Angel of Darkness

*

The Realm of Darkness has always existed, as close to us as our shadows, as far away as forever. It is a dimension that is populated by countless creatures that humanity knows only through the distorting mirrors of myth: a birthplace of fantasies, a homeland of horrors. It is as strange and familiar to us as our dreams, for our spirits can journey there, briefly, when we give ourselves up to sleep.

*

There had always been Three Powers in Darkrealm, or Makai, as its inhabitants call it. For long ages, their forces had been held in balance, and an uneasy peace had reigned. Among the vampires were many families who wrangled bitterly among themselves, vying for the summit of power among their kind. The endless plotting in their midst meant that Bosital was only the latest of several clans to have ruled the drinkers of blood, defeating the great clan Maximov only when their lord Demitri was imprisoned in a coma-spell that would last as long as Bosital lived.

The incubi and succubi were as greedy for power as the vampires, but they were less vicious toward their own kind: Berial, lord of clan Aensland, had ruled them for many long centuries. Berial, in preparation against the growing ennui that threatens even immortals down the ages, had raised and trained his daughter Morrigan, preparing her in case he should someday decide to abandon the growing burdens of his throne and his life. It was whispered that some of the ways Berial prepared his daughter were exceedingly strange, even as such things are measured in Makai.

But the greatest of the three clans had always been Doma, the clan of demons. The strength of this clan was founded on the power of its ruler: Jedah, the Angel of Night, the oldest and mightiest being in all of Makai. For longer than the earliest records could trace, Jedah had reigned supreme, untouched by the weariness of time, his power only growing with the millennia. The most ancient histories of all gave him the title 'The First': perhaps he was in truth the earliest living thing ever in Darkrealm. It was said by many that he had the power to obliterate both the other clans from the face of the realm, if he had so desired. It was a source of constant resentment among the demons that he never chose to do so (though of course they were extremely careful never to show any such resentment to Jedah himself!). But the fact that Jedah spared no time for all the usual methods of seeking dominion, said much about his priorities.

"The road to true power," he said once to his second in command, the demon Ozomu, "does not include the detours of political intrigue or all-out war. If the other clans ever learned that, they might be worth noticing." And it is true that their endless webs of espionage and their plots and wars occupied all the strength and all the attention of the other two clans. Each of them felt that their mission was clear: destroy the other. Only then, after their weaker opponent was defeated, could either of them be strong enough to face the greater might of Doma. Thus, Jedah was left free to develop ever more arcane forms of wizardry. His skill in mind and body, in magic and will, was unrivalled; his smallest wish was obeyed as divine law. Of all of the beings in Makai, he should have been the most content. But Jedah saw deep into the workings of destiny, and in his restless seeking for newer, more potent sorceries he was willing to draw wisdom from many strange sources.

*

All the creatures in Makai shared some tiny ability to make use of magic. What very few of them understood was that magic was woven into the very fabric of their being. Without such power, nothing could exist in that dimension. And the ultimate source of all magic, Jedah found, was the land itself: the earth that nourished them all, and welcomed their dead bodies back into its embrace.

Neither of the other Lords of Darkrealm cared about the land itself. The very location of the great Houses showed it: Castle Aensland spurned the earth altogether, floating high and haughty amid the clouds. The vampires' Castle was little better: springing from the utmost tip of the Nightfang, the highest mountain in all of Makai. The Lords of both these clans might allow centuries to pass before deigning to set foot on the 'common' ground. They far preferred other concerns: the incubi and the succubi delighting in debauchery and intrigue, the vampires quarrelling endlessly among themselves, the biter bit, each draining the other to gain some fleeting dominance.

But Jedah made his home in the Heart of Flame, a vast chamber at the centre of a great volcano. The demons revelled in the destructive force of the lake of fire there, and Jedah saw a terrible beauty in its light, and borrowed its power for some of his sorceries. He kept grimoires and wands and potions in stalactite-roofed halls under the mountain, and conducted arcane rituals in rocky chambers lined with natural crystals of great might. And yet, unlike the other Lords, he was absent from his stronghold more often than not. Many times the restlessness would take Jedah, and he would spread his shining wings of blue steel and silver, sacred metal shunned by evil. Swifter than the wind he would soar away from his home, rising from the sea of flame through the volcano's long shaft, until he burst from its peak like a streak of lightning that leaps up into the clouds. He could cover the realm with ease in search of new learning, but many times these journeys were driven by his heart, not his mind. Like any winged thing, he could not remain underground, or behind walls for long: his love of the earth did not make flight any less joyous.

