Chapter 54. Named

n the many planes of existence there were things that had never been named.  They clustered around him, drawn to his sentience.  There was a susurration of voices lost at the edge of hearing, the close press of minds far older and stranger than any he had known.  Their attentions were focused upon him in much the same way as a sleeping cat might suddenly awaken to the ephemeral dance of a butterfly.  His psyche buckled beneath the press of their probing curiosity.

“You are named,” their numberless voices tolled, taking up the call.

“Threnody,” he called searching for her peaceful presence amid the cacophony.  They wanted him.  He was potent and yet insignificant.  He clung to the name that she called herself now, a name that was not his own but which threatened to belong to him as well.

“Do not be afraid,” she whispered, “remember who you are.”

Wrapped in darkness, he was as a dust mote falling through emptiness.  The desire and pressure of eons flowed over him, eroding memory and sensation.  Gnawed away by the void, he was nothing and no one, a drop of water in an endless ocean.  All that he was and all that he could be condensed into a single point of emptiness. 

“I am not merely memory…”

“Come back, Pendaran, my Beloved.”

“I am not merely my body…”

“We hunger.  Let us live.

“I am not my emotions…”

“Pendaran, come back.”

“Who am I?”

Light dazzled his eyes and he broke into open air, gasping for breath before falling once more into cold darkness.  His ears were filled with clicks and whistles and now his bare skin felt the whisper of water pouring swiftly over him.  Once more he rose up and drew breath. The dancing wavelets churned with the burst and spume of hundreds of others, dolphins scudding swift and delicate beneath the waters.  They were laughing. 

“You have returned, O Great One,” they sang and their joyous voices illuminated the depths. Once more beneath the waves he saw dolphins swarm toward him, clicking and singing their greetings.  Confused he gazed upon his body only to discover that he existed no more.  He was immense and translucent, a long sinuous figure forged of moonlight and sea foam.  His luminous tail drove him swiftly forward as it coiled and shimmered, magically propelled through open water.  His arms were gone, replaced by fin-frilled talons.  Despite the fact that the dolphins were dwarfed by his strange form, they danced gracefully around him, spinning and tumbling in his slipstream and wake.

“What am I?”

“Your flesh is my anchor on this plane,” Threnody sang softly, “Your soul binds my shattered being together, restoring me to my former glory.”

“I’m afraid,” he said, the wonder at what he was seeing fading and replaced with fear.  He had no idea where he was or what Threnody needed with him, or even if she would grant him freedom now that she had regained power.  His body was gone and his free will with it.  He shared the form of the monstrous creature, felt the sensations of speed and current, heard the greetings of her children, but he was a passenger only.

“Sleep now, Beloved,” she soothed, “The time has not yet come.”

“No!” he protested, angered that she could dismiss him so easily.  He would not be banished for a third time.  The sickly sweet smell he had come to associate with her beguiling magic played through his senses and he fought to resist.  She relented.

“I honor your will, but there is risk in staying too long in any form that is not your own.”

“In dreaming I forget who I am,” Pendaran replied, “There were others in my dreams.  What are they?”

“To be named is to become manifest.  Those that dwell between the planes that have neither name nor life envy those who have both. Ah, the boundaries between worlds grow weak and the gods struggle to mend them.  Their servants are needed now more than ever.”

“Where are we? Where are you taking me?”

“So many questions, my Beloved.  Curiosity is the mark of the gifted.”

He gazed out through her pearlescent eyes and heard the low eerie keening of whales as their shadowy forms coalesced from the great darkness below them.  Light danced and scattered over immense flukes and long graceful backs like island chains.  Slow joyous laughter rumbled through the water and eyes as deep as time gazed upon him.  They welcomed him and spoke of far off places and songs shared across the years.  And of the Queen of the Sea.

