Phantammeron Book One Page 11

  * * *

  It had seemed a serene and restful time for Ana and Ama. For in their quiet hours no sounds were ever heard in Abrea save the flowing of the waters from the heights above, and the whispering winds that bellowed forth with the laughter of the trees. But they were no longer children. For they now had grown to fullness in that time of youthful splendor.

  Many unnumbered nights and days had passed since first they came to Abrea. And in this strange place, time itself had sped up and yet slowed down. For by some miracle of the garden’s springs did its enchanted waters alone decide that they should come of age for some purpose unknown to them.

  Ana was now a young woman. And in the changing lights of that strange world, to Ama she appeared bathed in the glow of the breathless beauty of womanhood. Her dark hair flowed down her shoulders in a tumbling display. And the contour of her body was graced with curves and hills like the lovely mounds that rose up about the garden itself.

  Ama had also changed. For he had grown strong with broad shoulders and brave face. Yet still lithe and agile he remained. Tall and handsome he seemed to Ana, to have grown bolder and more confident, his swarthy figure bearing the virile cast of manhood, now complete. And so Ana often came to him in times of uncertain fear and foreboding, falling into his strong yet graceful arms.

  But though their bodies had matured their minds remained unblemished. For in endless childhood games had they often engaged each other. Ama would look for Ana in the Gardens of Abrea. But she would hide far away from him in the tangled thickets beneath the Hill of Abra, until in his frantic searches for her he would finally find her hidden in some dark ferns in the valley or along the banks of the river far below.

  Ana would then run from him in laughter, past tall green hedge rows and over towering mossy bridges made of the tangled roots of plants and trees. Past ivy-covered ledges, which looked down into the foggy forests of the valley below, they would race. Through the hidden cool of quiet grottos and forgotten glades, across grassy meadows, and through fern-filled valleys they would wind their way together until the last fading glow of daylight’s gold had been spent.

  Then in the cool of the early evening they would climb the great tree that stood upon the hill. Ama would guide her to its base where flowed forth the tree’s wide white roots. Ama would then climb up into his great limbs, showing Ana how to run and bounce along them with her feet. The thick limbs would then gather to them the force of the gusting winds and rock up and down, throwing them high into the air as they laughed together.

  For many hours they played within the heights of the great tree, looking out across the endless groves of Phantaia that filled the valleys below. Then in the cool of the evening Ama would sit beside Ana on the thick boughs and talk of the many wonders of the woods that lay hidden in the wildest hollows of Phantaia. These mysterious places, Ana told him, she greatly desired to see.

  But each evening the dark twilit mist of Phantaia would return, rising up from some unknown place in the valley below, descending down and around them and enveloping them in its strange violet dew. The lights of the great tree would then disappear beneath its gloomy cloak. And so the light of the brighter day was banished from the land each evening by that phantom mist.

  As Abrea lay hidden in that strange lavender fog, Ana would look down from the cloudy slopes. And a sudden fear would come over her, a feeling vague and uncertain. Never would she be caught in the dark woods alone when twilight fell and the purple mists had returned, as many unknown things would begin to creep within the shadows that lay about the edges of the encircling woods.

  But she had learned this was also the time of sleep. For soon would they return to their garden beds, hiding within the purple shadows of the garden that now bathed the brighter world they had known.

  Upon a time the gloomy mists had returned again, surrounding them as they lay in their secret hiding spot. There in the cool of the wisteria’s perfumed air Ama first desired to kiss Ana, holding her close to his body and touching her face with his gentle hands. For many nights they slept together in youthful innocence in the rapture of a sacred love most pure and untarnished that had grown between them. So was born in the ghostly catacombs of the misty gardens of Abrea an endless bliss and love which, alone of its kind, would ever endure in that sad world. And by its almost divine will alone would it thus be sustained.

  But it was a night like no other, when the mists of that twilight forest were thickest, that there came into Ama’s dreaming mind a terrible vision most malevolent and unexpected. For he saw in this nightmare his own death clear and sudden. In that dream he stood before a rocky cliff. About his throat were long and wiry black hands. Into the face of a horrible monster he stared. Yet he could see only fiery eyes in the hollows of their shadowy form. The beast then seemed to turn his head, so that he saw with his dying eyes his own headless body thrown down into a swirling mass of clouds, black and baneful.

  Ama awoke in a bath of sweat, screaming out into the night whose gray fogs had curled about them. At first he thought he saw the green glowing eyes of another being looking down at him from the midst of that strange fog. Then he saw Ana’s kind face looking over him, soothing him with her gentle hands, and holding him tight through that night of terror.

  But as she looked into his eyes, he saw in her something beautiful and profound yet dark and cursed within her bound, which he could not grasp and only briefly glimpsed. But he was pure of spirit and could fathom no darkness or evil in Ana, so that he saw behind her eyes only the loving heart she hid within her deepest depths.

  Trembling, Ama then said to Ana, “My dreaming mind has seen many horrors, Ana. For several nights before this one have they come unabated. So have I in secret come to dread sleep and the mist that brings it. I have vowed many nights to roam the woods at dusk like a phantom fleeing before the last lights of dusk so I might escape these nightmares. For I have dreamed of not just my own death but of the death of Phantaia.”

  Ana comforted him and spoke to him with soothing and gentle words, saying, “Ama, into my own mind has come many odd dreams none of which has ever come to pass or ever will. Be not scared of these ghostly days of future passed. For you are here with me now. And brighter days lie ahead for us.” Ama was then renewed in the eternal hope he had for them and the abiding love he now carried for Ana.

  They then both saw the morning light of the One Tree coruscating over the tops of the trees. The mist was then burned away, and the beauty of the dawning light of that garden broke through the melting mists of that strange half-light world as they had always done to brighten their hopeful hearts. Its glorious lights then returned to their eyes the beautiful emerald of the dew-covered garden and its trailing meadows. Terror was replaced with the joy of that sacred place once more. And Ama soon forgot his bleak visions.

  Ama then heard from afar in the soft whispering winds the voices of the ancient trees from deep within Phantaia. “My brothers and sisters are calling me.” Ama said as he jumped to his feet.

  Ama began to gather food and to prepare for a long journey, telling Ana, “Follow me to the top of the mound of Abrea.” At the top of the hill Ama stood on a large rock. He then stood still, as if listening intently to some music born by the wailing winds. He then smiled, saying, “Ana, we shall now begin a grand adventure. For the time has come for me to share with you the many secrets hidden within Phantaia.”

  Ana then smiled with anticipation. Before her eyes Ama then took form as Phanyan, the Ebrandeer and guardian of Phantaia. He again signaled for Ana to come to him with the food he had gathered. Ana then climbed once more upon his back. With a wild dash he then carried her across the green swards that ringed about Abrea’s hill. Ana laughed with delight as they raced across the green meadows of Aron and up the slopes past the White Trees of the Ringwood, out of the valley, and deep into the mysterious forests of Phantaia

  For many nights Phanyan carried Ana with the winds to their back, racing deep into the shadowy depths
of Phantaia, and into the arcane wooded realms that lay just beyond the river of Avalyr. Ana saw that from the valley of Phantavra they had descended into a hidden forest that lay between the gentle green slopes of the mountains and the seas.

  In this peaceful glen had dwelt many of the secretive ones, those who are called the Chieftain Trees of Phantaia. These magnificent trees ruled the dense and tangled wilderness of Phantaia, where little of the light of the One Tree had yet remained upon the tops of the trees. They alone had long towered over that part of the forest, guarding it from the infringing evil that had crept before the tree-lined gates of Avalumlea. But few could find them. For these Lords of the Trees had used their wood-magic, the Galdar, to obfuscate themselves and their forest-children within the ethereal gloom of Phantaia. By their enchantments were many secrets of the forest shielded from the eyes of evil and the knowledge of the children of the Primordial Ones that had for many ages passed through forbidding Avaras and the fringes of Phantavra’s sacred Avalumlea groves.

  Phanyan had carried Ana far and wide to speak with the enigmatic trees. And from them she would learn of their rich histories, of the strange sights they had seen, and of the vast knowledge and wisdom they had grown to possess. For there was much they had known of that dark world from its earliest age which they had often shared with Ama in days long past.

  Ana had in time conversed with many of these trees and learned of their tragic fates. For Ama had taught her their secret language. Their knowledge was given to her in poems and song, which Ama recited as the trees shared their tales with them. In this simpler and more pristine time in the forest she would remember their whispering words of wisdom, listening to their gentle music and that of their children as the soft winds flowed through their swaying boughs.

  These words she would keep within the confines of her heart. For none knew what would become of this brotherhood of trees. They often spoke of a bleaker future that had recently seemed uncertain to them. Ama had known this as well from his dreams, and so had sought to preserve the knowledge of the trees should they be lost. So was given to Ana many dark and mysterious truths which these lords of the forest had kept in secret.

  Of the Chieftain Trees there were seven greater and five lesser trees. Of the latter little was known. For their purpose was most mysterious. They grew in woody lairs hidden deep in the outer fringes of Phantaia where few had travelled.

  Including the One Tree, their father, there were thirteen Chieftain Trees in all. These had been sent to watch over Phantaia and rule over its countless forest-children by their noble patriarch. Yet each dwelt far apart in distant lands, bound to the earth and water spirits that dwelt among them. All things moved by their design and will in Phantaia. For by their works and breaths, guided by the One Tree, was Phantaia’s destiny and design eternally bound.

  Ama then told Ana of the seven greater chieftain trees. Their secretive names were given as follows:

  Durn - oak

  Alcu - elder

  Afa - ash

  Kum - hawthorn

  Esnes - black willow

  Iwu - yew

  Uyl - apple

  These were the true Lords of Phantaia, and the most ancient of all trees that lived in the forest and many that would come later. Some dwelt close to Abrea, like Alcu and his princely white elderwood sons that encircled and guarded Abrea. Then there was Kum and his watchful bardic hawthorns which recorded the music of Abrea’s waters in their memories. Some like Afa slept peacefully beside the slow gliding river of Avalyr, glancing down upon his children’s reflections that stretched in unending rows about its shores. He listened often to the child of the river whose mournful song echoed up from its depths at the falling of the mists.

  Others dwelt far away, like the black willows of Esnes whose grim limbs and leaves hung like witches’ hair down over pits and caverns that roared up from the dark underworld of Phantaia. But the dark and twisted oak of Durn had the mightiest and strongest children, the Durnach. For they alone had bravely clung to the farthest fringes of Avaras, where their bold trunks yet stood before the tumult of Yana, guarding Phantaia’s children from her endless storms.

  Yet they of all the living trees that once had grown there had survived by their constitution and indomitable will alone. For the strong enchantments placed upon them by Durn their father-tree had helped them survive and stay protected from sea, wind, and storm. They loved him and drew ever nearer to his great trunk as the world itself grew more threatening, closing in upon them as the fated ages of turmoil passed away.

  Unto each of these proud seven was granted many servant trees. There were eight powerful tree servants given to each, nine in total for each kind. These were spread about the distant fringes of Phantaia and before the many gates that led into its interior. Yet were they ever bewitched by the lights of the One Tree and drawn to its center. For by the shining wings of its spiritual lights in the golden skies of Amladem, floating within its ethereal sky, did the One Tree yet feed their silvered leaves and guide them from afar.

  These trees then returned songs of thanks and love to him, which they cast up into the air as faint voices in the dead of night. They then were returned by the many young children of the One Tree that rose up at the foot of the Gardens of Abrea. It is these trees and the voices of the Chieftains that could be heard as one great song for those who listened, calling to each other in a fateful and solemn symphony of the trees, deep and mysterious, within the heart of that primeval wood. And so by the concordant harmony of the voices of the trees was Phantaia ever moved and sustained as one living entity through the seeming eternity of that shadowed world.

  Over many nights Phanyan and Ana had travelled the far flung trails of Phantaia, as that forest was a vast and nearly limitless domain. But by secretive paths had Phanyan woven his way between the thick and shadowy trunks of Phantaia, suddenly walking into dark portals within the hollows of ancient trees, and then reappearing in the midst of strange valleys Ana did not recognize.

  Through underground caverns, over rocky bridges, through mountain passes and waterfalls they roamed unseen by the eyes of evil, always avoiding the darker parts of the wilderness and wary not to wake the strange spirits of the earth and trees that crept there. They would sleep by night in peace and safety beneath the roots of the towering servants of the Chieftain Trees, encircled by their many sons and daughters that grew along the wooded paths about them.

  Ana had come to bond with the trees and know of them by name, as true friends and companions. For in the daylight hours Ama had taken her to their numerous sacred circles, where they would meet and bathe upon the grassy slopes in the bright lit glow of day together. She often danced and sang with them in their shining vales of green and hilltop fields of delicate flowers. And they were ever happy beside the frolicking young girl that had come to greet them there with such happy eyes.

  When she walked in those woods the trees would clamor to be near her. For they saw in her some new hope which their own woody hearts could only dimly sense. They often drew near to her, as within her spirit had grown a warm life-giving radiance that drew them ever closer to her presence, like the promise of some vital spring or essence long denied their thirsty roots. Yet by her kind and gentle nature did they come to know and love Ana. And sad were they when she would depart their lonely copse.

  Thus the mysteries of Phantaia’s most secretive groves and the spirits that grew from the sweet earth about them were slowly revealed to Ana. Yet some things Ama could not show her. For more curious things dwelt in the distant places of Phantaia, inexplicable things of a much older world even Ama could not comprehend. Yet Ana had in time come to know nearly all the great trees that grew there. And she came to see in Ama a truly generous spirit, with a nurturing and gentle heart much like her own that, by its vast capacity for compassion and caring, had guided the countless children of the many forests of Phantaia.

  She saw, like children, they seemed to come innocently to him with love and trust l
ike a father. And so his generous nature revealed a spirit that bound Ana to him, as well. Never again could she see herself leaving Ama or his blessed Phantaia. For the love they had all shown her had grown inside her. And she had vowed in secret, in a quiet moment alone, that she would protect Ama and the woods with her own life if she must.

  Upon an evening, in the dark corners of Phantaia, they found themselves on the last of their many journeys. It was there that Phanyan took shape as Ama again, leading Ana to the foot of a wide and girthy tree hidden in the shadowed thickets of a black and lonely wood which light itself had seemed to have forsaken. She could barely see beyond the black tree line the distant lightning of the storms of the Magra mother as she raged on into the night. And she could sense the icy winds upon the tops of the trees as the blue storms raged upon them in unending battles in the distant valley below her.

  Here in this bleak valley they slept for a fortnight under the mighty mossy boughs of the black oak named Durn, the greatest of the Chieftain Trees in Phantaia. About his mighty roots lay numerous acorns cast off from his thick curving boughs. The great oak had unbound the very shadows from the twilight of the forest by his breath and the enchantments he had wrapped about his neighboring woods. And the rich smell of his leaves and bark, and of the child-oaks he had raised, permeated the dense shaded woods around them.

  Ana looked up from the giant roots under which she slept, and saw the last rays of the lights of the One Tree thrown upon the tops of its crooked black limbs so that they shined like golden arms in the depths of its thick ebony boughs. Stretching into that winding rocky valley his dark oak armies had protected the woods of Phantaia from the evils of Avaras in the canyons below. For the Durnach oaks were the most powerful of the trees in Phantaia. And the witch-hazels below could not defeat them as long as the light that fed them yet shined from afar, and their oak father stood strong and unyielding among them in its impenetrable heart.

  Though apprehensive, being so close to Avaras, Ana felt at peace within the shadows of that mighty oak. Ama then told her that long ago had Durn been birthed from the earliest seeds of the One Tree. So like a brother was Durn to him. So too was Durn and his children closest to the One Tree in spirit. For they had followed even closer to its own secretive purpose set long ago—a purpose not even revealed to him.

  Ama then looked upon Ana with sad eyes. “Ana, in the night before this one I had a new dream. In it I saw the colors of autumn fall upon the One Tree,” he told her. “And in my dream the garden had grown gray.” A look of fear had now appeared upon his face.

  “I too, long ago, had this dream, Ama,” Ana replied, looking for a long time at Ama with knowing eyes. “But I know not what it means, as I can never see a time when the One Tree should ever die.”

  “Should the One Tree ever fall I fear Durn and all the Chieftain Trees would also perish. And Phantaia, left unguarded by these oaks, would fall before the malicious trees that now gather below in Avaras.”

  Durn, the great oak, hearing Ama’s voice, opened his dark eyes and wrinkled lips. He looked down with his wide amber orbs at Ama. Then he looked into the eyes of Ana and smiled. Like the sound of eternity itself, in a most ancient and hoary voice, he then said, “Beneath my father, the One Tree, has slept for many eons a silver well, my child. It alone has sustained him. The One Tree shall live until the spring that sustains him perishes. Then shall he wither and die. For the mystical water now flows through him and is one with his spirit. So has my brother Kum and his sons been ever watchful of it, listening to the ceaseless sound of its flowing waters for a time when they should be silenced.”

  Durn continued, “Phantaia shall exist and all my brothers and sisters with it until the time when, by fate’s hand, the waters perish and a new spirit enter it. Of this miracle have the voices of the trees of late begun to speak. But with hopeful hearts we now sleep and wait in the shadows for either our death or rebirth.” The tree then slowly closed its eyes as the twilight mists climbed up from the darkest depths of Avaras, swirling about its limbs.

  Ana thought upon these mysteries as she fell asleep in the arms of the great tree. But as Ana drifted off into a deep sleep, she thought she could see the dim radiance of two glowing eyes in the dark woods that stood about them. They stared at her for the longest time, and then disappeared.

  When morning came they left the gloomy Oak Groves of Durn. Climbing a windy hill upon a mountain slope, they saw the mysterious One Tree shining brightly far away in the distance. Like a burning beacon, heroic yet serene, it seemed to call them home. And Ana was happy about the thought of returning to the peaceful Gardens of Abrea.

  As they rode back home she thought upon the words of the ancient oak and how the strange well had sustained the living trees and gardens of that wilderness through the life of the One Tree. And she thought again upon the encroaching evil that now seemed to creep about the fringes of Avaras in the valley below them.

  For many days and nights they travelled, until within a tiny glade of grass that grew within the thicker woods they stopped to rest. Ama had returned to his boyhood form. He then walked up to her while she rested in the warm grass, saying, “Ana, I must tell you something. During our journey the past few days I saw an intruder in the woods. And so I have raced ahead, carrying us beyond its reach. But the nature of that being is unknown to me. I know only that the woods’ calls of late have been of war and its preparation. For the coming of this terrible intruder in their midst has signaled some change in Phantaia. This new cry shall bring once more a call to arms and the defense of Phantavra and Abrea from the dark evil that shall soon rise again from the pits of Avaras.”

  But Ana told Ama, “This must be my father and his servants, Ama. If he has come for me then I must face him alone. For I must spare Phantaia his wrath.”

  But Ama stood firmly, saying, “I do not think it is your father but a being unknown and with strange intent which none can yet comprehend. For the woods spoke of something more sinister among them, a being that passes freely as if unbound by light, shadow, earth, or void. This concerns me. For not knowing what it seeks has brought even greater fear amongst the children of the forest.”

  After many days travel Phanyan safely carried Ana asleep on his back to the Gardens of Abrea. He then climbed the great hill in the midst of the twilight air and laid her down onto her grassy bed as he had done many times before.

  The next day Ana awoke feverish from a troubled sleep. She turned to grasp Ama’s hand but he was gone. In a panic, she roamed about the garden looking for him. But she could not find him anywhere. She then called out to him from the slopes of Abra. She then heard a crunch of leaves and limbs behind her in the dense underbrush. Startled, she turned around to see Ama standing before her and holding the most beautiful flower she had yet seen. While she slept he had climbed to the very heights of the One Tree and there found a large blossom which he had picked for her.

  Ana looked frightened for a moment, then angry. But Ama only smiled, telling her, “I have one last secret to show you.” He carefully unfolded the blossom. She then saw its elegant four-pointed shape. But looking again she saw within it grew a fifth petal from its center, forming an unusual five-pointed star.

  Ama said to her, “The blossoms from the top of the tree have the power to heal all ills in Phantaia. These five petals represent the five Primordial Ones, the sons of the Essence Eternal. For the tree is in fact a symbol of their unity, which long ago was divided, and whose reunion is still the Spirit Divine’s greatest hope and desire. This truth he has yet to reveal in many other mysterious forms yet to come in Phantaia. So is his hope our hope, Ana, that this world be healed and sustained by love alone.” Ama then smiled as he handed it to her.

  He then called the great tree by its secret name, Celebreava, telling her, “This is the name of the shining spirit that yet dwells within the father-tree and its blossoms, that which gives it life, and that which gives its children life. Yet it is not the secret source of its light,
but of another spirit unseen within. Like my own secret name, Ebrandeer, the name of Celebreava must remain unspoken. For the hidden truth of its name belongs to the trees of Phantaia only.” Ana then looked with curiosity at the strange bloom.

  “Within this flower also dwells the secret to new life,” Ama continued. “From the topmost blossoms shall be born the first seed-bearing fruits for the generations yet to come. Yet the blossom’s pollen is meant for another. For the five petals also represent the five Maiden Trees. And this the One Tree sheds for them.

  “But these trees I cannot show you. For they are hidden from all eyes except one among them that grows near the garden unseen. The One Tree’s pollen is shed and given to them alone, borne by the winds that fill Phantaia’s greenest and most distant dales where they dwell. The Maiden Trees bring forth new life into Phantaia, taking into them the golden seeds shed forth and given to them by the father-tree. To smell of his flowers is to know of them. For their dreams of new life are bound together as one in those blooms,” Ama told her.

  Ama then shared with Ana the history of the noble five, the five Maiden Trees that are the mothers of the forest. He shared how they had given birth to the trees, tending to their needs, and shedding tears for the fallen ones that had perished. And so are made the Glessa, or enchanted amber, from their tears whose sap falls into the River of Avalyr when they weep.

  Of the five Maiden Trees, their names are remembered as follows:

  Phea - beech

  Veddu - birch

  Anling - alder

  Alum - fir

  Lumlea - rowan

  Phea is their queen. About her shining silver form are encircled twelve slender beech trees born of her dreams and who are handmaidens to her. To her only do they serve and protect. They will die to protect her. For she is the one true source of the next line of Chieftain Trees. She is the sacred bride to the One Tree. And she brings to him great love and faithfulness in all she does in Phantaia. He celebrates the beauty of her heart, her form, and her spirit by the throbbing of his sacred lights. As the One Tree shines a golden light, so she shines a silver one. And the two as one light united bring forth their bright beauty to Phantaia’s inner realms where their beams are forever mingled.

  Little is known of the other Maiden Trees except for their mightiest of servants, the Rowans of Avalumlea, whose children encircle the lands before Avalyr. These guard the inner realms from the evil that comes into their woods from Avaras to harm their nurseries. These are the children of the ancient rowan, Lumlea, whose white, knotted, and aged trunk lies hidden beneath the falls of Abrea in a fern-laden copse at the very source of the waters of Avalyr.

  She was once the mother of that forest in another world now lost for all time. The grandmother and midwife to the trees of Phantaia, she now guides the children of Phea. In her heart are hidden many enchantments born of other worlds before even the coming of the Essence Eternal into this one. For she is thought to have somehow survived the perils that had destroyed many divine and beautiful forests in worlds prior.

  Ama held Ana’s hand, guiding her by moss-covered stone stairs down the side of the cliff beneath the white waterfalls of Bann, and into the hidden fern-covered grottos that lay below the falls. He then told her that here alone had the warm earth of the Immortal Clay’s spirit spoken clearest to the trees. For his earthly essence had lain dormant there through countless eons of time, untouched and unmarred by the unfolding drama of that world.

  In this hidden place the spirit of the Rock Eternal had supported Lumlea by his rich nutrients, hiding her away under his towering cliffs from the eyes of evil which had continually sought her. For she alone carried the ancient wisdom of the forest and many others in her spirit. Hidden in her secret grotto beneath the falls, surrounded by impenetrable rocks and soft maidenhair ferns, aged Lumlea had remained untouched and pristine.

  Ana gazed upon the ghostly tree, amazed by her strange form and beauty as the pale mist of the falls floated about her white limbs and leaves. Under her dripping boughs would Ana often come to sit alone, listening to the sound of the waterfall as it fell upon the smooth rocks and roots of the old tree. Ana often heard the sad trees mourning for her rowan children in Avalumlea and the felling of them by the evil agents of darkness. To Ana was granted many blessings from this wise old woman of the world. The tree often whispered to her with its eyes and mouth closed. For that mother of trees knew of the secrets bound to Ana which she had not yet discovered. And yet many of these truths Lumlea had kept from her. For she told Ana that her fate would be revealed to her and made known in time.

  So, like her own mother, Lumlea cared for the child and comforted her for many days and nights. Many fears, hidden even from Ama, yet weighed upon Ana that only Lumlea had known. The old tree spoke to her of the nature of the world, the seas, and the hallowed earth beneath Phantaia. And from her Ana learned, though much time had passed, there yet awaited a flourishing age—a glorious new beginning for Phantaia which through her and Ama would soon arise again. But this simple yet hopeful truth alone was all the wise tree would impart to her.

  In the depth of the night, in the Gardens of Abrea, Ama and Ana rested from their long journeys in that mystical wilderness. On the slopes of the Hill of Abra they had come to rest in peace together once more, sleeping for many long nights beneath the cool shadow of that misty mound.

  But Ana had turned to him before bedtime, curious about the terrors of the lower woods of Avaras where she had seen many wicked and tortured faces upon the darker trees. She desired to know who they were and where they had come from, as they remained a great riddle to her. With reluctance Ama then shared with Ana the secrets of that sinister forest, though his knowledge of Avaras and its many dark histories was limited.

