Chapter XLIII: Baen Fior

Baen opened his eyes slowly, the stabbing pains of the great fall even finding their way into his wretched body. He had thought there could be no such pain that could overwhelm the constant anguish of the raging fires that flowed through is veins and threated to burst out at any moment. This was the curse of the Seph girl laying next to him, unconscious. She had fainted during the fall, his body cushioning her blow, and the darkness within her preserving her life. His mind was brought back to the day he first set hands on the Knowing Orb and the pain that had filled his body and tried to consume him the way his power had once been able to consume all others. Now, he was a wretched skeleton of his former self, having to devote his strength and will to keeping himself from being perpetually consumed by the fires of true evil. After a moment, he rose from the cratered ground and stood within the shadows of the banished lands.

Magma spewed up from the cracks in the ground as lava rolled far below. Stalactites and stalagmites crackled in the heat and loomed throughout the caverns as if Baen stood within the gaping maw of some giant beast. Far above he could see the spiralling darkness that lead back to Cion Sky, he watched the lightning crackle across it’s edges and knew that no matter how hard he tried to leap, he would never be able to leap high enough to escape. It was then that he heard the sudden crack of ground near him and looked to see his enemies, all eight of them delivered to him.

His eyes, still filled with the blood of anger and destruction, stared down at their unconscious forms with anger and malice. His hand slowly travelled to his sword and he drew it out with great care, bringing the blade up and around. The runes began to glow as the voices of all the evil creatures that had died for him and all the creatures that served him still began to bubble in his mind. Here was his great torment, the constant echo of a million pained and tortured voices that wanted nothing more than to have their revenge upon all the world. This was his own mind as well, but the voices only furthered his rage. The runes began to hiss with light as he drew near the warrior who he had slain once before. No wound was found on the man and he seemed to be unconscious not from some great blow but from exhaustion during the fall. This was another cruel torture then. But now he had the chance to finish the job he started.

With a slow, methodical hiss, he brought the sword up, then stopped at the top of his swing. What was he doing? No. This was not how it would end. He would let them rise to fight him and he would slay them all and prove that no prophecy could determine when he lived or died. He slowly drew back and stared throughout the lava-marked cavern, his eyes flickering in the darkness.

His body could feel the flames trying to break out through his skin, through his armor, through his eyes and mouth and throat. The burning sensation rose in him as his mind slowly warped even more than before. Finally, the rage and sorrow found its way to his head and overpowered him. He let out a great scream that echoed through the caverns, the echoes dying with the anguish of his tormented soul. The great Baen Fior dropped to his knees and sobbed, hot tears of purple fire spilling to the ground and trickling off to the lava far below.

“Why have you cursed me, oh God? Have I not served you as you demanded me to serve you? Is this my service as well? To be banished to the darkness…to be killed at the hands of mortal men and women, lesser creatures that despise me solely for my name…for my title…for my desires? How can one despise a creation made for a purpose…a creation made without ability to question or resist it’s own powers and ideas? I have no will….do I, God? I am yours to command and manipulate and thus you have made me your wretched puppet….WHY!?” Baen’s voice echoed up through the caverns and spiralled around again and again as he struggled to his feet once more, his sword clutched bitterly in his hands.

His eyes slowly settled on Adelia, his grip loosening as he began to drag his blade as if the burden was too much. He knelt next to her figure and observed her. The blue tattoos upon her face, the backwards half moon….the strange star marking the left side of her bald head, the great braid trailing down her back. She was beautiful to him, and he could feel a strange pain within him….it was not love, he knew. He was incapable, wasn’t he? Why would God give a creature of absolute evil love? No, it was not love that pained him, but the weakness that she brought to him. It was sorrow. The sorrow that he could not have nor ever deserve her, perhaps. He was not sure, for such feelings were devoid in him, and thus comprehension of them eluded him as well. He stared at her as she breathed silently for several minutes. “Ah, what different creatures we are, my dear. And yet, they perceive us as the same. They believe us nothing more than wicked wretches, nothing more than tools to exact their biddings on in an effort to make a perfect world. There is no perfection though, and God does not desire such….I expect it to be so, for he has given them foolishness as well, and it is their foolishness that will keep them from ever attaining the perfection that they seek. Yet, still I am not comforted, for in their foolishness, they have castigated, betrayed, and destroyed me. They have abandoned me, their brother, their friend. Never did I show malice or hate, nothing……nothing but the darkness that I had to exact upon the world we had created. May you hear me and remember this…that I was part of the creation of these lands….and for every love that blooms, my hand is part of it….and for every death and life and success and misfortune, my hand is there as well…..I am part of the world forever…..no matter what they do to me. Do they know what my existence has brought? Do they? No…..for they are as blind as all your allies who come to save you from my clutches.” Baen stared down, then began to rise from Adelia’s side, his eyes flaring and the lava all around him beginning to boil up and sputter. “So…this is to be my tomb? No…..it shall be their tomb and my prison….” His words hissed from his lips as his eyes roamed across the craggy cavern walls.