1 Terra

The doors to her inner sanctum swung open with a thunderous clang. Though she heard the initiate's footsteps pattering towards her on the cold stone, though she heard her panicked breathing and swallowed tears, Terra did not turn around. It would do no good. Of all the priestesses, the initiates were the youngest, the most prone to panic. There would be no calming this one; not with a glance, not with a touch, and certainly not with words.

Panicked or not, the girl would deliver her urgent news, and Terra, the High Priestess of Dawn, would receive it with the same composed grace with which she received all messages. As though this one wasn't apocalyptic. As though she hadn't foreseen it long ago.

The initiate fell to her knees, skin and bone thumping mutely on the first of the marble steps leading up to Terra's altar, where she stood at her scrying glass, waiting.

"My lady," she said, pausing to catch her breath, "the king has fallen."

The battle playing out in front of her reflected as much. Leagues away from the fighting as they were, sequestered in their temple, Terra could see how the sky darkened above the mud-spattered and bloodstained battlefield. The elements themselves wept for the loss of their king. Against waves of atrocities pouring out from the seat of Darkness itself, an ill wind blew, carrying diseased dust and bones of the fallen. The earth cracked and trembled. Boiling water spouted from where Terra knew there had been no trace of it. And fire — there had been fire already. The armies of Dawn and the armies of Armageddon had met between volcanoes, and mages on both sides had called down the lava as their ally.

But the slopes now ran glowing red, with molten rock, melted steel, and spilled blood. A golden crown lay dented in the dirt, its gemstones cracked and dimmed. And the body of King Cedric was lifeless and still, food for the hounds of Hell biting at his face and uncovered hands.

The Light had been with Dawn. The Light had never left. Dawn was the Light's kingdom, promised her protection since the War in the Beginning, and the Light was faithfulness and truth; She could not abandon them, even if they forsook her ways. She had filled all Her warriors with Her strength: strengthened Her mages, sharpened Her warriors' steel, even scorched the abominations of Darkness with holy power. There was nothing more the Light could have given them. And still, it hadn't been enough.

Terra had known it wouldn't be enough. She loved her goddess, and had faith in her, but she was no fool. Light defeated Darkness. All it took to prove that was a sputtering candle in a windowless room. But Darkness was limitless. Darkness surrounded them, as far as the eye could see. Light was finite, and Darkness an eternity.

It was always destined to win.

Terra lifted her hand, but didn't yet wave it in dismissal. She may not have needed the girl's message to know the war was lost, but her presence had its uses yet. There were ears she needed to reach, and she hadn't the time to skulk through the most empty temple, dragging terrified women out of their beds.

"Tell Priestess Anaeia to meet me in the heart of the temple. Wake everyone you can, and once you have, ring the bells of prayer. We must see the soul of the king to its rest," she said.

If the initiate had any objections, she didn't voice them. Instead, with the labored slowness of one whose feet are pained and swollen from running, she stood and left Terra once again to the silence of her chamber.

How little time she had left with it.

There was little use for sentimentality now. The war was over, the battle lost. The omens proved true, and the kingdom in ruins. But there had been a time that this place was her sanctuary. It seemed just a moment ago that she reached out to this scrying mirror for the first time, hands weighted down with robes much too large and heavy for her, unable to bring up a single image. She drummed her fingers on its flawless surface now, as the battle with Armageddon raged on, heedless of the doom that was coming. Inadvertently, Terra touched the face of a young fire mage reflected inside it, raging with two fists of flame, punching clean through legions of ghouls and gargoyles.

Even at the end of the world, she couldn't help but smile at her fury.

The door swung open once more, this time entirely a surprise — quite a feat, considering what it took to catch an oracle off guard. Terra's fingers trembled as she lifted them away from the glass and spun around to see the intruder. Making her way inside dressed in tidy robes of black, walking stick echoing against the stone, was an old woman with slumped shoulders and hair as brittle as straw.

"The initiate told you to meet at the heart of the temple, Mother. You are not needed here," Terra told the ancient priestess Anaeia. But she didn't stop walking. Slowly, slowly, clack-clack-clacking with her cane, her mother came nearer, until she reached the steps and could go no further.

