Artemis…
Hearing Ruvick say what she had been to afraid to admit to Selene made her knees tremble as she stumbled back and leaned against the wall behind her for balance.
“Why are you so afraid to admit to Selene that you are her mother Artemis?” Ruvick asked earnestly.
He didn’t sound like he was trying to provoke her, but rather he just wanted answers.
“I...I don’t...I can’t…,” she stammered but the words wouldn’t come out the way she wanted them to.
“Actually...I think I have a better question to ask you. You were at the very forefront of the Mordrinite War fifteen years ago. You were there right as it was coming to an end and then you just...vanished. You disappeared right off the face of Erebus. There was no word or mention of you anywhere. What were you doing in all that time? Where were you?” he asked her.
Hearing his questions, her mind drifted back to the events leading to the end of the Mordrinite War.
The sky was dark as smoke from the countless fires and chaos that raged all around them permeated through the air. The sound of clashing swords echoed through the battlefield.
Artemis, who had been fighting in this war for more than twelve years, was more exhausted from a single battle than she had been in a very very long time. Deathroot was growing out of her skin from all of the Arcanence surging through her body. It was taking every scrap of moonlight in her soul to shred the Deathroot to pieces and preventing it to grow any further.
Her muscles were sore and her bones aced. She had cuts all across her body and she was bleeding so much that it was hard to regenerate from.
To the right of Artemis, a blonde haired woman named Camilla was on her knees and leaning on her sword to try and stay awake. She looked like she could pass out at any moment but she tried to fight through it.
In front of both of them, collapsed on the ground and unconscious, was another blonde haired woman whose name was unknown to the both of them but her appearance and her strength in battle was utterly terrifying.
It took everything that the two of them had just to take her down and they still didn’t have the strength left to finish her off, only knock her out.
The woman’s body was fit and well toned with muscle, however she looked to be wearing a skeleton outside of her own body. With many bones laid upon her skin as if they were armor, held together by thick tendrils of Deathroot. Arcanence radiated off of her body even now with such strength that any ordinary person who approached her would die in moments.
A oval shaped and featureless bone mask with only slits for her to see out of clung to her face, and horns that curved backward was held together by Deathroot.
Standing over the woman’s unconscious body was Kayron. The bastard had been controlling this woman like some kind of weapon as he fought alongside her to take Artemis and Camilla down.
However, seeing as his weapon had failed, he clicked his tongue in disappointment.
“Damn it Nashandra. I was hoping that you might last a little bit longer but I suppose you’ve done a decent job for now,” he said as he waved his hand and a pool of blood surrounded Nashandra’s body before enveloping her completely as it sent her away.
“Surrender now Kayron! You cannot defeat us both!” Camilla said in defiance as she struggled to stand.
“I don’t have to defeat you. Never had to in the first place. I only had to stall for time, long enough for Malthael to arrive. In fact, I think he should be heading to Lunaas very soon,” he said with a smirk on his face.
Although Artemis could not understand what was being spoken, hearing the words ‘Lunaas’ and ‘Malthael’ told her enough that she was being stalled so that Malthael could attack the town. Artemis’s heart sunk in her chest upon realizing that as Adrianos and Selene were there waiting for her. She was supposed to have left to go be with them hours ago but Kayron and this woman Nashandra had gotten in her way to keep her here.
Nashandra was too powerful for Artemis to attempt an escape or fight her by herself, much less so with Kayron aiding her.
It left her with no choice but to stand her ground and fight alongside Camilla at a chance to break through.
Camilla grabbed Artemis’s shoulder, looked her in the eyes, and said something to her before waving her hand through the air as if to tell her to go.
She understood the message clear enough and took off in a flash.
She ran through the smoke and the chaos that the war had brought upon this land. She ran through it, and even though there were other battles still taking place, she paid them no attention.
She could not stop to help everyone. She could only focus on herself and the safety of her family at this very moment.
Most of all her daughter’s safety. She did not know what she would do if she found that Selene had died while she was at war.
As Mt. Lunaris came into view, Malthael had already reached Lunaas as his human form had crashed right into the center of town and was now fighting against the Wolf of Duranell, Dean Smith.
Malthael’s dragon form however was perched upon the very face of the mountain itself as it rained fire upon a man and a little girl braving against the flames.
Adrian and Selene!
She touched down right behind Selene and the moment Adrian saw her, he shouted, “Go! Take her far from here! I will handle this!”
Artemis nodded and roughly picked Selene up even as their daughter fought against her grip and reached for her father.