“The Queen of the Sea, my sister, dwells in these waters, but she has been corrupted by grief.  For every good thing lost when my sea was slain, she demanded tribute from mankind to avenge the evil of Shiro.  She gave that tribute to Ashekoroth that he might fulfill his false promise to resurrect the JadeSea.  Her inchoate anger and grief blinded her to his true purpose, for he used us both and became a mighty demon.  She opened the way to him that he might learn terrible magic locked away by the gods.”

“Does she have no name?”

“My sisters of the seas were gifted with names by Melandru and so we became conscious and received the gift of life, but we do not speak them. Your brother in Art gave me Threnody.”

Abruptly the celebratory songs of the whales died and the water grew cold.  He looked on in amazement as shadows rose up from the depths and the sleek forms of dolphins darted swiftly away.  The ocean seethed with anger, tingling against his psyche like an icy fire.

“Quiet now, I must deal with her.”
 
“Impostor!” the depths raged.  Pendaran quailed, his psyche alive with unearthly fear.  He drifted boldly in the tumultuous water as the ocean became a vast pool of blackness around them.

“Sister of the Depths,
Melandru’s daughter,
Hear me sing
Beneath the waves.

“Freed from the stone,
Garbed in frail flesh.
Dance with me
Twixt ebb and flow.”

His body shuddered as the raw power of the Queen’s answering song rose up from the depths.

“Beloved husband of the Sky,
Remakes what was lost,
Draws from stone
What was slain.

“Melandru has abandoned us!
Bitterness and evil reign.
And I will fight,
And I will slay.

“You are a weak shadow,
A lie.  Impostor, Go.
Jade has taken my Sister,
The Betrayer’s kin must die.”

The world around him was shattered with a keening cry of rage and an immense pulse of chaotic energy.  Threnody made a shrilling cry of lament as the water erupted around them, driving them back and under and over like carelessly strewn toys.  Darkness flooded his vision amid the sickening twist and thrust of the water around them.  They tumbled helplessly in the wake of the massive wave until the blackened sea parted like a ghastly veil to reveal Threnody’s enraged sister.

The sky was her crown, a shroud of roiling angry clouds lanced with lightning as she rose upon a column of furious water.  Dragon-formed, she was a leaden color, dull and metallic, her scales lacking the grace and luminescence of Threnody.  Her sinuous tail coiled furiously around her shifting throne of angry waves.  Wind roared from her ivory jaws.  Wings like curling breakers lashed the sky.  Threnody fought to go aloft and face her immense sister.  She was as a firefly before a wintry gale.

“We are betrayed my sister,
Made to fight where
No quarrel existed.
I am of the JadeSea.

“Let your rage be quelled,
Let grief reign in its rightful place.
You lamented my loss,
But I am returned.

“Shiro has fallen again,
Let the gods decide his punishment.
It is not for us, guardians only,
To seek justice in the affairs of men.

“For Lyssa also blessed us,
She of two faces.
Knowledge and power may
Serve fair and foul alike.

“We are servants of the gods,
Children of Melandru.
Remember her laughter,
Sing again the song of balance.”

Pendaran felt Threnody’s doubt as if it were his own.  The Queen of the Sea pressed down over his psyche, holding him in her gaze with a terrible nonchalance.  She had been driven mad with rage and loneliness.  Her kind were vanishing, the gods had abandoned her.

“You are dead, Sister. 
Even were you free,
Your ocean is gone.
The world dies, and I despair.

”Leave me, phantom!
I have found another to serve.
I will grow to fill the other seas.
I will avenge you.

“I will destroy humanity.
They seek to ascend
The throne of my creators,
And name themselves gods.

“Choose your side now,
For when twilight comes,
Only one will rise.
And I will follow.”

Grief flooded his senses as Threnody dove back under the waves and departed.  A heartbreaking song poured from her being and the black ocean received it in silence.  She sang of loneliness and despair and loss.  Her sister was dead to her now, and worse, turned to evil.

“I’m sorry, Threnody.”