Azela Incarnate

Eviscera, now twelve years old, slid aside the curtain at the entrance to the shaman's burrow. Across from said shaman sat the chieftain, Nenyix. Both looked to her, waiting. The warm air was thick with the scent of damp earth, and faint wisps of steam drifted from a ring of glowing stones, softening the light within. Even at her short height, she had to bend forward to fit as she stepped inside and looked to the chieftain.

Unlike most, Nenyix's aging had not stopped until he had reached a ripe old age. His feathers were as grayed as his failing eyes. "Come… sit," he said.

Eviscera joined the chieftain and the shaman around the heated stones. The shaman, Ancarix, was tall and bald, with no feathers or fur. Instead, he was covered in various tattoos. He poured some water on the stones, bringing forth an extra bit of steam.

"Why have you called me here?" asked Eviscera.

The chieftain handed her an ancient tablet, then pressed the power button on the side. The screen flickered reluctantly to life, showing an image of a god on its cracked display.

"Do you know who that is?" he asked her.

For a moment, fragments of other lives stirred within her; faces she had never met, places she had never walked, and names she had never spoken. "Ex… Exitherra," she said, pulling from her borrowed memories.

"Exitherra," the chieftain confirmed. "Once, our kind was all trapped as a part of it. Individuality was an unobtainable dream, and our wills meant nothing. Each of us was just one of many voices, drowned by those of many others." His weathered gaze lingered on the glowing image.

"Then the Schism happened," Eviscera said.

The shaman across from them spoke, "You are blessed, to know all of this through second-hand memories. What we used to be, the Whole Ones, they lived through it. And we remember their torment."

The chieftain nodded. "As he says." Then he scoffed. "I never liked that term, Whole Ones. It lessens us. We are as whole as those that came before. Our jailers would reduce us to nothing but the fragments that made us, as if we were not as entire and individual and valid as any other living being."

His hands gripped his knees tightly, then loosened as he sighed. "But as our memories come from fragments as well, I do not believe they paint a whole picture. We've fallen more in love with the story than the history, over these long centuries." He sat up straighter. "Enough of old wounds. We are the past. And as you have been showing us, you are the future."

Ancarix said to Eviscera, "You are still aging. You've not yet reached maturity. And yet you've already proven yourself to be quite dangerous. So many challengers that could not tolerate your impure origin, living on through their killer."

Eviscera extended her claws and glared at him from across the stones. "Are you saying that you see me as a threat?" Her sneer became a smile. "Because you'd be right. I am."

Nenyix suppressed a proud smile. Eviscera spoke with all the bravado expected of a child her age, but it was not entirely unearned. The chieftain said, "You've adapted well in the name of survival, but remember who first taught you how to turn that savagery into art. You still have much to learn before you're as intimidating as you think you are."

Eviscera looked at him. "Sixteen hearts live on in me, and I have not a single scar. Through them I have the wisdom of several lifetimes."

"You have knowledge, not wisdom," he corrected her. "And consider: you absorbed that knowledge from those that couldn't even handle one rabid child."

Ancarix let slip a short laugh, saying, "We did not lure you here just to challenge you. As Nenyix says, you are the future. And it is the future we must discuss with you."

Nenyix grunted his confirmation. "I raised you with a purpose, and it is time that purpose is revealed."

Eviscera retracted her claws. "I'm listening."

"Those of my generation still see you as an animal, but one not to be trifled with. Many have begun to openly show admiration as well. When you reach adulthood, your reputation alone will keep any in the aerie from opposing you, including myself."

"You expect me to take your place?" she asked.

The shaman pointed to the tablet. "Look upon that which once was divine. He was more powerful than all incarnates combined, because he was all incarnates combined, and far, far more."

The chieftain said, "That divine power did not die with him. Your strength grows. Your skill grows. One day the aerie as a whole will be unable to stand against you. But this aerie is just one of many, and those that have incarnated with Exitherra's divine power are far stronger than you."

"The divine incarnations," she said. "Julix. Sierrix. Ayan. Nausphearix. I know some of their names through the memories."

"A day will come when you will kill me in combat, and take my title. You will earn it. You will eat my heart. You must, for yourself and those of the aerie." His gaze was intense. "Sierrix craves power, more so than any of us. She will reap our hearts by force one day. We all know it. She is chaos. She is ambition. She is avarice given life and form. If the other divine incarnations do not join her, she will reap their hearts as well to make herself stronger. She will descend upon us as our doom with an army or as a self-made god. And you are the only one of us with a chance to survive. As chieftain, it will be your decision if we all fall in battle, or live on in you."

Eviscera considered. "Sierrix is one of the first. One of you. If she hasn't come for us in the last several hundred years, why would she do so now?"

The shaman took a deep, sad breath. "This world was meant to be our grave. Why rule a dead world, a defeated people? No, Sierrix's goals have never been so small. We are but a means to an end in her grand scheme. We all thought her mad, because for centuries, she sought something so inconceivably valuable that none of us dared to dream of it. Many who had defied her for centuries now flock to her in droves, willingly swearing themselves into servitude based solely on the rumor that she has finally found it."

"Found… what?" Eviscera asked.