She was sure that Adrianos would have no trouble at all defending himself from Malthael until she returned to assist him so she wasn’t too worried for him. Hopefully, if they managed to kill Malthael together and this war was eventually over, they could enjoy the peace together.
These thoughts raced through Artemis’ mind as she carried Selene away from the mountain and far away from Lunaas where war was still raging.
She eventually came to a stop in the middle of a forest on the outskirts of town and almost collapsed in exhaustion. She had overworked herself and was teetering on the verge of blacking out. Artemis looked at Selene’s worried, crying face and reached her hand out to pat her head to comfort her even though she also felt a heavy weight of worry herself.
Artemis brushed the hair out of Selene’s eyes, smiled, and said to her in ancient Greek, “Don’t worry my little girl. I will be back for you.”
Selene looked at her confused as to what Artemis said to her.
Artemis stood up to look towards the mountain and watched as Adrianos’s vibrant flames illuminated the mountain side.
With the small scraps of energy Artemis had left, she rushed out of the forest and was about to launch herself into the air to join Adrian when a bloodcurdling presence overtook her.
A truly profound nothingness surrounded her and all light in every directions went dark. The vast emptiness was so horrible that she fell to her knees as if gasping for air even though she wasn’t having trouble breathing.
No, it was like she was experiencing the state of all of the universe before creation had exploded into existence.
It was a state of pure non-existence.
In one final act of defiance, Artemis gathered all the left over scraps of moonlight that she was clinging onto and released it in all directions.
The strain of using the last of her magic caused her to black out but as the small fragments of light reached her eyes, she was able to catch a glimpse of a man towering over her with his outstretched arm reaching towards her face. His haunting eyes were like a swirling galaxy of dead stars. The only light shining within them was the light being reflected back at her from what she emitted.
“Who…,” and with that, she fell to the abyssal darkness.
Ten years later…
Artemis gasped awake and quickly stood up off the ground. She pulled out her sword and held it tight in front of her. As she did, she looked all around her for the figure of that man she saw in the darkness but there was no sign of him anywhere.
She then looked back towards the mountain to head towards Adrianos but the flames had gone dark and Malthael’s body had already fallen to the ground.
In fact, the more she looked at the dragon’s corpse the more she realized that it was buried under vegetation, snow, rocks, and dirt as if the dragon had been dead for years.
But that’s...that’s not possible.
“What has...happened here?”
Artemis remembered that she had left her daughter Selene in the forest as she went to look for Adrianos. She rushed back to check if she was still alright, but found that she was nowhere to be seen.
Selene was gone.
This doesn’t make any sense...
During the war, Adrian had told her that they would live in a small house on the side of the mountain top overlooking the town.
Maybe they were there right now!
With this hopeful thought in mind, she rushed to Mt. Lunaris and looked for the place he had told her about in the letters he sent to her but all she found was a crushed log cabin buried underneath the snow.
“Where...where have you gone Adrianos?” she asked herself.
She was about to head into town to try asking someone else but she then sensed his spiritual energy lingering nearby.
She followed the trail of energy until she came across a large tree. It was too large to have grown to its size on its own in just a few short years.
Some kind of force must have been feeding it additional energy to catapult its growth.
Was it feeding off the Dragon’s corpse or something else…?
With this thought in mind, she spot anything that might help her find him and Selene...until she saw a glint of light reflecting off a metallic surface.
What was that…?
She knelt down upon the area where she had seen the reflected light and realized that it was the point of a sword.
A sword was buried underneath the ground and the tree roots and so she began to dig out the sword until it was laying in front of her.
It was Adrian’s half-bladed sunlight sword.
What the hell is this doing here…? It should be with Adrian, not buried in the dirt!
It was then that she looked at the trunk of the tree itself. Her eyes narrowed as she focused on the tree and saw some strangely shaped branches protruding from the side of it that looked almost like bony fingers...
“No please…” she said while holding back tears.
She released a portion of her magic and controlled it so finely to blow the tree apart, leaving the decomposed skeleton inside fully intact.
Preserved in the tree, a brief warmth radiated from it and passed through her body. It felt very reminiscent of Hell’s flames but it also felt much like her brother Apollo’s. Her brother had blessed Adrianos shortly after they had first met and marked his soul with his own power so even if Apollo was not by her side, there would always be a part of him that was protecting and caring for her.
This was Adrianos’s corpse that she had found embedded in the tree.
