The Swan and the Songbird

My body collapses into Almelos’s embrace, but my psychic manifestation stands defiant. The flower swells to cover the fiend’s face, the air shimmering like rippling water. Reality bends and warps around us, the demon recoiling and ripping at the flower. The fiend is tall and thin, with bat-like wings, like a gargoyle given dark pink flesh. A souleating demon. A nabasu. The psychic landscape settles into my preferred battleground. A great weeping eye looms, closed, in the sky above us–its enormous tears feeding a rushing river speckled with pure white lilies below.

We stand on an invisible floor an ogre’s height above the flow. Light is everywhere but with no visible source. The “sky” around us oscillates between bright and dark blues. Far behind me is a simple wooden door standing without support. Almelos and I will be slaughtered if the demon breaches it. Here though, within my mind, we might stand a chance.

“Tricky human,” it chatters at me in the caustic language of the Abyss, “you think yourself so clever.” Its toothy grin is confident and sadistic. “I am no less powerful here than in the physical world, bringing me here just prolongs your suffering.”

“Perhaps,” I answer in its native speech. Some of the river’s water diverts vertically, ignoring the floor and forming a domed barrier around me. “But threatening the lover of a Naderite was the worst, and last, mistake you’ll ever make.” I will keep you safe Songbird. No matter what.

“Naïve mortal. Your goddess can’t save you from me.” The demon is drooling now, and it mimics my barrier, but with blood instead of water. I raise my hand high and quickly sweep it down.

“She won’t have to.” The weeping eye above us sheds another tear. It forms into a jagged dagger, which plummets toward the nabasu with incredible force, crashing against the blood barrier, cleaving through it, and smashing into the demon. The dagger dissolves after the impact, falling through our illusory footing and rejoining the river.

The fiend roars at me, its patience wearing thin. A massive phantom jaw filled with knifelike teeth crunches down on me. It collapses my barrier and pierces my shoulders, back, and stomach.

The nabasu’s barrier fades, but the monster immediately replaces it. “I will tear you both apart!” the thing snarls at me with feral fury. Its arm extends unnaturally far and cuts into my other shoulder before fading away.

I sneer at it as I send another dagger its way. “You don’t get it, do you? We followers of the Lost Maiden are obsessed with romantic tragedies. You’ve set the stage for my climactic finale.” My sneer turns into a cold stare. “Cultists murdered my parents, and you’ve slain my friends. I don’t wish to die, but you won’t take Almelos.”

The nabasu dodges the dagger and sends a clawed hand toward me, but my desperation grants me speed. I lean out of the way and channel the river into an uppercut that hooks around and smashes the despicable thing back into the floor.

As it rises, the fiend turns the water to blood and sends it back at me. The torrent is too big to dodge, too fast to stop. The force of it hurls me bodily backward against the door. My barrier falters. The door, an inanimate construct of my mind, is unforgiving and I feel myself shatter against it. Once the blood falls away I try to breathe past broken ribs.

The unopened eye above cries crimson tears. The river below runs red.

Broken, terrified, and fighting a relentless foe, I do all I can.

I pray.

“Thank you, Naderi.” I weep and look up at the bleeding eye. “Thank you for giving me strength when no one else would. Thank you for Almelos—he’s been wonderful to me. Thank you for the life I’ve lived. Defending him to the last is my best possible end. Please, deny this demon its foul whims. If Almelos is to join me, all I ask is that it be without suffering.” My prayers receive no obvious reply. A moment’s pause and the demon unleashes a sadistic chuckle at my crumpled form.

“I told you your goddess won’t help you.” Folding its wings, it stalks toward the door. Toward me. Toward the love ballad my heart sings every day, Almelos. My fury and adrenaline tint the world red.

“She gives me the strength that I can help myself. I won’t let you past this door.”

“Then I will take my leave.” The abomination marches toward me.

Past the mindscape, my ears register a voice. I feel gentle hands on my face and shoulders.

“You can do it, Garsalt. Love is the greatest of all things. We’ll triumph over this, like everything.”

You’re right, Songbird.

I’m sorry.

I lurch to my feet and break my promise.

I open the eye.

I widen the river below as a steady torrent of bloody tears rushes down and floods over the widened banks. The water clears itself of the stain and flows clean once more. The eye, surging with energy and every color known to the multiverse, focuses on the demon.