"I know where I am needed, child," Anaeia said, her voice thin and reedy, but not without a mother's affection. "And I know what you are planning."

That, also, Terra had foreseen. She'd inherited her gift of divination from her mother, who had taken the black robes of the Oracle's order long before she'd fallen pregnant with her. But it didn't matter. The High Priestess answered to no one but the king himself, and the true king was dead. She could do as she desired.

What a foolish thing to think. She didn't desire this. But it was necessary. Her mother should have seen that much.

Terra didn't so much as lift an eyebrow in response.

"What do you intend to do? This battle is beyond winning. You knew as well as I that Cedric stood no chance," she said.

"I do not doubt that we've come to the end of an age, Terra," her mother replied. "Three thousand years of peace may have been all that was in the Light's power to give us. People will die, and we will mourn. I do not relish defeat any more than you do."

"But you do accept it."

"Yes. Because it is inevitable. As is the Darkness's defeat at the Light's hands, when the time is right. That is their nature, child. God and Goddess, Light and Dark. Their reigns will cycle as day and night do." She banged her cane against the floor, punctuating her speech. "Mortals should have no say in it."

Fury quickened in Terra's breast, though it was her duty to maintain her placid expression, her graceful tone. "You speak as though you are above the Light herself, Mother."

"The Oracles do not serve the Light, girl. We serve the truth. We serve the order of the universe, which exists beyond the petty struggles of two Gods and the race of man they created."

"That is blasphemy."

"YOU are the blasphemous one, Terra." Her mother threw her finger out in front of her. "You mean to stand in the place of a god! You mean to take the war from their hands, change the terms that were agreed upon before our time began!"

"Yes!" Finally, the white-robed woman let forth a shout, stepping away from the mirror that showed her all the suffering of the world, the mourning of the elements and the victory of Darkness, becoming steadily more sure. "If it means saving the lives of the people I swore to guide and guard, then yes! I would stand in the place of a god! I would defy the universe! What good is order if it is paid for in blood?!"

Her mother fell quiet for some time. Odd. Her eyes, full of righteous fury only moments before, became like simmering coals; heated, yes, but in a quiet way. It had been years since the two of them shared words beyond a few simple sentences. Had seeing her daughter act human again brought out a motherly love long buried? Terra supposed it didn't matter. Everything was nearly done anyway. Anaeia's efforts were futile.

"Order is only ever paid for in blood," the old woman said. She placed her cane on the first step, pulled herself up. Placed it on the second step, pulled herself up again. Tired and slow, but all the more deliberate for it. Terra made no move to help her, lit from behind by the setting sun beyond the temple windows. "That was to be the lesson I taught you, Terra. I see that I've failed."

She stopped at the top of the stairs, wheezing and hobbling past the altar of the Light and all its iconography, to reach out to the daughter who stood at least a head and a half above her now.

Though it was far from what she wanted, Terra knelt so that her mother might touch her face one last time.

"I don't fear what becomes of this world, child. It will end and begin as it will. It will outlast whatever blasphemy you force upon it," Anaeia said. "But you will not."

"I know, Mother," Terra replied.

"You will pay a terrible price, and in the end, it could very well be for nothing."

"Or it could save everything."

Anaeia fixed her with a sightless stare, dark eyes glossed over in an oracle's trance. "Terra, my child. My beloved. Do you really believe that?"

Beneath them, the earth bellowed and cracked, shaking the temple of the Light to its foundations. There was no more waiting.

Terra laid a gentle hand on her mother's face, and with a violent tug, pulled an orb of something prismatic and shifting from the core of her being. This was the act she'd prepared so many years for, and now that the time had come to face it, it was the easiest thing she'd ever done.

The old priestess's body collapsed to the floor, fading in and out of sight like a mirage approached in a desert. She would be the first of many, for she was right. All order was paid for in blood, or stolen magic, or blasphemy, or death. But hers would be an eternal order, and for it, she would pay an eternal price. She would pay it gladly.

Terra threw open her arms and took her mother's magic into her being, feeding her twisted and luminous soul.

"I believe it, Mother. I do."