Cataclysm War | Chapter 100: His Mentor's Truth (First Draft) (Patreon)

Sunday, August 14, 4 S.E.

Count Teryn Varius Cartellis hummed to the crackle of the fire in his office silently, setting his rapier calmly on his desk and brushing his hands down his suit. His eyes were calm despite the omens of the day, and his mind was steady. There was a strange peace to accepting what must come, and Teryn Cartellis had never been a man who railed with futility at assured fate. His daughter was all-but-dead in every way that mattered, but his son had found a gateway to a better future, and his House would survive through the boy—assuming he managed to survive long enough to reignite the Cartellis legacy.

Teryn smiled quietly at the thought and turned to the far side of the desk, reaching into the pocket of his jacket and setting a plain white envelope upon the mahogany surface, addressed to his son in Haelfennyr script. It was a final insight for the boy, one that would be required if he were to avoid the pitfalls that Teryn himself had fallen into. Life was not always fair; that was a fact, but it was as much based on the efforts of the individual as it was predicated upon the environment in which they existed.

The Count took a calm breath and turned toward the fire, picking up his glass of Aetherwine and stepping toward it steadily. He had desired the throne, either for himself or through his son’s marriage to Aylar, but the Archon-King had ruined that plan quite thoroughly. Even now, he was probably fertilizing some bastard half-breed within the nubile young Queen, and the thought faintly repulsed Teryn. How Ectherion would weep if he could see his descendant now, whoring herself for a lesser species.

The Count sighed quietly at his own venomous thoughts and smiled.

There were always regrets, he supposed, but few of them meant anything.

He could affect what he could affect, but otherwise, it was a matter of essentially screaming into the void and hoping the Divines and the System to which they were tethered would take benevolent notice. He’d long-since lost faith in that idea, and had never been a true man of Faith, but he supposed anything was possible. If not now, then perhaps in the future—not for him, but for his children. Cerynia was ruined, but there remained the faintest echo of hope she might recover, albeit one as thin as his own remaining time.

Teryn’s ears twitched faintly at the sound of armored footsteps, and he sipped his Aetherwine, enjoying the defiance of refusing to face his judge as the click, click, click of approaching steel prowled down the corridor, and a familiar figure filled the frame of his doorway. Teryn sighed quietly, swirling his glass of Aetherwine, and enjoying his refusal to bend to the whims of fate one last time—right up until the voice belonging to his executioner spilled forth.

“{Good morning, Teryn,}” Ceruviel Latherian said in dulcet tones, her voice mild despite the situation. “{I see you’ve seen to your affairs. The disarmament is a nice touch, albeit wholly irrelevant.}”

Teryn chuckled at the Duchess’ words and finally turned to her, meeting the faint glow of her lavender gaze and the crackle of violet lightning that sparked around them. Even with nothing but cold disdain in her eyes, Ceruviel Latherian was a generational beauty. It would always remain a regret of his that he had not tasted that particular fruit. He’d tried, of course—as had countless others—but he’d been entirely unsuccessful. The Duchess indulged as she wished, and sadly, few of the Nobility were to her tastes.

“{I wanted to be polite,}” Teryn replied levelly, while nodding to a glass of Aetherwine. “{Feel free to help yourself. I thought you might be thirsty.}”

Ceruviel chuckled mirthlessly at his words and stepped forward, her hands clasped behind her as she glanced at the glass, and then up to him.

“{I would ask why you let it come to this, Teryn,}” Ceruviel said, ignoring the glass as she moved into his office, “{but I think we both know the answer. You’re a relic, like the rest of your ilk. You fear the future, and that fear makes fools of what should be wise men. I’d be disappointed if it wasn’t so piteously predictable.}”

Teryn sighed quietly and tipped back his Aetherwine, draining the glass and looking at it, empty, in his hand thereafter.

“{You are ever-so-superior, Ceruviel,}” the Count said as he contemplated the empty glass and peered at the Last Archon of Altera. “{Yet you are so hateful toward your own people. We seek to persist in this new world, and you would see us all subsumed beneath the rising tide of your pet Terran, our culture erased, our traditions eradicated,}” he said plainly, shaking his head. “{You betrayed us, Archon. Every Haelfar of your own blood. How swiftly you abandoned us for a child you barely know.}”

The Archon clicked her tongue at the words, chuckling without mirth.

“{I scoured his mind the first time we met, Teryn. A mild invasion of privacy, certainly, and I didn’t dig too deep—just deep enough to know the essence of him. I loved him when I knew him, as surely as the Sun loves the Sky. Have you ever felt that love, Teryn? An obsession that would drive you to do anything to see the target of it succeed?}”

The Count hesitated at her words, and then smiled wryly, shaking his head.