The chieftain leaned forward and hesitated, as if speaking a blasphemy he dared not say too loud. "Having been hatched here, you may not see that Eon has never been our home. It is our prison. A prison that many say Sierrix has found a way to escape."

* * *

Scera had run out of tears to shed. Once again, she brought the dreg's heart to her mouth and sunk her teeth into resistant gristle. Once again, she tore a piece free, tasting the bitterness. Her stomach turned even as her jaw kept working. Once again… nothing. No light. No memories. No essence.

"I can't save any of them," she said, with only the smallest trace of the existential despair she felt leaking into her voice. Her fingers trembled around the ruined heart, red still dripping between them. "Their hearts are empty."

She looked at the grisly mess around her, limbs and organs of various races splattered across the inside of a tavern. Killing the others had given her brief satisfaction, then left her feeling hollow, unfulfilled. But those of her kind, the ones she had killed out of mercy… killing them wrenched at her heart in dark and twisted ways she had never felt before. Her hands would not stop shaking long after the deed was done.

What had they done to them? How could such a thing even be possible? Death was a harsh necessity. It was part of a cycle. But that cycle had been broken. Their minds were empty. Their hearts had been erased. Their souls, sparks that once were part of a living god, had somehow been snuffed out; light vanished forever into an eternal darkness.

Her own mind tilted at the thought of it, the reality of true death sinking its claws in deep. Cold sweat gathered at the back of her neck. Bile rose in her throat. She knew of this kind of death, of others that had died where no one was around to save their essence. Of animals that only lived on through the nutrients their bodies gave. But to see it in her own kind, in sapient beings, right in front of her…

They would never live again. Entire lifetimes of experiences, gone. As if they had never been.

No one would carry their souls.

And now their bodies were being puppeteered by their murderers.

Her breath came fast and deep as she fought the dizziness that tried to claim her. Her tingling hands found a table to hold onto in an attempt to steady herself. She almost didn't hear the footstep behind her, faint beneath the ringing in her ears.

Scera's reflexes were more alert than her conscious mind.

She spun in time for her left hand to knock away the first dart that flew toward her. The second she managed to catch a heartbeat before it would have punctured her throat. She held it there a moment, turning it in a beam of sunlight from outside. Its tip glistened with something oily and black. A faint, acrid smell rose from the coating.

Tossing the dart across the room, she finally caught sight of the one who had thrown it. Had her eyes not been so adapted to the dark, her attacker would have been nearly invisible in the shadows, crouched in a corner of the tavern. She had not been there before, and Scera smiled in admiration as she realized that this assassin must have snuck past her and found a more hidden spot to attack from.

The elf's dark attire and skin blended with the shadows, but the nearly glowing red of her eyes betrayed her. They remained fixed on Scera without a flicker of fear. Another dart sat ready between her fingers. Its point caught a sliver of light, gleaming with the same dark coating as the last.

Scera closed the distance before she could throw it, but her claws only met the wall behind the dark elf. This attacker was fast, not as fast as Scera but faster than any she had slain in this world so far.

The dart was dropped, and a blade was drawn. It wove a web of slashes and thrusts that came closer to their marks than even the lightning that previous attackers had thrown, a sorcery that would be impossible to dodge if the casting were not so slow.

Scera was pushed back, evading and parrying the unrelenting strikes, letting them glance off her claws. Those claws were nearly as hard as steel, but Scera's arms ached from each parry, the impact jarring painfully through her wrists.

Lucky for Scera, the dark elf's expertise was in striking from stealth, not open melee. With a kick, the elf was sent into a stool and lost her balance. Scera prepared to leap in for the kill, but heard clumsy, loud steps running up behind her.

Scera dropped low and let the newcomer's spear point pass over her shoulder, close enough that she felt the wind of it against her ear. She rose to meet this human, disarming him with ease. He stumbled backward and fell.

"Ashiah! Catch!" he yelled as he tossed something her way.

Scera turned to see what was thrown and realized she had been tricked. The elf had already moved, and the ball exploded with a blinding flash.

The smoke it sprayed burned her mouth and nostrils, and her vision was replaced with fuzzy nothingness. Turning toward where she remembered the open door to be, she leapt outside just as a curved blade whistled toward her ribs.

Though blind, she sensed it in time and caught the wrist that held it, wrenching the hand with her superior strength. She felt bone snap and give, and the man screamed horribly.

Another blade opened a line of fire across her forearm. She could tell immediately that it had been poisoned. It caused her to let go of the man.

"We're leaving, Jun, this one is too much even for me," she heard someone say, and knew it had to be the dark elf.

Scera wasted no time in striking where she heard the voice come from. Her attack tore through flesh and bone.

But she could tell it wasn't the dark elf. Too wide, too cold. The elf had used a body as a shield. Scera also used it as a shield to intercept two more darts that she barely heard in time. Her vision was starting to clear, but it swam at the edges from the poisoned blade. She tossed the body aside with a snarl.

Behind spotted discoloration, she could see Jun and Ashiah as they fled down the street. Scera didn't follow. She heard others coming her way.

The poison now in her blood was not designed for her kind. Her body was already fighting it off. It would not aid those coming for her as they ran to their doom.