  The trees of the darker woods of Avaras had dwelt in a land apart from their sisters and brothers since the time when Phantaia’s first seedlings took root. But the darker soil of Avaras had been sundered from the brighter earth of Phantavra long before the evil trees had possessed it. For the spirits that crept there were forbidden by the Rock Eternal to ever enter Phantavra and the lands about Abra’s sacred mound, where lay his sister in deep repose. Into the black earth had come many abominable spirits and shadows of things unmentionable and most malevolent—the fallen children of the Primordial Ones whose tortured spirits in ancient times had become trapped there.

  For it is in the slimy earth of Avaras that the last of the dark lords of a forgotten land had hid their spirits, when their bodies were destroyed in the last wars between the Primordial Ones. They alone had survived the endless battles that destroyed their lands, hiding from the Nothingness that had consumed their siblings, and fleeing before the violent Dreaming Seas that had risen up to devour them. The trees of Avaras, their own spirits having fled their ancient forms in fear, had then become possessed by the demon-spirts that had come to dwell there in the black rocks and earth that remained.

  But the evil trees that had grown there were ruled by haunted witch-hazels of great power, those that are called the Connewe. Though these master trees had been children of the One Tree long ago, they had forsaken his warm loving light for the cold grip of darkness. For in ancient days the hazels were once twins to the twelve Chieftain Trees of Phantavra, their noble brothers, bound as one to them until divided by some strange enchantment inflicted upon them.

  Like the Chieftain Trees of Phantavra, they became Overlords of Avaras, being thirteen in number. They, however, had no lord. For in the witch-hazels had come to dwell the shattered spirits of the hateful children of the Limitless Void, those whose ghosts had hid there and escaped their cruel fate at the hands of their heartless father. Those great trees were thus possessed and forsook the loving light of the One Tree, their true father, embracing the forces of destruction, darkness, and death, seeking vengeance on all living things. And so too were they fed by the corrupt soil of Avaras, ever after, sundered from the brighter lands, alone and apart from their nobler siblings, fo
revermore.

  The thirteen Connewe, thus united by their evil, collected even great power amongst themselves. As a great war-band they now strove to gather the trees and destroy the One Tree and all of Abrea. For they hated the greener woods where their blessed brethren now dwelt. And so the Connewe vowed to separate the great tree from his many children, as they themselves, as children of the Limitless Void, had been cruelly abandoned by their own father. Yet in their avenging hearts they ever desired to find the Limitless Void and enact great vengeance upon him. For the paternal wound he had inflicted upon their hearts would not heal, and its pain within them knew no bounds.

  But it was known by the living trees of Phantavra that only by the will of their cursed father could those devilish spirits truly awaken again. For their spirits were yet bound to him as slaves. Without their father’s presence and the rage he engendered in them, they were powerless to destroy Abrea and defy its magical lights. Instead, they wrapped their dark enchantments about Phantaia like a garrote, so they might slowly suffocate its heart. None could now enter or exit its woods. With their own dark magic and the maligned spirits they summoned from the sickened earth, they now filled the sinister glades of haunted Avaras with horrors to entrap the leery and all those who might unknowingly wander into its muddy midst.

  This dark land would become a gigantic wilderness of shadowy woods and night terrors, far larger than the inner realms of Phantavra. For it stretched back into the mists of Time’s lonely corridors, into the blue mists of dim and unknown lands, whose crumbling earth eventually fell away, down into the bleak chasms of Wendalia.

  Great in age and strength, the witch-hazels of the Connewe had ruled over that dark wood for many ages. By the strange powers and wizardry they now possessed were they greatly feared. To each of these trees in time would be born dual servants, so that there was now three of each. They alone were give knowledge of the secret paths through the woods leading into its hidden interior. They could work great wizardry and evil when they came together, joined in a circle by their crooked arms, and call forth the dark spirits and ghosts of the putrid soil to do their vile work.

  But Ama told Ana, “We may never see these malevolent trees. For they now dwell in the farthest corners of those darkened lands, far from the lights of the One Tree which ever burns their crooked branches to cinders. They remain unapproachable, even in their own realms, as they are now protected by malevolent spirits hidden within the blackest catacombs of the rocks and earth, where even more perverse beings yet sleep.”

  Ama continued, “But the Connewe still hope to rise again within the shadows, marching into Phantavra to destroy Abrea and end the life of the One Tree. Yet it remains unknown to them that only by the destruction of the pool may they extinguish its candle. With the corruption of the pool might my brethren weaken, then fall before them. They would then rule over this land. But to what further end might their baneful spirits might be directed, none may know.” Ana then looked with fear about the woods.

  “So many mysteries yet remain as to the comings and goings in the dark corners of Avaras,” Ama said. “But we should not worry. For their ignoble father, the Limitless Void, has perished. Leaderless, there is no one left to command the Connewe towards further violence. And so they sleep. Yet something new has come into the woods that makes me doubt everything I have said to you.” And Ama looked far off into the mist.

  Ama then told Ana he had found something odd in the forest. In the last age the children of Esne, the Black Willow of Phantavra, had come to dwell among the Avaras children, forsaking the light of the One Tree, and dwelling in their midst. They had planted themselves upon the fringes of dark chasms, caves, and canyons in Avaras, spying upon the workings of the Connewe, and reporting to the Chieftain Trees of their grim toils in that dark land. But in time had seven of their kind been perverted to evil’s will and fled the lights of the One Tree and the mind of Esne, their father, joining the Connewe to serve them and their hidden purpose.

  They had seemed drawn to something, having fallen into the deep canyons that lay about Avaras, down into the underworld beneath Phantaia where not even the twilight gloom could reach. In those vast caverns the dark willows grew monstrous, so that in time their stringy roots stretched for great distances through the earth and stone. Like vampiric vines, they sucked the life from the trees and plants that grew above them. These willows they called the Were-Trees, or the Koredlum. Yet none had ever found them in that grim underworld, nor could they be destroyed. For some force not of this world sustained them.

  But of all the thirteen Chieftain Trees of Avaras, the most powerful were the Seven Hazels of Evil Thought—the Ephram. For they and the Koredlum had gathered together to do great evil. They had long ago found a dark pit that lay in the heart of blackest Avaras. They had grown around it to draw forth some unnatural power from its inky depths.

  In this pit had long slept a force none had ever seen or known except Ama. For the treacherous mind of a dark spirit slept in the bowels of its dark pool and the oily waters which lay hidden within. The knowledge of that pool and its secrets remained unknown to all living things in Phantaia, save to the Ephram and the Koredlum, whose wicked roots clung to the entrance of its black orifice.

  It was said the dark roots of the Ephram had gathered about the lips of that pit to drink from its poisonous waters, listening to the whisperings of the mystic spirits that slept within its depths. But from that pit, Ama learned, would come the source of something more sinister yet to be revealed in Phantaia. Born of an earlier world, it contained the source of an unfinished evil beyond all knowledge in this world. Ama then looked upon Ana with wild eyes, which she had not seen before.

  Then Ana said, “Of late I too have felt the dread of the trees, Ama. For when we had passed through those woods by the seas, I had seen their evil faces. Its then I saw a dark pit in the earth with many strange figures and forms I did not recognize.”

  But Ama said, “It is unlikely to be the same place. For there are many such dark places in Avaras. It is a vast realm of many canyons and chasms.”

  Ana replied, “But I saw the Ephram about a great pit. I saw their eyes. Ama, I am fearful they are on the move again, looking for me. It is me they want.”

  “No Ana. They only want to destroy the One Tree. But do not fear. For those demonic trees shall never make it to Abrea, as the Durnach that dwell within their ranges alert us of all intruders. Nor have the Connewe the courage to do harm to any living being in Abrea. For the lights of the One Tree would burn them to ashes, as they are made of only evil shadows. So had they turned back before the light and fled in past ages, back into the farthest fringes of Avaras to hide from it.” Ana then cuddled closer to Ama, her fears and doubts still lingering. For she knew what she had seen. And she hoped that Ama was right.

  As the golden rays of dawn beamed upon them, Ama and Ana rested upon the summit of Abrea, napping within the white roots of the One Tree. Beside the silver pool they held hands and looked into each other’s eyes. And they felt as one, closer in spirit and in mind to one another than ever before. As kindred spirits were they now, two innocent hearts beating in unison to the rhythms of nature’s ancient melody.

  Ama had shared many secrets of Phantaia with Ana and had showed her many wonders of the woods. Ama then spoke to her, saying, “Ana, should anything happen to me, you must remember the knowledge of the trees I have given you and keep their secrets close to your heart. For I have sought not to believe in the morbid dreams that now torture me. In recent days, they have come more often, like some cruel memory of a tortured past. And so I have sought to preserve the sacred knowledge and wisdom of Phantaia in your heart and mind, so that they might yet live on should I leave this world.”

  This hidden tree-knowledge would be named Breddunar, the forest-secrets. For Ama had hoped they would be kept hidden from the world until their knowledge could be shared with the deserving children of a future age.

  But Ana said to him, “Ama,
do not to speak of those dark dreams and thoughts any longer. For my heart hurts to see you distressed by such things which do not seem a part of this world but of another foreign to us. I am but a daughter of dreams, born of the mother of all dreams, and to which the fates of all living things are bound unto a timeless loom. But to me is it known by my mother’s words that many beautiful things yet shall come to pass. For a hopeful future yet lies ahead for us. We should not follow the uncertain paths of our dreams. From us shall come something joyous, which I have vaguely seen in the shadows of my own heart.”

  Ama then felt comforted by this daughter of the sea. He had grown close to her and drawn to her. He held her face gently in his hands, and drew close to her to feel her warm breath upon his own. Ana looked into his eyes and felt something new and wondrous awakening from within. Ama then embraced her in his strong arms.

  But that violently curling mist, like a rising banshee, suddenly descended upon them, hiding them in its thick cocoon. Ana stepped back, startled by its sudden appearance, as it now seemed gray and gloomy, and not of the lavender color she had seen many times before.

  It summoned into her mind a dark memory. And she gazed at Ama with her own uncertainty hidden in her eyes. For she feared in secret she would bring some evil upon him and upon that blessed paradise. And she feared she would draw Ama into her own strange fate, which had yet been partially revealed to her by the words of the Shadow and the Twilight Mist.

  Would she bring doom to Ama by her presence in Abrea? Would she bring doom to them both? She turned away from Ama and walked to the edge of the pool.

  She now spoke. “For many nights and days, Ama, I have thought upon my mother An, who lies hidden in the depths of that far away ocean. I long to see her again. I feel I must go to her and return to the sea, quickly now. Somehow I feel I belong with her, though I know by the words of the Lavanc I am forbidden to return.” But in her secret heart, hidden from Ama, she desired in truth to free him from the darkness she knew now would come looking for her. She did not know what her father would do to her, or of his dark and destructive designs for Phantaia. She feared the evil he would bring down upon them both. And that Ama would be harmed. Her heart hurt at the thought, as she wrapped her arms about herself.

  But Ama looked puzzled, hearing her strange new desire. Ana, gazing about the valley, then said to Ama, “I still do not know the meaning of this strange place nor my place in it, Ama. Though much has been shared with me by you and the loving trees, I have nothing to give in return. At night while you slept I have heard the pining of the seas calling me.” Ana then ran to him, imploring him, “Ama, please, you must return me to the seas now.”

  As Ama held her, he saw how lost she felt. But he told her, “Ana, I in truth have no answers to the questions that remain in your mind. For I too know not what lies behind the mystery of why you are here.”

  “But, I cannot take you to the ocean,” Ama said to Ana. “For the Twilight Mist asked that you be brought to Abrea and remain here with me. All I now know the Twilight Mist shared with me in the youthful days of Phantaia. Your grandfather had sought to spare you from some terrible tragedy. For the workings of some evil which dwells beyond Phantaia and the seas would someday come for you, he told me. So have I brought you here to hide you away. And I shall protect you from the darkness should it come to threaten you here in Abrea.”

  Hearing his words, Ana now knew he had known. And she looked down in greater sadness and doubt, no longer able to hide the truth from him. But before she could speak, Ama walked to her and embraced her, comforting her again. Ama then felt the bold heart of Ana beating within her, but with some strange force and design beyond this world.

  Ama stood still, pondering its strange beat. For it had some hypnotic power over him. He then placed his right hand on her chest and said to her, “Something great lives inside you Ana, which I had sensed since your first days here.” She then removed his hand. For Ana feared like the Shadow he might see some horror therein, and know of the strange waters she had been told held some destiny, which she did not yet comprehend.

  But Ama stood as one in a trance. For the strange music of the waters within her had brought into his mind a memory of a story told to him as a young boy by the Twilight Mist. Somehow it had summoned those memories from its own depths and reminded him of a distant time as a young boy beside his gentle uncle in the Gardens of Abrea. But the stories told to him he had not understood until now.

  “I am reminded of a strange tale, Ana, told to me long ago by your grandfather. And in its story I feel may lie the answer to your riddle,” Ama told her.

  Ana slowly walked away perplexed and sat upon a rock beside the pool. As Ama sat beside her, he told her, “I will share the origins of our world and many others, which had been told to me long ago by your grandfather. From it shall you come to know of the One Tree, my blessed father, and how it came to be. But maybe it too shall reveal your purpose in coming here. For in that story lies the mystery of a fated pool, dark and mysterious, which had haunted the children of many fallen worlds before this one.”

  As Ama began to tell his tale, Ana looked into the pool at her feet and saw her reflection again upon the surface of its silver waters. She then saw that she had aged. Then in the fog that fell about them, she thought she saw herself as a woman, yet much older. About her feet her children played. And she heard a strange word rising up out the waters, saying only, Maymee. The vision then faded away as the fog enveloped them.

  The pool lay gray and silent again. The once-bubbling brook now stopped flowing, as the forest below them grew deathly still. Even the great tree’s limbs stood unmoving. Its once-fluttering leaves and shining lights turned a brilliant shade of lavender, as if the mist itself and the voice of the boy had somehow changed the One Tree’s lights. The mist flowed around the hill, wrapping it in its pale gray color and filling the Gardens of Abrea that lay eerily quiet about them.

  Ama sat beside Ana in the rich ferns that graced the hilltop. She lay in his arms beside the pool and listened as he spoke, until his eyes melted away into the dreamy landscape of his haunting tale.

  The Fallen World

  Ama sat quietly, gazing off into the distant horizon. “When I was a young boy,” Ama said to Ana, “the Twilight Mist had revealed to me many mysteries of our world and many others stretching back in time. Yet I had not known until now, that in his wisdom he had sought to give me a deeper knowledge, so I might gain some understanding in this troubled time.”

  Gathering the epic tale in his mind, Ama then began.

  Before the creation of Phantaia and the mighty earth that stood beneath it, there was nothing except the emptiness of space and the dust and decay of a dying world. Even before this one was made had many others before it been birthed, born, and died, each destroyed by the evil that had always hid there in the shadows.

  But despite evil’s destructive will, strangely had the good children that dwelt there been consumed by their own wickedness in the end. For they had struggled for power over each other and the world, until they had extinguished the last living flame that once shined brightly within it. Yet with its last dying ember had always remained an enduring hope that something good would be reborn from its ashes.

  A thousand worlds prior to this one had a world been made in which the lights of dawn shined brighter than any other, pure and untarnished by the eternal night that always crept about it. In the youthful grandeur of that ancient world had a magnificent tree of golden splendor grown beside a radiant pool of purest silver, wherein no shade or shadow could abide. More beautiful than our own, its sapphirine waters had been born from the primeval dew of the shining tree that grew beside it, so that the pool’s own light was most luminous, like that of the golden tree that fed it.

  Yet this pool of light dwelt not apart from the tree, but was wed to it in spirit, such that each was sustained by the other. For the loving union of their lights had cast back the shadows from the gloomy world, beaming down a
s one white beacon their gold and silver rays into the depths where it lay hidden.

  About the great tree had grown a rich forest much like Phantaia, stretching boundless through the valleys of a vast sylvan paradise. But of spectral lights were its trees forged, with leaves of gold, and bark bathed in the light of its polished silver. No darkness could dwell in that lucent wood of gold and silver. For into these gilded trees had the beams of the pool and tree ever shined, unfaded, so that the shining glades and glorious meadows grew tall and grandiose in their prismatic lights.

  But though the pool and the tree had blessed that world with their unblemished radiance, no child could be born into that forest or dwell therein. For by its blazing sun was that world oddly cursed by its sterile state of unwavering perfection.

  Beneath the forest, she who is named the Evil One had dwelt in the dark depths undisturbed. Through the birth and death of many worlds and continuums she had slept, hidden within the foul waters of a baneful pool whose black waters issued forth from the bottom of a putrid pit. This fearsome sea serpent had slept in the depths of those abysmal waters, suffering alone in private agony. Long ago had the ancient shadows of her broken heart bled away, so that nevermore had she the will or even the desire to cast forth ever again her grim shade into this bright world of eternal sun again.

  But the hollows of her dark spirit had been filled, long ago, with the Insatiable Hunger of Hatred and the Unquenchable Thirst of Revenge. And so her vengeance against the light and hatred for the living had grown ever greater within her. With her ravenous appetites she had fed upon the living children of earlier worlds, such that no trace of them had remained. The light of their spirits and the form of their flesh was thus savagely devoured by her, so that never again would they be born again into it. With their deaths did their worlds also perish, immolating into the void, a pitiful destiny most malicious and cruel.

  But the pool and tree had been reborn into this new world, yet again, to defy her. Bound as one, born of Merciful Love and Enduring Compassion, finally united, they had come forth again to wage war against the Evil One for the death of their children in countless worlds previous. For they had sought to cleanse it of that vile serpent’s spirit once and for all, that which had lain in wait to poison and pollute their love with its fanged maw.

  Seeing their blinding light beaming forth upon the horizons of that young world, the Evil One had risen up from her great gulf to assault the source of it and to devour it whole. But as her great jaws opened up to consume the tree and its sister pool, she was seared by the strange spiritual fire that shined out from them both. For the light of the golden tree and its silver pool united had now birthed the Sacred Light, whose mighty candle now burned pure and bright within them both.

  The face of the serpent was then seared, and her form sundered in two by its double-flame. She then burst forth into great storms of gray fog and cloud, releasing her own dark waters from her black heart, down into the world. But from her dying body were spawned twin horrors. For two misshapen abominations had arisen from her black and corrupted womb.

  These were the bastard sons, born of the ruin of the Dark Mother’s putrid and divided flesh. Greatest of these was the indomitable not-being called the Nothingness—he who eats the spirits of the living, the essence of which was gifted unto them from the One Cosmic Spirit. The cleaver of souls, the Nothingness had arisen from the very root of his mother’s immolating heart. But from her decaying body had arisen his terrible twin, the vast storm called the Emptiness—that which consumes the secret form of the Vatar, the flesh of the living and the matter from which it takes shape. And so was born the vile slayer, the eater of the dead, the consumer of all matter, and the father of the frightful Magra Lords.

  Her two evil sons, the Nothingness and Emptiness, fed upon their malevolent mother’s flesh. They then were filled with her evil appetites and insatiable desires. And so in them was thus born anew the unending hatred of the world, its living tree, and its shining pool. Yet the spirit of the Evil One had remained, trapped in her dark pool of death and decay.

  The sinister twins now rose forth from her corpse to wage vengeful war against the pool and the tree, seeking to sunder the source of its blasphemous illumination, and thus obliterate its light forever. But the Nothingness and Emptiness could never approach the light of the pool or tree. For by its beams were their own spirits burned. And so they built for themselves a terrible prison in the depths of the Great Beyond, where even the lights of Heaven would fade in the swirling gray fogs of their mother’s mists.

  Seeing the source of the Sacred Light unapproachable, the evil twins then sought to divide the pool from the tree, one from the other, so that they might falter and fall away, and their sacred spirits forever after divorced from each other. For by the breaking of the marriage of tree and pool would that world fall again, back into restless shadows and dreadful dreams. And so the dying world would be theirs to consume, once more.

  By the act of a servant of midnight, a dark demon most wretched and devious had the source of the pool been found and polluted. As its own light faded, this sacred pool was cruelly ripped away from the earth by the Emptiness, so that it bled forth its silver blood about the mound, crying out in agony. The last of its silver waters were then spilled down into the depths of the pit of the Evil One, where they were devoured by the dark waters of the bottomless well that hid there.

  With the waters of the beautiful well now destroyed, the union of tree and pool had been broken. Divided from its other half, the golden tree now wilted, and its leaves turned brown. The Sacred Light that dwelt within the tree then faltered and faded, so that its spiritual flame departed that world, cast away as a shining seed, into the mountains that lay within the heavenly ether. The world then slipped back into the silent gloom from which it was made. And that darkness which had always hid among the rocks and trees, returned once more. Only the umber husk of the tree remained, the last relic of that once blessed marriage.

  By their endless hunger and thirst, the evil twins gorged upon the flesh of the world and its unborn spirits until they became bloated and fat. Only the foul breath of the Dark Mother remained, its putrid fog hanging upon the surface of the Black Pool, flowing out upon the corpse of the world left drained by her vile and vampiric sons. And so that distant and forsaken world had died, as had many others. But so too had fallen the Evil One that once had cursed it. And she was never to live again in this world or any other. For her two violent children would rule them all ever after.

  But something had remained that was left untouched. Though the tree had perished, the empty cauldron of that pool had yet remained. For its rocks were born of the heart of the One Cosmic Spirit that cannot perish—the Sacred Heart whose essence he had placed within the rocky grail of the pool. For in that dying well had yet remained his undying wish that the courageous spirits of his children should rise again and embrace the divine will found within its waters.

  Ama then paused. Ana had started to reach down into the well, pondering Ama’s strange tale. “It is time for a short break,” Ama said. “But the story shall continue.”

  He then slipped down the hill and out of sight. When he returned he brought Ana fresh water from the streams of Lilu, fresh berries, and nuts from the gardens. They then gorged together beside the crystal spring, as the dark clouds that gripped the garden deepened around them. To Ana it seemed that only Ama, the tree, the pool, and she were now left in that sad gray world. And so she drew close to Ama as they ate.

  Ama stood up and stretched his body, refreshed. Smiling, he bent down, saying, “Ana, may I continue?”

  Ana then looked up with her tired, yet curious eyes, saying, “Yes, I am ready, Ama. But I am saddened by the dying tree and its pool in this tale. What became of them?”

  Ama then stood before her animated, saying, “There is more to tell. Much more.” He then began to walk around the pool, looking into it as if searching for inspiration. He then continued the second part o
f his story.

  Many worlds after that embattled one had also perished in darkness, sinking each time into shadowy ruin and wreckage by the violent acts of the evil that lay in wait there. For they had entrapped the minds of many children, those possessed of their own dark hearts which they could not fathom. And so they in turn destroyed themselves and their own kind.

  But in the last world, the one previous to our own, there had been born a much brighter and more hopeful future than any yet known. For within the earliest days of its own glorious beginning, there had remained, yet again, a dark and depleted well. Its hollow cauldron was all that had remained of an ancient pool whose waters had long nurtured that previous world. Beside this dry well now stood the sad black trunk of a fallen tree, whose own mists and dews had departed it long ago.

  But out of the foggy gloom had walked a grim and forlorn spirit cloaked in the ephemeral gloom of evening’s twilight. It had come from the unknown lands that lie beyond the farthest swells of the Seas of Eternity, where the Great Mother’s dreams were forever forged anew, and whose immortal tides flowed on through boundless time and space.

  This being had come to kneel beside the ruins of the pool, solemn and unseen. With aged and regretful hands, it had carried the last of the waters of an unknown pool, whose grim past was more fateful than this one. With trembling hands, it poured the last of those waters back into the shattered font, so that it might be reborn and its pool yet live again. That being then wrapped its dark violet cloak about it and disappeared into the mist.

  The pool then lit up again with a miraculous glow cast from the essence that now possessed it. Though the tree had died, the pool would yet live again to bring new life to this world. For within its waters hid many unborn spirits. Unlike any well known before, was it made. Of light and shadow, and the realm of eternal dusk and dawn equally drawn, were those waters forged. For the twilight children of that world were those waters meant to serve.

  But those waters also bore a curse to all who would seek to harm them. For that pool had been remade, such that never again would it be undone or destroyed by the powers of darkness or of light, evil or of good, without exacting its retribution upon them in the end. Such was its Creator’s intent. These strange waters now safely slept, bathed in the dreams of future spheres and damned worlds with doomed beings yet to live, suffer, and die by its unrelenting will, until either its own ominous spirit would be obliterated, or its secret purpose at last achieved.

  The twilight pool and the corpse of the tree, born unto their shadowed pasts in the throes of their brighter futures, returned to peaceful slumber as this new world awaited the dawn of its own rebirth.

  Beneath the quiet pool and the shriveled roots of the dead tree, deep in the ground had slept a hidden maid. That child had for many ages lain in the womb of the world, dreaming in her stony crypt that lay hidden within the earthen mound. She had been laid to rest there by an unseen but gentle hand, to sleep and dream until the time of her awakening would come at last. But the mysterious waters of the shattered pool above her had seeped into the cracks of the rocks, dripping down upon her face. She then rose from her bed, reborn and renewed.

  Climbing from her crypt, she came forth out into the dark forest walking barefoot upon the black earth that lay beneath the undead trees. That strange child had awakened in the youth of the world, wrapped in the shining raiment of her own shade, yet with the shadows of an earlier time glowing forth in her dark eyes.

  She then had knelt before the tree and pool, as a child praying before her parent’s graves. But seeing the black limbs of the dead tree hanging over her, she knew then she had come too late. Her tears then fell, the safni, first tender rains of the Sacred Waters in Phantaia, dripping down into the dark pool and waking its spirits from their eternal slumber. Her sorrows, now mixed with its waters, had become one with its brooding spirit.

  Ama, standing beside the pool, looked at Ana with solemn eyes. “It’s strange, but the Twilight Mist told me,” Ama said, “that by the sorrows for the dead and the dying are our loved ones reborn in this world.” Ama stood silent as Ana thought upon the wisdom her grandfather had given her before his death.

  Ama then returned to his tale.

