Chapter 47: The Unhallowed Trinity

  “It is done,” Xeras replied.

  "Did anyone escape?" Dahlia inquired, not looking up from her tasks. Her human-sized form provided benefits—like performing her ritual preparations without relying on Ruth or others. Yet, there was something satisfying about assigning mundane tasks to her subordinates.

  However, this spell was far from mundane, and she aimed for perfection. That is why she did not hurry; perfection demanded patience, even if patience was the bane of all fairies.

  "No one escaped. Many tried to break ranks and flee, but they were swiftly taken down before they could get away," Xeras said, pressing the tip of Gloombough into the cemetery earth. He stood still like a statue, ready to report and waiting for her ritual to conclude or for a reason to strike. The way energy sputtered from his eyes caught Dahlia’s attention, though. She’d never seen him particularly interested in her magical weaving before.

  The morning sun rose over the horizon, its first rays illuminating the darkened earth of Riverwatch’s cemetery. Dahlia sensed Horus’ simmering resentment as the dawn’s light attempted to banish the shadows from Nantes.

  Within her intricately drawn ritual circle lay three bodies: Amelia, Adeline, and Zorah.

  Unlike the fools who spent the night drinking fey wine, Dahlia had entered a trance to regain her spells and then prepared this ritual, and she hoped it paid off.

  “Witness,” Dahlia commanded the Ebon Chorus, who all gathered around the outer circles of her spell. Then she drew her lute, checked the tune, and hummed a scale.

  ? “Cold hands, still hearts, the dust takes its due,

  Your names left unspoken, forgotten, untrue.

  The river ran red, drank deep of your pain,

  But hear me now, and rise once again.

  The scales were weighed, the sentence passed,

  The sun’s burning eye turned cold at the last,

  Horus cast you aside, erased all you were,

  But I stole his judgment, I make you reborn.

  They wrote you in silence, they buried your names,

  Thought death would cleanse you, but then I came,

  The veil is torn, the chains unwind,

  Stand with me now, unbroken by time.

  Silent steps, unseen blade,

  Sins unspoken, debts unpaid,

  Blood runs cold, the shadows call,

  From darkness arise, make tyrants fall.

  The corpse of Adeline twitched first. Dahlia’s singing created waves of potent magical power visible to all the Ebon Chorus. A thick miasma of gloam wafted off the fairy in waves thicker than her pastel fairy dust. Occasional motes of solar light floated into the air only to spiral back down, pulled by Dahlia’s will. They settled over the three corpses, binding to their flesh like molten ink—baptizing them, reshaping them, forging them anew beneath her hands.

  Freshborn shadows cast by the morning sun danced by gravestones. Yet they were rapidly pulled inward, where the miasma of gloam and motes of a gods divine judgment merged into the young woman’s body. What rose was not human, nor was it a wraith or specter. Adeline’s pale skin transformed into an abyssal shade of violet, so dark it drank the morning light rather than reflecting it.

  Dark voids marked the empty spaces where she once had eyes, and the darkness was so deep only Dahlia, with True Sight, could tell where those dark orbs looked. Her hair, once a flowing thing of beauty, now flowed like mist or a fine shroud that clung to her neck. She cast no shadows—instead, her form seemed to merge and feed upon any that were nearby.

  Her hands, well. They flickered. One moment, long, graceful, delicate things perfect for disarming traps, picking locks, or performing any manner of dexterous challenge—the next, her fingers were replaced by curved fey blades. Back and forth, her hands shifted, ready to use either tool to flay or choke the life out of those who had killed her.

  Dahlia named her Sablethistle, her very own Phantom Blade.

  “Stone unyielding, law undone,

  Weight of judgment, breath of none,

  Kneel before her, beg in vain,

  Rise, O Warden, and bind them in chains.”

  The ground shuddered beneath Amelia. The ground itself rejected her death. The fractured cracks of split earth created the appearance that her corpse had escaped a prison of earth, almost…. Before chains of darkness shot into the air from the jagged wounds in the world. However, the chains did not bind her; instead, they lifted the newly reborn woman to a standing position. Miasma condensed into spectral armor, shifting twilight metals formed armor fit for the grandest of knights.

