Into Forbidden Lands

Illiom was floating in an ocean of golden energy that surged and washed through her in rhythmic waves.

Inner and outer had lost all meaning, all distinction.

The enormity of what she had just learned – that she was an Adept – should have been a staggering realisation, yet it was not.

She experienced some nausea as her two selves, the ancient and the present, came into union.

Everything felt paradoxically transformed and yet unchanged.

She did not comprehend how she could hold both of these truths in her core and still retain her sanity.

Yet she did.

She no longer belonged in the world of mirrors.

Illiom was still reconciling these two realities when another floodgate opened and thousands of other fragments of experience began to rush in. These were memories from the many different guises she had worn since intoning the Chant of Undoing.

As the Draca had predicted, she had ‘lived’ many lives: all through the long, harsh age of Dur Egon and then during the more civilised Ther Egon. Each life had been different from all those that had preceded it and, in each one, her appearance had changed completely.

This parade of masks that she had worn left her in awe of the different people she had completely and utterly believed herself to have been.

But beneath it all, Illiom saw how each life had served to teach her something invaluable. The suffering and the hardship – the gifts of many an unassuming life – had nurtured within her a humility and a compassion that had never been present when she had been Aethera, the Adept who had commanded so much power at the pinnacle of Igollianath’s doomed glory.

The parade of lives came to an end at last and Illiom found herself afloat once more in the empty, velvet night. An incalculably distant array of stars was now the only light source.

Still held in the Orb’s embrace, Illiom began to experience power rushing into her. It came from every direction at once and tingled through her body, especially in her hands and in the pit of her stomach.

She knew what was happening: her body was reawakening to all of the formidable powers that Aethera had acquired as an Adept. They flooded into her like a great river, overwhelming and unstoppable.

Yet the humbleness that lay at her core remained undiminished, for it was the prize that she had earned after thousands of years of exile.

In the very centre of her being – surrounded by that humility – a radiant sun shone.

Illiom knew then that she would never again be separated from this light, and that everything she did from here on would be informed and guided by it.

As her awareness expanded, it was as though a veil was torn away and she saw that even this new self, this new Illiom imprinted with Aethera’s vast knowing, was no more than an infinitesimal speck in Ataram’s Great Dream.

In that instant, poised between nowhere and everywhere, she saw what had always been true.

She saw that the essence of her existence was the same as that of every creature, the same as everything in creation.

She saw this in an explosion of utmost knowing.

She saw Ataram.

She would never be able to describe it, for words were like snowflakes that melted in the presence of the sun.

There was only Ataram.

Dreaming the Great Dream of the world.

And the dream could not turn around and say to the dreamer, “I see you, I know you.”

Only Ataram could say that to the dreamed.

And – in that moment – she, who had once thought of herself as Aethera, as Illiom, and as so many other dream-forms, saw herself as no more and no less than Ataram itself.

I am the all.

The all is me.

I am Ataram.

Ataram am I.

And with that knowing, everything else became ecstatically and gloriously irrelevant.

As her final identity prepared to dissolve forever into that impossible, unbelievable and uncontainable vastness, a voice interceded and whispered.

Not yet, my child.

Sudra summoned Illiom back from the brink of delicious nothingness. Reluctantly she turned away from that final sanctuary. The love of her Goddess – and of her divine voice – were irrefutable.

I ask that thou withhold from claiming what is rightfully thine.

The silence between Sudra’s words seemed to penetrate the entire universe, and the echo of her voice resounded through the eternal vaults of time, to return to the beginning of all things, and back again.

First I seek an act of service, my beloved one.

The Goddess’ words resonated like crystalline chimes.

An act of kindness for the lost souls of the world, for those who persist in suffering.

Illiom waited, burning with a love that threatened to consume her as it once did the Firebrand.

For those lost souls I plead with thee, my child, to return to Âtras.

Restore the balance to a world that will otherwise endure endless suffering at the hands of those who know no better.

Then the Goddess spoke words that left Illiom breathless with the opening of yet another layer of truth.

I ask that thou reclaim what thou hast unleashed.

Understanding flooded into Illiom with a crushing force.

The World of Mirrors…

She – and the other Adepts – had always believed the Bloodrobes responsible for unleashing the curse of darkness upon Âtras.

But she had been wrong.

Sudra had opened her eyes.

There were no Bloodrobes.

There were no Adepts.

They were all one.

One and the same.

What she and the Adepts had judged as evil had never existed outside of themselves.

The Adepts’ fear of the Bloodrobes birthed from the darkness they had incubated in their own hearts. The barriers of doubt and apathy, of fear, hatred and falsehood, of illusion and separation, had all germinated within them long before they had manifested in the world.

Illiom had no recourse but to acknowledge her part in creating the abomination that had sought her destruction.

And if the Bloodrobes were the Adepts’ own darkness, then Crelor also…

Appalled by this realisation, Illiom gazed at the face of her Goddess as it became once again visible in the tapestry of stars. Yet what she found within those divine eyes was not judgment – nor even admonition – just an enduring field of love.

Then, as the face of Sudra dissolved, five new faces emerged from the stars.

She recognised each one.

The Draca.

Menalor, the Draca who had first spoken to them about the true nature of their quest, on the shores of a lake on Varadon’s Keep.

Provan, the blind, wise Draca of Iol who had singled Illiom out at the Varagan Draal.

Memester, who had guided them towards unity in the Queendom of Evárudas.

Abdora, the beautiful One who had invited them to drink of the sacred waters of the Underearth Lake.

Sconder, the Draca who had been slaughtered by the Bloodrobes.

They now spoke to her as one…

Reclaim what you have unleashed, Chosen.

Our task is done.

We have fulfilled our promise.

It is now time to keep yours, Adepts of Igollianath.

Reclaim your darkness.

Make right your wrongs.

We long for home.

Then they too were gone.

Illiom floated in empty vastness.

Sudra was gone. The Draca also.

She now felt them within herself.

Eventually she became aware of a single star, pulsing more intensely than the others.

Wordlessly, it called to her.

The star was Iod.

She willed herself forward until she was soaring towards the Sun God.

As she drew nearer, Âtras came into view.

She saw others, making for the same destination.

There could be no mistaking who they were.

The seven of them left the emptiness of space and fell into the world’s embrace.

They enveloped themselves in shields of light, and incandescent fire ignited around each.

Illiom remembered the Keeper’s prophecy of the Seven Comets.

This day all prophecies would come to pass.

Thus the Adepts returned to the College Keep at the top of the mountain-isle known as Igol.

The fell cloud still hovered over the sea, and lightning continued to flash through its perpetual darkness.

The seven found the Bloodrobes exactly as they had left them, enthroned around the dark pit.

They landed in their midst and each came to stand before one of the seven sorcerers.

There was no reaction, no conflict.

The Bloodrobes did not attempt to stop them nor to defend themselves, but remained motionless, as though this was what they had been awaiting.

As one, they rose to their feet, shrugging off their dark red cloaks.

The creature Balgor stood before Illiom like congealed darkness, and smiled.

“Have you come to your senses, Illiom? Have you returned to be at my side?”

The World of Mirrors.

Illiom offered the sorcerer a nod of recognition.

“I am doing much more than that, Balgor. I have returned to claim you.”

Illiom was suddenly aware that in the distant heavens, Iod and Sudra were now completely eclipsed by Krodh.

Irrsche dominated over Âtras.

The Bloodrobes stepped forward, but in midstride they lost substance and dissolved into mist.

Illiom and her companions inhaled the mist.

A single ray of Iod’s incandescence speared through the open dome at the crest of Igollianath and descended into the mountain.

The reclamation was complete.