Artemis broke down in tears and grief as she wrapped her arms around the skeleton knowing that it was her mate, Adrianos.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry I wasn’t there! I’m sorry I wasn’t there for our daughter, and for you! I’m so sorry…” she cried as her voice eventually trailed off to uncontrolled sobs as she realized that she had missed every moment of Selene’s childhood up to this point. She had to find a way to make up for it somehow.
After Artemis had finished digging him a proper grave, she was about to start filling it in when she spotted something unusual with it.
She looked closer at his ribs and noticed that there were cracks in several places as if someone had stabbed him to death.
The realization enraged her as she knew that Malthael, with his huge form, couldn’t have killed him. Not only that but she did not sense the corpse of his human form anywhere near the mountain. From what she remembered, he was fighting in the center of town against Dean at the time that she had taken Selene away.
It was unlikely that Malthael was responsible for any of this but for some reason, she felt he was used to separate her and Adrianos from Selene.
Someone else had killed him at the moment that Malthael was brought down and she was led away to take care of Selene.
Knowing this information, she left Mt. Lunaris to find her daughter and search for answers.
Two weeks later…
It didn’t take her as long to find her as she thought it might. It took some difficulty, however, to figure out that it had been more than ten years since the end of the Mordrinite war and it had ended with Malthael’s defeat at Dean’s hands and the absolute annihilation of the capital city of Morath in Mordran due to the efforts of Moyako, the Immortal Phoenix.
Serving as Dean Smith’s vice-captain to the Darkmoon Knights brotherhood was Selene Kiser.
Artemis almost smiled as a small amount of pride filled her heart. Selene had made a name for herself despite her absence.
It seemed that this new brotherhood of theirs was centered in the capital of Duranell.
With adrenaline rushing through her body, she made her way to the capital city to meet her.
It only took her mere moments to reach Duranell’s capital and find her way around the town. To draw as little attention to herself as possible, she purchased a hooded cloak and made her way to the Brotherhood hall.
However, as she realized that she was so close to meeting her once again she wasn’t sure if meeting her at this point in her life was something she should do. If she confronted Selene, would she reject her or welcome her? Would she hate her for being gone from her life or welcome her back into it? Not only that, but she wanted to find who it was that killed Adrianos. There was no way she could bring Selene into that. Selene was only seventeen or so years old and still growing up. Artemis didn’t need to put that kind of burden on her.
All of these conflicting thoughts raced through her mind and they continued to trouble even as she eventually realized that she had already made her way inside the brotherhood hall. Artemis looked around but she didn’t spot Selene anywhere. Instead, she was met with Dean Smith who looked at her with wary eyes, as if trying to determine whether or not she was a threat.
Artemis also knew that no matter what she tried to say, they wouldn’t be able to understand her as she had never bothered to learn the common language. All she could do was try to convey her intent as peacefully as possible and hope that using Selene’s name could help.
Artemis pulled down the hood to show Dean who she was.
Dean’s eyes widened in shock as he recognized her.
“Artemis!” he gasped.
He started spouting off words until he understood that she wouldn’t understand a word of what he said as he held up a hand for her to wait a moment.
He then went back into his office for a few minutes and came back with some sort of gem with rune formulas engraved into it. He waved for her to follow him into his room and so she did.
“Alright, can you understand me now?” he asked in fluent Ancient Greek. The engraved gem seemed to be some sort of translation tool.
“Is my daughter Selene here?” she asked.
“No, she isn’t. She’s busy on a mission. She probably won’t be back for another few weeks or so. Artemis, where the hell have you been? You’ve been gone for over a decade! What happened?”
After nearly half an hour of explaining everything that had happened she nearly broke down when she mentioned that she had found Adrianos’s corpse on the mountain and learned that he had been killed by someone other than Malthael.
“I would have made more sense to me if Malthael had killed him but you’re saying he was stabbed? Someone killed him while he was fighting Malthael?” Dean asked.
She nodded and he folded his arms.
“Shit...that area has been ravaged by death root ever since Malthael’s corpse fell which meant that no one could make it up there to check the cause of death. Everyone just assumed Malthael had killed him…,” he said.
“I want to take Selene with me to find out whoever killed Adrian and-,” she tried to say but he held up his hand to stop her.
“No. I can’t allow you to do that. King Arobynn ordered me to keep a tight leash on Selene at all times. Ever since Adrian died and you disappeared, I’ve had to play the role as her guardian which means that she doesn’t go anywhere unless I say so,” he said to her and she rose to her feet in anger.
“How dare you try to keep my daughter away from me! I’ll flay you alive for even thinking of trying to keep us apart!” she threatened as her hand inched toward her sword but Dean remained perfectly calm and did not move from his seat.