*

It happened at one time, that Ozomu began to notice a deeper discontent in his master, a greater abstraction, a shadow of foreboding on him. Jedah's absences from the Heart of Flame grew longer and longer, until at last the terrible day came, when all of Makai knew that he would never return.

For of all the Lords of Darkrealm, only Jedah loved Makai itself; cared enough to listen to the land, and understand it all. He would fly higher, higher, ice crystals falling in glittering showers from his wings with every beat, until he left the last wisps of cloud far below. Sometimes he would climb higher still, until he glided at last through the eternal, unearthly night that stretches away forever beyond the air itself. He would spend days in lightless caverns far under the earth, reading the secrets written in the layers of a single stone. He would wander far roads, on foot and disguised, to sip strange brew with a village witch and listen to her gossip. He would wail to the moon with werewolves and speak in tongues of flame with dragons. And everywhere he went he heard echoes, rumours, whispers. The land itself was crying for help in a thousand voices, and it was a plea that only he was willing to hear.

For Makai had prospered under the long, distrustful truce, and the land was thronged more and more, until it seemed now that every wood hosted a coven of witches, or a pack of werewolves, and every cave had a dragon brooding over a meagre hoard, or a nest of new eggs. The earth was overburdened by the multitudes it supported, until at long last the land was nearing the limits of its strength. Soon, the sources of all magic, overtaxed by all the new lives that drew on them, would begin to run dry. And when that day finally came, the inhabitants of the realm, whose very being depended on magic, would begin to die. Jedah travelled the realm from end to end, hoping his fears would be proven wrong. But his dread only grew with every passing day, until for all his frantic searching he could fly no longer from the truth.

For all his ageless wisdom, the weight of this new knowledge almost broke him. Sorrow drove him now, and he fled from any witness, any undeserved sympathy or just accusation. Until, alone, in a black wasteland at the farthest margins of the realm, he hid beneath his huddled wings, and bowed his head, and wept. For he held himself responsible: the peace had only lasted so long because he had kept the other two Powers in a precarious balance. But what else could he do? Start a war? Deliberately massacre all those his peace had allowed to live?

His tears fell onto that barren earth: the first water that had touched it in untold years. And the land itself answered his grief. Silently, it touched his spirit with knowledge no one in history had ever guessed: that there was a way to open a gateway to another dimension. This dimension was known to the wise of Makai as the Dimension of Light or Earthrealm. It was a place of legendary bounty, thronged with beings who did not need magic to survive. As a result it was overflowing with magic that had never even been tapped: magic that almost none of its inhabitants knew how to use.

Slowly, Jedah rose to his feet. His face was filled with dawning wonder, growing into exaltation as he knew that yes, it could be done. And it should be done: here, where none could be harmed by any backlash from the spell, and now, before the final failure of all magic. From horizon to horizon, he was the only thing that moved in the face of that dark land, and it seemed as if the earth itself watched him, and waited in silent, terrible suspense.

He unfolded his wings to their farthest stretch, majestic arcs of silver that shone blindingly in the gloom. A moment later he echoed the movement, throwing his long slender arms wide in a gesture of opening. His clear voice rose in the soaring beauty of an Angel's song, and pure power geysered up before him, rising from the place on the earth where his tears had fallen. Force gathered that could have shattered mountains. It was held in place only by the focus of Jedah's will, concentrated in the space between his outstretched hands. Higher, wilder, the flare of power grew, and over its gale, his song of invocation spiralled to its peak. Jedah threw all of his deepest self, all the love of his heart and all the wisdom of his mind and all the power of his soul, into a single cry of "YES!"

And the world disappeared in a blinding flare of light.

