called from a distance. "Dirk is looking for you." The sound of mortal speech sounded vulgar and offensive, defiling the sacred stillness.

Still kneeling upon the blood-soaked angel wings, she did not turn to look at him. She stood up silently. She gathered the precious wings in her arms, clutching them to her bosom for a moment and bowing her head reverently as she sensed the power in them. The wings then disappeared to a vault in her residence in the cloud world. She sighed, feeling Geoffrey's soldiers eyes on her. From the distance in the darkness, their mortal eyes would never notice the blood all around her.

"Are you OK?" Geoffrey called out, perplexed by her silence.

"Divine," she replied blankly.

"Do you want a ride back to the other side of the island?"

"Go away! I will teleport myself there when it suits me, noisome mortal."

12.5.1

Dirk sat at a large table concentrating upon a map of the southern coast. It was covered in markings representing the planned path of invasion. He did not look up from the map when Zyrdicia entered. He was annoyed that he had been unable to locate her in the monocle again. She had ignored his telepathic summons as well. He had desired her presence and disliked being disappointed. He noticed the candles in the room seemed to dim of their own accord when she walked in. She pulled the room's shadows around her, keeping the light at bay.

When he spoke his tone was barbed, "You said you were going for a walk. That was three hours ago. Where were you?"

She ignored him. She was preoccupied with thoughts of something else. She had no interest in an argument this time. She was emotionally drained and psychologically raw from Baal's visit. Hearing the confrontation in Dirk's voice on this occasion was more than she could bear from this vile world of flesh. She felt a need to escape from it. When she finally spoke, her voice was flat and detached. "I ran into a friend. He reminded me that I have a debt to tend to."

Dirk still did not look at her. His tone remained cutting. "I want you here tonight. We need to discuss how you will transport more of my troops here. Your personal errands will have to wait."

"Not possible. I have to go."

His eyes moved from the map to her face in surprise. Something about her tone told him that she did not intend to leave for merely for an evening. "How long do you expect this to take?" he asked evenly, straining to see her in the shadows.

"Forever," she whispered absently, staring out an open window toward the blackness of the sea in the moonlight.

He was stunned that she could even contemplate such a thing. Every indication had led him to believe that she was thoroughly enjoying her stay in Aparans. In fact, after the initial confusion upon his premature arrival on the island, last night had been sublime. He had been rather touched by the birthday gift - it was easily the most perfect present anyone had ever given him. A piece of Camarand -- what better gift could there be? She had seemed quite amused with herself - and with the pleasure it obviously brought him. Before falling asleep together this morning, they had spent several blissful hours pondering that pleasure. In a particularly heated moment he had even told her that he adored her, and for an instant at least, had meant it. Her unexpected, distant demeanor irked him now. He replied coldly, "Such a departure is out of the question. I require your destructive talents for the coastal invasion."

"I belong elsewhere." Her voice was devoid of the usual spite. It sounded weary and indifferent.

He glared hard at her and despite the haze of darkness that seemed to cling to her, realized suddenly how listless she looked. He jeered, "The strain of the invasion has obviously induced some sort of delirium."

"No," she sighed apathetically. "My will is more lucid than it has been in a century."

He could not understand why she was avoiding the bait of an argument. She normally loved quarreling with him. He doubted that she had any intention of really leaving, but her avoidance of confrontation only served to anger him more. "I forbid you to leave! Need I remind you of the terms of our agreement?"

She thought a moment, trying to follow his implication. It was more than her fatigued mind could handle. "What agreement?"

"Your attempt to act oblivious is entirely unconvincing," he said snidely. "You know very well that I am referring to the contract governing the arcanium. If you leave, you will give me no alternative but to consider it a breach of the contract and revoke your claim to the mines."

"Do what you must, then," she said, sounding resigned to it.

It made no sense to him. She had to be using a new tactic, playing a new game to exasperate him, perhaps. If that was her motive, he had to admit it was successful.

"Zyrdicia!" he exclaimed menacingly. "You forget that you are my vassal now. You belong to me. Your whereabouts are mine to determine..."

As he spoke, she looked at him through the shadow with eyes that were flat and lifeless. It was as though the provocative twinkle that normally dwelt there had been extinguished. Her expression was strangely vacant. She disappeared in the middle of his tirade.

He was certain she would be back. Certainly by dawn, when she needed to rest. She was undoubtedly playing another of her infuriating games. As the next few hours passed, he tried in vain to contact her telepathically. The monocle was blank when he tried to summon her image.

In the house's sleeping quarters, he saw that all of her personal possessions had disappeared. That minor detail stunned him. It dawned on him for the first time how serious the situation could be. Could it be that this was no game at all?

Sleep was a lost cause then. He tried to rest, but given her recent presence in the bed, the pillows were permeated with the smell of her. It only served to intensify his sense of dread. It was inconceivable that she would dare to leave - just like that - before all Camarand belonged to him. He got up and used the monocle to contact Cai at Castle Blackpool. He was surprised that the seneschal was still awake. "Are Zyrdicia's servant's still there?" the prince asked hopefully.

Cai shook his head. He looked upset. "No, my lord. They all left a few hours ago. Portia received a telepathic command to pack up and depart immediately. This time she fears she won't be able to come back and visit, either."

Dirk sighed angrily, breaking off the connection. It was worse than he suspected. She was easily the most senseless creature he had ever known.

12.5.2

"So why was Zyrdicia so weird last night?" Geoffrey asked, oblivious to the events that followed her return to the Governor's house. He obviously thought she was upstairs asleep.

Dirk stared at his younger brother angrily, "What are you talking about?"

Geoffrey shrugged, "When I found her it was like she was in another world. Kind of spooky actually. She is usually so cheerful and fun to talk to. Not last night. She called me a 'noisome mortal', whatever that's about."

"Where was she?"

"At the cliffs, on the other side of the island. She was doing something out there, kind of kneeling on the edge. It almost looked like she was asleep at first, but she wasn't."

"Show me the location," Dirk commanded quietly.

They rode out to the cliffs right away. Dirk immediately noticed something on the edge of the rocks which reflected the bright morning's sunlight. He dismounted so that he could investigate. The object was an elegant dagger that he knew belonged to Zyrdicia. Her long, black leather gloves were abandoned near it. His well-trained eye recognized the dark stains on the surrounding rocks as blood. There was no sign of struggle. Hers were the only footprints in the area. Had anyone bothered her out here, there would undoubtedly be corpses, or at least ash, to testify to that fact.

A strange, silver feather caught his eye near where he had found her gloves. When he picked it up, he realized that it was no feather at all. It felt peculiarly fluid in his hand. Its softness was such that it almost seemed to dissolve and reform itself as he touched it. He intended to have Vector identify it, hoping it might provide a clue as to what had happened.

He suddenly regretted greeting her with vitriol. As he remembered how languid she had seemed, he suspected that the blood had to be hers. If she had been attacked, it certainly was not by anything human. And he could not imagine the bloodletting would have been her own doing. When she craved pain, she had no compunction about enlisting his assistance. She knew very well that he regarded such play as one of life's greatest delights. He was certain that she would have come to him. He wondered now that something else might have happened.