He then said, “Artemis...even with the King’s orders aside...you’ve been gone for years of Selene’s life. Do you really think its wise for you to suddenly show back up in her life and then string her along with you to find Adrian’s killer? What are you going to do if she ends up resenting you along the way?”
Hearing that, all the anger drained from her and her hand fell away from handle of her sword as she sat back down in her chair.
“Then...then what am I supposed to do? As her mother, I can’t just abandon her,” she said.
“I’m not saying abandon her, but maybe...find out who killed Adrian and take care of it yourself before reuniting with her,” he said and although she had thought about that herself, she did not want to think about leaving her again.
Through gritted teeth, she pulled the Sunlight sword from its sheath and placed it in front of Dean.
“Here. Give this to her. Tell her its a gift but not from whom,” she said and through teary eyes, she walked out of the brotherhood hall.
She hated leaving her daughter behind once again but she also knew that she couldn’t leave the matter of Adrian’s killer alone.
She would take care of this matter on her own and once she was finished, she would return to give back all the time she had lost to her beloved daughter Selene.
Now…
“You had left Selene behind to look for the person who had killed Adrian didn’t you?” Ruvick asked but already knowing the answer.
“When I came across you, I thought that you might have been the one that killed him but...you lack the sheer emptiness of that man’s presence. You have such weight and depth to your soul that to call it empty is wrong,” she said to him, the stinging anger still present in her voice but fading slowly.
“Yet when I found you and placed that curse upon your shoulder, you called me Erebus. You had thought that I had killed Adrian?” he asked.
“I...I had thought that, yes. The fact that you had cursed me made me think that it was indeed you who killed him but...when Selene arrived to help me and Marcus removed the curse...you had done it to bring us together didn’t you?” she asked and he nodded.
“You are right but I want to ask again. Why did you assume I was Erebus and that I killed Adrian? Erebus is dead. All the primordials are dead, save for one of course. Why would you think that he was still alive and that he was the one who had killed him?”
“Because before Adrian was about to be killed, I was going to join him to fight Malthael but someone stopped me. Someone appeared and enshrouded me in darkness. A darkness so empty and vast that the only thing that resembled it was your own. Now I have seen the eyes of a primordial, like a vast swirling vortex of stars. I tried to shine my moonlight upon the face of the man in that darkness and saw only the lightless eyes of a primordial of shadows and nothingness,” she said and when she looked Ruvick in the eyes, she found that he looked nervous.
He looked down at the ground as he held his chin in his hands as he said, “That’s not good...Erebus is supposed to be dead. All the primordials are supposed to be dead save for God himself…Why are Apophis and Erebus…”
He then looked up at Artemis and asked, “Lets say you are correct and Erebus did kill Adrian. What are you going to do about it? Erebus is already dead. The very world we stand on was built upon his corpse. Even if he managed to appear right in front of us and you had the opportunity to kill him, how do you think that would end? You cannot hope to match a Primordial God in battle. For what reason do you confine yourself to a hopeless endeavor when you should be reconciling with your daughter?”
Hearing that, Artemis snarled back at him, “What does it matter to you if I tell my daughter who I am to her?”
“It matters because Adrianos was my friend. In fact, during the war I had visited him and warned him that circumstance might force him back into the war whether he liked it or not and that he needed to protect his daughter at all costs. I wished for him to live out the rest of his life alongside his wife and daughter in peace. I now hope that you will heed my advice as well and give up chasing after a ghost.”
Hearing his words, Artemis could not bring herself to stay angry at him. After all, it was because of him that she was able to meet her daughter for the first time in fifteen years.
But there was one more question that remained unanswered.
“Ruvick, you said that Adrianos would likely be pulled back into the war due to circumstance and you had mentioned God...were you talking about the Mordrinite War or...something else?”
Ruvick stayed silent.
“Ruvick...who are you really? Your face resembles a man who had been cursed by God hundreds of thousands of years ago but your soul...your soul is completely unrecognizable to the man known as Cain. Who are you really?”
Ruvick stared at her with a stoic expression as he said, “Cain died alongside all the gods and angels that perished on the day of the Exodus. My name was given to me by the the Fell King Dagon of Amaskia. In this world, I am known simply as Ruvick. Nothing more, and nothing less.”
Hearing that, Artemis chuckled halfheartedly as she turned away from him and said, “Damn it...I’ve wasted the last four years chasing after nothing at all...”
“While there’s nothing that you can do about the time that you have lost, you should use the time you have with Selene right now to embrace her in any way you can,” he said.