*

As Jedah sang his invocation, all over Makai works of magic suddenly faltered as the land offered up its last reserves of force to Jedah's call. Far, far away, Castle Aensland shuddered amid the clouds and all its inhabitants took flight in insane panic lest it should fall completely. The spell-warded outer wall of the vampires' Castle crumbled, but these two clans later counted themselves fortunate. Perhaps it was Jedah's decision that his own home should pay the greatest price. For the Heart of Flame erupted, utterly destroying Jedah's stronghold and forcing the demons to take temporary refuge in the upper world they loathed.

All the greatest beings in Makai, the Lords themselves, travelled with all their speed, flying furiously toward the focus, the point where the last power in the world was gathering, draining away. For all their speed, they arrived too late to do anything but bear witness.

All they could do was watch from afar as the distant figure of Jedah disappeared in a concentrated burst of absolute white radiance.

By the time that the chieftains of the demons, the incubi and the vampires crossed the last leagues of the wasteland, Jedah was gone. Where he had stood, there was a gaping pit charred into the earth. Lying in the bottom of the pit was a blackened, hideous mass of burned flesh and twisted bone, and two thin streaks of molten steel and silver, already tarnishing. Not even a trace of his robes had survived that blast; there was nothing to mercifully shroud those ghastly remains.

The three Lords of Darkrealm, Berial and Bosital and Jedah's lieutenant Ozomu, gazed down at all that was left of the oldest and greatest Lord of them all. Beneath their searching eyes, there could be no mistake, no error. None of them felt the slightest echo of Jedah's spirit. He was dead, and the realm would never be the same again. All of them were shocked into silence, stunned by the implications of this: the fact that Death had claimed a being who had never been destined to die. At last, the three Lords themselves raised rocks from the nearby earth and built a domed vault over the pit, piled a cairn of stones over the place where the Angel had laid down his life, so that the world could live.

Yet Jedah had another, far greater memorial to his sacrifice. The gate he had opened for the first time between the dimensions had poured all of the untapped magic from the Dimension of Light into Makai, making it richer in power than it had ever been in its long history. That gate had closed with Jedah's death, but its vital aim was achieved.

Darkrealm was saved.

*

For a time, Darkrealm was saved. But the unspoken accord that had raised Jedah's cairn was the last between the three Lords. Jedah's death had broken the fragile balance of power between the clans. Doma, once the mightiest clan, was crucially weakened under the leadership of a lesser Lord. Left also with no secure stronghold, the demons dispersed through all the caverns in the earth, their energies directed toward searching out and then fortifying a new home. But the other two clans wasted no time in seizing what they saw as the perfect chance for supremacy. The long peace was shattered beyond repair and all of Makai was plunged into the savage, three-sided war that Jedah had feared.

The toll on lives and land alike was hideous. Wide tracts of the realm were laid waste, blasted by sorcerers' fire, crushed beneath satanic engines of destruction, poisoned by the salt blood of the slain. The fortunes of war shifted like the sands, as all three clans struggled for centuries without ceasing, yet none could gain a decisive grip on ultimate power.

It was a bitter irony that Jedah's sacrifice had provided the means to prolong and intensify this ghastly war. For magic was now abundant in the land, making the sorceries of war devastating in their might. Also, the closing hymn of Jedah's invocation had been witnessed by all three of the Lords of Darkrealm, and they were not slow in grasping the critical importance of his dimension-spanning breakthrough. Each of them strove, in his own fashion, to reconstruct the beginning of Jedah's last great spell. For though all the unused magic in the Dimension of Light had already been drawn into Makai, there were vast reserves of other power which still remained in that dimension: power which would give ultimate victory to the first Lord who could tap it. Earthrealm was filled with living beings, each of them a potential warrior on the bloody battlefields of Makai, or a soul that could be used to power spells of hideous malice. And the Lords realised that Jedah had opened the way: they could now follow in his footsteps and access that dimension, without fear of sharing his fate. The incalculable influx of power that had incinerated Jedah alive would never happen again, now that there was no more excess magic left in the world of humanity.

It was in these days that Berial, Lord of clan Aensland, disappeared forever. Some say he failed in his first attempt to open a gateway, that he was eternally lost between dimensions. Some say he fell victim to a plot by Bosital, while others whisper that he was murdered by his daughter, Morrigan. The truth will never be known, but soon afterwards Bosital was slain by the survivors of the rival vampire family Maximov. Perhaps they were assisted in this by Aensland's vengeful heir. With Bosital's death, the head of the Maximovs, Demitri, was released from Bosital's spell, and rapidly fought his way to seize the Lordship of all the vampires.

