The Shadow Gates

The arguing continued but began to quieten when a few heads turned to face me. “What?!” Nallis exclaimed, her eyes bulging in her head.

*“I’ll go through the gates. On my own” I repeated, a sense of calm settling over me as I realised that this was something I wanted to do. Something I had to do.

“You’re insane” the voice of one of the adventurers rose up.

“We just told you that the last one to go in died” came another voice.

“You’ve only got one arm. What chance do you have, Raenar had years of experience and he still died”

I just smiled at them as they objected to my decision. “What’s left to lose?” I said with a shrug, “I can’t very well continue being an adventurer like this and I don’t have many other skills to fall back on” I justled the stump of my arm to emphasise my point. “If I go through the gates, I’ll either find a way to shut them, or I’ll die. Not bad for a cripple”

The other parties quietened at that, though my friends continued to voice objections. The idea made sense; I couldn’t see much that I had to lose anymore. Without my arm I couldn’t defend myself, it would only be a matter of time until I was killed, whether by a monster, a bandit, or Zarin. At the very least, if I didn’t survive the shadow gates then I could go on my own terms.

“I for one think it’s an excellent idea” Zarin said, clapping his hands together. He leaned back in his seat and smirked at me across the table.

“No, Aucus” Sara’s soft voice came from behind me. “I’m not going to let you die, you don’t need to be an adventurer. You just need to live.”

“The lass is right” Korin agreed, “This is suicide, I don’t give a shit if ya lost ya arm. It ain’t worth dying over”

I had made up my mind, I was going to do this and nothing they said would stop me. “Can you all give me some time with my party” I said to the others within the command tent.

They rose swiftly and made their way for the exit, apparently having accepted my decision. They clearly had came up with no better alternatives themselves. “It’s been a pleasure” Zarin said, stopping by me with a wide grin for a moment and patting my shoulder. I gritted my teeth and ignored him as he carried on past, leaving me and my party alone in the tent.

“I can’t let you do this” Aladra said flatly. I was a little surprised by her response, she had never seemed to care all that much about any of us. “Orsat wants you kept safe; he won’t be pleased if I let you kill yourself”

I shook my head, “I know you’re all worried. Believe it or not but I’d rather I didn’t die as well”

Cleo cut me off, “So why are you being such a bull-headed fool, they’re the shadow gates for goddesses sake. You might be a strong adventurer, but they’ve held the devils for centuries, you can’t overcome that kind of power”

“I know that, I’m not just doing this so that I can have a good ****” I waved my hand around, trying to make them understand. “I can’t explain it, I don’t really understand it, but I know that I’ll be okay”

They looked at me strangely, then again, I supposed that most things about me had been strange for months now. This was just one more thing. “Trust me”

Sara looked on the verge of tears and Cleo was not far behind her. These people had been dear to me as we had grown closer and by all appearances, I was going to abandon them based on the flimsy feeling that everything would be okay. I could hardly blame them for being hurt.

Korin sighed; his hands dug into his matted beard. “I don’t understand everything about ya Aucus. You’re a human which is strange enough, and on top of that ya got all these oddities going on. I just need to know if you’re certain about this. If ya got any doubt, I’ll knock ya out and take ya back to Alynthir myself”

I nodded my head at him. “I’m certain. I’m not going to pretend like I’m an oracle, like I can see the future, but I do know that I’ll be okay”

He grunted his ascent, “That’s good enough for me”

Aladra frowned at me, “If it’s going to be okay then I’ll go with you, make sure that you stay alive

“No” I retorted firmly, “I have to do this alone, you can’t come with me”

She sighed, “worth a shot” she grumbled and nodded her head. “I’ll let you go. Just make sure you come back alive, Orsat is annoying when he gets pissy”

I looked over to Sara and Cleo. Sara wiped away a tear, “Okay, I’m not going to stand in your way. If you don’t come back though…” she trailed off, her eyes meeting mine like pools rippling from a stampede of emotions.

Cleo nodded her head, holding onto Sara tightly as though she would fall into an endless pit if she let go. She didn’t say anything, just continued nodding her head.

“Thank you” I said to them all, “I wish you could come with me, but thank you. I promise I’ll come back”

We left the tent shortly thereafter and were escorted by a troop of guards across the landscape that had been torn up and bastardised into a battlefield. A wooden barricade was dragged aside by a squad of strong men, their grunts flowing into the wind as the barrier slid away. Some of the other adventurers had come with us, either to show their respects or to stand guard if I failed.

They were there, looming over us in a chilling display of our own inferiority. The shadow gates. I gazed into the dark opening, barely wide enough for a person to squeeze through, yet it was still wide enough for endless darkness to leak into the world.