  As the tears of the girl-child fell into the dark well, an ebony dew rose up from out of it, until a terrible storm had formed within its cloud, blowing the dust of the decayed world about her. As the hand of night rolled over the hill, great thunder was heard from the sky, as of a trumpet blown, bold and clear. The hollow husk of that tree then trembled as the pool grew still. The girl then ran and hid in the rocks below in fear.

  As gusts of wind blew down from the skies and the rains about them fell, a mighty lightning bolt flew down from the heavenly mountains above, striking the trunk of the dead tree, splitting it in two, and revealing its rotten and crumbling core. The shattered trunk of the dead tree then fell upon the hill, divided and shattered before the pool. The storm clouds then fled away into the Heavens. The girl-child then returned and stood upon the edge of its ruin.

  But as she looked into the skies the gates of the shining Heavens above her opened up. And a bold but bright voice was heard to say, ‘I am the beginning.’ But from the depths of the waters of the dark pool came another voice, dark and shadowy, saying only, ‘I am the end.’ As the skies calmed, it seemed that everything had fallen into silence once more.

  A great mist had descended, shrouding the mound in its mid-cloak, and bringing forth gentle rains so that the pool was replenished. But as the clouds cleared away, a small white seedling had pushed its way through the barren earth where the old tree had stood, growing from inside the broken log of the black trunk that had fallen.

  The girl-child saw the beautiful light of the frail sapling from afar, as it sprouted from the dark soil. She then pushed away the rotting husk so that the new forest-child might grow forth freely upon the mound. With her hands she then took water from the pool and poured it upon the tiny sapling. And so by her love in time would the seedling grow into a mighty and majestic tree.

  Ama then strode to the One Tree, standing before it and feeling its thick white bark, saying. “So beautiful was this new tree, Ana, that its bark shined white with the brightest of light, pure and of a pale fire, like that of the Creative Flame that burns in us all.”

  This tiny white tree the girl-child carefully nurtured. A new wilderness was then born from this sapling. For she took its many fruits and planted a twilight forest from its seeds. And so like Phantaia, those woods soon stretched back into the fathomless spaces of that world.

  The pool and tree dwelt side by side. But apart were they in spirit. For within the depths of the pool had lurked a sleeping presence whose force was born of the very breath of the visiting spirit that had brought it. The pool had immured the tree to its own purpose, so that the tree and the world about it both moved within its sphere. And so by its insidious powers and will was the light of the ghostly tree oddly dimmed by it.

  In time, the white tree shone not with a gold or silver light, but of eternal gloaming, with the violet cast of early evening’s lengthening shade. For the pool’s twilight waters were filled with an ambient glow, endowed with the shade of its gloomier heart. Yet by the earthly powers of that phantom tree was the pool’s light also changed from its deepening dusk to a dimmer dawn. And so within both tree and pool burned the pale glow of a moonlight lamp whose ghostly glare cast back the eternal night that crept upon them, drawing up the very shadows of the world into its own lavender cloak, mixing them with the lights of the tree, then casting them back out again in twilight hues more magnificent.

  The storms and rains had passed. And the clouds parted above the hill. Upon the mountains high above, a shining son had arisen from his heavenly tomb. He beamed down his many blessings upon that dark world, welcoming a new age of light unto it. For it was his bolt that had shattered the dying tree, awakening its own child to shine again.

  This golden child had refashioned the da
ylight Heavens, the Amandyas, summoning forth many blinking and beckoning stars, placing them in the dark skies above him. For he had fathered many celestial children. Their starlight had blasted away the darkness from the roots of the forest. And they had washed clean the face of the dark waters with their silver beams, until they alone were reflected therein like gemstones of many colors.

  Yet by the wise labors of this bright boy was twilight allowed to dwell under the brilliant sunbeams of Heavens in perfect harmony with the somber darkness that dwelt beneath it. The violet glow of eternal eventide shined throughout that wilderness for many ages unchallenged, such that evil could not come into it. So by the dusky gloom alone were the nether ones that dwelt in the infernal abyss soothed into a deep and unending sleep of death yet undying.

  With the fashioning of that twilit world the girl returned once more from the woods to the hill where the pool and tree now lay. But she was now a woman, tall and elegant in form. As she approached the pool, she looked into its waters, seeing upon its surface many faces. For the spirits of its children were swimming in its depths.

  She then pulled from its waters the Children of Twilight, one by one, whose spirits had been placed there long ago. They then drew forth the color of night into their faces from out of the surface of its bejeweled waters. And there shined within the white leaves of the great tree many lights upon their violet eyes, until unto them was drawn the light of the tree, renewing their shadowy spirits with its loving radiance.

  The Children of Twilight thus first came forth to sleep as one beside the tree and pool. And so were they united in brotherhood, dancing as one before she who had made them, their Divine Mother. But they saw the light of the star-children in the skies above, which glittered like diamonds in the Heavens. And they heard the music of the spheres, giving back to them their own joyous songs as tribute. They then felt the loving face of the Divine Father as he looked down from his golden halls in the Heavens above, shining his own benevolent light upon them. But they were most joyful for the gifts of the pool and tree, whose eventide glow filled their hearts with hope and peace everlasting.

  In time there were born many beautiful children between them. And the One Cosmic Spirit, whose house had been long divided, was brought together again as one spirit through them. And so came to be the Children of Twilight, the cherished ones, who would come to dwell in that world for many ages.

  The Divine Mother had dwelt among them in their faded gardens, in peace and happiness. But he who dwells in the Heavens had seen the fair maiden from afar. So in time the Divine Mother heard the blowing of the horns of the Divine Father, calling her from the heights of Heaven’s halls. Its music he had made for her. But she could not go to him. For she was bound to the pool and would not leave it. For therein had hid the last of the children of evening within their waters, whose sleeping spirits were yet unborn.

  One night as she sat beside the dark pool a strange loneliness filled her heart. But as she stared into its waters, she saw the bejeweled light of something shiny in its depths. As she reached down to touch it, she saw a single bright beam from an unknown source cast down upon the surface of the waters from on high. She gazed upon the beautiful glint of gold, captivated by it.

  She then left the pool and climbed the slopes of Heaven, seeking its source. The Divine Mother climbed up into the heights of the mountains until she stood upon the white alabaster steps of a great hall. There in the depths of his innermost chamber she saw the Divine Father praying before a mighty lantern of gold. He then turned and saw that his love had come to him at last by the calling of its candle. The Divine Mother and Father then held each other in a tender embrace.

  Their love grew, so that in time the Divine Mother had come to dwell beside the Divine Father in his shining lands that lay within the Heavens. They looked down upon all the children that they had made and were happy. For they now knew they had been summoned forth to bless the world with their noble creations.

  For many ages the great lantern of Heaven had held back the evil that still slept in the shadowy pits beneath the roots of the world. For twilight itself had been cast out of those woods by its radiance, long ago. Instead light and shadow had warred for dominion over it until Time’s very patience itself had been tried by their conflict. For it could no longer withhold the aging of that timeless world from that which would come to pass. The immortal trees of that wood had grown tall and wide feeding upon Heaven’s glow, until the celestial lights of the Divine Father could no longer penetrate the shade of the trees that had grown about their tangled roots.

  With the retreating of the shadows the evil spirits that long had crept there, hidden in the floor of the world, now awoke and stirred within their prison. Their spirits then rose forth again, seeking to destroy the light and claim that world as their own as they had done in many worlds prior.

  From the depths was then heard a dark and mournful cry that only the Divine Mother could hear. Its cry was of a forsaken child. And so was she stirred by it in her sleep, thinking it to be the last spirits of the pool calling her to return. In her bed she wept knowing she had abandoned them. And so in the heart of the night she fled the golden halls of Heaven, returning in secret to the misty gardens of her twilight realms.

  There in the mists of the perpetual gloom she came to where the dark pool slept. She then looked down into its depths to find the source of its hidden voice. But as she looked upon the waters there was revealed to her an erotic vision, spawned forth from the depths of her most lascivious and secretive desires.

  By its strange mirror the face of another, handsome and dark, was shown to her. Then a deep dark voice came forth from the depths of the woods behind her, saying, ‘By these waters alone shall your desires be fulfilled. Drink from their dark cup and be free.’ Entranced, she bent down and with her hands drank from the forbidden waters of the dark pool.

  She fell into a swoon as a dark mist enveloped the hill about her. A black figure then walked forth from the misty forest. Strong, dark, and chiseled in form was he. She rose to meet the handsome figure, running to him with a passion fully unleashed, and born of great desire for him. They then entered the dark pool together and made love within the throbbing glow of the malevolent pool. She then fell into his dark and muscular arms, back into a troubled sleep.

  A dream came into her sleeping mind, of a fate most terrible to behold and filled with many horrors. As she awoke she found herself lying naked and alone beside the pool. She then heard the silver horns of the Divine Father calling her from his house in Heaven. But by her shameful acts she could not face him. And so she ran deep into the depths of the twilight woods. There she dwelt alone among the dark and twisted trunks until in time, from torturous labor, she bore a child.

  To the Children of Twilight was this baby most akin. And under their care and love was he raised as a beloved child among them. But they also saw within him a being very different. For it was revealed in time that there had been given unto that child many great gifts. There had entered into him the maverick essence of the Spirit Divine. Yet a hidden darkness lay within him, too.

  His body and wings were of silver, bearing the merciful light of the stars in the Heavens. But his great heart was of gold, most pure and kind. In him dwelt the lustrous fires of the Creative Flame. Yet within his eyes glowed a dark and dreary light, born of the weariness of the world. For they carried the hidden spirit of the Ghost of Eventide, glowing with the glamour of midnight whose shadows shined forth like the gloom of impending nightfall.

  But so too the children saw that he would soon paint upon the blank canvas of the world the colors of even greater wonders and more beautiful works. And they saw that through him would something great be returned that had been reft from them. This child they named the Maker, as he was closest to them and the creative will of the One Cosmic Spirit, their eternal father.

  In time he grew to be a beautiful boy, with eyes of darkest night that could see through the limitless spaces, the mists,
and the earth that lay beneath the firmament of the world. His own spiritual light shined forth like the twilight trees set ablaze, yet guided by the strange darkness that yet filled his mind and spirit. So most like the pool and tree of that world in twilight was his light cast. For through him like themselves were the dual forces of light and dark that filled the world brought together again.

  Beside the Children of Twilight he then dwelt, hidden from the lights of Heaven, deep in the depths of the tranquil woods. By her loving heart the Divine Mother guided her child until such time as he was old enough to leave her. She then bade her beautiful son go forth and find the Divine Father who dwells in the Heavens, send him word of her love for him, and bear news of her return to rest eternal beneath the sacred mound of the pool. For weary with age, she would now return to the tomb where once she had lain.

  With tears in her eyes she kissed her blessed child goodbye, leaving him alone in the dim woods. But she could not look upon the pool. For it brought to her mind painful memories. In her former tomb she returned to endless sleep from which she hoped she would never awaken again.

  Bereaved by the loss of his mother, the shining son left the twilight woods, climbing high into the mountains seeking the halls of Heaven. There at last upon the rugged cliffs he found the house of the Divine Father, just as his mother said he would. Seeing that winged child standing from afar, the Divine Father came to him and pondered the strange appearance and origin of the pale boy.

  The child then revealed to him the fate of his mother and of her return to sleep. The Divine Father then fell to his knees and mourned for her. But the child came to him and comforted him. For his heart was pure and filled with compassion. Its then the Divine Father took the child in and loved him with the full depth of his mighty heart. He then raised him as his son, blessing the boy with his own wisdom and guidance.

  In time that child was granted great powers by his father, as he saw the creative will of that boy would not be denied. He then knew that the twilight child would transform the world with his gifts long after he was gone. For he saw that his Divine Son would soon bring great works of beauty into it for the benefit of the children of the twilight forest whom he still loved.

  Ana then stood and came to Ama, asking him, “Ama, I know of the Spirit Divine. Is he not this world’s Creator and Lord? Is he not the one which fills all living things in Phantaia with his own spirit?”

  “Yes, it is true,” Ama said. “For this tale was told to me when I was but a boy and I understood but little of our Creator. But I see now the hidden truth of your grandfather’s tale. And so are the Great Father’s plans for Phantaia and for us somehow revealed therein.” Ama then continued.

  When the twilight child had grown and come of age, the Divine Father revealed to his son the last hidden truths of that world. He then was given the full measure of its glory. He was shown the Wings of Night upon which the Divine Father had hung the star-children in the Heavens. And to him was shown the gray Gates of Eventide that the hand of evil itself had forged to hold back the light of the world.

  To his Divine Son was then revealed the greatest treasure of all—the Sacred Light of the One Cosmic Spirit. This he had withheld from the world until a blessed time when its full radiance would again be allowed to return unto it. The boy could only gaze in wonder at the majesty of his father’s flame as it burned within its golden lantern.

  The Divine Son for many days thought upon these miraculous creations within the quiet of his father’s house. But he desired most to sit in his halls upon his golden throne, and stare into the Sacred Light whose flame had hung there above the seat of his father. Into the depths of his mind then came a strange voice—a strange calling from deep within his spirit. From the darkest recesses of his heart soon flowed forth a dark desire to possess the light and use it for his own purpose.

  The Divine Son then came before his father and said unto him, ‘Father, I shall go build a great house beyond these heavenly halls. For my own Creative Flame burns brightly, desiring to share its gifts with the world.’

  But the Divine Father had known by the will of that boy that soon would that day come. And he bade him, ‘Go forth and make a hall for yourself as you desire, my son.’

  But the Divine Son said, ‘Father, I long to bring the Children of Twilight as one family under my guidance. For them shall I build a sturdy house to draw strength from. But I have seen the true source of the light of the tree which once burned so brightly, now denied them. So shall I take the great flame of your house, the Sacred Light, and from it build an open cauldron to house it, and a mirror to cast its bright flame upon the world. And in that house shall I keep it so that it shines its merciful light, like a bright shining sun, down upon the children of the world. By its beacon shall I summon the twilight children to my halls so that they dwell ever closer to me, far from the evil that lurks in the lands beneath their feet.

  ‘In those shining halls, shall they sing as one in perfect harmony, like the stars you hath made in the Heavens, far from the cacophony of the wild beasts and dark spirits of the woods. And the skies shall be filled with their loud symphony of voices such that order shall flow into it by their music. And their hearts and that of the world shall be forever brightened. To each shall then be given a new world—a mighty star plucked from the Heavens—which they may remake in their own image. And these, their honorable houses, shining like a million candles within the mantle of the inky sky, shall be more beautiful than any of the stars yet created by you.’

  “So had the Divine Son willed a glorious plan to be in that earlier world, greater than any yet conceived under this Heaven or their own,” said Ama.

  This grand design the Divine Son had conceived in his mind’s eye, telling his father, ‘By my hand may the Children of Twilight dwell apart from the tree and pool, and thus be free at last. They shall throw away the sad lights of dusk and dawn, fashioning a world as they will, as we ourselves have fashioned this one. But for this dream to be fulfilled, Father, I must take the candle of the Sacred Light that lies imprisoned within these halls.’

  The Divine Father looked upon his son with doubt, saying, ‘Only now in this world has peace finally reigned supreme. Since the demise of many worlds before this one has it been an unfulfilled desire. Peace has been granted unto us as a gift, yet only after many had perished at the hands of the defiant evil that had hidden amongst us to stir up war.’

  But the Divine Son said, ‘Had not every world before this one perished by its own darkness? It has always been so. The Sacred Light shall protect us, chasing away the monsters that dwell in the deep holds of the world. This light was meant to be given and shared, not coveted and hidden away. For it was created through the glory of the children of this world, whose spirits were made from its very light. It should be given back to them so they might bathe in its glory. By its guiding light shall the children who dwell in the black and oppressive woods be renewed. They shall then use it to remake the world, kindling the creative will that burns in them.’

  But the Divine Father said, ‘My son, only by the hiding of the Sacred Light has our long sought peace been won. For should the evil that dwells below see the Sacred Light return to this world, it would be tempted again to rise up to destroy it once more. With its destruction would Heaven fall, and all the children that dwell under it perish again. And so has the withholding of the Sacred Light from the eyes of the Emptiness and Nothingness made that possible.’

  But the son said to his father, ‘Soon shall evil rise again anyway, Father. For I have seen them stirring in their prisons and calling to me in dreams. I, the children’s new leader and lord, must take the Children of Twilight from the evil woods before they rise again. In the safety of my halls shall they be free forever from the dark temptations soon to enter their hearts.’

  But the Divine Father said to his son, ‘Like that granted unto you, the children of the woods have been given the freedom to choose their own fates, my son. For by freewill alone wa
s this world fashioned. They have chosen to live together in peace in the lands of everlasting dusk. And so it is done.’

  But the Divine Son said to his father, ‘No Father. They had been denied freedom. Are they not enslaved to the shadows of the Forest of Twilight, hiding in its faded former glory? If they are free then they should be free to choose, to remain in the shadows of the suffering wood or seek the light of truth that shall call them now from on high.’ At these words the son left in anger, defiant and proud. But his father remained somber, deeply saddened by the words of his son.

  As his father slept, the Divine Son fled away from his house to prepare his own. For his Creative Flame burned brightly within him and would not be denied. But as he was leaving he saw from deep within his father’s halls the Sacred Light shining dimly from within. He then entered the quiet halls, stealing the Sacred Light and the crystalline lantern within which its fire now burned. He then fled away like a thief in the night, across the fringes of that shining realm, and into the heights of Heaven beyond the summit of its peaks.

  The Divine Son then rekindled the fires that burned within him, building a mighty forge to fashion his creations. He then placed the candle of the Sacred Light within its hot center so that by its fires was molded the golden walls of his great hall. The Divine Son then built many chambers for the children to live in, as his feverish mind had envisioned. Upon the completion of his great house of gold, the Divine Son stood pleased. But he did not rest, as he now sought to reveal to the children of the world its many wonders, so they might come unto him, enter his house, and dwell there.

  He returned to Forest of Twilight. And there he found the quiet pool beneath whose dark waters his mother now slept. He looked upon the glory of the twilight tree that emanated so beautifully with its pale cast of silver. Upon the summit of that mound he then blew upon his great golden horn, summoning the Children of Twilight to come to him. He then watched as they came forth from out of the glades and copses below.

  As the children came to him, they gathered about him, dancing with joy. They then told him they had for many ages dwelt in perfect peace in the dark forests below the mountains. They brought to him many treasures of great beauty they had made. And they asked him to stay with them and share in the rich bounty of the gardens they had grown. The Divine Son was happy and tempted by the strange tranquility of that twilight place. For it was not as he imagined.

  But he saw that they were deserving of even greater happiness than what they had been given in those fallow woods. He then asked, ‘Who among you will leave this forest? Who will abandon this dark pool and gloomy tree, and dwell beside me and the Sacred Light that now burns brightly for you in the golden halls I have made? Look up with your shadowed eyes to the shining realms beyond the highest Heavens!’ He then pointed to the skies above.

  The children then saw the clouds part above them. They then beheld a wondrous house of great beauty and splendor. And they were blinded for a time by its golden light. But its beams shined down so brightly that they began to reflect upon the pool and tree below with a sunny glow. They then cast a golden light down upon the forest so that the trees and garden seemed to blossom forth with fresh life and rich miraculous color.

  The children of that world were amazed. They bowed before him, shouting that their Maker had returned with great gifts for them. For they had known long ago that he would return to them someday bringing forth new creations. Some among then said they would go with the Maker, for they longed to travel to the new home promised them in Heaven, and look with their own eyes upon the bejeweled lights that lay hidden there.

  But many chose to remain beside the tree and pool, saying that they had desired only the cover of twilight. For the powers of the silver tree and its enchanted pool granted all that they now desired. In them dwelt the mingling of the world’s lights and shadows in perfect harmony. And the eternal happiness that had bound them as one yet remained in the Forest of Twilight.

  The Maker, hearing their words, honored their free voices, saying, ‘To each among you has been given the freedom to choose your own destiny. Do so as you wish. Come with me or stay.’ And he looked upon their troubled faces as confusion fell among them.

  Some among the Children of Twilight left with the Maker, while others remained behind. On the mountain in great streams the masses followed him, leaving behind their forest brethren, until above the mists of the mountain peaks they came upon the shimmering halls he had made.

  In that great house of many rooms they walked with quiet grace among the shining candles that warmed their faces and filled their hearts with joy. There they dwelt in simple beatitude beside their Maker, just as he had planned. And he in time told them that unto each would be given their own world, so that they might each be lords over their own realms. They then bowed in thankfulness to him. Then was shown to them the Sacred Light he had kept hidden in the shadows of his halls. Into their dark forms then came its shining breath, as unto their spirits did its light come to dwell, casting back the darkness from their hearts.

  But after an age, some in his halls looked down with sadness upon their brethren in the shadowed world below. And they wondered upon the tragic act of those who had refused to come with them. The Maker then saw their sad faces, so that he too looked down with pity upon their lost brothers and sisters trapped in that half-light world. And he suffered to watch them separated from those they loved.

  He then said to the children, he would return to the twilit world below and take their brothers and sisters from that dark place, bringing them to his halls. For many chambers remained empty that he had built. And he told them that his house, without them, was incomplete and forever flawed. They then looked down in deep sadness and shame.

  The Divine Son then returned to the somber glades of the Forest of Twilight, calling the pale children that hid there to come to him once more upon the hill. In the garden where he sat the lost children appeared to him grim in spirit, as they too missed their sisters and brothers.

  The Maker then said to them, ‘My children, my house alone now possesses the last of the shining lights of the world. For unto me has the Sacred Light now been given. In my halls will its spiritual fire always reside. And in my house alone may your gloomy spirits be rekindled. For I too, like you, was once a Child of Twilight.’

  They then came before their Maker to touch him and look upon his glowing face and form. But some among them came before him saying that he had now divided their people. And yet the hope of eternal peace and brotherhood still remained within the gentle Twilight Forest, their promised home. For the Divine Mother had willed it be so, long ago. Her promise had been fulfilled, they said, while his had not. If he so loved her then would he return the children that now dwelt in the Heavens back to the forested lands, their true home.

  But by their refusal to join him, there was born in the shadows of the Maker’s dark heart great anger and malice towards them, their stubbornness, and their rejection of his noble plans. He then asked why they would choose to live in the shadows of that dusky land in misery and isolation. Had they ever been free of the curse of the shadow?

  Soon the evil that yet dwells beyond the Gates of Eventide in the depths of the Black Pit of the world would come and seek them out. And by their choosing of the shadows, they would soon be doomed by the dark will placed upon their spirits and the evil which would once again creep into their hearts. So to the innocents was revealed by their Maker the forbidden knowledge of the evil that lay beyond the forest in the pits beneath them.

  But hearing of the dark spirits that lay beneath their feet, they ran from the Maker in fear, hiding deep in the forest. The Maker then returned to his halls in Heaven. He then stripped the Sacred Light from the cauldron of his house. And as he tore it away, there was heard a mighty screeching and screaming, and a bloody red light alone remained behind. He then returned with the light to the garden. For he had hoped that by this act the enduring beauty and glory of its light would be revealed to
them, and their hearts turn towards it.

  The Maker then held the mighty light above his head, commanding it to shine forth upon the forest, and burn away the twilight gloom of the woods. A great radiance then shone out, casting back the last shadows of the woods, far and wide, and turning the twilight forest into a forest of light and color, its trees gilded once more with trunks of gold and leaves of silver.

  But as the Maker looked upon the brightened woods he heard the dark and gloomy waters of the pool behind him whispering, as they had done to his mother in ages past. He then went before the pool, as he thought he saw something shining in its depths. Holding the Sacred Light, he reached down into the clouded waters. But as he touched them, they burned forth with a great radiance upon their surface, so that the shadows of its dark waters were now filled with the essence of the Sacred Light. A bright white light was then thrown up from the pool and out upon the mound.

  Seeing the miraculous change made upon the water by his hand, he went before the great tree and laid his hands upon its bark. And the Sacred Light came into its form as well, so that it also shone, radiant and white again. The pool and the tree then shot forth their twin lights onto the mountain slopes, so that its streams and valleys sparkled in the shimmering rays.

  The heavenly halls of the Maker then glowed upon their summits like a blazing coal, so that they reflected their blinding white lights as a mirror, down upon the tops of the trees. The forests were then blasted with its brilliant beam, as the stars of Heaven were dimmed by its brilliance. And the twilight fog that had clung to it was burned away. The Sacred Light was thus born anew in the tree and pool, so that they cast forth their gold and silver lights again as they had so many worlds ago.

  Then was heard a great bellowing and a terrible cry far below. For the light of the pool and tree had melted away the iron Gates of Eventide. And the shadowy beings that had dwelt in the depths in that abyss now screamed out in agony from the illumination cast down upon their formless faces.

  The Maker and the children of the forest then listened to the terrible roar in the pits below as it shook the earth beneath them. The Maker then looked upon the Sacred Light in his hand and saw that only a tiny ember had remained. For what it once possessed had now bled away into the pool and tree upon the mound.

  The Children of Twilight had fled before the blinding rays, into the deepest shade of the woods to hide. But the children who dwelt in the halls of Heaven looked down in awe and wonder at the scene below. Seeing the glory of the shining tree and pool, they desired to return to the garden they so loved. They then fled the golden halls upon the summit of the mountains, winding their great host through many canyons until they stood before the pool and tree.

  There they knelt before the majesty and beauty of the electrum lights cast down upon their faces. And many wept, saying at last had the true powers of the tree and pool been restored.

  But the children of that shadowy world had fled away in fear, into the farthest fringes of that forest to escape the light so that the Maker could not find them. Dwelling far away from their homeland, these dark children grew black in spirit and mind, hiding behind the trees and under rocks until their own spirits were filled with vengeful shadows. Their hearts grew hateful toward the Maker. And they desired to destroy the tree and pollute the pool, which ever blinded and burned them. For it was no longer their desire to dwell beneath its sterile fires, or hide in the brighter forests that had grown around them.