“{Archons,}” he said mildly, staring at his glass. “{You lose yourselves in the minds you prowl like a predator stalking grasslands, and forgetting your own home. He’s a Terran, Ceruviel. Inferior. Unworthy. You could have chosen anyone for your project, yet you chose him. His Alphas are irrelevant. He is lesser.}”

Ceruviel didn’t seem offended by his words—or rather, seemed to put no weight into them.

“{By your approximation, I can see the delusion that spawns that thought,}” the Duchess said as she smiled coldly. “{But I long ago stopped caring what you inferior minds believed. I was Alurien’s last student, Teryn. He entrusted me with that—he became the Father I lost, and he taught me his joys, his pains, even his fears. Can you imagine that? The fears of a Saint? A man who dominated Altera with the power of his mind alone? No, of course you can’t. You’re too busy being an insignificant, narrow-minded viper.}”

The Count snorted softly at her words and shook his head.

“{Alurien. It always comes back to that. Is that all you are, Ceruviel? Alurien’s enduring soul, wrought in the form of beauteous temptation? How sad for you.}”

Ceruviel smiled thinly at his words as she came to a halt near him, gazing down from her superior height. Ceruviel Latherian was a Haelfar of supreme breeding, that much would never be in question. Her bloodline had ruled a Kingdom for millennia before the Eldormer unification—a unification her ancestor had wisely conceded to join of his own volition, securing his bloodline’s prominence in the millennia that followed.

How sad that she should become a Terran’s attack dog.

“{Attack dog, Teryn?}” Ceruviel mused, calmly raising her right hand. “{No. That is the part you fail to understand—you, and the other cankerous fools like you. Achilles is not my master, Teryn, any more than you are in control of your fate.}”

The Duchess bent toward him, her fingers extending to brush his jaw in a way that sent a shiver down the Count’s spine.

“{He’s not my leash-holder, Teryn. He’s my legacy,}” Ceruviel said softly, “{and if I have my way, I will make him the unquestioned Emperor of this New World.}”

Teryn’s pulse quickened at the Venerate Archon’s proximity, and he swallowed against the traitorous pulse of fear that sounded in his once-calm heart. At the end, it seemed, he was as mortal as the rest—and just as helpless before absolute power. Still, curiosity lingered in him, and he mastered himself enough to ask that most pressing question.

“{Why?}” he said finally, almost desperate to know. “{Why do you want him to rule so badly? Why him and not your own people?!}”

Ceruviel’s smile was almost piteous as her hand moved to his chin and lifted his face, her head bending until her lips were at his ear.

“{Why, Teryn?}” she asked softly. “{Because he has fulfilled my wish. My truest wish. The one I have held in my heart, where no one may ever pry into it.}”

Psionic threads wound their way around Teryn’s mind, and he felt himself growing faint, held aloft by the sheer physical might of the Last Archon.

“{He has given me something no Haelfar has ever managed, despite their most desperate efforts.}”

Teryn’s heart stuttered in his breast as threads of Psi tightened around it, and he felt his awareness dimming as his pulse began to slow, his consciousness only permitted to remain to hear her last words—the secret of the Duchess that none in the Court had ever truly understood, only learned to fear.

“{He’s my Heir, Teryn,}” Ceruviel said softly. “{The heir I never had. The lineage scheming rodents like you stole from me with knives to my womb, in some vain effort to claw your way into a higher station, and I will burn away every last one of you to ensure he is safe.} Fuck {our species, Teryn. If I have to wipe your kind from the face of the planet to keep him safe, I will do it. There is nothing I will not do for my son.}”

Teryn collapsed as his heart spasmed, and Ceruviel watched him silently, bending down to squat before him in a clank of steel.

“{You’re insane,}” he croaked, staring at her beautiful features in horror, and seeing the madness behind her eyes. “{You are utterly insane!}”

“{Yes,}” Ceruviel murmured. “{Grief drives us all mad, eventually. I accepted my mind had shattered long ago. There is peace in that acceptance, my dear Teryn. Your mistake was forcing me to take notice of you. Don’t fret, I’ll spare your daughter the ignominy of her fate. I will be visiting her next to tie up that loose end. Suicide is tragic, but it’s better than she deserves.}”

Teryn choked at Ceruviel’s words, and his body spasmed faintly as his heart started to fail, strangled under the grasp of the Venerate’s immutable psionic power.

“{Take heart in this knowledge, my lord,}” the Duchess demurred softly. “{My Achilles will rise to the highest peaks of this world, and if the Haelfenn are worthy, they will rise with him. If they are not…}”

Ceruviel reached out to lightly tap his chest, and Teryn’s heart stopped, the world turned grey, and her final words were the last he ever heard.

“{...I will obliterate every last soul for the sin of failing him.}”