I turned around to look at my friends, taking a deep breath of air as I prepared myself for this great unknown. I took a step towards them, and Sara wrapped me in her arms, holding me tightly as we embraced. “Come back” she said sternly, planting a soft kiss on my cheek.

Cleo went next, hugging me just as tightly whilst she tried to hide the tears that were rolling down her cheeks. As she released me, I knelt down and embraced Korin, his strong hands squeezing me hard until it felt as though a rib was about to snap.

With that, I rose back to my feet and turned to Aladra, her lips twisted in one of her strange expressions. She didn’t hug me, simply reached out and clasped my hand in both of hers. “Good luck” she said quietly.

I smiled at her; it may have been the most open her heart had been since I met her. “Let’s see if a one-armed adventurer can’t close the shadow gates, then” I grinned at them all before turning my back. I looked up at the gates once more, feeling a strange wave coming from it. With one flow it pulled me in, beckoning me to come closer, with the other it pushed me away, repulsing me and screaming at me to flee.

I gritted my teeth and **** myself to follow the first wave, taking one step at a time as my feet crushed the dried leaves and twigs beneath me. I felt the eyes of everyone on me with each step I took, my friends, other adventurers, ordinary soldiers, all watching me with hands gripped to hilts of weapons for whatever may come next. My fingers ran over the ring that I had been given in Karatir, the only one that I wore now that my adventurers ring had been lost with my arm. The motion helped to soothe my nerves as I stopped at the gaping maw and ran my hand over the black stone.

I glanced backwards, seeing Sara, Cleo, Korin, and Aladra. My mouth twitched into a smile as I took in the sight of them then turned away once more, resting my gaze on the abyss. I took a step forwards.

I crossed the threshold into the shadow gates and became wrapped in a blanket of cold, the warmth of the sun vanishing in an instant as all around me was a black endless nothingness. I looked around, the darkness only split by the light that came through the gap in the gates. A figure stood in that stretch of light, smiling at me in an expression of joy. “You’re here” Lilith said.

“You’re…” I was stunned to see her in the flesh for once. How was she here? I didn’t know what I expected to see within the gates, but it hadn’t been Lilith. “You’re here?”

Her smile softened as she looked at me, “I’ve been trapped her for hundreds of years, and you have finally come. Oh my child, you can set me free, set your brothers and your sisters free”

Her voice sounded different here, less melodic, and more passionate, like a prophet hawking on a street corner. “What… how… I have so many questions”

“And now we have the time to answer them, no longer constrained by the brief flickers we shared”

“Who are you?” I asked, “I know you said your name is Lilith, but… _who _are you”

Her head nodded subtly with a knowing smile, “I’ve told you before that I have taken many names over the years. Ash’an, Olaire, Vounaere, I have been known by other titles too; Sister by those you call Goddesses, Spirit Forger by my children, Mother of devils by the ignorant. I am Lilith, first child of the power, Creator of the Vul’ain, Mistress of the Northern Vale, and betrayed by my kin” an aura of golden light bloomed around her as she spoke, a staccato of power in her words.

My mouth dried up, one phrase sticking with me Mother of devils, “What…” my mouth had gone dry, and it took me a moment to wet it again, “Why do they call you mother of devils?” I asked cautiously, a tremor rippling through me.

“Because mankind is foolish and ignorant. They see that which is different from them, and they brand it as a devil, they see their power and they scream in terror, the boot on the neck tells them it is evil and they take up arms” she shook her head. “My children, the Vul’ain, I created the first of them from my own flesh, giving them my power. You call them devils, but they are no mere night terror, they are the purest of creations”

The words rattled through my mind, Lilith hadn’t lied to me before, at least not that I knew. She was answering my questions, if she was lying wouldn’t she have tried to distance herself from the devils. Could it all be true, could everything I had heard about devils be a lie? It was a strange thought to think that the monsters that had kept me up at night as a child could have come from such a magnificent being.

I nodded my head; I kept on nodding it as I tried to wrap my mind around her words. “Why are you here? In the shadow gates I mean, what happened?”

Her lips pursed in an unusual expression of annoyance. “I was betrayed, by my own kin. In the time you call the thousand wars, there was a danger to the world. A mountain of fire that would have erupted, shaking the ground and splitting it open to be consumed by the oceans. The ash would have blotted out the sun for centuries, I doubt anyone would have survived” she shook her head as she recalled her history. “My sisters did not wish to stop it. They are patient creatures and enjoy the strife and turmoil that you humans create. To watch you perish would have amused them, and then they would have waited for the world to return to its state and create more humans to toy with.” I could tell by the way she talked that she hated those she called sister, a hate more profound than what I felt for Zarin.