  Unknown to the Maker, those dark children had sought the help of the monstrous evil that dwelt in the gray domain of the Great Beyond. There the Nothingness and Emptiness had long dwelt in misery. But the dark children came before them with many sacrifices of their own kind. Those terrible beasts of destruction were then freed from their prisons by those vile gifts.

  By their forceful guile, the Nothingness and Emptiness then commanded these Children of Shadow to rise forth and wage war against the Children of Shining, their sisters and brothers of light who dwelt near the shining pool and tree. At last by dark magic and unearthly powers granted unto them by the evil twins, they rose forth slaying many of their brothers and sisters, until they came as a great swarm to destroy the shining pool and tree. By their violence they sundered them apart, polluting the well and chopping down the white tree. And so the Sacred Light that had burned within them faded again with their passing.

  From afar the Divine Son saw the true horror of what he had done. And he fled in fear, back to his father’s house with the last fading ember of the Sacred Light in his hands. But before his father’s towering gates he stopped. For in shame and remorse he could go no further. It’s then he buried the last flame of the Sacred Light in the rocks upon the slopes before his father’s house.

  The Divine Son then heard the roar of a great storm billowing up from the depths. As he looked he saw the Emptiness come forth to slay the last of the shining children in the garden below. He came to their defense, descending upon the terrible spirit. A great battle ensued, as the forest about them was obliterated by their scorching conflict.

  With great will and strength the Divine Son unfurled his silver wings so that they were ablaze with a burning fire. The Emptiness then fell back beyond the forest in terror of its force. But the Nothingness had risen from his pit with violent and destructive winds, sucking away the spirit of the mountains, tearing down the golden halls of the Heavens, and evaporating the essence of the rivers of the wood with his very breath. And so the spirit of that world was laid to waste by that being.

  But seeing the precious spirits of the children of the woods devoured, the Divine Son, their Maker, came before that monstrous force with great ire and anger to wound him. A terrible struggle then ensued between them, until the Divine Son was taken by that beast. For the Nothingness was eternal and could not be vanquished by any power under Heaven, save the Sacred Light.

  The Nothingness had finally grasped the Divine Son in his great claws. But as he was about to devour him, he looked into his black eyes and saw his true birthright. And he saw the essence of the cursed heart within the boy, which was like his own. Seeing the seed of evil planted within him, the Nothingness then laughed. For he saw his true origin. He then flung the boy away, down into the abyss below. There the Divine Son fell upon the rocks and lay wounded. For in his evil mind the Nothingness had spared him for a purpose unknown to him.

  The Divine Father looked from afar in horror seeing the rise of the evil twins once more. But seeing his son assaulted he came forth to aid him. But the sinister twins had laid a trap for him such that his heart would be tested. And by its breaking would he fall.

  The Divine Father then came before the Nothingness with his golden chariot whose lights, like a million suns, shone forth. But the Nothingness spoke with bold words, telling him, ‘The Divine Mother betrayed you, shining one. For she gave her love to another. From their carnal union was your cursed son conceived. For he is but a bastard child, born of her sins and of the secretive desire she has always kept in her heart for another.’

  ‘For he is the child of my seed,’ the Nothingness bellowed. ‘And of my shadow and shade is his spirit forever after made. By that child’s own hands has this world now fallen. For he was made to destroy it. And he shall rise yet again in many worlds after this one to destroy those as well.’

  The Nothingness then came before the Divine Father in his final hour of despair, saying, ‘Give me the Sacred Light of Heaven and I shall spare your pitiful life.’ For the Nothingness sought to obliterate its radiance from this world forever.

  Shattered by his words, the Divine Father said, ‘I would rather die than surrender the heavenly light to you. The Sacred Light shall live again to bless a new world and banish you and your brother from it, as it has done many times before.’

  The Nothingness then churned in the Heavens with great rage. His black storms then sucked the stars away from the mantle of the night, so that its shadow fell from the skies like great wings, down into the depths of
the forest below. The star-children that dwelt there then flew to the defense of their Divine Father. The last daughters of the Heavens then drew themselves around him in a circle. For with their silvered shields and spears they sought to protect him.

  But before the Nothingness they were defenseless. And so they were devoured wholly into his mouth. In his last fated hour, the Divine Father saw the supremacy of that evil being. And so with his last breath he called out to the Divine Mother, so that she might hear his calls and awaken once more. For he had placed in her the last hope that his son would somehow survive. But he fell before the savagery of the terrible Nothingness. And with him fled away the last merciful light of that grand Heaven.

  In her tomb of cursed sleep, hearing the sound of the terrible cries that shook the earth, the Divine Mother awakened. Seeing around her a mighty storm of death approaching, she ran to the top of the hill. Before her stood the sad remains of the pool and tree. For encircled around her was a deep pit of death and destruction, which the maelstrom had wrought upon the woods and earth.

  From the summit of the hill she looked for the lights of her children. But they had been devoured by the Nothingness and Emptiness in the last battles in which the Divine Son had fallen. She then looked down into the last waters of that sinister well of sorrows. And she wept once more for that which she had done. As she looked again upon its clouded surface, she saw only the dying light of the tree reflected therein. She then realized that in that pool had the fate of that world now turned.

  The last child of the Maker’s shining halls had fled from its ruin. For this lonely one had lost his way, and he alone spared certain death. The Divine Mother then heard his sad cry in the wilderness and called out for him. He then heard her call, and so returned to her upon the hill. But the remnant of his darker brethren had also heard her cries. And so had they also returned to her. Seeing their last shining brother standing before them, their dark hearts were then awakened again to love for their lost brother.

  The tree and pool were now dimmed. For with the fading of the lights of the Maker had they returned to twilight’s somber glow. The last of the Children of Twilight and the Divine Mother then held hands before the pool, as a dark cloud fell upon them. For the servants of the Emptiness had wrapped their storms about the hill to suck them away into their many mouths. The Divine Mother then commanded her children to hide beneath the roots of the dying tree.

  But the children would not flee their fate, and gathered about her feet, taking up arms to fight the black spirits that had descended upon them. For they alone had remained to defend their mother and protect the pool and tree from that remorseless evil.

  The Nothingness had descended from the ebony skies overhead. With thunderous words, he told the Divine Mother, ‘I have slain the Divine Father upon the mountain. And thy son has been cast down into the pit of the world where he shall perish alone.’ She mourned as his cruel words were spoken.

  But the Divine Mother stood with courage and looked upon the countenance of that cruel abomination. It’s then she knew that it was he that had come to her beside the pool in that lurid and steamy night long ago. And she knew now her son was of his dark and doomed seed. With malicious eyes the Nothingness then stared down into hers. He then bellowed forth with laughter at what he had created. And the last of the cliffs of Heaven trembled with its mighty sound.

  The Divine Mother then realized the terror of what she had done and the evil that had befallen the world. She called the last of the children to her and asked if any among them would be her messenger. For she knew in her heart her son yet lived. And she sought to bring to him a message of healing, of hope, and of enduring love so he might flee from that world and to safety.

  Then a small child came before her and offered herself up to the Divine Mother. With gentle hands the Divine Mother then held her to her breast and slowly brought forth her own heart and that of the child into a new form. And those two, chained together as truth and fidelity, formed themselves into a gray dove. This was the Dove of Hope, he who was named Hu. This bird she sent forth into the world, flying free through the suffocating night to find her son.

  A last valiant battle then ensued upon the mound. The Emptiness had come upon their spirits unseen in the final fatal conflict. For it had sent forth its siren song which no being might resist. Then into its vile orifices were the children ripped away from the hill, as death strips the body from its ghost. But a few yet resisted and fled to the edge of the twilight pool where their mother still stood defiant.

  The Divine Mother then came before the Nothingness and Emptiness upon the summit of the hill, so that the last of the spirits of the Children of Twilight could return to the waters of the pool unharmed. The last four children, now of darkness, then shed the raiment of their bodies. Their spirits then walked forth and entered the last waters of the pool, returning to its sacred and protective womb once more.

  But one remained who was of the light—he who alone had seen the great spirit of the Sacred Light of the Maker as it once had shined, pure and bright upon that world. He then climbed up into the dying tree and hid in the last blossom that had remained upon its blackened boughs.

  Seeing her children’s spirits returned to the pool and tree, the Divine Mother called out to the Nothingness, ‘Take me in your arms as you did so long ago.’ The Nothingness then reached down and took the Divine Mother in his claws and carried her away. She then was thrown down into the pit of his evil lair. He then drowned her in the waters of the Black Pool that had lain hidden there for all eternity in the pit of that world, devouring her sad spirit into him.

  The Emptiness then came before the darkened pool, shattering its rocks until its life-blood drained away, its waters dripping down into the illimitable void that slept beneath the ghostly hill. It then devoured them into its great mouth before fleeing away into the depths, full from his gluttony. For like his brother no deadly curse, godly power, or dire fate could stop the Emptiness and his ravenous appetite.

  But the dove called Hu had borne the last hope of that world in its tiny beak. For if the Divine Son still lived, he would receive news of his mother by the tiny message it now bore. The bird then found its way to him. For he lay upon the rocks of a great abyss. In his suffering he was awakened by the dim light cast down upon him. For the bird had carried the last shining branch of the tree as a gift from his loving Mother. By that message he now knew it to be her desire that through courage he should rise again.

  The Divine Son summoned forth the last of his strength from within his heart and flew to the fading lights of the tree that yet shined in the ephemeral night that braced the world. But seeing the destruction wrought upon the forest about him, he soon gave up hope as he knew his mother and father had perished. He then wept. For he saw what evil he himself had wrought.

  He then flew to the mountains looking for his father’s house. For he had hoped that the last ember of the Sacred Light yet remained. But seeing no sign of the mountains or of his father’s halls he felt great despair. Then he saw a light glowing faintly within the ebony veil. There, under the rubble of the mountains, he saw the faltering ember of the Sacred Light.

  He then knelt before it in sorrow. But from below the peaks he heard a distant cry. As he descended the slopes, there upon the rocks lay his father. Near death, the Divine Father lay gray and withered, his body lying as a hollow husk of his former self. For the Nothingness had stripped the Creative Flame from him. He reached out for his son with his shriveled hands.

  His son ran to him. And they embraced as father and son again. The Divine Son then said to him, ‘Father, I am sorry for all that I have done. I was blind to the truth and wisdom of your words. And so have I doomed the world by my pride and arrogance.’

  But his father said to him, ‘My son, know that it was the secret will of He that dwells beyond the Seas of Eternity that this world should fall.’ The son then saw the light in his father’s eyes begin to slowly dim.

  The Divine Fa
ther removed the argent wings that lay upon his back, giving them to his son. ‘Do not lose hope. From these wings shall a new Heaven be reborn. To a deserving child must these wings then be given. A new mantle of night shall then fill the skies, housing the stars of Heaven as they once were, and marking the advent of a brighter world yet to come.’

  But the Divine Father looked again upon his son, saying, ‘My child, the last of this world shall soon be devoured by the wretched beings that wait in the depths full from their carnage. You must bury me with the Sacred Light in a grave upon the mountain so that the children of a new world might someday find it. Long after my death I shall hold the light close to my heart. And there it shall remain safe from harm.’

  The Divine Father smiled, saying, ‘You were right, my son. The Sacred Light was truly meant for the Children of Shining, just as you said. Through its candle shall their spirits yet shine again.’

  The Divine Father then told his son, ‘Go my son with great haste to the garden. Return to your mother’s pool. For in its waters still lie the life of the world and the spirit of a new one. Perhaps the children of another time and place may discover some truth hidden within its waters. By their enduring courage and suffering must they come to understand it and what it has long desired, or they themselves shall perish like we have. For it has brought down its will cruelly upon us.’

  Father and son embraced one last time. The Divine Son felt his father go limp in his arms. He then carried his father and placed him into a shallow grave in the rocks of the mountain. He then placed the Sacred Light upon his chest, as he covered his grave-mound with stones. But hidden within the rocks shined out the pale light of its flame.

  The Divine Son returned to the mound of his mother. There he cried out for her. But she wound not come. And so he fell to the ground, weeping for her. Beneath the dying tree now lay the rocky hollow of her empty well, dry and barren. He then saw where the last of its life-blood had drained away, dripping down into the yawning void that lay beneath its earth. He felt almost grateful it was gone. Made of light and shadow, love and tears, he did not understand how that dismal pool had both blessed and doomed that world. For it had strangely doomed itself in the end.

  But as he knelt and looked into its cauldron, at the very bottom he saw a tiny handful of water that yet remained. He bent down taking the last of its waters in his hands. In them now dwelt the last of the life of that world, but so too the shadows of the spirits that hid within it. He then flew away on his silver wings as the last of that world was slowly consumed by the evil that had been unleashed upon it.

  None remained who had remembered that sad world, walked its splendid wood, or had remembered the grandeur of the trees that once grew there. The terrible twins had begun to consume the firmament of it into their toothed maws, until even the inky shade that hung upon its skies was obliterated. The very hollows of space then split open the belly of Heaven as it collapsed into ruin before them. And the great earth beneath that world cracked and crumbled, falling away into the sorrowful waste that now consumed it.

  Now devoid of trees, stripped bare of earth and sky, the last piece of that broken and shattered world floated alone in the malaise of eternal night. Overhead the circle of a darkened Heaven had slowly turned above the dying tree. The last of its kind, it had yet stood resolute upon the summit of its blackened and war-torn rock. Through eons of silence, unknown and unseen by any other living thing, its massive trunk and gnarled roots, uprooted by the powers of darkness, somehow still clung to the remnant earth upon which it once proudly stood.

  Stripped of its bark, its dry husk withered away alone on the edge of that spaceless gulf, while the faceless death of the Emptiness chewed upon the last of its gallant rock. Floating in the emptiness of the void, its plaintive cry echoed out across the ethereal winds in the depths of its mourning. For it had long resisted that terrible evil, though no spirit would remain to witness its final breath.

  Ancient and pale, the broken tree had died. The evil twins then came and ripped away the last of its limbs. Its trunk was shattered into many pieces, until the last remnants of that mighty tree was no more.

  But it had held upon its shriveled limb the last of its seed, keeping it close to its spirit until that final fateful moment. This seed the tree had hid from the eyes of the evil ones. For it had filled its only child and seed with the last of its love and life-giving essence. This life no darkness, nor light, nor earth, nor waters could breach. For the Sacred Seed was granted the first flesh and spirit of a new forest—the spirit of the True Tree incarnate and the essence of the Forest of Twilight that yet dwelt within its single shining seed.

  Ripped from its limbs, the Sacred Seed was then cast forth by the father-tree, out into the cold and merciless gulf of space and time, across the timeless and ethereal waters that flowed throughout. By its cosmic winds and waves, was it carried in the formless void upon that sea, far from the grim eyes of the dark lords of that former world.

  Only a ghostly space remained in the ruins left behind. But into the cosmos had returned the Spirit Divine to reforge anew this world from its own ashes. The seed of the tree had fallen into this world, cast into it by the rains and mists that rose from within it. It had then fallen into the Dreaming Seas, buffeted by storms and waves which could not harm it. Within the arms of the loving sea it was carried, past the blackened shores of Midnight, until at last it was thrown upon the spectral sands of Phantaia.

  Ama then said, “So had the seed of the One Tree, the Sacred Seed, come from the ancient tree that had perished in that tragic world.”

  Ama then walked over and touched the trunk of the tree, saying, “By my father’s seed alone has a host of new trees been sown in this world since that distant time, taking root and forming Phantaia, the Forest of Twilight. Know that this paradise was created by the One Cosmic Spirit for love of his children, those who he knew would someday come to dwell therein.”

  “But the Chieftain Trees revealed a secret to me, Ana. The Divine Son, the Essence Eternal, had returned to birth this world, hoping that the Children of Twilight might return to it someday and find a lasting peace within it. But the Essence Eternal has perished. You see, he has died so that we might live? But though he has left us, his spirit remains in this world, in the trees, and in us,” Ama said, with fire in his eyes.

  “We alone must decide our fate, Ana. For the Creator knows the truth lies not in him but in his Creation. The fate of the world lies with us. And so I fear we shall destroy this world, yet again, unless we the children can embrace the perfect paradise promised to us by Him.” Ana then looked at Ama with wonderment and awe.

  Ama and Ana sat together uncertain of their fates in that sad world. Gazing down into the glass-like waters of the spring, Ama said, “But the pool is another mystery to me, Ana. In the silver dews of Phantaia’s first shining dawn, the sapling of the One Tree had been planted upon this hill so that he might draw sustenance from this pool. For in the depths of the hill lies the maiden of the spring. She sleeps there now within her tomb, deep underground, wrapped and encased in his roots. But they have not pierced the mold of her flesh nor broken the source of her waters which continually flow from her.”

  Ana then said, “Ama, I do not understand how this pool with such sorrow could bring life to the forest. Surely it must speak of its own heartache, its nature, or even purpose?”

  Ama looked deep into the pool, as if seeing something Ana could not. “Yet the Secret Spring is a gift to us,” Ama said in a whisper. “For she has lovingly sacrificed her life so that Phantaia might live. It is a thing of joy. Not sadness.” With eyes closed, Ana then thought on this mystery as she wrapped her arms around herself.

  Ama stood again and walked to the edge of the hill. “Only the Hawthorns of Kum know of the true purpose of the pool and its maiden. But they will not speak of it,” Ama told her. “Yet should the pool speak, would it tell much more of its long life and purpose. But since the birth of Phantaia has it remained
silent.”

  ”But it matters not,” he told her. “For the pool and the tree are now one. They are inseparable. The Essence Eternal brought them here, joining them together so they might give new life to his creation and guide the children yet to come. That is what its waters would say.” Ana then looked at Ama and smiled. But seeing within Ama’s eyes the same hidden fear, she came to him.

  “But I fear for the One Tree with the visions that have come into me lately,” Ama said. “The servants of evil that sleep in the Great Beyond shall soon come forth and try and destroy the tree. For its great radiance calls them to war. I know now that the warm lights you see emanating from it are not of the tree, but of a secretive fire that burns within it. And my sisters and brothers have long known that by its mysterious candle would the servants of evil eventually come to Phantaia to destroy it. Its burning fire calls them. And so I fear that the last fatal age of this glorious land has now come upon us. It shall soon come to an end.”

  Ama and Ana both felt the cold chill of an autumn wind swirl past them as the gray fog rose and fell over the top of the hill. Its moisture dripped from Ama’s face and body. But he stood looking out over the misty valley before him, saying, “But Ana, hope yet lives in Phantaia, even in the hearts of the possessed creatures that dwell in the depths of the darker lands. For your grandfather told me, no heart trapped in the dusk of evil was ever completely free of the light of goodness which had once dawned within it.”

  Ama turned and looked at her, saying, “Ana, I feel that goodness yet dwells in your father.”

  Having finished his long tale, Ama now sat back upon the rocks to rest. He now seemed content. But Ama and Ana now looked into each other’s eyes. And between them they knew that their time together was fleeting. But as Ama looked at Ana again, he saw sadness upon her cheeks, and many tears which she had hidden.

  As Ana turned away, a single tear fell into the pool. Yet it did not stir it. For the water remained still and undisturbed. But her tears were not shed for joy, sadness, or even fear. She had hidden a terrible truth deep within her own secretive heart. And for this had she wept.

  The Dying Well

  Ana had kept a secret long concealed that she had not the courage to reveal. She had spared Ama’s loving heart a truth that would tear his world apart. Cruel waters on a crooked course soon would flow with sinister force. For within her heart’s corrupted state churned a well born of cursed fate.

  And so had Ana wept beside the pool. But seeing many tears on her face, Ama said to her, “Hold my hand.” She reached out and grasped Ama’s warm hand in hers. He then said, “The shadows of our yesterday are fading fast, while a dimmer and uncertain future draws near. But the light of the present shines brightly upon us, and has not yet receded. This is still our time, Ana, though fleeting as it is. What happened to that dream? Let us hold onto it...and not let go.”

  Ama, resolute and brave, took Ana by the hand and led her into a secluded land deep within the farthest confines of Abrea. To his hidden glade of love he led her, to the place called Unaranna. Within its high walls of swaying oleander, he took his beloved, where neither the light of the shining tree nor the dark shadows of the wood would ever find them.

  Concealed within the verdure of its lush and luxurious growth, Ama laid her down under a dense thicket of red roses and scented jasmine. There they held each other closely in the rapture of their long-held passion for one another. And love’s old song, which so few times had sung its sweet melody in that sad world, whispered in their chosen hearts its wise and wistful words: Forsake forever after the glory of thy former selves. Come together and be now as one.

  So were their hearts awakened to the sweet bliss of love, like the pale blossom of the night that opens up its glorious hues before the triumphant light of a loving dawn. In a passionate embrace they kissed. And to the rhythm of their pounding hearts and breath alone did they make love. Like the flood of a mighty swollen river, their desire for each other flowed wild and free within them, until their hearts like their bodies entwined were bound and wound together forever after, desiring never again to be free.

  And so what their hearts had long desired, fate at last had sent them in that fateful hour. But fear of a foreboding future vaguely felt between them had cast a morbid light upon their desperate passions. They had known of the fleeting time they had together. So little of its precious moments yet remained, though an eternity seemed to pass before them in that hot and humid night.

  With tears of joy, Ana and Ama drew their warm bodies together under the veil of the mist that wrapped about the hill. As the darkness deepened around them, they looked into each other’s eyes and kissed long into the night. They then fell asleep in each other’s arms and drifted off into a peaceful sleep in the lavender shadows of Abrea.

  But about them rolled a foul mist turned so suddenly morose and gray. It hung upon the twilit garden like the putrid fog that fills a forgotten graveyard as it slowly sinks beneath the relentless rot of a bubbling moor. A ghostly figure had crept about the slimy mist, silent and unseen. About it was a dark cloak drawn, its hooked nose dripping with sweat. Looking about, its sinister eyes were cast aglow in a sallow and sickly green.

  Its thin wrinkled lips smiled as it stared down through the fog at the writhing bodies of the naked couple. With its aged gray hands, it slowly reached out through the dewy air to touch the thigh of the boy. Its coal-black nails, sharp as blades, could easily cut him. But it stopped. It then drew its bony hands over the midriff of Ana as if sensing something. It quickly withdrew its beastial hands and disappeared back into the mist again.

  It soon came upon the shadowy bed of the Murgala where, with its terrible claws it severed the dark stems of the black roses, and placing them into its leathery bag. It then fled away into the depths of the cold fog that filled the midnight air. But as it disappeared it left behind a trail of dark petals that led deep into the shadowy woods of Phantaia.

  As Ana slept, it seemed to her that many restless nights had passed, as if she stood before the doors of sleep upon the threshold of a dream beyond which blinked the dreary eyes of a waking nightmare. For the scent of the black roses had now awakened, drifting out into the humid air that hung upon the hill. Her lungs were filled with its sweet and seductive odor. The peaceful waters of the pool seemed filled with that foul dew. For they dripped down about them, racing through the gardens, and fleeing into the river in fear.

  From the depths of the valley where the waters now poured, the sad siren song of the maiden of Avalyr echoed through the twilight woods and into the quiet Heavens. But far away in the depths of that wilderness the mournful melody had been heard by another more nefarious being that had for many nights crept through its quiet mists. And it paused as it listened to the furtive tale bound within the strange poetic words of her song.

  Ana had fallen into a new dream. And in that dream she was a young girl again, floating upon the Dreaming Seas, abandoned, and lost. But she was not afloat on her mother’s blue ocean, but adrift in a foreign place, wherein the sky was dark like the sea, and the frothy waters white as foam.

  In a panic she started to sink beneath that milky sea, when she looked and saw the hazy shore of some forbidding realm in the distance. There lay a pale undead forest, rising up from a black-sand shoreline, bathed in the blood of its crimson shadows. A frozen river tumbling with dark ice appeared beside it. But above it all stood a toothed hill of rock, upon which sat a wilted tree from whose bark a paltry light barely shined.

  In the darkness she heard someone shouting her name. She then knew its voice. For it was her love, Ama, calling out to her from the heights of the hill. She came to him, and they embraced. But as she looked upon his face she saw with shock and horror that it was black and charred. And its eyes were red and bleeding. It then melted away, until she saw the distorted face of the Shadow looking down upon her, smiling with its gnashing and drooling teeth of jet.

  She awoke from the horror of that visage, cryin
g out into the night. Ama awoke, and seeing Ana she held her and stroked her hair and face. She then fell back into sleep as a more peaceful vision came into her mind. For she now saw the faces of her smiling children walking beside her in the Gardens of Abrea. Yet strangely, the colors of early evening had been cast upon its leaves.

  But in that clouded vision she also saw their last days there where, swept by great storms, they were driven from Abrea by the gusting winds of a terrible evil. She feared for them in her sleep. Yet at the end, she saw them reunited. And she was with them in that final time of bliss. From the joy of this vision she felt they were real and no longer images in her mind.

  And so, when she awoke, she was filled with happiness and hope. Something beautiful had awakened within her, something she could sense yet not see or grasp. It was something she had not foreseen. She must share it with Ama, she thought.

  The mist about her had burned away. The sunny lights of the tree and the deep aquamarine of the skies had returned, beaming their bright colors upon her face again. In the valley below she saw the soft breezes blowing upon the tops of the trees. She then heard again the voices of their leaves as they fluttered in the wind. But the world seemed different. A new contentment had come over her. She looked down at Ama, kissing him gently on his cheeks. He seemed to sleep so peacefully.

  She now knew he had awakened in her something bright and new, a love eternal that had always been. But she would leave him now, yet soon return. And so in secret she fled away, running through the deep green verdure of Abrea’s sloping gardens and across the streams of Lilu. She needed to know something, desperately. She needed to talk to the trees.

  Over the many bridges that crossed through the valley, she travelled, into the shadowed woods of Phantaia. On she ran, through the gloomy woods, until she had wound her way into the twilight forest of Phantavra. There she stopped for a moment, unsure of where she was. For she had sought a passage through a secret yet forbidden door. Ana was familiar with the strange portals that led through the hollows of the ancient trees. For Ama had shown her many dark doors leading to even more secretive places within Phantaia.