But at length, despite these setbacks, all three of the new Lords opened gateways of their own at about the same time, and made their first steps into the new dimension. At first the arrogance of their power filled them: they held the mortals they met in utter contempt. Demitri and Morrigan particularly were carried away by their depravity: they used mortals as toys for their lusts, subjecting them to all manner of wild debaucheries. In this, they may have sown the seeds of their own doom. For a son was born to a woman Demitri raped and drained and left for dead. This boy, Donovan, grew to a powerful but embittered manhood as a dhampir, sharing a vampire's powers yet still able to bear the light of the sun. He found no solace for the shame of his tainted blood, not even in the study of the holy sutras, so to atone for the crime of his birth he took up the sacred sword Dhylec and dedicated his powers to the destruction of the invaders from the dark. At length, the arrogance of the Lords ceased to blind them: they were shocked to realise at last that not all of the inhabitants of the Dimension of Light were powerless against them.

Ozomu also may have been careless in his dealings with the beings from this new world: but his carelessness took a different form. Instead of abusing and discarding these mortals, he began to recruit minions from among them. Ozomu resurrected one particularly vicious mortal ruffian as a zombie; and gave him power so that he could serve Ozomu as his second in command (even as Ozomu had served his own Lord, Jedah). This creature's name was Zabel Zarock. In his arrogance he called himself Lord Raptor while he was in the world of men, though he held no true powers of Lordship such as Makai knew them. His wickedness served Ozomu's plans, after a fashion, as he stole souls with the unearthly screams of his music. But he proved a most untrustworthy servant: a scheming, ungrateful creature, he repaid Ozomu's gifts of power only with scorn. Selfishness was his only passion, and he plotted Ozomu's overthrow constantly: to him the loyalty those in Makai gave their Lords was a joke. Ozomu was aware of this, and sent his familiar, La Malta the Beast of Makai, to befriend the zombie, and watch him, and report Zabel's petty treacheries back to Ozomu, his true master. Zabel found La Malta a valuable companion, for he could change his shape at will, and pass through the earth as though it were smoke. He carried Zabel from place to place in the blink of an eye, helping the zombie greatly in his schemes, which all ultimately gathered more servants to Ozomu's cause.

*

With all three sides now able to access new support from the Dimension of Light, the wars in Makai grew more ghastly and devastating with each passing day. More and more bodies were ground into bloody smears, pounded into the poisoned mud of ever-wider battlefields. The expanses of charred, noxious wasteland grew without cease, as caverns were laid bare, and mountains were shattered by sorcerous earthquakes, and unnatural tornadoes ate at the countryside, and whole forests burned to black ash.

Now not only the creatures of Darkrealm were being destroyed. Now, the land itself was slowly dying: blasted and broken and burned, poisoned by the salt of wasted blood. Until, in a forgotten wasteland at the most distant edge of the realm, a secret miracle began.

It gathered, soft and silent as the snow that builds the avalanche. It moved through the earth, slow and humble as roots of grass that are yet strong enough to split the hardest stone. It centred on a barren pit beneath a lonely cairn of stones. No-one suspected that Jedah's body still lay there, exactly as it was when he died, millennia ago. His remains had been protected from the ravages of time by the earth's reluctance to absorb them into itself and destroy his last sacred relics.

Blood began to ooze from the walls of the pit, trickling from the charred earth as if it were freshly severed flesh, as if the pit were a wound in the heart of the world. Blood welled from the soil beneath the incinerated corpse, rising round the jagged outlines of broken bones, veiling the mangled, hideous thing slowly from sight. Blood dripped from the underside of the cairn's vaulted stones, splashing like slow rain into the rising red tide, until the pit was filled to its brim with the blood of untold carnage that the earth could no longer hold.