  A funerary veil, woven with golden threads of the Inquisition’s stolen judgments, drew attention to the hollow pits of white flames that were her eyes. Spectral chains writhed along her armor like snakes, coiling and uncoiling as if they were testing the air for the need to render judgment. Amelia’s skin had taken on an ashen color, lending her a statuesque quality due to its resemblance to stone.

  Dahlia named her Mourningveil, her very own Warden of the Lost.

  “Draconic birth, forsaken fate,

  Split in shadow, bound in hate,

  The wind recoils, the stars take flight,

  Hunter of dusk—rise into twilight.”

  Zorah held surprises, oh so many surprises—no wonder she had expected Dahlia to have known the von Draegen name, for the ranger held the royal blood of a nation, but much more interestingly, the diluted blood of dragons. As magic seeped into her and Dahlia’s mental fingers sculpted her, Zorah’s darker skin turned violet, but flows of golden light could be seen where her veins once were. Her eyes were like the molten gold, slit-pupiled gaze of a dragon. Her hands elongated and tapered to end in curved talons. Her dark hair had turned lavender and ephemeral and blew on an unnatural wind, twinkling with stardust.

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  The air reverberated with something ancient, not of the fey or the gods. Darkness flowed from her back, then it fractured, shattered, and poured into twin shapes that unfurled from her back. Spectral wings, woven from shadow and memory, stretched wide and cast long, hungry silhouettes that did not move with her body but with her intent.

  The silent declaration that she would never crawl upon the earth again might as well have been spoken, so clearly did it ring through the thoughts of the Ebon Chorus.

  Dahlia named her Thryssavane, as she was her very own Twilight Hunter.

  “Rise, my shadows, rise, my wraiths,

  The sun shall not claim you, nor chains of faith,

  The blade, the warden, the hunter of night,

  My unhallowed trinity, step into the light.” ?

  Dahlia exhaled a final, heavy breath—exhausted… and exhaled the fifty Glimmer to fuel the ritual. She lacked enough spells to perform a ritual of this magnitude on her own, and so had turned to the vast stockpile of Glimmer she’d gained from Tarik’s pact to fill the gap for the rebirth of the Unhallowed Trinity.

  And now that all three were before her violet-eyed gaze, potent, elite undead? Dahlia knew the cost had been worth it. They had not been born as Wights, Mummies, Wisps, Shadows, or Spirits, but Revenants.

  Xeras looked on stoically, as if he had seen this before, or perhaps reliving some of the ancient memories that bound him. He nodded in approval to Dahlia.

  False? True? Divine Judgment is woven inside of you. Where is my share?

  Shriekfang, the cursed rapier, demanded an answer.

  “You’re made from the Bones of the first Fomorian, a shard cast by an unspeakable Horror whose name we dare not speak, cursed Blood Silver, and woven from the deepest Gloam by me. Yet, you would sully that recipe of greatness through mere envy? Truly, you are made from the Bones of Balor.” Dahlia said crossly.

  When Dahlia’s voice struck the rapier as if a whip had lashed him, the handle shifted slightly towards Xeras, who growled low in his throat and looked away from the blade.

  After a seemingly endless silence, Shriekfang spoke again.

  I… withdraw my request.

  A few beats of Dahlia’s exhausted heart later, and the cemetery filled with a cough like thunder.

  Mourningveil stepped forward and stopped a few paces from Dahlia, where the revenant dropped to a knee. One hand moved over where her heart had once been, and the other held the haft of her wicked Warhammer.

  She coughed again, quieter this time. Death seemed to have played havoc with her throat. A few more coughs, and finally, she spoke.

  “Keeper, my death was stolen, and in its place, you have given me judgment. I am your warden. I am your hammer. I am the reckoning that walks in your shadow. Name the guilty, and they shall be no more.” Mourningveil spoke her oath, loud and clear.