  But there was one door he had forbidden her to enter. It had lain in the darkest depths of cloudy Phantavra. Of all the tree-doors Ama had shown her this one, he had told her, no one could enter, not even himself. But Ana knew where it would take her.

  On she travelled for most of the day, under roots and over dirt trails fringed with luxurious ferns. Under the shadows of knotted logs she ran, jumping over tumbling mounds of mossy rocks, and under masses of entangling vines and roots. Within the gloomy woods there suddenly glowed the bright light of a sunny clearing. Ana smiled knowing she had found the secret door at last.

  In the bright hollow of the darker woods stood the husk of a giant beech tree. Its smooth dead trunk seemed to loom ominously before her within the middle of a tiny grassy glade. This strange crooked tree stood like a towering white obelisk in the midst of the sunny clearing, its bent boughs broken long ago by cruel winds from its thick trunk. As Ana crept up to it, its cavernous black opening stood threateningly before her. She would hurry now, for she did not wish to be seen.

  But as she walked towards the great hollow of the tree, she heard a distant whisper from the gloomy woods about her. She thought she heard her name spoken in strange whispers within the tops of trees and in the shifting winds. Before the dead tree she paused, looking into the dark woods that encircled her. All was quiet again. She then jumped through the cool hollow of the tree, stumbling through the damp air of its woody hollow, until she suddenly fell out of an even larger tree and onto the bright sward of a sunny hill.

  Above her the winds were blowing briskly. And about the wide grasslands were trailing fields of daisies as far as she could see. But there on a great rocky rise above her, shining boldly against the light of the One Tree in the distance, she saw a small copse of towering growth. The massive silver trunks of a great ring of trees stretched up into the skies high over her head like the columns of a monumental cathedral. From a distance it seemed like the trees were delighted to see her, as they shook their leafy heads in delight above her in the crystal blue sky.

  Here lay the handmaidens of the Maiden Trees, who for eons had guarded Phantaia’s endless nurseries and the seeds and growth of countless trees that yet lived and died in the brighter realms of their forests. But so too had they come here to protect Phea, the great mother of all trees in Phantaia. For about her had they gathered so that no evil thing might bring harm to her or to those for whom she cared.

  Ana slowly climbed the rocky and windy plateau where, on its summit, she walked into the midst of a quiet clearing. Here the handmaidens had gathered about a tiny field of delicate grass and flowers. Yet when she looked between the tree trunks, the small glade appeared empty. There in the soft lemon-yellow grass of its meadow she sat down and began to speak to them in the tongue of the trees. For she had come to this sacred place knowing they alone could help her.

  But as she began to speak, there appeared beside her a strange presence. Something invisible standing before her began to shine within an argent light. Its then she saw materialize before her the silver form of Phea, the great matriarch of the Maiden Trees. Out of nowhere her towering trunk appeared. Her bark shined like a silver star, clean and bright, unmarred by time’s relentless march. And her chartreuse leaves and pliant silver stems seemed to be unfolding before her, and ever-young with the new green growth of an eternal spring.

  But Ana saw no face or eyes on her tall trunk. Nor did she hear any sound from the towering tree. For like the One Tree was Phea, both a living tree and yet a spiritual being. Then there came into Ana’s mind the sweet notes of a voice, soft and slow. It whispered to her, “Blessed Ana. At last I look upon your kind and gentle face. I am Phea, mother of the forests. It is a gift given to me that you have found your way here. For I had prayed that you would come. Stay with me Ana. And I shall care for you all of your days.” Ana then felt the warm spirit of Phea flow through her, and felt her great face smiling down on her.

  The loving words of Phea stayed in her heart. And for a moment Ana felt she could surrender to Phea. Her fears and her burdens had been so great. She could almost give up her life and stay beside the compassionate and loving tree. Dwelling beside her warm presence, she knew she could be eternally happy. But with brave words Ana spoke, saying, “Phea, I am scared. I have seen terrible images in my mind, and have been haunted and tortured by dreams since first I came to Phantaia. I fear I have brought some terrible doom upon this place. And this I cannot share with Ama, the guardian of the wood.” The great tree stood perfectly still, quietly listening with careful thought to her every word.

  Ana then gathered her thoughts again, saying, “But Phea, I come to you seeking an answer to an even greater mystery that now fills my mind. For last night I saw an image of my own children. And I need to know if my dreams speak of truth, or have been sent to deceive me as they had many nights before.”

  The sound of a gentle wind began to blow through Ana’s mind, carrying the faint notes of a mysterious music she could barely discern. Then there returned to her mind the whispering words of Phea, saying, “Within you, Ana, are the seeds of Ama, the son of Celebreava, who is the shining spirit of the One Tree. His seed now grows in you and waits to be reborn through your loving children. For to you and Ama shall be born twins.” Ama then looked at the shining tree with joy in her face. Her visions were true.

  “Your children shall soon come into this world with happy faces. And they shall be as lords over our woods, the same as their father. And from them shall come the glory of an even greater creation yet to be revealed. For Phantaia was created for you and your children, Ana, and for those that would come later, dwelling here and calling it their home. This is why you were truly brought to Phantaia, to dwell in peace beside those you love,” Phea said. Tears of happiness then began to well up in Ana’s eyes.

  Ana sat quietly, staring up
at the quiet majesty of the mother-tree. She then told Phea, “Then my dreams are true. But I still fear for the future, Phea. For Ama and I have seen many horrors and bleak visions of things yet to pass. Surely if this vision is true, then these bleaker ones are not all phantoms of our minds?”

  But Phea said to her, “Have courage, Ana. For some may yet come to pass, while others may not. The purpose of dreams is to reveal choices—two roads you may take. For your mother has given you the gift of freewill so you alone might decide your fate.” Ana then smiled, thinking of her mother that lay far away in the seas.

  But Ana felt troubled again, saying, “Great joy fills my heart, Phea, knowing of the new life that has been granted unto me. But I cannot tell Ama. For in his mind, he is now preparing to defend us against the darkness that now descends upon the forest.” Ana then stood and faced the tree, saying, “The evil he will soon face I have brought, Phea. For I know now that my father, Agapor, has come here for a sinister purpose. And yet inside me has been placed an even darker spirit—something malicious which I fear has been designed to fight the will of my father and his dark servant, as the seas of my mother fought his will long ago. I fear it now seeks to rise up somehow and destroy him again, entombing Phantaia and the world in some watery curse.”

  Ana then stepped back as the handmaiden trees gathered around her in a tight ring. Phea’s delicate branch bent down to touch her heart with its leafy hand. The trees then gathered their own limbs about the trunk of Phea. Phea then saw that within Ana lay something mysterious and profound.

  The handmaiden trees looked upon her with happy, yet troubled faces. Phea then said to her, “You must return to the garden and prepare a secret place for the coming of you children, Ana, so that the dark beings that come into it may not find them. For it is your children who shall decide the future of Phantaia.”

  “But the destiny of the well that dwells within you is unknown to us,” Phea said. “We do not know what hides in your heart, as it is closed to us. But the Twilight Mist which once dwelt in Phantaia had planned a hope-filled and happy life for you in Abrea. In this knowledge are we certain. For something good that was lost was meant to return to Phantaia, and thus be reunited with it.” Ana looked quietly upon the trees knowing in her heart what she must soon face.

  She thanked Phea, hugging her silver trunk, and touching the gray branches of the trees. They then looked down from their heights with sad yet hopeful eyes upon her. And Ana turned to look once more on Phea’s fading tree, until its silhouette disappeared within the deep azure of the sunny skies above her.

  Ana ran off down the hill, hoping to return to Abrea before Ama awoke. Soon would darkness fall. And she knew she must not be alone in the woods after dark. She jumped through the dark hollow of the great tree from which she had come. Stumbling again through the shadows, she fell, tumbling headfirst through the opening of the great tree trunk, and down into the bright green grass.

  But when Ana opened her eyes, the woods seemed different. An odd silence had descended upon it. And the mists of evening had filled the woods, wrapping about Phantavra in its dense lavender cloud. It had returned too quickly, she thought. For it was not yet the time of sleep. Or had she lost touch with the weird and staggered flow of time that had always wavered in those ancient woods?

  But a stranger fog had darkened the distant trees with its ghoulish blanket. It was an ominous vapor, the same one she had seen in the blacker woods of Avaras ages ago. On either side of her the spooky mist curled unnaturally about the trunks of the trees, hiding and distorting their true forms, as it drifted among them like wandering ghosts.

  But as Ana looked through the murky haze she saw the forest begin to change. Quivering lips and ghoulish faces began to appear then disappear on the trunks of the trees that lay in the distant blue shadows of the woods. Ana then knew that the threatening evil of Avaras had returned to Phantavra.

  As she ran through the woods Ana felt the hidden presence of another spirit following close behind her in the mist. She paused to look into the forest behind her. But as she did, she saw nothing there save the quiet trees whose lumbering limbs hung still in the mist high above her head. A dark dew had begun to drip down from the tops of the limbs like a soft rain. It covered her dark hair and face in its sticky sap until she could barely see the path in front of her.

  Ana then tripped on a root, falling in a dark bed of moss beside the path. But as she climbed to her feet she saw black rose petals laid upon the ground about her. They seemed to follow the edge of the path then trail off into the darker woods. But as she looked up the trail she saw how the black blooms led straight into the heart of Phantaia.

  Suddenly she heard a stick break. Turning around she saw only the mist as it curled like a phantom about the trunk of a nearby tree. Its odd and ever-changing form seemed to tempt her imagination. She then heard a dark voice calling her name, its sound penetrating the haunted air of the forest about her, yet echoing through the inner chamber of her very heart .

  Ana then felt a horrible thirst come upon her. It overwhelmed her mind and body, as if she would die if she did not find water soon. But that thirst had come from deep inside her—from the new life she was carrying. It was they who were calling her to return to the garden. In her confusion, she panicked, running quickly toward the warm aurora of the One Tree as its warm light cascaded through a tunnel of trees on the horizon.

  In the distance she could barely see the gate of the Ringwood forest, whose shining white trees still guarded the trail leading into the valley of Abrea. But their trunks were closing quickly, as if gathering as one to guard against a dark presence following closely behind her.

  Ana ran in desperation towards the elderwood trees. But as she ran the thundering feet of some other being rose up behind her. And she could feel its icy breath close on her heals. She then jumped between the tree trunks of the Ringwood as they closed behind her. She then felt the hair on her neck begin to rise as the long trace of a cold shadow cast upon the ground around her began to fade before her eyes. She did not look back to see what had followed her.

  On she ran, through the white forest, until she was beyond the last grove of the elderwood trees. Descending the wide grassy slopes of Aron, she fled across the laughing streams of Lilu until she found herself within the safety of the Gardens of Abrea. But the deep thirst that had come into her was now leading her to the top of the hill of the One Tree. But first she must find Ama.

  As she climbed the hill, Ana soon came to the secretive spot on the slopes of the garden where she and Ama had slept together. But he was gone. In a panic she looked about the tangled brush. Not seeing him anywhere, she began running up the hill. Nearing the top, she stopped for a moment to rest upon a windy terrace. Catching her breath, she felt safe again in the glowing verdure of the slopes. For the dusk of twilight had not yet settled about the Hill of Abra. And the warm lights of the One Tree still chased away the murky shadows that crept about the distant tree line.

  But evening’s eerie mist had begun to float again upon the twilight air, climbing up from the valley below and over the tops of the trees, painting its lavender shade upon the canvas of that once-colorful landscape with its sad and silken brush. Yet it seemed to Ana that it was too early for the mist to return. And Ama would not have left the safety of the garden during twilight time. Ana’s mind then raced with dark thoughts and sinister possibilities.

  From the hill she stood and called for Ama. Her voice echoed out into the gloomy woods. But Ama did not answer. She knew he was not in the garden. Had he entered the treacherous woods alone looking for her? It’s then her great thirst overcame her, driving her onward, over the last rise of the hill.

  Ana walked the final slope of the trail leading up to the great tree. She crawled over the giant roots that had draped themselves around the tiny pool. There Ana sat, staring into its waters with her maddening and unquenchable thirst. It had possessed her now, filling her with delusions and strange desires she could
not control.

  It was the secret pool’s waters she had sought. As she stared into the water, she realized she knew something of their purpose. Yet she knew even less about the meaning of that which lay within her own heart. And the perplexing nature of that tragic truth tortured her. Why had she come to the pool? Why had she come to Phantaia?

  As she gazed at her reflection in the water she felt the relentless thirst again, growing with an irresistible force with her. The new life inside her was crying for its waters. In a panic, she climbed down the hill again, stumbling through the vines and bushes, trying to resist the terrible desire and craving she felt. As she neared the bottom she fell, rolling down the hill until she lay upon the dark rocks beside Lilu’s tiny stream.

  She reached down with trembling hands to sip its cool waters. But as she drank from it, oddly she felt no comfort from it. Her thirst felt even greater than before. Piercing pains flowed throughout her body. She then heard a horrible wailing from deep within. It was her own children again, crying out in desperation for the waters of the pool.

  Weary and exhausted, she climbed back to the top of the hill where she collapsed beside the quiet pool, out of breath. She felt as if she had come to that strange well in a trance, where nothing was seen or heard, only felt. What had possessed her? Was it a nightmare spawned by some cruel spirit to torture her?

  She crawled to the edge of the pool, looking into it with lustful eyes. There she knelt before the mirror of the little spring and reluctantly cupped her hands, slowly drawing forth the water of the pool into them. She stared at the purity of them, seeing yet an odd light hidden within them. She then placed the water cautiously before her lips, as she closed her eyes, ever fearful of it. But her thirst was too much for her to bear. She must save her children.

  Ana then drank the cool draught of the spring, until not a drop remained in her hands. Instantly, she felt refreshed and soothed. For the crying within her had ceased. She then drew water from the pool again. Suddenly, she was filled with a feeling of overwhelming pleasure and release. Her mind seemed to have been cleared of all fear and regret, filled instead with a deep joy and contentment she had never known. She felt one with the pool, one with Phantaia.

  She felt connected to every tree, plant, and living thing, though the ferns and flowers that grew around her seemed to have changed in color and form. She felt an eternal peace within her mind and spirit. For that elixir of life had stilled her heart and yet strangely replenished it. And the spirits that lay within her and around her were all at peace, joined together with her in some infinite kindred moment of boundless bliss.

  She felt a spiritual sensation, as if the capacity for unending love and understanding, unburdened by the shade of fear or worry, had filled her completely. As she stood upon the hill and looked about her, the world seemed bathed in a miraculous glamour. For the trees below the hill seemed to have changed shape within the purple clouds that flowed about their feet. They now appeared as young children dancing in great unison, hand in hand, to the rhythm of some distant music rising up from the earth below. The trees of Phantaia had at last revealed their living spirits to her changed eyes. And she now saw the true nature of the secretive forest. For through the waters of the pool were her eyes closed, washed clean, and reopened again to the true joy of creation that had been hidden from them.

  But that vision soon drifted away. Ana then returned to the pool and drank deeply from it, yet again. Her mind was then filled again with the visual pleasures of things unrecognizable, the secret knowledge of truths long hidden to her, visions of strange colors, and the secret spirit of the living earth set aflame by its own inner light.

  When she closed her eyes, even richer thoughts came into her spirit that seemed vast and unknowable. She started to feel dizzy, as if she would faint. But when she opened her eyes, bizarre images returned to her in even bolder forms.

  All of Phantaia itself, as far as she could see, seemed filled with great rows of children stretching off into the distant. With garlands in their hair, they ran in never-ending rows across the boundless landscape. She smiled as she watched them dancing in wide circles beyond the hill, laughing as they ran through the many valleys beneath the mountains.

  The trees had all but disappeared, replaced by these smiling and giggling children of the woods. Ana saw the elderwood trees as they truly were, dressed in white, their beautiful young spirits prancing upon the grassy slopes of Aron. Their happy spirits had somehow barred the cursed trees whose empty husks stood silent and spiritless within their rings. Ana stood amazed at this wondrous sight. She now saw in a vision, unimaginable until now, what the One Tree had always seen—his own countless children endlessly playing and dancing about his feet.

  The proud Chieftain Trees had stood tall amongst them, clothed in rich robes like wizards, their beards shining like their silver hair and eyes. Their many children seemed to flock about them, hand in hand, with unending laughter and delight in winding and ever-widening rows and circles. She realized that, like Ama, the trees too had hidden spirits beyond the leaves, trunks, bark, and roots that bound them to this physical plane. For they were spiritual beings, each of them blessed with a piece of the loving essence of the Spirit Divine.

  Ana returned to the pool again and looked down into it, realizing now what it truly meant. Through those blessed waters Ana had seen with the loving eyes of the trees the true beauty of Phantaia’s mighty creation and the glory of the miraculous spirit from which it was made. Phantaia was but one great and loving family, alive and yet ever grateful to its Creator for its blissful state, desiring nothing else but to live free and to be. That is all it ever wanted. Tears then came into her eyes.

  As Ana climbed down the hill, a strange sleep had now come upon her. She wandered about Abrea listlessly, seeking Ama in the hollows of their hideaway. But as she dug about the bushes upon the slopes, she knew he was gone. She sat struggling to stay awake in her quiet bed, waiting to see his smiling face appear before her from the thicket. But he did not return. Only a sad mist remained in Abrea to wrap Ana in its icy arms.

  The weird waters of the pool had drained her mind and spirit. Its intoxicating draught seemed to have dulled her senses and pushed her into a strange half-awake state, unlike the peaceful rest she had experienced before. And so for many nights Ana tossed about in her bed alone.

  Then one evening she awoke in terror, startled by a distant sound coming from the woods below. She thought she heard something crashing about in the youthful trees at the base of the hill. She then heard a rustling in the bushes, something that seemed to lurk within the dark roses that grew above the falls.

  The lights of the One Tree then suddenly blazed above her, burning away the frosty mist that hung upon the tops of the trees. The glorious hill was then freed of its shadow so that its rich colors sparkled in the fresh daylight dew. But Ana heard again a rustling of leaves at the base of the hill. As it burst through the trees, she then saw the mysterious figure. It was Ama. He had returned to her.

  With great relief and happiness she ran to him. But Ama paused, as if unsure of who she was. Seeing her face he then smiled. And they embraced and kissed. “Ama, I feared some harm had come to you.” Ana told him. But as she looked into his eyes, he seemed different. He felt strange to her. For she saw in him the depths of a new fear and anxiety newly awakened. He looked upon her in silence, refusing to speak.

  Ama then took Ana by the hand and led her to the silver streams that flowed before the cliffs of Abra. Beneath the Falls of Bann they wound their way down the stone stairway to Lumlea, following its rocky ledge as it trailed off under the cliffs. At the bottom they passed the place where the spray of the falls had gathered in a cool showering mist before collecting into one of the many glowing emerald pools that lay before the many rivulets of Avalyr. Beneath the cliffs lay a secluded alcove that wound its way through the black rocks. As Ana looked in the darkness she thought she saw an ancient set of lime-encrusted steps leading down into th
e depths of the rocks under the hill.

  Below the spray of the falls, rising up from the river sands before them loomed the white tree of Lumlea, still bathed in the pale light of the mist cast about in the sunny air above. She and Ama walked beside the beds of colored pebbles piled up around them as the cool spray of the falls fell upon their hair and faces. “Only in this secret place under the Falls of Bann is it now safe to speak,” Ama told her, resolutely, “Like Lumlea, here in this alcove we shall remain unseen and unheard by both the spirits of the living and the dead. And you may safely sleep within the maidenhair ferns that lie thickest within the shadows of these cliffs.”

  Ama and Ana sat down beside the great bulbous trunk of the white tree. With fearful eyes, Ama then told her, “Ana, on the night you had left I had not awakened, even at the light of day. For I had succumbed to the curse of the endless sleep of the scent of the Murgala. Those roses had been stirred by the hand of something that had crept among them the night before. For I saw with my waking eyes the black blossoms cut by its claws.

  “Seeing that you were gone, I had feared you had been taken by that being deep into the depths of the woods. In terror I took shape as Phanyan, riding forth through Phantaia seeking you. But finding that none of the Chieftain trees had seen you, I grew fearful,” said Ama.

  “But I realized in my search that I had gone too far alone into the grimmer parts of the woods. Soon I found myself alone beside the Black Willows of Esnes, who yet grew upon the dark and stormy cliffs above Avaras. Only those secluded and shadowy trees of the borderlands would know of the darker secrets that others had not. But they told me that they had not seen you in Avaras or along the numerous trails that led down into its wood,” Ama told her. Ama then looked about and began to whisper.

  “But they told me that a dark figure had come into Phantaia, something terrible that had penetrated the secret door of the fortress of the rowans. Iwu the ancient yew had guarded it from all intruders since time immemorial,” Ama told her. Looking down in grief, he then said, “But they told me that Iwu’s arms and legs had been ripped from the earth by the evil Connewe that had come upon him in the night.”

  Ana then said, “It breaks my heart to know the old yew is dead.” Ama said, “Ana, I am saddened, too.”

  Ama continued, “The willows then told me that they had seen the blackened eyes of the Connewe’s dark lord and leader. With him had followed a thousand demonic trees. They had risen up again to wage war with Phantavra, as they had in ancient times.”

  Ama looked with fear again upon the eyes of Ana. “But Ana, the willows told me that another more powerful being had come into Phantaia under the cover of darkness,” Ama said. “It was an even greater monster which none had seen, only felt in the woods. For its dark form was unknown to the trees by day. It would only walk as they slept at the darkest hour of twilight, when the shade of its shadow cast a veil over their senses. It then followed an unguarded trail it alone had known. And so had I grown fearful Ana. I then left seeking Afa the father-ash, he who has slept beside the waters for many ages, deep in the valley of Avalyr. There his many soldiers had stood guard along its muddy banks unchallenged. For none had ever crossed Avalyr to Abrea for fear of that river and the strong ash trees that gripped its muddy banks.

  “But when I appeared beside the river,” Ama said. “I saw where his children had fled before some ominous and violent assault suddenly thrust upon them. Many of the once-mighty trees I could not find. Only their fallen limbs, ripped away from their trunks had remained, scattered along the shores of Avalyr.”

  Ama then told Ana, “But I fear for our safety, Ana. For just beyond the woods that stand before our lands have opened up many dark gulfs and cracks in the ground beneath Phantaia. They belch forth a foul fog that smells of death and decay, and things born of the undead and the underworld. But I fear something even more sinister hides there. Dark catacombs, which I have never seen before, have formed beneath the blackened earth, belching forth apparitions, strange spirits, and wailing specters never known in our lands. The lost spirits of the ancient world bring word of their suffering to us, yet a warning too. If what once has lain in those pits has now awakened then a more ominous presence shall soon fill all of Phantaia.”

  Ana stared in fear at Ama’s revelations. But Ama told her, “I know not the meaning of these horrible sights, as I have not had time to explore them. But the forces of Oblivion have clearly returned to stir the Connewe of Avaras to war again. Yet something unnatural has entered woods. And it is this presence which most troubles me, Ana.”

  When he was done with his tale Ana hugged him tightly. Though she was fearful, she was grateful to see him again. She then told him, “Ama, I cannot think about all that you have seen, as I have sought for many tortured nights to see your smiling face and be with you again. I am just grateful that you are alive.” She touched his lips with her fingers, for she had missed his kind and confident smile.

  She took his hand, and with a knowing glance, led him back to the garden where they embraced once more in their secret hideaway. The bright light of the tree shined brightly as it burned away the last shadows of the night. They then ran down into the depths of the many orchards in the valley, eating of the rich bounty that lay about them in the sunny vales below Abrea. But Ama looked with curiosity at Ana as she ate. Unknown to him her appetite had increased with the new life that was rapidly growing inside of her. But she could only look on his curiosity as a hidden pleasure and smile.

  For a brief time they laughed and played together as the young and carefree children they once were. And Ana saw how quickly their fears had flown from their minds. Like careless doves flying carefree upon the wild winds of a departing storm were their joyous spirits free of all worry again. For a brief moment it felt to Ana as if their terrors were unreal, just fading ghosts summoned up by the forest’s changing mists, or illusions born of their own minds’ clouded imaginings.

  That night they both slept soundly within the safety of the alcove beneath the falls. The next day Ana awoke early. But seeing Ama beside her, with much relief, she fell back to sleep again. As the light of the great tree shined on the pools around them, they rose as one. She then walked beside Ama through the maze of the beautiful gardens above. Those idyllic days with Ama, she thought, might never end. But Ama had sensed a change in Ana, and in Abrea, that troubled him. But he had not yet discovered its truth. But as the twilight of early evening came upon their sleepy minds, Ama began to ponder its mystery.

  “Ana, you never told me where you had gone the night you disappeared. Did you not enter the shadowed woods of Phantaia and become lost?” Ama said to her.

  Ana then said, “My love, seeing that you had not awakened, I did venture into the woods alone. For I had sought in secret the trail to the forbidden ones, the Maiden Trees, which you had feared to share with me. It is only their wisdom that I sought. But as I returned to Phantavra’s twilight trails, I too felt the eerie darkness of the woods descend around me. It is then I thought I heard my name called from the depths. But as I ran past the boundaries of the Ringwood, I felt the spirit of a terrible presence there, whose searching eyes seemed to follow me.”

  Ana then paused. “But Ama there is something important I must tell you first,” Ana said. But before she could speak, Ama looked about the hill in surprise, as if a new sound was heard upon the breeze about Abrea. He looked up with squinting eyes at the elderwood that encircled them, as if hearing upon the whispering winds the sound of an intruder.

  Ama then stood up and said to Ana, “Something stirs in the woods nearby. It has found the courage to come here at the close of day when the lantern of the One Tree still shines brightly upon the shadowy woods. I must take form as Phanyan and go discover the nature of this bold presence. I must confront it, Ana. For I now know that what was heard in the winds upon the tops of the trees was indeed a dire warning. Listen! A black spirit draws near.”