The blood was as hot and vital as if it had leaped straight from the veins of the dying. It was liquid and rich and showed no trace of coagulation or of decay. And once it had filled Jedah's grave, it did not lie at peace. Beneath the stony vault, the surface of that dark lake rippled and shifted with the eerie restlessness of a disturbed sleeper. Occasional tiny whirlpools gaped and closed, and small warm waves lapped against the black soil. Beneath the surface, strange currents stirred, shaped themselves, moving with the precision of hands, touching the pitiable shards of bone and the rags of seared flesh. First, the remains were lifted until they were floating suspended in the blood, the bones drifting gently until they lay straight. And then, slowly, their shattered edges began to grow together, smoothing bit by bit, until at last a long, delicate skeleton lay, gleaming like an ivory carver's greatest masterpiece. As the backbones reformed, the droplets of dull metal that lay scattered over the bottom of the pit rose out of the dirt, shedding their tarnish until they gleamed like bubbles of light amid the redness. They flowed together under the silent guidance of the blood, reforming into vast, elegant arcs of silver: shining wings that melded perfectly into the ivory column of the spine. Part of his body once more, they became more than mere metal: supple and responsive as flesh, harder and sharper than the strongest steel.

And then, the blackened shreds of muscle lost their burned appearance, and began to grow. New fibres of red appeared between the bones and began to stretch into long bundles of sinew, webbed with intricate traceries of veins. Cradled among the curving ribs, a heart swelled, gleaming like a mighty ruby, before flesh grew over the chest veiling it from view. Coaxed by the tenderly stroking fingers of current in the blood all around, skin appeared and stretched across the raw muscle. The skin was so pale it was not even white, but the faint blue of the sky at the horizon's edge. It spread across the skull, and Jedah's face reappeared, beautiful in its serenity, the closed eyelids curving gently over eyesockets no longer empty. Finally, hair crowned him once more, spread around his head like a halo: a gold so pale it was almost silver. The fine straight strands, long enough to brush his shoulders, drifted to and fro with the eerie undulation of seaweed.

The unprecedented healing was complete: Jedah floated in the blood that filled his grave, his body restored to all its perfection. Now, the unfathomed energies of Darkrealm gathered for one last supreme effort. The land cried out to Jedah's dead soul, calling him to take up the burden of his flesh once more. Makai itself begged him, even as it had done once before, to come to its aid in the hour of its final need. But this time it was asking him to come to it from death, from the death that had been his only reward when he first answered the land's need.

Somewhere, in the darkest depths of mortal oblivion, lay a spirit who had never been destined for death. Somewhere, his awareness stirred, and he heard the desperate call of the land he had loved, and had sacrificed himself to save. It would have been such an easy call to refuse. He had already lost what he should never have had to lose. How could he, in all justice, be asked to do more? Was even this last peace to be taken from him now? But none of this could stop him from hearkening to the call, and feeling his heart go out to the land in its ruin, and answering it with all the love that was in him. He surrendered himself to that call, and struggled toward it with all the strength of his soul.

Rising... A disembodied spirit soaring out of the endless abyss of Death.

Rising... The pale, perfect body was lifted softly through the blood until it floated on the surface, beneath the stony vault of the cairn.

Rising... Until two that should never have been sundered were made one.

*

Floating. Warmth. Peace. The sensation of currents, stroking his skin with a gentle, adoring touch: the hands of a lover. He drew a long, deep breath, and slowly, his eyes drifted open. Jedah's eyes were redder than the blood that cradled his body; they flared like the soul of all rubies in his pale, sculpted face. As he had drawn the air into him a moment ago, he drew power now: it roared into him, easier and more swiftly than it had ever done before, as heady and sweet as new life itself. A shout of triumph burst from him, scattering the stones of his cairn like chaff, and Jedah exploded upward from his grave, rocketing high into the air. He poured all his exaltation into a flight that shone across the heavens. The bared beauty of his lithe, sinewy body matched the azure glory of the sky. His hair streamed in the wind like sunlight and his wings blazed like the lightning as he flew.

At last, with a storm of wings he alighted beside the now-empty pit that had been his tomb. His shining joy was tempered now into a more stately manner. Jedah spread his arms and wings wide, as if he wished to enfold all of Makai in his embrace.

"I understand..." he whispered, his gaze ranging across the land, his voice as soft yet far-reaching as the breeze. "Pain is the price of joy, and no great gift comes without great loss. I wanted life for my people, and I freely accepted the death that was the price of their lives." He sighed, his face shadowed with the terrible irony of the outcome of his sacrifice.

