Chaos (38 page)

Stefan laughed and twined their fingers together as they walked down the path that led from his house to the winding mountains beyond, which slowly turned from green to white as fields of Licht blossoms bloomed.

"No!" Teufel howled. "Stop it! Stop it!"

Wholly against his will, he reached out to caress Sasha's face, tracing his forehead, his eyes, his nose, lingering on his lips before gently combing fingers through his hair.

They say love overcomes everything, but the sad truth is that it doesn't. Sometimes, love just isn't enough.

Hot tears fell down Teufel's face, and he wiped them angrily away, furious that he was still succumbing to the weaknesses of the man he had just recently been. He was not David anymore. He was Teufel, the darkness that ruled Schatten. The darkness that was all that remained because love had not been enough to keep Licht at his side, to make Licht want to live.

But try as he did to fight it, the truth would not stay quelled.
I don't want to be darkness,
David's voice whispered.

Teufel sneered.
Darkness is what people want. Darkness is how it always ends. Even Licht preferred the dark in the end.

No. Light to dark to light again. Balance. One cannot exist without the other.

"Then why did he leave me in the dark!" Teufel bellowed, causing the cracked glass of the ceiling to break free and fall to the floor where it shattered into a million pieces, the sound of it deafening. "There is no light! He left me, he died, and now there is no light and there never will be."

"Do you mean it?" Teufel asked, smiling excitedly. Licht brushed his fingertips across Teufel's face, ending at his lips. "You don't mind me making changes to your priests?"

"Our priests," Licht corrected, smiling at him, bending down to brush the barest of kisses across his mouth. "You hold my essence, my power—and most importantly, you hold my heart. I am not here as often as I want since I must contend with my careless siblings." His face clouded, but the kiss Teufel pressed to his fingers burned the clouds away. "I trust you as I trust no other. If I am not here to take care of Schatten, then I at least am able to rest easy knowing that you are doing it. So do as you will, sweet shadow mine."

Teufel sank to his knees, overcome by anguish as the forgotten memory washed over him.

You hold my heart.

He wrapped his arms around himself, wanting the pain to
end.
He was
tired
. If he had Licht's heart, then why had Licht left him?

I trust you as I trust no other.

He didn't want Licht's trust. He wanted Licht.

If I am not here to take care of Schatten, then I at least am able to rest easy knowing that you are doing it.

He hadn't taken care of Schatten, though. He had poured all his anger with Licht into it, warped Schatten into a land of dark and terrible fates, made them suffer in Licht's stead, made them suffer with him.

Teufel had never wanted to rule Schatten
for
Licht; all he had ever wanted was to help Licht, to stand beside him, behind him, to be Licht's. "I don't want to be darkness," Teufel whispered. "I just want to be a shadow."

Heat—burning, agonizing heat—tore through him, made him double over and choke on a scream. He clawed at his chest and nearly passed out as the heat abruptly burst from him and the sanctuary filled suddenly with brilliant, golden light.

Teufel shuddered, slowly looked up, and stared in confusion at the orb of light that hovered in the air above the altar. It called to him, soothed him, and made his body ache with longing and loss.

"The heart of Licht,"
said a soft female voice.

Looking down, Teufel saw a woman standing at the top of the stairs leading up to the dais. She was beautiful—breathtakingly so. She wore a long, elaborate dress and butterfly wings fluttered on her back, containing every conceivable color; her hair shimmed silver-gold and her eyes flickered with countless colors. She was also transparent, as though a phantom, though Teufel knew she was not one. "Faerie Queen," he said quietly, more confused than ever.

"Only a last, fading piece of her,
" the woman said, voice soft, faint.
"A shard of memory in the ring of chaos."

"What do you want?"

"I no longer exist. I have no wants. The question, little shadow, is what do you want?"

"Licht," Teufel whispered, eyes drawn helplessly up again—first to the golden orb and then to Sasha.

"Then let there be new light,"
the Faerie Queen said. On the altar, Sasha began to glow, and the ring on his finger burst into a riot of rainbows like a crystal struck by the sun.