“Be gone from my mind and this world, fiend. Our stories end here.” I push my palms together in front of my face and open them forward. Light shines from the eye and burns into the shrieking demon’s flesh. From the eye descend innumerable swans and songbirds, solid forms of the eye’s radiance. The birds punch straight through the nabasu, swiftly reducing it to grimy soot.

Knowing what’s coming, I put my forehead against the door, now forever sealed, and whisper to Almelos. “You cast aside the dirges within my heart and filled it with serenades. You delighted me with illusions and awed me with evocations. Thank you for everything, Songbird. You’re safe now.” I feel Almelos crush me into a hug against his chest, and his sobs are hard enough to shake us both.

Within the mindscape, the river rises above me, and I do not float. The lilies drift away downstream. My body begins to seize. My heart beats wildly, stops entirely, then resumes a desperate staccato. Beyond the mindscape, I feel Almelos lock his arms around me and hear every curse he’s ever known leveled at my betrayal. His warm tears fall on my face.

The eye shatters like glass, the “sky” fading to unbroken blackness. I hear his faint farewell. Five words I have long dreamed would be those last said to me.

“I love you, Swan. Goodbye.”

“There’s no other way!” I yell. Almelos’s light is already dimming.

If it goes out, we’re done. We stand back-to-back, peering desperately into the unnatural gloom around us. His staff glows, and I hold a burning torch, but the inky blackness closes in nonetheless.

“You don’t know what that will do to you!” Almelos shouts back at me. My deep blue shirt and leggings and his many-colored robe are both soaked in the blood of our friends. Our squad had been ambushed in the night. The thing hunting us, born into this world from the nightmarish Abyss, used its foul magic to paralyze us as it sucked the life from us with its baleful gaze.

I watched, helpless, as my friends–my brother and sister demon-slayers–died one by one and decayed into ghoulish mockeries of their former selves. Almelos and I fled and barricaded ourselves in a nearby ruin. The ghouls couldn’t get in, but the demon was lying in wait. It dispelled Almelos’s attempt to teleport us out, leaving us stranded and hunted.

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take. Otherwise, you’ll never recover enough magic to get us out of here.” I wave my torch into the magical shadows around us. Its light disappears entirely as it passes the darkness’ edge. I feel a tug and pull it back to see the burning end gone, severed by one of the fiend’s claws. “I’ll do everything I can to keep my promise. To keep us both alive.” I drop the stick and reach behind me to clutch his empty hand in mine. We tremble and shake together.

“Alright, you foolish man. I’m counting on you,” he tells me. Taldan bravado at its finest.

“Deal.” I swallow nervously, close my eyes, and reach into the river of my mind. I wade through its swiftly running water amid many pure white lilies. I find the one I need and pluck it. Coming back to the room, I clutch that lily in my mind.

“Come, gluttonous fiend. You who feed on the souls of mortals. You’ve already slain most of us. What am I, to all of them? Strike me, and let this be done.” I squeeze Almelos’s hand. I feel his tighten too, but it is not the reassuring answer of a lover. It is the desperate clasping of one unready to face death. I pull Almelos away and whirl myself over his back, hurling the lily with magical might; straight into the onrushing maw of the demon.

Before the story, for those unfamiliar with the Lost Omens setting, here is a glossary of terms listed in order of appearance:

1. The Abyss: A plane of existence home to demons, vile creatures made of spiritual essence from the worst aspects of humanity, often themed around the catholic Seven Mortal Sins. The demons are not the Abyss’ first inhabitants, but their profane fecundity has ensured they thrive there, and everywhere, they are able to gain a foothold.

2. Taldan: Demonym referring to Almelos’ nationality. Almelos is from the Shining Kingdoms of Taldor, a once-great empire now fallen to decadence.

3. Naderite: Demonym referencing the protagonist, Garsalt’s, faith in Naderi, goddess of romantic tragedies and love despite adversity. Her symbol is a white lilly.

4. Nabasu: A demon that eats the souls of its victims and reanimates their corpses as ghouls, undead horrors that can paralyze with a touch.

5. Fiend: A general term referring to any native denizen of the three planes of existence that truly unrepentantly evil souls go to after their mortal end.

6. Songbird: The symbol of Shelyn, goddess of art, love, beauty, and redemption. Shelyn was Naderi’s patron before Naderi herself ascended to divinity, but ever since Naderi’s ascension, the two goddesses have only ever grown more distant, despite Shelyn’s repeated attempts to reconcile.