“I would not allow that to happen, I used my power and my strength to still the mountain, to calm and cool its heart of fire. It took so much power to do that…” she paused and held a hand to her chest. “I was weakened, barely able to perform the tricks that your adventurers are capable of. It was then that my sisters captured me and brought me to this place” she waved her hands around her at the darkness. “My children followed, so loving and loyal as they are. They were tricked and captured, locked in this abyss with me. A prison of my sister’s making”

She looked at me pointedly, “That is how I came to be here Aucus. There were no thousand wars as the lies that you call history tells you. No, there was a betrayal and then a destruction wrought by that duplicitous act”

“What do you mean? The world was almost destroyed, how could you say that there were no wars?” I asked shocked. Even knowing that so much of what I knew was lies, it still shocked me to learn another. Still, though, I had seen the ruins in Alynthir and Karatir, there had been destruction.

“Some of my children were wise enough to escape their grasp, they led our servants southwards to those that struck us and waged a war. Ten of them, leading the ancestors of those you now call monsters” a note of pride wormed its way into her voice as she spoke of them. “They battled armies, laid siege to cities, and fought for their vengeance, for justice” she paused for a long moment. “And then they lost, defeated, and killed. All but one, a child lost and stranded alone in a world of men. I have felt him for so long, a piece of me constantly terrified of being discovered.”

“You created the monsters?!” I started to grow angry at her with that. She spoke of it like it was a fine thing, monsters savagely attacking whatever they saw in sight. “They murdered my village, the people that I grew up with, Lord Beckront”

She shook her head, “I created no monster, mere servants that worked our lands. Tame and simple creatures that only wished to fulfil their purposes. Giants to haul machines and heavy loads, Arachnyls farmed our silk, Goblins worked our lands as your servants do, Hunter bats kept watch and brought game from the forests, Wyrms bored holes beneath us for construction. You see them as creatures of destruction, they were born for creation.” Her hands clenched into fists as the golden gleam in her eyes brightened.

“And then the Vul’ain disappeared. They were left alone, and the lands died without us there. They were **** to flee south if they wished to survive, to the lands of humans. Humans are not like my children, different in so many ways, cheap copies of perfection. They could not understand these strange new creatures and so they did what they always do, they attacked them. The creatures were **** into hiding, to the few temples devoted to me in these lands that still held a shred of my power, to the dark corners and deep forests where they starved and lived in fear.” She grimaced at the thought of them living in such squalor. “In their new lives their society was brutalised, only the strong being able to survive. They mutated, creating new species of monsters, they lost what they once were, forgetting their purpose and becoming monsters in truth. I did not make monsters, humans did”

More and more new truths came at me like an avalanche, how could everyone have been so blind. No one had ever questioned where monsters came from, simply accepting that they were evil creations of the devils. Had no one ever tried to tame one, to feed it and give it succour? Were humans truly so wicked?

“I intend to restore this world, to return all to what it once was. Including your monsters. They will take on the lives of their ancestors, working hard and having their needs sated.” She sounded so idealistic. Though with her power, could it truly be called idealism?

“So you have been wronged, our histories filled with lies, and monsters created of the innocent. But why me? Why did you bring me all this way, raising me from **** so many times?” I pleaded with her, she had spun my world on its axis, and I still didn’t know why.

She just smiled at me as she stepped closer, holding my head in her hand and stroking my cheek gently with her forefinger. “That is a simple answer Aucus. Because you are my son”

My eyes widened, “What?! No, I’m not. My mother raised me, you’ve been trapped in here for centuries. It’s not possible” I grew defensive. Hurt that she would try to take my mother away from me, even in this simple sense.

Her smile softened. “Yes, Sephenia is your mother, and so am I. When you were but a dream, a glint in your mothers eye as your father’s seed quickened within her, she ventured into one of my temples. You call them dungeons now, but I still have some sway there, even a sliver of my strength is a powerful thing. I touched her there, throwing my power into the mixture that became you, you are equal parts her, your father, and me. It was a rare thing, and I have tried it before, but I cannot say how things would turn out. There are many ways for a woman to lose a child in this world, and many adventurers do not wish for children and take potions to remedy it. But for the first time in my confinement I created a new life, you”

I stammered; she was not my mother in the same sense as Sephenia. She hadn’t raised me, she hadn’t been there to teach me everything I needed to know, or to comfort me when I needed it. But she had helped to create me and had saved my life so many times. “You’re… my mother?” I said stunned.