High above, the heart of Licht flared into even brighter light, searing Teufel's eyes, forcing him to look away. When the light finally faded, he turned back and slowly rose to his feet. At first, nothing seemed different.

Then Sasha's fingers twitched and the Citadel echoed with a soft groan.

His head felt strange—fuzzy, as if it had been heavily packed with wool before someone stored it away. He groaned again and sat up, only vaguely aware that he was even lying down. Why did he feel as though he had just woken from a very long sleep? But even as he thought it, the wool began to fall away, and the dusty, sleepy corners of his mind began to fill with light.

He tilted his head up, smelling flowers on the breeze coming in the poor, shattered windows of the Citadel's sanctuary. The sun was coming up; he could feel it like a lover's whisper in his ear. He closed his eyes and, with a thought, banished the clouds. He sighed softly as the sunlight began to overtake the dark sky—first deep blue, then a hazy gray, then ember to rose to cream until, finally, a brilliant blue morning sky greeted him.

Licht smiled and finally looked down … and his smile slid away as he took in all that was wrong, and the memories of Sasha collided with the memories of Licht. He dropped one hand to curl over the wound in his stomach that was no longer there and slowly slid from the altar. He took a step toward the man watching him with wide, dark, tearful eyes, then another step, until he was close enough to caress soft skin. "Oh, sweet. What have you done? You should have left me dead. I am not fit to be a god, and I am not a god who should have been revived."

Teufel gave a shaky laugh, then abruptly fell against him, head buried against Licht's chest. "I made my choice. I won't live without you anymore. Don't make me."

"I won't," Licht said softly. "I'm sorry." Teufel gave another one of those horrible laughs, and Licht drew him up into a deep kiss, held him tightly. "I'm sorry," he said again as he pressed their foreheads together.

"I'm not forgiving you yet," Teufel said. Licht did not reply, just kissed Teufel's tears away and held him again.

"Fix Ehrlich," Teufel said eventually, voice sad. "There's nothing I can do now for the other priests, but do something for Ehrlich. Please."

"Of course," Licht replied, and with a last caress to Teufel's cheek he stepped away and down the altar stairs. He walked past Drache's enormous form until he reached the front, where Fritz had been turned to stone with one hand still on Drache's snout.

Licht sighed softly, sadly. "My poor priest, I am sorry this is what happened to you." His gold eyes shone and he lifted a hand, drawing in sunlight, filling the sanctuary with it. As it slowly faded away, Fritz sank to his knees and Drache opened his swirling rainbow eyes. His soft growl filled the sanctuary.
Lord Licht?

"Sasha?" Fritz whispered.

"Yes and yes," Licht said, rubbing at his temples, willing away the deep ache of two minds merging, the past and the present, the power that was rushing back to embrace him after existing so long without him. "I am Sasha and Licht. Still two, but they are rapidly becoming one." So many names:  Nikolai. Sasha. Licht. "I think, at least amongst us four, I would prefer Sasha. That is who I am now and who I will always be."

"Of course, Lord Sasha,"
Drache rumbled.
"It is … strange to see you back, but good."

Sasha's brows rose at that. "Good? I cannot think, after all that I have done, that seeing me is
good.
I told Teufel he should not have done it."

"David. If you are to be Sasha, then I am still David."

Turning, Sasha watched as David strode toward him. His eyes glowed with power, and something about him looked older, more jaded. The sweet, earnest young man was still there, but he possessed Teufel's sharp edges. "Of course," he said before he turned back to Fritz and Drache, looking at them thoughtfully. "I cannot reunite you as you are," he said at last. "Your soul has been split so long and gone in such different directions that the two halves have each become a whole of sorts. If I send you on to your next life, the halves would not be able to rejoin for several lifetimes. Of course, if that is what you want, certainly it will be done. But I can also do this …"

He placed one hand on Drache's snout and hummed softly. Soft, shimmering rainbow light poured from his hand, covered Drache's snout and then moved along the rest of his body. He shone in the sunlight like sparkling glass—and then began to shrink.