"But now, the wheel turns again. The people I saved have fought each other, until your own survival is at risk. So, you have given me life anew, that I may save you from this doom." Determination rang in his voice like an iron bell: "And this I pledge to you, that I will forge a final peace, for your sake, and for the sake of my people - or I will destroy myself in the attempt! ...You have given blood, to restore my life. Now, I return your gift with my own, as a sign of my own pledge. Blood for your blood... Life for your life..."

And he arched his wings forward, curling them around his shoulders, drawing their razor edges around the places where his arms joined his shoulders and back. A line of bright red welled from both of the slashes, and blood trickled down from his shoulders, to fall in a ceaseless slow rain onto the earth. And the earth drank eagerly of Jedah's gift, swallowing each drop of his blood without trace the instant it touched the ground. Jedah's will kept the wounds that his wings had made open and bleeding, as a token to the land that his promise to it would never be broken. And the land honoured his blood sacrifice, pouring its power freely into him in return, so that he never felt the pain or weakness of those softly dripping wounds.

He sank to his knees on the bare earth and leaned forward on his hands, reaching out across the land with his mind as his fingers sank into the soil. The ground split beneath his hands and cresting waves of blood rose out of the earth, forming themselves into reaching arms, twining themselves with his own hands and arms. In their embrace, he gained the new, detailed knowledge he sought. Even he, mightiest of Darkrealm's beings and exultant in his new life, was staggered by the carnage he felt. He shuddered, and his wings shivered in the air, fanning themselves over him in a reflex attempt to shield him from the destruction that he felt rampaging over the land, thousands of leagues distant.

The savage echoes of war confirmed him in his resolve. Still kneeling in the wet caress of Makai's power, he silently presented his plan, and felt the rumble of assent ripple through the earth beneath him. Jedah knew that war, all war, had its roots in the desire to gain power - and ultimately life - at the expense of others. Without the existence of others, Jedah knew, there could be no war. Of course, he did not want to destroy anyone: if he did, he would never have lain down his own life to save the people of Darkrealm. But his return from the grave had given him profound wisdom: as a dead soul himself, he had learned things no other being, living or undead, had ever guessed. He knew all the secrets of spirits with an intimate, personal knowledge. He knew that death need not be the end. He knew how to embrace a dying soul as it arose from its corpse, how to accept it into himself and merge its very being with his own. The spirit would live on within him, protected from all harm, sharing his own immortality. In return its memories and its power would be his to access. When all spirits from Makai and Earth became as one, war would cease to exist and together they would share eternal bliss.

But even with the ongoing massacres, there were still millions of beings in Darkrealm alone. The gathering of souls would be a long, slow process, and he ached to end their suffering at once. Jedah knew he would need help. He withdrew his awareness from the distant lands, and lifted his hands from the soil. The arms of blood that had held him vanished back into the earth without a trace. Slowly, he rose to his feet.

With a casual flick of power, he clad himself in garb that he knew (from humans kidnapped to Makai) would be suitable attire for a priest. He now wore a sober dark blue suit and long coat, the high white collar of priesthood and a formal, winged cowl which hid most of his shining hair; only two long strands were left free to frame his face. It was not that he cared in the slightest for such shallow matters as dress: if he had only himself to consider, he would have been perfectly happy to stay as naked as when he had arisen from death. Still, he knew that almost everyone else set great store by simple appearances, and that even gods were expected by their followers to look the part.

He closed his eyes, and focused his mind first on a distant place within the territory of his old clan, Doma. A shadowy rainforest, a lush, wild place of tall trees hung with honeycombs the size of houses. The home of the Soul Bees: creatures who devoured the brains of their victims, and thus gained some limited access to their memories. The perfect tools for his need. He reached for the mind of their Queen, a small, savage spark of energy, ruled by sharp and primal desires: hunger and sex. He hummed his message into her simple mind.

The time has come for all souls to be as one... Combine your souls together and come to me.

He gifted her with just enough intelligence and power to allow her to trap dying souls. But he did not give her the ability to merge with them or use their memories or power. From afar he listened as she summoned and instructed her subjects to join her in her new task, until the hives were empty and the entire swarm took wing in a cloud that darkened the sky, moving through the forest toward more populated lands.