  Ama took Ana by the hand and led her quickly t
hrough the mossy trees of the river and up the winding stairs of Bann. As they climbed the hill Ama stopped, hearing again a rustling in the distance as the fading light of the One Tree beamed out its last rays across the rising mist. “Soon it shall dare to come even to Abrea where the light shines brightest. I hear its heavy feet stalking the dim glades beyond the elderwood. It brings evil again to this place, Ana. It has summoned the darker trees to rise again against us. A new war with Phantaia shall soon be waged unless I can stop it,” Ama told her.

  But he looked down in doubt, saying, “It seems impossible to me, Ana, that this should be. For only the spirit of the Limitless Void may command this evil. But his spirit and form passed away long ago.” Ama then looked up at the One Tree. “The light of the great tree still burns brightly,” Ama said. “Its unwavering glow is still untarnished. And so we are safe here. For no power of sky or earth, void or darkness, dares to enter Abrea as long as the tree and its noble pool still live. For they are married, Ana, their hearts and spirits united as one under this sacred mound upon which we stand. But I must go now.”

  “Please don’t leave!” Ana begged him. “This journey is perilous, as many unknown things creep about the woods. I fear for your safety, Ama.”

  But Ama told her, “It is my duty to protect Abrea and my father’s tree. I shall never forsake my responsibility. The destiny of Phantaia now rests with me alone. I will go and summon the oaks to rise to fight this evil, to defend Abrea before it is destroyed.”

  He then embraced Ana one more time. But she could not let him go. He then told her, “I shall be gone a few more nights, Ana. Wait for me in Abrea, beneath the falls that bathe the tree of Lumlea. There you will be safe. For that place lies nearest to the secret heart of this hill and its spirit. But do not go into the woods again. For where the light cannot go shall evil dwell.”

  “I will honor your wish,” she said. She watched him ride away from her, winding his through the hills and dales below the falls until in the distance she thought she glimpsed his tiny form beside the fog-enshrouded river, far below. She watched as he disappeared into the tree line, and was gone.

  The gruesome gray mist had now returned to Abrea, blanketing it in its solemn shroud. But the new life that had grown within Ana had drained her of her energy again, so that as she slept beneath the Falls of Bann, the great thirst was thrust upon her once more. But this time, she thought, she would resist its tempting call.

  She slept for many nights in the maidenhair ferns of the alcove, the sound of the roar of the cataract above lulling her to sleep as it had done the night before. The quiet tree of Lumlea also slept, as if she were trapped in a spiritual realm of her own making. As Ana lay in the farthest corners of the cave, she hoped she would awaken to the sound of the happy footfalls of Ama beside her again.

  But as she slept the unquenchable thirst had returned. In the middle of the night she awoke, bathed in a feverish sweat. That terrible thirst had filled her haunted mind with dark illusions and dire visions again. But the more she resisted its call, the grimmer became the strange shapes and shadows that crawled about the rocks and pools around her. Her mind became sickened by it, such that she could not sleep. For every hour she would awaken with great thirst and the relentless pull of the pool that lay high above her on the hill.

  But in the midst of that restless night, she rose from her bed like a being possessed, climbing the winding paths that encircled Abrea. In the depths of the night she walked alone through the thick humid air, up the winding paths of the hill, until she stood at the foot of the mighty tree. Climbing over its maze of tangled roots, she found her way to the silver pool that slept there, cold and unstirred in the night air. She then dipped her hands down into its depths, drawing out the magical waters, drinking deeply again as she had before. In a trance she then returned to her bed beneath the falls.

  For many evenings she had made her way to the pool to drink, as the days blurred into nights. But with each new dawn she found herself alone and unsure of where she was, or where she had been the night before. But to her and her unborn children had been granted a restful sleep, undisturbed and tranquil, unlike that first troubled night so long ago. And so by Abrea’s secret waters was given to Ana many nights of peaceful interlude. Yet with each gray dawn she was still weighed down by the uncertainty of seeing Ama ever again.

  Many days had passed and Ama had not returned. Ana often sat upon the rocks below the falls and looked down into the phthalo green pools of Avalyr for solace. But the next evening her troubled sleep had returned. As before she made the ghostly walk from her bed, climbing the hill until she came before the silent pool.

  But as she reached down to draw forth its waters she saw that the pool was now empty. She then awoke as from a nightmare, rubbing her eyes, looking in terror at the empty well where the precious waters once had flowed. She then realized the horror of what she had done. For the shining spring’s waters had been depleted, and yet had not returned.

  Ana ran from the pool in terror. But as she fled down the hill, she saw that the light of day seemed gloomier than normal. She then turned to gaze upon the One Tree and saw that the bright light of its trunk and boughs had greatly diminished. Its white bark had faded to a tawny gray. And its leaves, once silver and green, had yellowed and browned, hanging limp on its many drooping boughs. The light of the dying tree now cast only the sad transient glow of eternal autumn upon the dreary forests and gardens about her.

  Ana then saw about Abrea that, unlike most mornings, the mists that would normally burn away had oddly remained about the gardens. The lights of the great tree that once shone so bright in the morning air now hung low beneath the clouds that clung about the top of the hill. A cold wind now flew past her, blowing about the leaves and limp plants of the garden that drooped their dry and withered branches. A somber slate-gray sky hung above her, as if possessed by the long shadow of a distant tempest that had gathered in the horizon beyond her sight.

  The gray fog now filled the lonely outskirts of the gardens, replacing the purple mists of twilight time. It began to slither its way about the dark forests in the distance, so that by its thickness no light or darkness could pass beyond it. Like a foul vapor of the dead, it seemed spawned from the very bowels of the earth. But what monstrous pit of horrors coughed it up, Ana dared not imagine.

  Yet, with the dimming of the lights of the One Tree, there had returned a mournful, almost sublime state to the inner woods of Phantavra—a morbid spirit which it seemed to have once lost but now eerily embraced. It was as if the trees had willingly drawn about them the solemn pall of their long desired death, returning to the promised peace of the eternal grave denied them by the scourge of their suffering lives. For death like life was once a gift to them, stripped cruelly away. And to its grim summons had Phantaia now gladly surrendered.

  Yet the black trees that lay upon the margins of the valley were not the ones she had remembered. They were not of Abrea’s youthful trees or of Phantavra’s gentler woods. And she gazed in horror as she watched the tops of the trees shift and shake as they moved about in the foggy forest. Ana then saw a faint flash of lightning far away in the gloomy horizon beyond the mountains. For the forests about the mountain slopes seemed to have surrendered themselves to the violent gusts of an unseen storm, bending their great boughs to the rhythm of its cold and calamitous winds.

  A creeping penumbra began to glide over the Heavens above, covering the woods with its morbid shade until it reached the edge of the valley and stopped. Only the secluded garden and its great tree had stood apart from the odd shadow. For they possessed the last spirit of some inner font of life that they alone could still draw forth, and which could not be taken from them nor easily fade away. Within their wilted growth they would hold on resolutely and yet with desperation to their own living lights, as if gripped with a vaguely perceived fear, refusing to surrender themselves to the creeping shadows that now invaded their once-shining lands.

  But with the
disappearance of the water of the pool Ana now saw that the One Tree had begun to die. And the living nature of Abrea had slowly begun to perish before her very eyes with the fading of its once glorious light beneath the clouds. As Ana began to weep quietly to herself in the hidden hollows of the gardenias, its endless blooms began to fall like pale ash, drifting down and about her hair and face.

  That night she slept beside the pool and would not leave it, looking down into its hollow rocky cauldron in doubt and fear, yet hoping its waters would return. Yet with each passing hour she would awake again with great thirst, staring into the empty pool, seeking its mercy and forgiveness. For she could not satiate the life inside her that desperately needed the magical waters that now were no more.

  Then at a fateful hour, when the distant rumble of the storms began shook the hill, she awoke once more in the midst of a nightmare. As she gazed upon the skies, there in the distance, she saw a slowly-boiling blue bank of clouds, much darker and bolder than the others, rolling its way across the tops of the trees like a great tidal wave upon the sea. Beyond the valley flashed another stroke of lightning, much closer, whose delayed sound echoed forth through the stillness of the frightened air.

  Ana stood upon the roots of the fading tree and looked to see if Ama had returned. But as she peered around the garden she saw that an ominous new shade now hung upon the ashen plants and shriveled blooms below her. It was not borne by their shadows alone, but thrown forth upon them from some new darkness that had approached the hill with the gathering storm.

  It was an ominous presence. For the dying trees seemed black as coal, filled with a sickening shade that they could not shake. At the foot of the elderwood lay grim shadows whose darkness had killed the once-green grass that lay beneath their feet. Its once-vibrant color seemed stained, not by the shadows of the overarching trees, but from some artificial yet permanent hue of the nighttime skies beamed down upon it, an inky blot which no light could now penetrate.

  Some power unseen by her seemed to control that darkness. As the shadows shifted and moved about, they slowly filled every corner of the woods with their deep blues and blacks. As Ana looked at her feet, she saw that the darkness had drowned out her own shadow in its black satin sheath. It’s then she knew from whence the darkness came.

  In a panic, Ana fled away down the hill and into the dark woods, desperately seeking Ama. She ran across the dry beds of Lilu, until she came upon the slopes of Aron. There she stopped at the edge of the still elderwood trees. She cried out for Ama, her voice resonating through the darkness as she walked cautiously through the wilted Ringwood.

  But no answer was returned. Nor was heard the whispers of the winds within the tops of the trees. Only a still silence gripped the shadowy woods that loomed around her. But as she walked along the dappled trail she found that the usual paths she had known were now overgrown and unrecognizable.

  Parts of the woods seemed overgrown and impenetrable, as if the dark forest had grown wild and savage, sprouting new sinister growths which had buried the living forms that once had filled it. It seemed as if the work of some gloomier spirit had now possessed the plants and trees, and changed the woods to its own maligned design. She tried to find a recognizable path. But not a single tree or landmark looked familiar.

  Time seemed to have sped up in the forest causing the dark plants to explode in size, climbing over each other in a chaotic tumble of thicker, more tangled growth. Translucent, fleshy leaves and evil-looking malignant flowers opened their bloated black shapes and purple blooms as she walked past. Dizzying clusters of tendrils brushed against her legs and arms, their tenuous snake-like fingers reaching out from the rotted earth to snag her.

  Massive malicious-looking vines clung to every limb and branch, suffocating the trees in their sheer masses. Tangled and thick, their black ropes had reached out to strangle their neighbors, encircling the trees with their hairy arms, wrapping every bough in their sinewy fingers until their weight bent low the imprisoned trees. The open spaces that had remained about the path were now filled with an unstoppable undergrowth of luminous fungi, sickened mushrooms, and dense spongy spores. It was as if the light of some dead sun had fed them, its wicked black star casting down its ghastly glow from the festering sore of a wounded Heaven. Yet radiating from within their ghoulish leaves and ghostly stalks was a darker gloom cast aglow and nursed by the suffocating night from whose shadows they were truly nourished.

  Seeing the odd-looking plants Ana turned back in fear, fleeing through the slimy fog that now poured down into the valley of Abrea. It is then she heard a ghostly voice. It sounded as if the younger trees were whispering to her in the throes of their own death, reciting some terrible curse upon her. But the voice had not come from the woods. It came from the hill. As she stopped to listen she noticed it was a woman’s voice calling her from some high place on the summit of Abra.

  As she walked across the muddy beds of Lilu, Ana thought she heard the strange voice again, only louder. She then heard a sad weeping coming from somewhere near the One Tree. Ana ran up the hill as quickly as she could, climbing over the dead wisteria and honeysuckle, their dried leaves and limp vines crunching to powder under her feet.

  Looming above her, Ana saw the gray trunk of the One Tree that once shined so proudly. And a deep sadness came over her. Yet, with the last of its faded lights she could still see the hilltop in the increasing gloom. But as she approached the tree she saw on the hill, beyond the fleeing fog that hung upon its peak, a ghostly figure kneeling beside the dying tree. Its back was turned to her. Ana cautiously approached the strange figure, thinking it might be Ama.

  But as she looked through the haze, there beside the tree stood a young woman. Even in the dim light she was beautiful beyond words, with eyes blue as the shining waves of the sea, and skin white as the foam of the ocean. She was clad in a flowing white dress embroidered with accents of red gold and forest green. And her shining, ruddy blonde hair was elegantly braided as it hung down to her ghostly white feet. Upon her head was a shining garland of lilies and orchids, woven like a crown, framing her graceful face.

  She seemed to be a being, not of this world, but from some other time and place. For she radiated a strange phantasmal aura that was filled with an unworldly, yet life-giving glow. She was not of the flesh, but appeared as a vision seen only in the depths of a waking dream. Yet Ana sensed she was a spirit of the earth and a being somehow connected to the hill upon which they now stood.

  As Ana drew near to her, she saw that her head was held down, as if in deep meditation. Or was she mourning?

  Ana stopped and stood beside her, unsure of the strange woman. The golden maiden then looked upon Ana with happy, yet tearful eyes. She then walked towards her, her small feet almost gliding across the earth. Ana then saw her face up close. It was perfect, peaceful, and soft. Beautiful beyond compare. And yet in her eyes seemed to dwell some mystery Ana could not fathom. For the spectral woman bore a profound sadness upon her face. Her watery eyes looked as if for many ages she had wept alone in silence.

  The forlorn woman then spoke to Ana in a ghostly voice, saying, “You have returned to the pool. For this am I grateful.”

  Ana asked, “Who are you?”

  The ghostly woman then said, “I am the Secret Spring who has slept in this mound for many uncounted eons, waiting patiently for the last of my days in Phantaia. From me have arisen the waters of the well that lies before you. And from those waters has the One Tree and the trees of the world been nourished. But the last of my waters have all but drained away now. For what essence of me that yet remained in the pool has now been depleted. So, like my own fading spirit, this precious font I once filled has now bled away.” She then looked down, as if in sadness.

  But Ana fell to her knees, saying, “No, I am the one who has taken your essence. For a cruel thirst possessed me for many nights.” Ana then started to cry, saying, “I have taken that which was forbidden. For Ama told me not to drink from the pool. S
eeing the wilted tree with its once mighty lights now diminished, I am fearful for the fate of Abrea. For with the dying of the light of the One Tree shall evil soon come upon it. Left unguarded, both the One Tree and its precious garden shall surely die. Then shall all of Phantaia also fall. Only Ama can now stop the dark spirits that come to destroy them.”

  Ana looked up at the spirit for mercy, saying, “Noble Spirit, Ama disappeared into the woods and has not returned. He must have known of my evil deeds and fled away,” She then held her hands to her face in shame, pleading, “Please forgive me for all that I have done.”

  But the Secret Spring knelt beside her, saying, “Ana, you should not be sad. Nor should your heart be troubled. For these are things that have come to pass which I long ago had foreseen. At last has my own time in this world finally run out, like the golden sands that once poured with vigor from the Hourglass of Time. But the essence that once flowed through me had begun to fade long before you came to Phantaia, as it was made and meant to do. And so have I known that the waters of my life would someday perish, and all things sustained by them also die. For everything that has a beginning must also have an end, Ana.”

  Ana then looked once more upon the falling leaves of the dying forest and turned away in despair. For it seemed with each passing moment the colors of autumn, red and gold, had deepened, enveloping Abrea and all of Phantaia in the hues and shades of its failing spirit. And she saw in the great tree’s death a tragic end to the world of which she had played a part.

  But the Secret Spring saw her suffering and touched her face, as she smiled warmly, saying, “Do not fear the future, child. Soon shall new life be born into this world. For I like you came to this marvelous realm with fear until I found love. Yet strangely, unknown to me, I discovered I was brought here by a higher power, so that my own waters might someday nourish the young spirits that now grow in you.” Ana then looked in confusion at the spirit.

  The Secret Spring said to her, “To you, Ana, has been given a great gift. Soon shall come the time when your own children are born into this world, blessing it with their many wondrous creations and gifts.”

  But Ana said to the spirit, “How could it be that the pool and tree must perish so that my children live?”

  The Secret Spring said only, “Ana, this is the great cycle of life the Essence Eternal, our Great Father, set in motion long ago.”

  But Ana cried, saying, “If I had known what would become of Phantaia, I would never have come here. For I love Ama as I do the very trees of Phantaia. I never sought to harm them.”

  The Secret Spring looked at her with understanding eyes. “Through your love for Ama shall the spirit of the seas and the trees now be united. From your love shall the spirits of the Children of Shining be born anew in this world. For it is the secret desire of the Essence Eternal who willed it that this be so,” said the Secret Spring, smiling.

  But as Ana looked into the compassionate eyes of the Secret Spring, she saw a profound sadness borne upon her gentle countenance. The Secret Spring then said to her, “But one task remains for you.” The Secret Spring held Ana’s hand, saying, “You know now what you must do, Ana. For you have known it in your heart for many nights in Phantaia, even before you came here. Within you sleep the Sacred Waters of the world—the true waters promised Phantaia before its very creation. You must make a choice soon. It is yours alone to make, as no other may decide it for you.”

  Ana stared at the Secret Spring, who smiled down upon her with kind and understanding eyes that looked deeply into her own.

  The Secret Spring then turned away, walking back to the foot of the One Tree. There she looked up at his dim lights, which had now faded to a somber gray. She said to Ana, “My time in this world has passed away. I must soon depart it. For with the last of my waters now depleted, I shall soon perish. With the death of the pool, the last of my essence has now been spent and sped away. My spirit shall soon sit beside my father, the Immortal Clay, who dwells in the Lands of the Afterlife where all spirits of the dead shall soon safely rest.”

  As the Secret Spring looked down at the base of the tree, she told Ana, “But I am saddened still, Ana. For the spirits of many others that I love dearly must remain behind in Phantaia to assist in the making of this world and another yet to come. They vowed long ago to help the children of the twilit forest. I am most sorrowful for the fate of my brother, the Rock Eternal. He shall stay behind to guard the sacred earth of this world until its final destruction by the evil that hides in the depths. When the last spirit of the last child has departed shall he too be granted his freedom, sojourning forth to greet his many fallen sisters and brothers once more in Avredd.”

  But the Secret Spring smiled, saying, “My brother has many beautiful gifts and treasures yet to be revealed in this world. With his glad and happy heart, he forges these treasures, even now, under the earth. Someday they shall awaken and be found by the children of the world. But the flesh of their bodies, which shall surround their hearts and minds, he now treasures most of all the things he has made for them. For this worthy task my father had decided his son should do without family or friend to guide him, until such time as his works within this world were completed.”

  The Secret Spring paused, as if entranced by some deeper thought. She pointed to a place beside the One Tree where its roots had left a small hollow in the rock. There the poppies had grown, bright and red, within a small plot of earth. Ana then walked over and stood beside her, looking down at a small pile of tumbled stones from which the flowers had grown.

  The Secret Spring said, “It is here that I buried my daughter Phanduan.” She then walked over and sat beside the small grave that lay at the foot of the great tree. She showed Ana the tiny stones she had placed over her body, like a shrine, in the midst of the white roots.

  “She died long ago when the world was young. I wrapped her tiny body and buried her here beside the tree where she would not be forgotten. Here she has remained in the cold earth alone yet near to me, her loving mother. For I have slept beneath her in my own tomb, deep underground, keeping her close to my heart, always. In this sacred plot shall the light of the heart of my daughter remain, close beside my own,” said the Secret Spring. She then paused. And a tiny golden tear fell from her eyes.

  With sorrowful eyes the Secret Spring looked up at Ana, saying, “I shall soon leave this world. And it is forbidden for me to speak of my child’s death. But by my undying love for Phanduan I feel compelled to tell you of her sad fate, before my own spirit is forced to forever leave my graveside vigil.”

  Peering down with solemn eyes at the small grave, the Secret Spring spoke again. “I found my daughter’s body in the dark roses that grow at the base of the hill. For as a young child she often played among their satin blooms, seduced by their dark beauty. But I had forbidden her to touch them, knowing that he had left them there to harm me and my children. By their savage thorns was she stuck and poisoned, and so had perished in the Gardens of Abrea.

  “But after I buried Phanduan, her spirit returned, telling me that she had not perished from the dark roses, but had died for the love of the children yet to come into the world. For by the sorrowful song of the seas’ own tides had she come to know of their grim futures,” the Secret Spring said.

  “My daughter then told me that she had left the Sacred Light she had been given in the depths of her grave so that the children yet to be born into the world might find it,” said the Secret Spring. “For a time would come, she said, when they would need it. And so would they be destined to discover it buried upon the hill and use it to bless this world with its glorious light. By its spiritual fire would it then take wings again, chasing away the shadows of darkness and the storms of destruction that would come to fill it. And by its hope-filled nature would it replenish the lights of their hearts, and so stay the evil that has always sought to dwell within us all unbidden.

  “My heart still aches, Ana, after all this time, knowing that nevermore
shall her loving face and fair form walk this earth. Nor shall she ever know the blissful journey of a long and endearing life. For fate hath cruelly stripped her from that gift. But it brings my heart some solace knowing she has died so this world may live,” the Secret Spring told Ana in sadness.

  The Secret Spring stood up and turned towards Ana. Holding her hand, she said to her, “I must now leave this world.” But as the Secret Spring turned away, she looked back again at Ana. Turning around to face her again, she held in her hand a strange ghostly goblet of silver and gold which reflected its wild prismatic lights upon the scenery about them. A great cauldron it seemed to her, beautiful and beyond belief, wide yet thin-brimmed, with pearls and gems, and covered with many cryptic symbols she could not discern. Its electrum waters glowed with a warm light, much like the tree’s. Yet of the fires of a sacred forge, bound to another place and time, was its cup fashioned.

  As Ana looked into its waters, she saw upon its frosty surface dancing lights and drifting shadows, and the faces of people and events alien to her and unrecognizable. Ana then became scared, as she had seen parts of this vision before in a dream.

  But the Secret Spring spoke to Ana with a calm voice, saying, “You must now summon up great courage, Ana. For these images are of no other but the lights and shadows of your own spirit that you must now face. But within this cup flows the destiny of our world and the fates of many others that shall come from it. This I now give to you.”

  The Secret Spring then offered the glowing cauldron to Ana. Ana hesitated. But at last, she reached out and took it from the Secret Spring. She then saw that the face of the Secret Spring now glowed with a peace she had not seen before. The cauldron then suddenly disappeared into vapor before her eyes. And the suffering thirst she had borne for many nights was gone.

  The Secret Spring gathered her dress, wrapping it about her. She then smiled, kissing Ana upon her cheek as she said goodbye. As Ana looked she saw the Secret Spring walk forth towards the One Tree. Within its trunk a dark door opened forth, as a blue mist billowed out of it. Ana looked with curiosity at the strange door. For it seemed different than all the others she had seen in Phantaia. The Secret Spring then turned and looked upon Ana with hope-filled eyes. She then stepped into the smoky door of the One Tree and was gone.

  Ana stood quietly on the summit of the hill as the dark mist rushed past her. She walked silently to the pool and looked down into its dry bowl. She stood for a long time, uncertain and frightened, thinking of the words of the Secret Spring and those of her grandfather, which alone comforted her.

  She then heard the sound of loud footfalls coming up the hill. It almost sounded like that of a wild beast storming through the garden. But before she could hide among the rocks, bursting through the clouds, Phanyan suddenly appeared before her. But he looked different. He was weathered and muddy. And his golden horn was dark and tarnished. The color of his once-splendid white coat was no longer white, but mottled and gray.

  Before the blink of an eye the great horse had changed his appearance, back into the figure of Ama. Seeing him again, Ana was overjoyed and ran to embrace him. But as she approached him in the mist she saw to her surprise that his youthful appearance had changed. He was an old man now, with a wild shock of hair filled with streaks of white and gray. Upon his face a short but graying beard had grown, coarse and tangled like the tops of the trees that grew about the darker woods.

  But he had wild and frightening eyes. She then saw that he had backed away from her in terror, as if he didn’t recognize her. Some madness had come upon him. For he seemed to be delirious and in a state of shock. Ama stared from afar at the empty pool, walking cautiously up to its edge. As he peered down into its hollow container a look of horror came into his weathered face. Then Ana saw many tears well up into his eyes.

  Ama looked at Ana in disbelief, saying, “This cannot be.” But seeing her reaction at his appearance, he raised his hands to feel the grizzled beard and hair that lay about his wrinkled face. He then looked down at his aged hands, holding them before him. In a frenzied and crazed state Ama ran away, down the hillside until he found a tiny pool of dark water that yet remained at the base of the mound. As he crawled upon the rocks about the muddy pool, he looked into its dark water struggling to see his reflection.

  Ana came chasing after him. But seeing him weeping before the stream, she ran to help comfort him. But seeing Ana again, he quickly jumped to his feet, backing away from her. “What have you done?” Ama yelled, falling to his knees and holding his face in sadness. She knelt beside him as he wept. He then slowly looked up, saying, “At last has come the time I have feared. For the pool is gone. Soon shall my father perish and all of Phantaia with it.” He then looked up into the air as the brown leaves of the dying tree drifted down and around them. A cold autumn wind then grabbed them and tossed them about, throwing them high in the air above their heads again.

  Ana then touched his wrinkled face. Like the aging tree on the hill above, she knew now what her terrible act had done. And she clung to his frail frame, weeping and hiding her face in shame. But feeling again the love of Ana, Ama’s heart was awakened, drawn so near to her own. His senses returning to him, he held her chin up and gently kissed her cheeks, saying to her, “What was done is now complete. All is settled again in my heart, Ana. For we are together again. And for that am I most grateful.” And they embraced.

  But Ana looked upon his aged eyes, struggling to tell him what she had seen. For in that vision of the Secret Spring had hid some last truth and hope that the curse of the pool’s death might not be in vain, and all that had fallen was not lost but would somehow soon be lifted up again.