When the light finally faded, in place of the Holy Sentinel stood a tall, lithe man with dark skin and pale gold hair that fell all the way to the floor in a thick braid. Fritz made a pained, disbelieving noise. "Drache—"

"Fritz," Drache said and swept him up, and the two clung tightly to each other, crying quietly and exchanging desperate, clumsy kisses.

Sasha smiled faintly, relieved that at least one wrong was on its way to being righted. There were thousands to go, but the first step had been taken. Leaving Fritz and Drache alone, he took David's hand and left the sanctuary by way of the stairs off to the right.

They began to climb, leaving the sanctuary behind entirely and entering the Citadel tower, climbing the steps that wrapped around the outside. The spells he had woven long ago to keep people from falling had not faded in all the years he'd been gone.

He could have easily bypassed the stairs to reach the top, but he preferred the walk, steadied by the sound of David behind him. When they finally reached the top, he closed his eyes and simply enjoyed being bathed in morning sunlight, relished its loving touch on his skin.

David pressed against his back, arms twining around his waist, his sweet, cool shadow to counter the sun's heat. Turning around in David's arms, Sasha kissed him deeply, lingering, savoring the heat and flavor of his lover. Drawing back, he brushed David's hair from his face and said, "You look good this way, sweet." He stroked David's face, his hair, admiring the slight changes to his features, those sharp edges that had not been there, the power and knowledge in his eyes—and that bone-deep sweetness that nothing would ever banish. "Are you happy this way?"

"I'm happy to have you," David replied, though it was more of Teufel's resonating timbre in his voice. "I'm your shadow; that's all I ever wanted. Don't leave me again."

Sasha kissed him, holding him close and pouring everything he had into the embrace. "I promised I wouldn't. I intend to keep that promise. I
will
keep that promise. But our reunion may be short lived."

David nodded in understanding. Sasha gave him another brief kiss, a caress, then turned to stand at the edge of the roof of the tower. He looked out over Schatten, narrowing his eyes at the clouds that lingered. With a thought and a flash of sunlight, he banished them, giving all the sunlight he could to a country that had gone too long without it. Next, he broke the spell of winter and hastened the melting of the snow.

Satisfied with the weather, he turned his attention to other matters. Throwing out his arms, he said,
"Beasts of the dark, be at peace and choose your fate:  beasts of light or nothing at all."
Across the land he heard thousands upon thousands of roars as sentinels threw up their heads to answer his spell. He felt it as many simply chose to die, felt as others assumed different forms, eager to try a different, happier life.

Sasha turned his gaze to the Great Wall and with a simple pulse of flashing power, turned it into dust that scattered in all directions, falling to the fields and mountains and valleys of Schatten, eventually to blossom into white and cream flowers that had been lost long ago. In the city below, he banished the tortured phantoms, tears stinging his eyes at the strength of their relief as they went into the arms of Zhar Ptitsa at last.

Looking toward the distant Unheilvol, he gave strength to his Seers, repaired the damage to the city, and replenished their depleted supplies. Reaching out to the minds of the Seers, he bid them care for the people of Schatten, send them to Sonnenstrahl when they had nowhere else to go. Minds rippled with shock, with awe, but every Seer immediately answered the summons with a quiet, but earnest,
"Yes, Lord Licht."

Immediate concerns of Schatten addressed, Sasha drew a deep breath and reached out with his power one more time, casting it out over the barrier that had kept Schatten away from the rest of the world for over nine hundred years. One last deep breath, and as he exhaled, Sasha shattered the barrier.

He swayed as it broke, still new to his powers and ill-prepared for the backlash. David steadied him, then pressed against his side. The sound of thunder rumbled through the cloudless sky and David trembled in his arms.

Lightning flashed and the roof of the Citadel was suddenly filled with eight additional figures. Sasha slowly turned to face them.

"Kolya?" Zhar Ptitsa said, looking at him in shock.

Nankyokukai looked just as stunned.
"He's
the child of chaos you never told us about, Raz?"

"Nikolai," Culebra said softly and crossed the roof to him, reaching out to take his hands. "It is good to see you again, though I admit I never anticipated meeting you this way."