The harsh white flash of fire burnt out instantly–leaving the world spinning for a long moment. The knight could not see anything, but he felt the change instantly. The heat that melded, and boiled everything around him–it just vanished. Everything felt cold in comparison; dreadful. There had always been something off with the darkness that settled over the forest, but now it felt forever wrong. Umor and Shreifaya had been barely keeping the forest alive for eons passed, giving it just enough nourishment to not wilt and burn itself away, leaving nothing left.
The trees were frigid. The air felt rich in his lungs for the moment. The ashen darkness gathered, writhed, and regenerated in the absence of one of the two Guardian Conflagrations, began suffocating the forest, and the knight could not see any of it. A tornado of thoughts ran rampant through his mind as he processed the information being given to him.
The Divine Fire was the very fire that Lord Eos was made of. It is something that all creations of the former sun could use with enough maturity in their fire. It was but a fraction of the true well of power that Eos himself wielded, but a fraction of an ocean is still a lake. All of his children were blessed with the ability to use it, but only one was banned from using it. Umor was simply too powerful without the Divine Fire to be allowed to use the fire of the Sun.
"I was not there for the order, but the forest itself remembered the wrath Umor felt when he was told to never unleash the full scope of his power. He was petulant then, just as he is petulant now, as all Elemental Incarnates are. Father created an Incarnate with a lust for battle." There were few words that Kanaft could use to describe the feelings that were brimming in the bottom of his heart or the thoughts of anger, disgust, and dread that crept from them. It was a swirling mass of negativity–but he did not stop moving forward despite the overwhelming feelings.
"Umor is gone. He raised me for a short time. He showed me how to wield my fire for twenty-three days. It was a horrible experience, learning how to wield fire at that age, but I still managed. He deemed me proficient enough to fight, so he left half way through the twenty-fourth day. I never saw him again after that. Not even the next day, the Guardians were ready–and the war began between them. The war that never ended." There was a pause for a hesitant moment, before Kanaft spoke again, this time echoing something that the knight couldn't place, in the faint whisper. It was something hot, though. He beat his powerful wings again, and spoke faintly.
"The Guardians were always at each other's throats, and now, they never will be. The white is a dangerous place, after all." The knight closed his eyes against the cool metal layer of armor, as if trying to picture the scene the animal was trying to paint behind his eyelids, and the various emotions that came with it, but, still, he did not say anything. There was nothing to say, so he let the bird continue.
"I had never met Shreifaya before that moment. Unlike Umor, she was not angry; she was apathetic to the plight of others, instead. She was allowed to wield the divine fire. Her fire, unlike Umor's, was not incomprehensibly strong, instead, she gained her Guardian title through how she used her fire. Her tale is far older than this forest in its entirety, so when she was blessed with wielding fire, she was more crafty with it than most, or so the forest grumbles.
I never dared to approach the ashen skies, so I cannot tell you how accurate it is, but they must be true if she has been keeping up with Umor in their squabble for this long.
It was eerie seeing how fast she froze after hearing the name you spoke. She was even complacent enough to allow herself to be captured by the aggressive ash. What did you whisper?" Kanaft's question was clear and precise. He knew, of course, it wasn't difficult to go digging in his partner's mind and get the answer himself, but warming the knight up to his endless curiosity was probably a better idea.
Behind his helmet, the knight's expression shifted subtly. He wasn't sure why his lips quirked up a little at the memory. Despite the loud, dire winds, the knight could hear his own thoughts clearly.
"When I saw her for the first time–Shreifaya, I saw someone else. Perhaps they're related, but when I saw her, I saw the spitting image of a god. Her name was–is–Brumorus Eurel. Of course, I am not of the stature to address her as such, so she is Lady Eurel. My tongue slipped and called her Lady Eurel." This was a nice shift in topic.
"A god you say?"
"Yes. She was not like Lord Eos, however. Lady Eurel was born a mundane creature–a mortal, like you, and like how I was born, too. She became one of God's vassals maybe a couple of centuries before I was born. She became one with the cold, but when I met her, she was so warm–It was like I was in the presence of my mother–before her death."
"Lady Eurel… were there any other gods in your land? Whether attained divinity or born into it?"
"No. Not alive, at least. When I was a boy, I overheard the story of Lord Yufir. He was the first dragon, and, supposedly, he was a part of the four original beings to inhabit this planet of ours. Lady Eurel was his second daughter. He died mysteriously long before the first human walked Celestia–that's the name of the continent I'm from." He paused for a moment, recollecting a certain encounter he had had.
"Lord Yufir and Lady Eurel were the only gods of Celestia, yes, but there were…others."
"What do you mean, Elder?" This was new. That could be bad, but he held his alarm and scrutiny for a moment. He didn't like peering into the memories of his partner, but it needed to be done. Now he had to do it again. Nothing should be able to hide itself from the Soul Beast bond, yet now that he looked a little closer, there was a certain set of memories–it was like a mirage was on top of them. When he looked at them, the sight of them felt like a limb falling asleep. As he surveyed the memories some more, the knight spoke.