  “Ama, a spirit of the pool came to me bearing strange news,” Ana said. “The time of the birth of our children draws near, my love. For it is I who tasted the waters of the spring so that they might live. And so by their unquenchable thirst has the pool perished. But the spirit of the well told me that its waters had been made for them, and that the pool had perished so that they might live.” Ama then placed his hands upon her belly and felt the life that lay within her. Ama looked into her eyes with tears of joy as they embraced again. For that knowledge centered him, all uncertainty and fear now flowing away from his spirit.

  But seeing the last lights of Phantaia now fading quickly, he looked up with sorrow upon the wilting of his father’s tree. He then told Ana, “Soon the father tree shall die and I with it. For without the waters of the spring, we are now doomed. Without the tree’s shining lights Phantaia shall soon wilt and die as well, and the forces of darkness and destruction free to roam the forests and gardens unchallenged. But now is not the time to mourn. Our time in Phantaia has run out, Ana. A great evil shall soon come and devour Abrea. But I no longer care as your welfare is all that matters to me now.”

  Ama then sat upon the rocks, looking off into the distance, his mind lost in the thought of some horrendous event. “But something sinister roams these woods, Ana. I fear it comes for us. When I left you I had travelled deep into Phantaia. For many nights I sought to find the trail of the black spirit that freely crept about the forest. But as I approached the borders of Avaras I found upon the lonely corridors of the woods the black petals of the Murgala. It was then I had known the truth of that evil and its purpose. For only a servant of the Endless Night would place them there. The Murgala were planted in Abrea long ago so that the Children of Darkness might find their way to its shining glades and bring their own shadow into it. But these petals had been left there so that some other being of great evil might find its way to us.

  “I had followed the strange trail of roses through the black woods of Avaras. However, I soon lost its path, as the spirit had traveled without rest, as if possessed by some terrible and unstoppable desire it could not satiate. After many restless nights in those phantom woods I had finally slept beneath the towering husk of an old oak, whose hollow trunk was all that remained of an ancient friend. But I awoke to the sound of thunde
r overhead, and the strange glow of large eyes that blinked all about me in the dark. It is then I knew that the Connewe had risen again. I then fled away into the dark gate that lay hidden in the hollows of the forgotten tree.

  “After I jumped through the portal I saw that I stood within a dead and blasted landscape, one destroyed by the winds of the Magra. Upon a hillside I watched the fading of the lights of the One Tree from afar. I then felt the weariness of age suddenly come upon me. My father was dying. I then knew the powers of darkness and destruction had returned to Phantaia to obliterate him. Yet strangely, they had known its end would come, not by their hand, but by the hand of another,” said Ama, staring at Ana in curiosity.

  “I ran with great haste on my four feet, racing to get to Abrea. But in the midst of the trees, I heard the feet of the dark creature crashing through the woods like a thundering giant. It seemed to be following me, tracking me. It was then I had known that creature had not been sent to harm Abrea, but to destroy me.” Ama said, animated.

  “Fearing for my life, I raced through the woods until I came before the rushing river of Avalyr. I then turned to confront the monster. For I had planned to cast him into the cold currents and let the river carry him to the seas. I then saw crashing through the trees a dark shape. Like a great serpent it appeared, born of purest darkness and evil will. It was like no other monster I had seen in both power and strength. But before I could face it, I felt the riverbank give way beneath me, and I fell headlong into the swiftly flowing river of Avalyr, travelling towards my doom at the falls before the seas.

  “I had struggled against its flow. But as I swam against it I saw the lonesome Isle of Adda appear in the fog. And so I swam to it with all my might. I then climbed the hill of the island until I reached its summit. As I looked back, I saw no sign of the beast that stalked me except the rustling of the tops of the trees about the riverbank. But as I climbed the golden mound of Anadelling, I saw beside me the mysterious apple trees growing about the hilltop. There I stood before the ancient apple tree of Uyl, whom I had not spoken with for many ages.

  “The aged one then spoke to me, telling me of his sister tree which lay within the twilight realms, beyond the farthest boundaries of Phantaia. In this land it said that I could hide and be safe from harm for all eternity, dwelling in the Lands of Mist within which grew the sacred glassy groves of Nemedd. For no evil had ever haunted those crystalline woods. It is then he showed me the secret Doors of Evening that lay upon their aged trunks. These portals they said could take me there, to the lands of your grandfather. For the mists of twilight time had flowed from them, their great gates opening only at the time of early evening’s own tide. And so was the great mystery of the evening and of night in these woods revealed to me,” Ama said, looking up at Ana with hopeful eyes.

  Ana then said, excitedly, “Ama, I have seen this sister-tree, Kurtavla the tree of the white apples. And I know of Nemedd, the Lands of Mist. For my grandfather took me there before his death. Oh, it is a beautiful place indeed. For the children of the crystalline trees yet sleep in its wood, waiting to awaken when their own lands shall be reborn again. But so too is it a mournful land, destined to fade like the twilight itself. For sadly, he that rules it is no more.” Ama then looked down in silence.

  Ama told Ana, “That ghostly land is our only salvation, Ana. For I fear that with the death of the light of the One Tree, the evil of the woods shall soon come into Abrea to destroy what remains of the tree and the gardens, slaying what few living things remain here. Phantaia itself shall then plummet into an infinite night that never ends, forever after enslaved to its own immortal shade until the evil twins should come forth from the abyss to devour what remains.”

  A crash was then heard in the trees beyond the dark elderwood. Ama turned to look in the direction of the sound. “The beast has returned! It watches us from the woods. It is stalking us just beyond the Ringwood trees in the distant hills. For I feel the shaking of its great footfall and the breaking of limbs beneath its clawed feet,” Ama said, his eyes wide and wild looking. “But it is searching for me. I feel its red eyes upon me even as we speak. But I sense it hath not the courage yet to enter Abrea. For the tree yet shines its last feeble light upon its face.”

  Ama then turned to Ana, saying, “I must confront the beast before it finds you. You must flee to the safety of the Isle of Adda. Soon comes the time when the Doors of Evening shall open up.” Ama pointed to the One Tree, saying, “Look! Twilight time draws near, for the light of my father is fading fast!” And Ana saw the sad form of the One Tree as its faded trunk cast its dying umber glow down upon the valley about them.

  Ama then said to Ana, “With the last light of day, evening shall come upon us quickly. But when the last light falls the tree shall shine no more, Ana. When its last beam dies, darkness shall descend upon us and embrace us forever after. Evil shall then freely enter Abrea and devour it in its iron jaws.” Ana then ran to Ama’s arms in fear.

  “Go quickly to the river’s crossing below the falls,” said Ama. “There you shall see upon the heights of Adda the shining blossoms of Uyl, the ancient apple tree that grows upon its heights. You must wait for me on that shore. I will soon join you by the river’s bar. We shall then cross it together. For I alone can carry you across the river safely. We shall then climb the hill of Anadelling that lies upon the Isle of Adda. There within the trunk of the apple trees lies the secret portal to the Lands of Mist. For the Doors of Evening soon shall open upon the crest of the isle. Beyond their gates our salvation lies,” said Ama. Ana turned to look at the great tree as its last light began to fade to a dark amber.

  Ama looked again at his withering and aged hands, saying, “I must go to my father’s tree. Soon old age shall overtake me. I must climb to the top of its highest limb and take its last fruit. From its seed now rests the last hope of a new world. With his seed we shall plant a new tree, hidden in the Lands of Mist, and far from the prying eyes of evil. There in that undying land shall the True Tree of the world grow again in peace, cared for by our children, and far from the dark spirits that shall soon destroy this land.”

  The winds began to howl around them as the great storm grew near. Ama was about to leave when Ana grabbed his arm, saying, “My love, I have withheld from you a terrible secret. By the words of the Twilight Mist was it revealed to me that the Sacred Waters of the world lay hidden in me. These my mother had placed within me so I might carry them to Abrea unharmed. For it was the desire of the Essence Eternal that they be brought into this world for some strange purpose I could not comprehend.”

  But storm’s winds began to swirl around them, throwing dust and leaves about, as Ana shouted, “But Ama, I know the truth now. For I was born to bring them here so that this world would be renewed and the forest reborn. They have since remained inside me, waiting to be released at a time only my heart would know. That time is now, Ama.”

  She then held Ama’s arm, pleading with him, “Let me go with you to the hill, Ama. Do not leave me in this final hour. For my place is with you. Yet my heart is with Phantaia. I will not abandon her in her time of need. For soon I must complete the sacred task that has been given to me.”

  But Ama said to her in anger, “What would then become of you? What would become of our children? Those waters cannot be undone from your flesh. They are a part of you now and inseparable. Though you release them into this world, nevermore may you dwell therein. For you would surely perish. This you surely see, Ana?”

  Ana then said, “I would risk everything to fight against the bane of evil and the uncertain future that stands before us in Nemedd. For the Sacred Waters were meant to be here, to grant something wondrous I have seen and known in the very depths of my heart. We shall all die if I do not make this choice. Phantaia shall die, as shall the world.”

  Ama pulled her arm away from her, saying, “I shall not let you perish even if our children should live. Nor shall I permit your spirit to leave this world, even if the destin
y of a thousand worlds depended upon it. For I love you truly.”

  But Ana stood in defiance before him, saying, “I shall go to my death alone then and do what I must for the blessed children of the forest. For at the spring I saw them dancing about the hills and valleys. Do you not see that your sisters and brothers are dying, Ama? Do you not hear their sad cries? The children of Phantaia must be saved. It is the will of the Twilight Mist and the One Tree it be so!”

  But as Ana marched up the hill, the winds died down as the skies grew still. Ama then said in a calm voice, “Then go and do what you must. I shall go and confront the dark figure in the woods. And though we both perish and our children with us, shall we at least have had but a brief moment alone with our pride and with the glory of our fateful sacrifice to comfort us in this final hour. Goodbye Ana.”

  But Ana stopped and turned to look upon Ama with sad eyes. Ama then walked up to her and took her in his arms. “Phantaia’s time has passed. Do you not see the dying tree and the woods about you? Nothing more remains for us here,” Ama said to Ana with dreary eyes.

  Ana felt all joy leave her spirit. For she knew Ama was right. And soon would a malicious and unstoppable force come into it to destroy what remained. Then was heard from afar a great roar and gale like no other, falling about them from the Heavens, and burning their faces with its frosty breath. Ama pointed to the skies, saying, “The light of my father’s tree is now gone. For the Magra draws near!”

  As they gazed into the Heavens they saw a black cloud approaching. A frothing storm had suddenly appeared above them, its colossal vortex a force most terrible to behold. In the distance it slowly began to turn about the apex of the distant mountains. And the earth beneath their feet began to rumble and shake violently from its thunder.

  “We will surely die if we stay here,” Ama then said to Ana in the tumult. They saw its great mouth open above the horizon, sucking up the trees in the distant glades of Avra. Soon would the monstrous spirit come unhindered into Abrea itself, devouring the Hill of Abra and the One Tree, who now stood lifeless upon its summit.

  “Will you go forth to the river and wait for me?” Ama asked. “I will,” Ana said. Ama drew Ana to him in a last tender embrace. They kissed again before they parted, not knowing if it would be their last in that doomed world.

  Ana watched as Ama walked away. She watched him as he climbed the gray Hill of Abra, making his way towards the trunk of the sad tree. She then looked away. With careful steps Ana climbed through the dried brambles that lay thick about the base of the mound. She was with child now and so walked carefully. Tired as she was, she wound her way through the dying stands of trees that once had sung so beautifully about the streams of Lilu, passing on across the muddy plains of Aron, then towards the river in the distant valley below.

  But she had turned back briefly. For she thought she saw the last of the lights of the once great tree still shining from some hidden place about its base, like a tiny star hidden behind a cloud. It quickly disappeared in the black vapors of the flowing fog that now encircled Abrea. But oddly, as she looked up at the tree she saw no sign of Ama.

  Ana had walked out onto the dismal fields of Aron. Where bright fields of green grass and daisies had once grown only a wide swath of muddy earth now remained. The lights that once shone pure and bright upon the white bark of the elderwood was now gone. Only a blighted ring of leafless trunks now remained. A pervasive melancholia had crept into her mind as she walked through the vast fields of dead grass and brush, making her way through the rolling hills that wound their way to the river.

  From out of the black woods behind her flowed an inky fog. Ana stopped and stood in fascination as its snake-like arms drifted out of the forest, onto the slopes above her, and across the valley, enveloping her tiny figure in its smoky cloud. Suddenly, she felt alone and lost. And this uncertainty began to drain her once-hopeful and brave spirit.

  Standing still upon a low hill, Ana was unsure of which way she should go. Closing her eyes she thought about Ama and the promise they had made. This time she would not falter. She then hurried through the putrid fog, running down the hill towards the still waters of the river below.

  Between Ana and the river lay a dense thicket of drooping ash trees and dry brush. As she drew nearer to the thicket she heard from the fog behind her a strange voice calling her again. It was very faint at first. But in her isolation, alone in the trees, its sound felt somehow comforting to her. She thought for a moment, it must be the wind in the trees. For she could hear the storm gathering in the distance. She then heard her name spoken again and turned about to see who it was. Had she heard that voice before?

  The shadows created by the flowing fog seemed to move around her and encircle her. Frightened by it, Ana stopped again, hoping to hear the voice again. For she had convinced herself that it was Ama. It then became a comfort to her. Even if it was not Ama, anything was better than the emptiness of the heartless night that now surrounded her in its cold dark grip.

  As Ana approached the thicket she closed her eyes and plunged into its depths, climbing on all fours through the dense leaves and crumbling logs, feeling her way through the shadows cast by the trees, and towards the shoreline of the muddy riverbank below. As she made her way through the dense vegetation, she saw that the once magnificent and towering ash trees about her looked barren and dead. Their broken logs lay strewn about the forest floor like the huge limbs and legs of giants, ripped from their sockets.

  In the blindness created by the darkness, Ana found herself suddenly tumbling out of the woods and down the riverbank. She had rolled down through the mud until she at last lay beside the cool waters of Avalyr. She gazed upon the mysterious Isle of Adda as it stood proudly above the clouds that hung low upon the surface of the glassy river.

  But as she struggled to regain her footing in the mud, she heard a terrible scream. Had it come from somewhere behind her? Then she heard the scream again, like the sound of someone in terrible pain and suffering. Was it Ama? In her exhausted voice she called out to him. But there was no answer. Only the creeping fog had remained, silent and soulless as it drifted ominously through the trees above her.

  Ana looked through the clouds, past the broken line of ash trees, and up into the black forest that encircled the valley of Abrea. There in the distance, beyond the Ringwood, she thought she saw a strange black form watching her from the edge of the tree line. But as the gray fog passed over the valley again, it disappeared back into the shadows of the ominous woods.

  The Sacred Pool

  “Ama is it you?” she cried, as the dark figure disappeared into the woods.

  But Ana heard nothing save the onerous silence of the suffocating night. For with the fading away of the light of the One Tree, a deepening and permanent darkness had fallen upon Phantaia so that nothing that yet lived dared move within it. Only the cold fog remained animated, its wavering sheet of gray drifting down and around her until it covered the valley in its morbid shape and shadow.

  She heard again the crack of thunder. And she saw overhead the gathering of black storm clouds as they billowed down into the valley from the mountains beyond the tree line. Long fingers of blue lightning streaked across the skies of Abrea overhead, lighting up the tops of the trees and hills with flashes of white. The storm was quickly approaching.

  But as she stood along the muddy banks of the river, Ana heard again her name called out from the depths of the woods around her. It was louder and closer than before. The voice echoed through the forest and across the sandbar, originating from a place just beyond the edge of the tree line. Yet the deep and sonorous sound had filled every part of her fragile mind with its haunting and memorable sound.

  She turned to see where the voice was coming from, but saw only where the gray mist had parted before a stretch of trees that lay above the riverbank. As she looked into the gloomy woods she saw a tall shadowy form suddenly step out from behind a tree. Standing in the shifting mist it looked down at
her with its black and penetrating eyes. Ana walked towards it but stopped, for she was uncertain of it. Was it Ama?

  She ran through the wet sand of the riverbank, desperately trying to reach the gloomy figure in the mist. Nearly out of breath, she stumbled through the cold mud, frightened and desperate. But as she clawed her way up the muddy bank, the odd figure quickly disappeared back into the woods.

  She struggled up the riverbank, until reaching a high point she fell forward, tumbling down into the thick bracken that bordered the tangled wood. An eerie silence seemed to pervade the forest. Overhead she heard the crackle of thunder, louder and closer than it was before. Its crisp white light flashed upon the damp trunks of trees and logs about her, which made them look like the bleached bones of fallen giants.

  As the lightning lit up the forest again, she saw a large figure walking away from her, disappearing into the hollows of the woods. The strange figure then reappeared from behind a tree in the distance. It stared at her with strange reflective eyes that shined like gold saucers in the shadows. She stood up to run towards it. But it was gone.

  Ana then heard the chilling voice again echoing through the trees. Dark thoughts and doubts then flooded her mind. She thought to herself, it must be Ama. He was hurt. As she stumbled over numerous logs, she cried out to him. But as she made her way deeper into the forest, she thought she heard the loud breaking of limbs about her in the shadows around her. Something else was there, encircling her, observing her. It was the trees. The whole forest was now alive and moving as one mass.

  Lightning flashed all around her, as she dashed past the animated trees. Thunder shook the leaves and earth beneath her feet as she wove her way deeper into the forest. Beds of large mushrooms glowing with purple, yellow, and orange heads, cast an eerie glow as she raced past them. They had grown along a faded trail, lighting a tunnel through the black woods for her to follow. On she ran, following her chosen path as it wound its way to some unknown destination.

  Suddenly the lightning flash brighter than before, revealing a clearing up ahead. But as she looked through the trunks of the trees, what she thought was an old stump in the clearing was really a dark figure. Was it Ama? As she cautiously approached the entrance, she saw the ominous trees gathering in the gloom behind her. But each time she turned to gaze at the slithering shapes, they suddenly seemed to disappear in the midst of the fog.

  Ana walked cautiously into the clearing. A sudden gust of wind then blasted through the trees about her, blowing away the mist that had filled it, and throwing great clouds of dust and debris into the air. As she looked through the blowing dust at the strange figure, she saw that it was gone. She stumbled about in the windstorm, holding her hands to her face, trying to find Ama. For she was sure she had seen him standing there just moments before. She then screamed out, “Ama...Ama! Where are you?”

  A strange man then stepped out from behind a large tree at the edge of the clearing. He was tall and dark-skinned, with a thick black cloak that wrapped about him. He had broad features, aberrant and demonic. For his damaged face and form had been worn and weathered by endless ages of violence and war. Yet he bore the sad aura of a spirit tortured by his despair, tormented by his own depravity, and terrorized by the impending death of the world.

  Ana felt a chill come over her. For his great cat-like eyes had opened wide, glowing with a gold and ambient light, as he looked upon her face for the first time.

  The tall figure walked towards Ana as the lightning from above flashed upon his weathered face, casting nightmarish shadows upon the deep recesses of his cheeks. She saw the horrible hollows of his black-rimmed skeletal eyes as they looked down into hers. Ana trembled as she saw within them the rise and fall of an angry fire.

  Yet strangely, Ana saw within him a being like her, proud and determined, yet conflicted. For she saw in his face something restrained yet stained by his evil. It was a countenance that reflected the hidden pain and anguish of something long denied yet ever hoped for. She saw, that despite his terrible appearance, in him dwelt a sympathetic spirit. In her heart she felt a sudden rush of sadness and pity for him which she could not understand.

  She stared into his eyes with great curiosity. For it seemed to her they still held a small piece of something she had seen in the eyes of the Twilight Mist. That something also dwelt in him. For as the raging fire within their orbs now dimmed she saw a delicate violet much like her own return to them.

  The strange man smiled at Ana, staring down in wonder at the muddy girl who stood before him. He then offered her his hand in assistance, speaking in a deep crackling voice that shook the air around her, “Ana do not fear me.” But she stood unmoving. Weak from exhaustion and still unsure of him, Ana backed away to the foot of a nearby tree that sat at the edge of the clearing. But the dark figure did not move.

  Oddly there stood about Ana a ring of trees almost impenetrable. Seeing no exit, she began climbing up the wild roots and knotted trunk of one of the trees. But as she did, she saw upon its dark trunk the glowing amber eyes of the witch-hazel she had seen long ago in the depths of Avaras.

  She jumped back down into the clearing, as the tree scowled at her with its black and hoary face. Bravely standing before the dark figure again, she said, “I demand to know who you are. Where has Ama been taken?” For she was certain she had seen him just moments before.

  The dark figure did not move, but said in a deep voice, “I know nothing about your Ama.” He then walked around her slowly, peering again into her eyes as he did. He walked towards her and lifted a finger to touch her cheek. But she turned her head away.

  He only smiled, asking her, “Do you not know in her your heart who I am?”

  Ana then looked closer at his face. She backed away a few steps from him again, wrapping her arms around herself. Shivering, she hung her head down in sadness. “Are you not my father?” she asked.

  “Yes. I am Agapor, your father,” he said, smiling. Ana could only gaze at her father with an icy stare, gathering her thoughts and feelings, still unsure of who or what he was.

  “I have traveled these lonesome woods from a faraway land, enduring many struggles and trials to be with you, my daughter,” Agapor said. “But I thought you were lost for all time. Come. Let us embrace as father and child.” He held again his dark hand before her. Ana looked upon his black-nailed fingers and saw the strange dark ring as it vaguely shimmered and shined. Seeing her unmoving, Agapor lowered his arm to his side again.

  Agapor looked upon Ana in frustration, saying, “This is not the way for a daughter to act before her beloved father.” A darker expression then came upon his face. “You must come away with me,” Agapor said, “far from these tragic woods of doom and gloom. For soon an unstoppable force shall come into the forest, desiring only its dying spirit, and consuming the last of its fallen trees. You too shall fall prey to its ravenous hunger if you stay here.”

  But she walked boldly up to him, saying in anger, “It is you who have brought doom upon Phantaia! For the monster that has for ages chewed upon its farthest cliffs was sent by you. It is you who command the evil hazels to rise again and bring war upon us. Father, you are cruel and heartless like the evil you command. I shall never leave Phantaia. I shall never go with you.” And she turned her back to him.

  But Agapor expressionless said to her, “Look at the forest, Ana. It dies a pathetic death by the hand of some evil unknown to us both. For by its own attrition, the living light has faded since first I came into this wood. That which sustained it, its own life blood, has bled away from the very trees and earth—as if consumed by its own children. It is not my desire that Phantaia should perish so. But the evil spirits that now creep about in the depths of the world have come to destroy it. The Magra were made to destroy it. In the end they have always won. But it is true, my child. The great storm of Yana was sent by me to pursue the Twilight Mist, my father, and drive him from his hold. For by my own devious will was I duped into summoning her.” Agapor paused
, looking at his daughter with deep sadness. He then walked about the glade quietly as if deep in thought, his heavy cloak encircling him.

  Agapor turned to his daughter again, saying, “Do you not sense in your own spirit that you are like me?” Ana paused, uncertain of the meaning of his question. Agapor then said, “Our two hearts are as one, Ana, for we are of the same fallen seed. Though you deny it, you are a child of the Limitless Void. The power of its devouring spirit yet dwells in you. I too feel it. It creeps in you and hides in you, this will to destroy, to devour, and to drink of life itself. This one truth is inescapable, my child. This you can deny if you choose. But you cannot change it,” Agapor said proudly. “For you are born into it.” Ana looked down, hiding her secret shame. For she saw he was right. Its will had allowed her to destroy the pool. She had consumed it just as Yana now consumes the forest.

  But something more filled her troubled and confused mind. Ana then began to shake as the cold winds of the approaching storm dipped down into the hollows of the glade and the boiling black clouds overhead poured over the tops of the trees. Agapor took off his great cloak and walked forward to drape it around her. But as he did Ana backed away from him in fear. Agapor looked at her with a pained expression on his face.

  Ana then said, “Do not come near me, Father. I do not want anything from you.” She then screamed out, “You sent the Shadow to slay me! Your own servant would have killed me if your father had not saved me. It was you that had abandoned my mother, just as the Shadow had said. Did you not send the servants of the evil twins to destroy her, as you now use them to destroy Phantaia? How could you do this, Father?

  “You never loved me. You never loved my mother. You never loved anyone or anything!” Ana then held back tears as she looked bravely at her father. “You have now taken Ama from me. And so have you sought to harm the only one I ever truly loved,” Ana said, heartbroken.

  Agapor then looked away, stunned and hurt by her brutal words. But he turned about, his dark cloak flying about him, enraged, saying to Ana with eyes aflame, “These are all lies told to you by the Twilight Mist. For it was he that sought to fill your mind with these cruel lies so that you would turn against me, your own father, who has come to save you from the evil that now descends upon the woods.”

  “I loved your mother,” Agapor told her. “For I have sought to save her from her tortured sleep within the cruel prison of the seas which your grandfather made for her. She is still trapped by its curse, even now. Like her, I was deceived by the selfish powers of the Primordial Ones, which have now used me to destroy the world and all love left in it. Have the ancient ones not succeeded in their cruel plans to divide us and destroy our love?” Agapor asked, whipping his cloak about him and turned away from his daughter, hiding his own tears and pain from her.

  Agapor looked down in sorrow, saying to his daughter, “But none of my past, my mistakes, matter to me now. For the shining tree upon the hill is dead. And the living spirit of Phantaia has departed. Yet it was not my intention or desire that Phantaia should perish, Ana, or its light fail. I have come for you, my child. You are all I have left.” It’s then Ana looked upon her father in pity.

  Agapor then looked into Ana’s eyes again, saying, “Soon the beast in the heavens shall come to devour all of Phantaia. Even I cannot stop her now. So has the Nothingness that hides in his prison deceived us and won. For this reason I feel pity for the terrible fate soon to befall Phantaia. For the trees shall be ripped from the soil and their earth obliterated from this world. Darkness shall then creep upon the firmament that remains. A thousand soulless ages of night shall then rein here, until the Nothingness and Emptiness return from the Great Beyond to claim their prize once more.”