Jedah's restless will ranged far and wide over the lands in search of more assistance, venturing at last even into the skies, into the floating castle of clan Aensland. There he was startled to find another disembodied spirit, imprisoned in an ancient spell. This one, though, had never been through Death, and indeed had never even lived a physical life. She called herself Lilith, after an Earth legend of the true first woman, who had been cast out as a demon for refusing to submit sexually to the first man. She said that she was originally a part of Morrigan's soul, until her father Berial had split her away and imprisoned her in an attempt to purge Morrigan of what he thought of as the 'excess evil' in her being. This fragment of a spirit had grown a personality of its own through the centuries of separation, one distinctively more naive than Morrigan's, much less jaded and also a little less shallowly hedonistic. This unhappy little spirit longed of course to become one again with Morrigan. Jedah told her, with absolute honesty, that he would gladly reunite her with her other half, but that before that could be accomplished, he would need her help in return. Lilith instantly agreed to help him, with a wholehearted eagerness that held no trace of deception. He whispered to her the secret of capturing souls, and she was the most adept pupil he ever had. Therefore, he took all his care to hide from her even the concept that it was possible to merge with or tap into the souls she had caught. He also allowed her to think the reunion he promised would take the form she desired - that she would join Morrigan and share her body - rather than the different union he planned. Finally, he reached out across the leagues, shattering her prison with one sharp burst of force, and giving her one last gift: an illusion of a physical body. Her gleeful laughter sent tingles down his spine as she plummeted away from Castle Aensland to the world below, afire with eagerness to start seducing and ensnaring souls to bring to him, to give him the power he would need to reunite her with Morrigan, her sister, her other self.

There were others he recruited to perform such work for him, in Makai and in Earth, but at last he felt that he had enough such assistance. The suffering of the realm and its people would not let him rest. He yearned to begin the last, most arduous part of his great plan. For it was one thing to have assistants to bring souls to him, but he himself would need to be incalculably strong to accomplish his goal. The best way to increase his own power was to absorb the most powerful souls, as soon as possible. Once he had become one with only a few other truly mighty spirits, he could take on countless hordes with no fear that his sacred quest could fail. But it went without saying that with strength came pride, and the more powerful his opponents were, the less likely it was that they would surrender themselves to him willingly. There would be long and bitter warring involved, and as determined as he was to win, he was equally determined that no such sorcerous cataclysm would be allowed to wrack the already wounded realm that he loved.

He threw his arms wide in a gesture of invocation, and his wings drew blazing arcs in the air as they flexed. Softly his song rose into the air, and power leapt instantly to answer his will. His wings swept forward suddenly, slashing at the air, drawing streaks of shadow in their wake as if they had cut through the sky itself. Slowly, these slashes widened and darkness gathered between them, gaping hungrily. There was no sudden outpouring of power here, for this was no gateway into another dimension rich in untapped magic. Once again, Jedah was going beyond the limits of magical understanding. He was not merely accessing a dimension. He was creating one. Not a vast and complex world, nothing on the scale of either Makai or Earth. This was a small place by comparison, yet other dimensions were shielded from it by unbreachable walls of force. At last, the choir of Jedah's voice rose to a majestic crescendo, and the guarded dimension was complete: Majigen, the Warzone, where the last battles could be fought without further harm to Darkrealm.

For a long time Jedah stood silent, framed in the black maw of Majigen, gathering his strength for the final effort. His bleeding shoulders were slumped, his wings drooped in weariness until their tips almost dragged in the dust, his head was bowed and his eyes were fixed on the ground. He drew new resolve from what he saw there, promising to himself that someday this bleak land would thrive. At last he took a slow, deep breath and stood tall and proud once more. He raised his gaze to the horizon, staring across the leagues toward the populated core of Darkrealm, where millennia of war were dragging all living things closer to the final night.

His wings spread to their widest stretch and the light spilled from them in long spears of dazzling radiance, as he opened his arms: a lover offering a close and ardent embrace. A smile, infinitely warm and tender, illumined his face, and an aching longing poured from every line of his body.

From the profoundest depths of his soul, he reached out, and called.

Come to me...

And all of Darkrealm stood still.

Do not fear me...

All over the realm, the souls of the living were touched by Jedah's call.