"There was once a matriarch. She was a virtuous woman, who grew up in a world of chaos. Her love for life was only matched by the hate the kingdoms of Celestia held for one another, so she used the hate and spilled blood to her advantage. Herself, and her two best friends used the bloodshed–the corpses, to become gods without divinity running through their veins. She used the evil of the world to help itself heal. Her name was–"
The knight raised the freak of nature in time to hear the loud ringing of something solid landing against the tower shield.
"I'll have to tell you the rest of the story later." Kanaft had never been more annoyed by the plague than at that moment.
The knight could not see the creature that had attacked them very well, but the various eyes staring at him with that intensely hungry gaze was something he had recently become familiar with. The deep-rooted agony in their atomic eyes. There were dozens of them clustered together just above the edge of the tower shield. This was not good. Winds were being displaced. Behind him.
Faster than a blink, the knight was on his feet. The touch of the black feathers against his feet was silken–warm. Focus. Quickly pivoting out of the way, the knight watched as the spear of orange fire skewered the formless being that had struck out at him, but that was only the beginning.
Just as the eyes of the fragment of the ashen sky were closing, they were also splitting off from their main body of ash. Like an infection, the blob of cold ash and mob of eyes zig-zagged, swerved, and circled around the pair as they flew, preparing for the right moment to shoot them down. Sadly for it, however, Kanaft wouldn't be shot down so easily.
Several innocent-looking mirages of fire fluttered into existence, before becoming small, radiant suns of fire. There was no pattern in which they were placed around the pyromancer–at least at first glance. The knight could not see it, but each sun had been placed roughly in front of each cluster of eyes, before quickly transfiguring themselves into more adequate weapons of war.
His eyes darted around in the darkness, watching as the familiar forms of the angels melded themselves into existence from the suns. Not a lick of heat radiated from them–yet the fire still whisked of their forms like a true fire living strongly off a stack of wood. They went to work instantly. The creations quickly moved away the spots they had been created from, and began the slaughter. The knight was not sure how Kanaft knew so much about slaughter with weaponry, but, at the same time, the Crypids were once human–so maybe he had learned such amazing technique from them, before they too became a parasite leeching off of the forest.
Black blood spilled like waterfalls from the night sky as eye after eye closed. It had all happened in an instant. Kanaft was already well away from the fighting behind him. The knight didn't even have to do anything in the 'fight.' The once glorious light from the angels turned into specks in the distance as the bird continued his restless pace toward the tree atop of the floating island. The wind was still howling, but there was no more ash gaining on them.
Not long after, the angels were dispelled with less than a thought required, and several spears of radiant fire sparked to life around them. The knight hissed at the light, turning his face away from it for a moment, allowing them to grow accustomed to the new addition to their journey. Everything had happened so fast that his eyes didn't even get a chance to register the sting of a sudden light.
After accessing the situation once more, the knight let his guard waver, just the slightest amount. It was difficult to say exactly how far away the nearest creature of ash was from them, especially when everything around them was a blur, but he made out a single one directly above them. It wasn't like the rest of the eerie yellow-green eyes, this one was large–probably contained more souls than anything the little ones could. Welling up in its single, belligerent eye were the large orbs of black liquid-ash, that trailed down its nonexistent face and fell like hail. It was appalling, depressing, and chilling all at the same moment. He could almost taste the salt from the faux black tears, mixing with the rotting tang of copper sewn into it.
Raising his guard again, the knight prepared to launch Rising Tide toward the side eye that was getting a little too close to them. Swiftly, the spears reorientated themselves, locking onto the large target above. Not wasting a singe of a moment, they launched in unison, arriving in front of the gaping eye, raked with insanity, in but a few finite moments.
The sky shuttered for a second as the flaming spears made contact with the eye. Plumes of smoke were the first to escape the wound, but were quick to be followed by a fountain of black blood, leaving the center of the pupil that was just barely visible in the fickle light. The attack was followed by more spears swirling into existence, all the same orange, heatless flame as the ones prior had been, and swiftly joined their brethren in their crusade to end the creature watching them.
Wave after wave of bright fire went upwards, lighting the sky, like a flare on a lonesome island in isolation, until, finally, the eye shut, and melted into a torrent of ash.
"Relax, Elder. There is no need for you to interfere. I will deal with the ones that get too close, as that is why I was created, so, please, sit."
The knight followed the request by doing as he was asked, and sat back down on the small meadow of black blades of grass. He was a little perplexed why Kanaft didn't use his divine fire, but that was a question for another time. For now, he decided to stare off into the darkness of the daylight.
What could be equated to a sigh then reverberated through his mind like a mental projection before quiet consumed their shared tether. They had finally made it to the sacred territory. The island floating above Moyra was the largest it had ever been to the knight. It was now or never. The silence stretched. The curtains of ash were surging with glee, Shreifaya was incapacitated, and Umor had been extinguished. He needed The Guidance to help forsake the ilk of this forest. So much to do, and it seemed like things were only getting more and more chaotic as the minutes passed.
"Welcome, Elder. We have entered the sacred territory of fathers throne. Father awaits us both, I know it."