  The white flames of Mourningveil’s eyes stared challengingly, defiantly, at the Ebon Chorus who surrounded Dahlia and the three Revenants. Dahlia herself, though, was looked upon with an almost worshipping look by the newly reborn undead. Nothing of Amelia remained in her appearance or voice, that Dahlia could detect.

  A pity.

  “Be welcome into the Ebon Chorus, Mourningveil,” Dahlia answered. Then she shifted her eyes to the other two revenants.

  Sablethistle flickered, vanished, and reappeared next to Mourningveil. She tsked at the kneeling woman.

  “You should have let me go first, Warden. I do so love a dramatic entrance,” Sablethistle grumbled. Then she kneeled. Slowly, deliberately, each second was a matter of drama played out—be that the drama of shadowed leathers stretched taut over calf and thigh, or the way she absorbed shadows. When none of the Ebon Chorus shared her sense of drama, she dropped to a knee and gave Xeras a sour frown.

  For all her bravado, Sablethistle had to swallow twice before she found the words she wished to speak.

  “You have named me, and thus I am,” Sablethistle said. For a brief moment, she let earnest, genuine gratitude and wonder show through her voice and the black orbs of her eyes that only Dahlia could see.

  “I was unseen, unheard, forgotten. But no longer. I am your blade in the dark, the whisper before the fall. From your shadow, I shall orchestrate the ruin of your enemies.”

  Dahlia’s eyes sparkled, despite her exhaustion. For a brief moment, she had seen into the heart of Sablethistle—and liked what she saw. It seemed Adeline had found purpose in her new existence and thirsted to execute it.

  Thryssavane did not kneel nor bow her head. Instead, she crossed her arms. Her clawed fingers tapped idly against the midnight plating of her new armor. A slow smile spread across her dark lips—a slow, predatory movement, as if she were considering something to be hunted. The reptilian eyes, with their slit-pupiled gaze, glowed even in the morning sunlight, and were much more challenging than those of the twins. Elements of Zorah remained.

  “You reshaped me, Keeper.” Her voice was low and deep, barely feminine. A snort sent faint ripples of unseen power through the air.

  “But I wonder… do you truly understand what you’ve made?”

  The air shifted then, as something deep and ancient, an unquestionably draconic presence, uncoiled in the space around Thryssavane. Her dark violet skin flowed into scales, her body elongated, and vertebrae shifted. In moments, something large and monstrous would be among them.

  Xeras raised Gloombough an inch out of the soil. The rest of the Ebon Chorus braced themselves.

  Dahlia lifted her right hand, a simple gesture. Stop.

  Thryssavane obeyed, her body flowing back into what it had been. Obedience wasn’t mandatory; it was inevitable. Shriekfang called the fairy the Princess of Chains for a reason, and her chains were thick, unbreakable, and rooted in manipulation of the very soul and essence of what her minions were; to defy Dahlia would be to defy the force that sustained them.

  “I completely understand what I have made, Thryssavane.” Dahlia’s voice was even, confident, and unshaken. A minor undercurrent of annoyance cut through, but also pride. “I have made my Twilight Hunter.”

  Dahlia’s smile returned in full wicked glory. The violet of her lips sparkled with a metallic luster in the morning sun, and the black of her nails sucked in light and shadow even more hungrily than Sablethistle.

  “Do you understand?” Dahlia asked.

  “I do,” Thryssavane said, and she, too, took a knee and bowed her head. “I am Thryssavane, Twilight Hunter, sworn to your will. Where your enemies flee, I will find them. Where they hide, I shall drag them into the light. Their walls will not protect them; their gods will not hear their prayers... or screams.”

  Three names, three oaths. Dahlia almost felt rejuvenated from her exhaustion. Almost.

  “Rise. The weakness of flesh no longer binds you, nor the chains of mortality. Power without action is meaningless, and we have work to do.” Dahlia gestured for them to rise, then beckoned all the Ebon Chorus to her.

  “Search the area of both Riverwatch and River Home. Bring anything useful to me, Horus does not need their belongings anymore.”

  “Riverguard Keep is next,” Dahlia said. Anticipation filled the air.