She nodded, the same white hair that had always been so strange on me, gleamed from under her hood. “Yes, and you are a new thing entirely. You hold within you the power of the Vul’ain and the guise of a human. You have the potential to be a turning point in our history. Open the shadow gates and free your kin into the world”

I was abashed at the idea, from what she had told me they had been wronged, but what if the devils, or Vul’ain I supposed, were like humans. What if some of them were evil, what if some deserved to be imprisoned. “I… I can’t” I stammered out, her hand moving down from my cheek as her eyes scrunched into a frown. “I don’t know them” I quickly tried to explain, “What if some are evil like I’ve been taught”

“Evil” she almost spat the word, “Why do you think they’re evil? Because the humans that imprisoned them told you that they were? What have my children done that was so evil? Did they beat you to **** outside your home? Did they stab you in your sleep? Poison your food? Take your arm from you?!” she looked at me accusingly. Her expression daring me to answer but she continued before I could open my mouth, “Do you truly believe that they could be worse than those _nobles _that have ruined so many lives, then the royalty that permit them to run amok and leave their own peoples to suffer and die, than the so-called _goddesses _that give them the power to do so?”

My mouth was dry as she echoed the same sentiments that I had felt for so long, the corruption and injustice was a scourge on the world. From what Lilith had said, the Vul’ain had not caused nearly as much destruction and harm as the unchecked nobles.

“No” I muttered at last, receiving a satisfied smile from her. It looked so beautiful beneath her golden eyes and pale hair.

“No” she echoed my words. “I want to wage a war against them Aucus, to bring order to the world and take my **** on those that wronged us. I want you to lead my forces, be my Champion, my Justiciar, my flaming sword.”

There was an appeal to her words, to fight for the change that she had promised me. I struggled to think of a reason to turn her down because that was what the more rational part of me wanted to do. “How can I know that you would be any different. You claim to be different, but you’re still a goddess. Why should I believe that you wouldn’t reign over us with the same power that they do?”

“Because I know that I am no goddess. We simply have the power that mortals don’t possess, and it is our duty to use it to create, to add to the world and not destroy it. I don’t want to kill people. I am willing to if it is necessary, but I wish this war to end with as little bloodshed as possible. Unlike my sisters who will relish in your dying screams” she shook her head remorsefully, “Free us Aucus and my power is yours, fight for us and my victories will be yours”

I nodded my head, “Okay, I’ll do it” I heard myself say. I had never really had a choice in who I served before, first it was Lord Beckront who had been a good man, but he was the lord when I was born, and I had never had a choice. Then came Lord Motten and his vile but lawful deeds, forcing me to flee. As an adventurer I was in service to the crown and the kingdom, I could choose my contracts, but my service was always expected. This was the first time I was being given the _choice _of serving someone, and it was for a cause I truly believed in. I could not ask for a greater gift.

“I’ll free you” I paused for a moment and set my resolve, “and I’ll fight with you” I added, eliciting a smile from her. I turned around, seeing the glaring light tearing through the gap in the gates, the two large monoliths looking as though they could outweigh a mountain. “Uh, how do I free you?”

She chuckled softly. “You must simply push the doors open. As a human you can interact with Cleonora’s creation. Place your hands on the doors and push, they will open”

I looked down at my missing arm, the stump painfully visible. “How? I’m not exactly what I was”

She stepped towards me and gently unpinned the folded shirt, pressing the pin back into my armour. The clothing fell loose, and she tore the sleeve off with incredible strength. The cool touch of her hand pressed against my stump and a golden light emanated from that spot as a strange sensation started where she touched me.

My eyes widened as I saw a spurt of growth come from my stump, lengthening out into the shape of an arm shrouded by Lilith’s golden glow. As the glow faded my eyes nearly popped from my head. I thought that she had regrown my arm by whatever power she held. But she hadn’t.

She had given me an entirely new arm, made of shining purple scales with claw-like talons where my new hand was. It was the flesh of devils, how they had appeared in stories and legend. I tensed my arm and saw it move, almost jumping in surprise. “It’s not…” I trailed off, not wanting to sound ungrateful. I had thought I would never have my arm again not long ago.

She turned her gaze down and looked at my arm, “Ah. Yes, I’m sorry about that. I’m not used to forming human flesh, my creations were of a superior design” I moved my arm, bending it and stretching out my fingers. It felt almost the same as my old one did.

“Thank you” tears welled in my eyes at the restoration. I was whole again. Different, yes, but whole.

She nodded her head and smiled, placing a fingertip on my new arm. Her golden glow grew brighter than ever, almost dissolving the darkness around us as she spoke. “Free us Aucus”

Beyond her in the abyss I saw hundreds of figures, tall and large, with the same strange appearance as my arm. Protrusions grew from their heads, some short, others long and twisted. They stood around in obeisance to Lilith, their eyes closed as they basked in her glow. Devils.

I swallowed nervously and took a step towards the doors, placing one hand on each black stone slap. I closed my eyes and sucked in a gasp of air before I pushed.