I am the First, and the Last; the beginning, and the end...

Ozomu heard the voice of his ancient Lord, and stared in disbelief. He was the only one left who had see Jedah's charred corpse with his own eyes, all those millennia ago. There was no possibility of a mistake. Jedah was long, long dead. And yet, deep in his soul he knew that this summons was no fraud. Grimly his clawed fingers gouged into the stone arms of his throne as he fought down the yearning inside that urged him to abandon the responsibilities of Doma, and hasten to his master's side, to welcome him back into life.

It is time...

Morrigan paused as a tingle of power swept across her overheated flesh, snapping her out of her idle lusts with a speed she had not thought possible. She fled to the innermost windowless rooms of Castle Aensland, before the tantalising impulse overwhelmed her and she could throw herself out of the nearest window and fly straight into those open, loving arms.

Every soul must return to one...

Demitri bared his fangs and hissed like a panther in instinctive, savage fury. He was the one who seduced others into giving themselves up to him! Never would he submit to another's desire. Never. ...No matter how much he lusted to feel the power of that embrace, and measure it against his own.

Come to me...

Ozomu's lieutenant, Zabel Zarock, heard, and laughed with unjustified pride. "Interesting! A new challenger who is more worthy of death than Ozomu." Grabbing his guitar, he called La Malta, asked the Beast to carry him to the source of the summons.

Be one with me...

Through the gates that the three Lords had opened, Jedah's call echoed even into Earthrealm. And there too, there were those with ears to hear, and hearts to respond.

Join with my soul if you desire peace and tranquillity for all time!

Weres (a wolf and a cat), strange creatures of the sea and the snow, things assembled from metal and from bits of dead bodies, lords of realms of fire and of sand, twin sisters and a girl with no kin, bearers of guns and wielders of swords both sacred and accursed, heard Jedah's summons, and hearkened in their souls.

And Jedah's power, backed in that moment by all the might in Darkrealm, was such that total acceptance was not even needed. The slightest moment of wavering, the tiniest impulse, was all that it took to enable him to physically summon the hearers.

One by one they appeared, scattered across the dark dimension of Majigen, snatched out of their former lives by an Angel's might and a realm's last desperate need. Ozomu was the only one of the great souls who hearkened to him that Jedah did not summon. He knew that someone would be needed to rule Darkrealm while he was defeating and merging with those he had summoned, and Ozomu was the only one he could trust. Jedah was familiar with even the most hidden depths of Ozomu's mind, and he knew that, in the end, Ozomu would give himself up to his revered Lord's will. For Ozomu knew him too of old, knew that he spoke no lies and meant no harm.

Finally the summonings were complete. Jedah felt assured that, once he had joined with these powerful spirits, nothing else could stop him in the fulfilment of his sacred vow to save Darkrealm and its people. He paused in the flowing orchestration of arcane sorceries, and allowed his awareness to return to the physical world. He stood still and looked around him one last time. Even in that dark and empty land at the very edge of Makai, he saw a subtle, poignant beauty in earth and sky that pierced his soul with longing. He knelt and at the touch of his hands on the earth, other hands of flowing red rose upward, embracing and stroking him even as they had done while they healed his ravaged body. He bowed his head, leaning into their caresses, returning them with his own long, slender hands. "This will be the last peril." he murmured softly, as his wings spread protectively over the earth. "It may even be that I have overreached myself. My desire to end the suffering as soon as possible, may mean my death. But it is a risk I must take. The wars that were destroying you had to be stopped. They will not continue now, not with only one Lord left. Even if I fail, I have spared you that. May the peace heal you." He stood with a sigh, the slump of his wings mirroring his sorrow as he let his gaze drift one last time across the land. "...I will miss you." he whispered, eyes like burning rubies clouding over for a moment with unshed tears. Slowly, he turned away from Makai and walked into Majigen, closing the gateway behind him so that only his soul-gatherers could enter, and only he could leave.

As he stepped forth into the shadows, determination blazed hotly in his eyes, and his head and wings were held high. His wounded shoulders were squared as he walked onward into an uncertain future, bearing the burden of his impossible responsibilities with pride. As his beloved Darkrealm dwindled and was lost behind him, he did not look back.