  Agapor looked upon his daughter with earnest eyes. He then said to her, “In your heart you must see that I came here to save you. In you, Ana, now rests the last hope and light of goodness that still burns in me.”

  Agapor then held out his hand one last time. “Please come with me, Ana,” Agapor said. “Come with me to the timeless lands that lie beyond the Seas of Eternity. There may we dwell in peace. For a curse lies upon this sad world. The forest of Phantaia was created to eternally bring destruction and war upon itself. It is a doomed place. That is the tragic truth you cannot see. It shall ever after awaken the vile hatred of its immortal enemies that hide within its own shadows, until it is annihilated by them, again and again.

  “Do you not see this? This world has fallen like so many others before it. It is time to leave it behind. Soon even the seas shall be sundered from the world. I shall then be free to take you and your mother away from here. You see, I have sought only to bring my family together, Ana. That is truly who I am and what I seek,” Agapor told her.

  Hearing these words, Ana was moved, seeing in her father a different spirit, driven not by a sinister purpose but something worthy and true. She then looked upon her father with kinder eyes, saying, “Father, I want to be with you. And I desire with all of my heart to see my mother’s face again. But I cannot leave Phantaia. My place is with Ama now. For the hope I feel in my heart for us has not yet died. All I want now is to see him again and be with him. For this reason, I must remain behind in Phantaia.”

  But Agapor grew angry again, saying, “Where is this deceitful being, this Ama, in your time of need? Are you not alone in the world? Soon the face of an evil whose power you cannot fathom shall look down upon you with its cold and pitiless eyes and laugh. In me now is your only hope.” Agapor looked up into the skies as the lightning flashed around them. “In the Heavens now descends the mighty maelstrom. And it comes for you,” Agapor cried out as the winds blew about them.

  A great burst of wind began to whip the nearby trees, blowing them about, and tearing the tops of their limbs away. Feeling its blast, Agapor struggled to regain himself. Then another great crash of lightning flashed before them, striking one of the black trees at the edge of the clearing. The towering Connewe screamed out in agony as the bolt sheared it in two, sending its shattered trunk flying back into the forest behind them. An opening had appeared in the circle made by her father’s war-like trees.

  Ana looked into her father’s face, saying, “Father, I am sorry. I will not go with you. For my fate and that of my children remains here in Phantaia. Unlike you, I shall never choose the darker path. By aligning with its evil will, you have brought a curse upon yourself and your family. You alone must now go forth and face the horror of what you have done—face the final act of your fallen fate. I love you, but my heart remains here in Phantaia. And I would rather die than be without her.” Ana then fled away through the gap in the evil trees. Agapor stood quietly as he watched his daughter disappear into the shadowy woods.

  Ana ran as fast as she could, her heavy breath casting billows and clouds in the frosty air. The woods about her now appeared bathed in the cloud of a thick blue shadow. Its bent trees with their crooked limbs were all that remained of the once-beautiful forest. With the death of the One Tree and its life-giving light, not a single green leaf grew upon the trees and plants. For the greener growth had been destroyed by the evil witch-hazel that now crept about in the far corners of the foggy woods.

  Bright blue flashes of lightning lit up the forest floor around her. But as Ana looked within the slithering mist that poured up from the earth, she saw that the evil trees appeared to be creeping towards her. Their giant eyes glowed with a vengeful blood-red color. She saw upon their distorted faces that they all bore downturned mouths. For within them lay a sinister desire to do her great harm.

  As she hid behind the dead trunk of a tree, they shuffled about in the shadows to surround her. Their black bloated roots writhed and curled like snakes in the mist as they rushed upon her from many directions. They slithered through the fog, trying to grab her with their long wooden fingers. But she jumped between their trunks and under their roots, fleeing on foot out into the wider hollows of the darker woods. Only ghoulish carpets of blue-green fungi remaine
d to light the forest floor about her.

  As she ran, she cried out for Ama in the darkness. Then from the depths of the forest behind her she heard Agapor’s distant voice, as it echoed around her and through the trees. He was calling her to return to him, to leave Phantaia. But Ana knew that he had sent the terrible trees to grab her and bring her back to him. And she knew that soon there would be no escape. Without Ama, they would soon find her.

  Ana bravely stumbled on through the blue haze of the nighttime forest, over logs and through great piles of leaves until in her confusion she realized she was lost. Alone in the woods at night, she was frightened more than she had ever been. She did not recognize the trees in this part of the forest. For an evil shadow had replaced the twilight mist that once filled it. It’s then she saw a pair of green eyes glowing faintly in the shadows of a tree in the distance. It was the same eerie eyes she had seen many nights ago.

  She struggled through the darkness, following the mysterious eyes. But they always stayed several steps ahead of her. She stopped to catch her breath as the thundering storm raged on in the distance. The voice of her father had faded away. And she was alone again with no light or sound to guide her. As she looked around she did not recognize this more forbidding part of the woods. Had she roamed into the dreaded lands of Avaras?

  The dense umbrage of the canopy of the trees had gotten taller and thicker until it hid the flickering lights of the thunderstorms far away in the distance. Oddly, the demonic hazel trees seemed to have disappeared, as if in fear of this part of the woods. What few trees remained here stood far apart, like great towering titans not of this world but of another more ancient one. For they were monumental in size and height. Yet they seemed almost spiritless, sucked of all life, undead.

  The green-eyed creature had suddenly appeared again beside a great trunk, glaring back at her as she plodded on. But the landscape had started to change, and she began to stumble into puddles and shallow pits of mud and dark water, becoming cold and wet. Exhausted, she struggled to orient herself as she walked slowly through thick beds of dark leaves and under logs that hung over the faint trail she had been following.

  She then saw that the soil under her feet had changed. Beneath the rotting piles of moldy leaves and detritus, great cracks in the black earth had appeared. Staggering onward, she soon found she had to jump over large crevasses and narrow chasms, which opened up at intervals within the uneven forest floor around her. Thick masses of roots and logs draped themselves down into the cavernous openings that lay in the soggy soil beneath her feet.

  She stopped and turned around. She must go back, she thought. She must find a path back to the river, or to any familiar tree or trail she might remember. “Ama...” she cried.

  Suddenly, she felt her foot trapped by a tree root that hung upon the lip of a wide and sinister-looking pit. It had appeared in front of her, as if out of nowhere, blocking her path forward. As she struggled to get free of the root, she saw on the other side of the chasm the ghoulish figure, its eyes burning bright with a sickly green as it stared at her. The root then tightened around her ankle, so that she fell forward into the dark opening in the earth. But she caught herself from falling, grabbing onto the rotten roots of a nearby tree that hung down into the pit.

  As she climbed up the tangled mesh of slippery roots and black limbs that hung down into the pit, she looked down into its dark depths and saw the enormous size of its opening. Lying in the midst of that wicked and wasteful wilderness, she now hung before an immense and yawning chasm. A putrid vapor carrying the foul odor of rotting and decaying flesh belched forth from out of its dark and decadent mouth. It was a truly pit of death. And Ana became scared.

  But as she looked about her she saw around its rim a cluster of ancient willows hanging half-dead and unmoving, their drooping roots and limbs bending themselves down into the darkness, as if seeking the source of some dark nourishment in the depths below. As she peered down into the shadows she saw that their large gray roots had clung to the walls of the pit, diving down into its farthest depths towards some unseen source of water.

  Fearful of what lay hidden in the darkness below, Ana began to climb up the roots that dangled around her, trying to reach the forest floor. She would find a way out of this netherworld of death and decay, and face the evil witch-hazels that had sought her. For she would rather face her father than die in this awful place.

  But as she began to pull herself up from the edge of the pit, the rotten roots gave way around her. Into the darkness of the black orifice she fell, falling faster and faster, until she landed into a great pile of dirt and leaves at the bottom. A waterfall of refuse then rained down upon her from the forest above, burying her in a grave of debris and earth. Ana then fell unconscious, her mind drifting away into an empty but peaceful place. Her spirit had surrendered to the darkness at last. She would give herself up to her grave, drifting off into the eternal sleep that is death.

  She thought she heard the ghostly voice of Ama, calling her from some unknown land of the dead. She could see his smiling face aglow in the shining light of that new spiritual realm, looking down upon her on some forlorn beach, where silent silver ships sat waiting, ready to carry them to the spirit-lands that lay beyond its ghostly shores.

  Ana felt that she was but a phantom adrift upon a silent sea. But she had awoken, as from a horrible dream, back into a frightful place of infinite darkness. In a panic, she began to climb forth from the cold earth, gasping for air and clawing her way out of the dirt and rot that had fallen from the heights above. Erupting from the mound, she struggled to orient herself. But as her eyes adjusted she saw she was at the bottom of a great pit deep beneath Phantaia.

  High above her Ana could still hear the faint thunder of the storms that were now ravaging the woods of Phantaia. Its howling winds barreled down into the depths of the pit, whose rocky walls stretched high above her head. She then saw a massive rotting stone stairway that spiraled up and around the walls of the pit, as it wound its way up to the surface high above her.

  But a dim light had been cast from some unseen source hidden in the darkness behind her. It seemed to throw its unnatural colors about the walls and floor like the moving reflections cast by water. Ana crawled down from the pile of earth and leaves. But as she did she saw the floor of the pit was filled with the skulls and bones of strange beings and beasts of some other place and time. Frightened, she ran to the stairs hoping to make it back to the surface high above.

  But as she began to climb the stairs she heard a ghostly voice. She stopped and turned back to see what it was. As she left the stairs of the pit, she saw that she stood at the edge of a giant cavern that stretched far and away into the shadows of the underworld. Odd phosphorescent growths clung about its roof and walls in sheets and masses, throwing their eerie colors about the cavern. They appeared almost sickly in hue—of washed-out pink, white and gray, acrid orange and deep violet. A pale vapor writhed about in the still air, lit up by the morbid colors cast upon it, until its wisps dissipated within the cavernous heights above her.

  A thick layer of dust lay upon the carved stone of the ancient floor. As Ana crept into the cavern, its foul dust billowed with the slightest footstep. She then heard the crunch of dried bones, and saw at her feet the black crust of countless layers of shed blood splattered about the floor and walls. The dried corpses and shattered skulls, broken weapons, and battered armor of slain creatures and figures lay piled up in its farthest corners. She saw that untold violence and conflict had been committed here, undisturbed since time immemorial.

  But in the middle of the great cavern she saw an even stranger sight. For in the middle of the cave lay a large pool, dark and foreboding, its slimy black water lying stagnant and still in a stone basin carved within the center of the floor. From within its poisonous waters ghostly vapors had arisen, swirling upon its oily surface like a potion of dark enchantment. It cast an eerie glow as the shining fungi reflected their colors upon its dull bl
ack surface.

  To Ana the dark pool seemed ancient beyond all knowledge, older still than the well of Abrea. And the smell of death and decay seemed to hang above its quivering, almost gelatinous water. It was as if some terrible being had perished there, its sinister essence now sleeping alone within its slimy depths. For she felt the presence of some ancient spirit hidden within—something hate-filled, vengeful, and maligned towards both the living and the dead. Its radiating malevolence seemed to pervade her own heart and spirit such that she began to feel nauseous and ill.

  Yet something inside Ana drew her towards the dark water. She crept cautiously up to the edge of the pool. As she gazed into its clouded waters she saw strange murky images bubbling up within it, as if by her presence alone they had been unleashed from some nightmare of the mind. Many haunted visions and horrors flooded into her imagination, things born of distant worlds, conflicts ancient and indescribable, heroic beings, magical beasts, enchanted relics, strange events, lost causes, victories, and fabulous histories stretching back in time. She saw people filled with the joy of their happy lives, dancing as one together with their many children. But others she saw cruelly slain in the prime of their youth, falling in desperate conflicts borne up by the dreadful cataclysms of endless and tragic wars.

  As she looked down into its brooding depths, she became entranced by its strange tale of woe, desiring to know more. A part of her spirit felt drawn to the tragic faces that appeared before her in the water. She felt pulled into their plight by a force uncontrollable that crept within the pool itself. Like the seductive wine of a forbidden goblet, she desired it—a perverse desire for something that lay corrupted and foul, lustful and salacious within it and within her.

  Ana stood before the pool, her eyes turning dark. She would undress herself before it and enter it, letting it take her. Her body desired it, to dive into its black waters, to return to it and reunite with the manly forms that she saw spread before her. She would embrace the strongest among them, the handsome one she saw hiding within its erotic depths.

  But as Ana began to slip her raiment from her body, the oppressive stillness of her muddied mind was broken. For something more sinister began rising up within the pool’s depths as it began to bubble violently. All of a sudden it stopped. For the waters seemed to arrest themselves, resisting and lying still again as its dark images melted away from her sight.

  Ana then saw the faint glow of a bright star rise up slowly from center of the pool. The face of an elegant dark woman then appeared upon its shimmering surface. She seemed to be a beautiful queen, a mother of darkness bathed in shadows. Her hair and eyes were darker than the darkest night. And she wore a magnificent tiara of jet with a black veil partly covering her face.

  The ghostly woman held out her hand to Ana, imploring her, as if trying to tell her something. Ana saw her lips moving, but her voice seemed muffled by some force beyond her own control. They were words of something forbidden, mysterious, and yet unresolved. She seemed to be longing for something long desired and disturbingly profound. Yet the vision seemed unreal, even less a dream than an illusion of her mind’s inner eye.

  But as Ana reached out to touch her hand, she felt something powerful break the surface of the pool in a violent fashion. Ana fell back as a great tower of dark water burst forth from within the pool. A boiling column of blood-red water then gushed up from below, shooting high up into the cavern. But as the spray fell about her, the pool returned to calm again. It lay still, simmering and seething in its own blood with a perverse delight.

  But from out of the middle of the pool climbed a monstrous form whose horror her worst nightmares could not have fashioned. A great amorphous cloud, ghostly and gray, filled the air above the water. Like an ever-changing storm born of flesh and mist, it seemed to be writhing and wrestling within itself, crying out in the torture of its own suffering existence. It struggled at first to form itself, as if some other being was battling it from below. It then broke free of the pool, taking the form of a boiling tempest from which sprang tendrils of cascading red lightning that cast about the cavern, blasting and shattering the carved and crumbling stonework around her.

  Hovering in the heights of the cavern, the monstrous spirit took shape as a bulging blob, its many eyes opening at once, staring down at the small girl. But it began to shift again, massing itself into different shapes as if searching for one more desirable. At first she saw in the cloud a great white hawk, its pale wings outstretched. Then she saw a demon, dark, bat-winged, and vile. It then took the white bird and black demon, merging them into itself and forming them into a mighty dragon that shined with scales of gold and silver. A being born of great musculature and strength, it had a golden crown upon its head, with many sharp horns and mangled teeth that seemed to grow forth and crowd its fanged mouth.

  But this form it also quickly abandoned. As she looked on, its boiling shape had shifted again into the head of the terrible Shadow, growing larger and larger until only its wide warped face looked down on her own, smiling from the heights of the cavern with its long wiry teeth. Changing quickly again, she saw before her a spinning wheel that swirled and twisted faster and faster over her head like the storms of the Magra. Its throbbing vortex thrust itself down to swallow her. Ana then cowered on the ground, covering her face in terror. But the maelstrom had slowed and stopped until it had dissipated in the air overhead. The cavern then lay quiet once more.

  The great cloud then reformed, slowly gathering its many appendages back into itself, swirling them about its hot center until a familiar figure began to take shape. Drifting over the waters stood the figure of her mother, her soft countenance staring down at her as the drapery of her ocean dress flowed behind her. She stood with arms outstretched for her child. But Ana looked away, for her heart could not bear the pain of seeing her image.

  But hearing her mother’s voice again, she reached out to her. But knowing in her heart it was an illusion, she turned away again. Gathering her courage, Ana then stood before the vast cloud, saying, “Who is it that has come forth with my mother’s face? For I know not the meaning of this strange place or perceive the purpose of the strange visions summoned up to haunt me.”

  A booming voice then came into the image, saying, “Does this form please you?”

  Ana said, “I know not why you torture me so with false images of those I love.”

  The being then spoke in a commanding voice, saying, “I have taken the shape of that which dwells in your earliest memory, that which you trust most. I am the ancient child of the Evil One, whose broken spirit is no more. I am that which sleeps in the pool you see before you, and in the darkest depths of the world.”

  Ana stood upon the slippery slabs of stone that lay beside the pool, saying to the gray spirit, “You are not of this pool or this world. I know who you are. You are the devouring spirit of the Great Beyond, that malicious being who hides in the bowels of the world like a coward. You are that which devoured the flesh of your own mother. And you are that which has destroyed countless worlds like this one, consuming the living spirits of the innocent children that once had filled them.

  “You are the Nothingness!” yelled Ana, as the waters of the pool quivered in the darkness.

  The Nothingness stared down at the girl, gathering its malevolent spirit and mind into itself. It then said, “You have been a most inquisitive child, knowledgeable and wise, but naive. For many questions in your mind yet remain unanswered, dark truths yet to be revealed to you. I am indeed the Nothingness. Yet am I a mystery to many. For my true purpose is unknowable. Though I have devoured the spirits of countless worlds, in the end have they been destroyed by the sins of their own children. My brother and I have fed upon their lifeless corpses. But we have not destroyed them. They have destroyed themselves.

  “Even this world shall eventually consume itself. For its own children shall be the source of its demise in the end.” The image of her mother then grinned. “Such is the nature of the cursed fla
me that burns within them. For their own Creator placed it there. I have not stoked its fire nor fed it, but let their own villainous ways—their greed, their corruption, their perversions, and their murderous ways—rage within their doomed hearts, letting the fires of their own desires burn them to cinders.” the Nothingness bellowed.

  Ana’s heart grew heavy as she looked at the stagnant pool. She then saw how it boiled and bubbled red and thick with dark blood. The jet black eyes of her mother’s image then stared down at her, cold and unfeeling. The Nothingness then said, “Yes, you see the blood. In the pool is the blood of the dead, the countless fallen from many worlds who, by their malevolent acts, had given themselves up to me. Their blood now courses under the very rocks of Phantaia, filling its underground rivers with the liquid essence of the dead. It flows endlessly into the mouth of my brother, the Emptiness. For he is the vampire that drinks from it, never satiated, sucking its ever-increasing streams into his wide belly.”

  But Ana now stood bravely before that being, saying, “You are but a maligned spirit filled with many tricks meant to entrap me. For Ama revealed to me your true purpose in this world. You are a deceiver and a liar, sent to pollute the minds of the innocent just as you polluted my father’s mind, corrupting it to your own end.”

  The Nothingness smiled, saying, “If you desire, Ana, I shall reveal many truths to you. It was my hand that parted the waves of the sea so that your father could sleep with your mother. And it was I who sent the bolts of lightning upon the trees so that you could escape the Magra. For I desired that you be spared an early death at the hands of your father’s servants until your own evil deeds could be fulfilled. And so have you done so, just as I had planned.”

  The Nothingness then suddenly grew dark, his cloud taking a red and horned demonic face. He then drew his great cloud down upon her, shouting in a violent voice, “It is I who fathered the Creator, the Essence Eternal that spawned this world, whose very spirit now lives in its children. They are my children, all of them. My dark seed lives in you all!” A hot blast of wind from the breath of the Nothingness blew down upon Ana’s face, casting back her dark hair from her shoulders. But she stood defiant and unmoving before the foul spirit.

  The Nothingness then gathered his storm about him, taking shape as the proud face of the Twilight Mist, smiling down at Ana with his sadistic eyes, saying, “Like your grandfather, were you born to fulfill my secret will. And so were you made to follow its twisting course wherever it might take you. The well of the Secret Spring that fed the One Tree was destroyed by you. But it was my will alone that it be so. And so have we together slain the great tree and its cursed light.”

  The Nothingness then slowly transformed his face to that of her father, saying, “Even the heights of your father’s own evils are not fully known to you. For long ago your father vowed to give up your life to me, Ana. He willingly sacrificed his own daughter so that Phantaia might fall, betraying his own child so he might slay his father.” The Nothingness smiled, as he looked upon the pained face of Ana.

  The Nothingness then rose up again, taking the shape of a great blood-red dragon, saying, “By your father’s oath are you now mine to slay, if I desire. Only by your death shall your father be released from his solemn vow to me. How much love hath you for him now, Ana? Show me this love so I might devour it.” The Nothingness then shook the dark cavern with the roar of his great laughter, as Ana’s mind became clouded and confused. She began to lose herself, lose her purpose. And she fell into a deep despair.

  But Ana said to the Nothingness, “Though I love my father, I know not who he truly is. Yet my heart tells me he would not knowingly make such a vow. For you are a vile and sinister spirit, cursed with many lies and untruths designed to imprison the wary and the trusting. Unlike my father, I am neither of those things. So I will not be deceived. If my heart is evil and corrupt as you say, then I have truly fulfilled all that you have asked of me and my task in this world is complete. You could slay me now if that were true.” Ana knelt down, weary of all she had heard.

  “It matters not to me whether you live or die, succeed or fail,” said the Nothingness. “I may spare the world your death so you might have the pleasure of watching its slow and torturous demise by your own hand. But in truth I need not your help, for your own children shall destroy themselves and the world soon enough. Then shall they come before me in submission, begging for death’s sweet oblivion. Know that I shall wait on them as a loyal servant, serving up death to them all.”

  The Nothingness then gazed into Ana’s eyes, his own face changing into her own. “In you, child, flows a part of something greater,” said the Nothingness. “It is a sinister force that even I do not understand. Yet I sense that within its waters lies the limitless source of an undying curse, that which has doomed the children of countless worlds before this one. Soon it shall be unleashed again into Phantaia and into this corrupted world, inflicting its poisonous and hateful wrath upon you all. For this world was conceived by its enduring will. And by its curse shall this world soon perish. So have I spared you, Ana, so that your last terrible task may be completed.” The Nothingness looked down with an evil grin. Ana then watched as his great gray cloud slowly faded away in the air above her.

  Ana looked down, unsure of all she had believed since she first came to Phantaia. She no longer knew what the truth was. For that spirit had placed the seeds of doubt within her. Ana knelt beside the pool, forlorn and sad. The vile spirit was gone. But she was left alone to her uncertain destiny in Phantaia.

  Ana sat beside the pool, thinking about Ama’s fate and the sad and tragic plight of Phantaia. And she thought to herself whether death was now her only friend. She stood up to leave, when she felt a presence behind her in the shadows of the cavern. She then turned and saw Ama standing beside her. He seemed young again as he smiled down at her. But Ana felt conflicted and confused. His eyes were his own, yet something black had filled them.

  Ama then said to her, “Ana, I have returned. Do not worry about me any longer. For I am with you now.” Ana reached out to embrace him, but pulled back feeling something strange about him.

  Ana then said to him, “Ama, my heart aches as I have missed you dearly. But I am unsure of this place, or of who you are. My mind is now clouded with many delusions. And many dark things have been shown to me I had not seen. I am doubtful of the future, of you, and of everything.”

  Ama brushed her hair with his pale icy hands. “I could not tell you,” Ama said in a hollow voice. “But this dark place is my true home. And the spirit that haunts it, my true father.” Ama then took Ana’s hand, leading her to the pool. “Come with me and spare the world its doomed fate,” Ama said.

  But Ana resisted, stepping away from him in shock at his words. With deep black eyes staring into her own, Ama implored again, “Do not hesitate, Ana. Come away with me now.” He then reached out his pale hand to her.

  Ana hesitated. Then feeling again her deep love for him, she looked into his sad eyes, saying, “If it is true that within me dwells a horror unseen by me, then I would rather perish. By my death shall I spare the world its curse, and save my father from his terrible vow that binds his fate to my death. But most of all I wish to be with you, even in death, Ama. I have longed for it as much as I have longed for you. I will go with you.” Ama and Ana then walked together to the edge of the dark pool, which simmered and boiled with a dark red color.

  But as Ama reached out to take her hand, she ran towards him. And with all of her might, she pushed Ama into the foul waters. A shrill scream of pain was then heard echoing through the cavern, as the form of Ama tossed about in the water. But as Ana looked, she saw him change shape into strange forms of beasts and monsters most hideous. Its then she saw the true form of the gray Nothingness tossing about in the waves.

  “I will not let you deceive me as you deceived my father,” cried Ana. “The Sacred Waters of the world shall be restored, and the children reborn into this world, forever aft
er living in peace and harmony by its essence. The lights that burn in the hearts of my children shall rise again to defy you and the evil seeds you have planted in this world!”

  The agonizing screams of the Nothingness echoed through the cavern. But the dark spirit of the pool had come forth from the depths to claim that being. As it writhed and twisted in the black water, the pool’s dark arms wrapped about the cloud of the Nothingness. The spirit held again that being in its grip, like a mother holds her child. It then dragged the great form of the Nothingness down into the depths to drown it in its blackened waters. Ana looked down into the depths of the pool with pity for the creature, until she saw only peaceful water resting again upon its tranquil surface.

  Ana turned away from the dark pool and began climbing the stone stairs that spiraled their way out of the pit. But as she did a strange white light was thrown about the cavern walls behind her. And a haunted voice could be heard, saying, “Return...return to me.” Curious, Ana crept back down the stairs and walked towards the pool to find its odd source.

  The face of the dark woman then reappeared upon its surface. She reached out with her dark hands, imploring Ana not to leave. But as Ana crept closer to hear the dark queen’s words, a cryptic vision appeared again. Ana saw a dark young woman dressed in black satin, standing beside a pale young man whose hair shined like gold. Before them lay a shining fountain of shadowed waters. And above them a white tree, free of shade, unspoiled, and pristine. But upon the young woman’s hand lay a dark ring in which shone the lavender colors of twilight.

  Suddenly, a great angry cloud thrust up through the water with great violence, shattering the serene vision. The pool’s waves lashed angrily against the violent gray fog, as if to assault it in a defiant display. The cloud curled within itself as if being torn and rent by the water, until finally escaping its brutal assault once more, the thundering storm billowed forth again into the cavern.

  Ana ran for the stone steps, as she saw its dark black cloud fold itself into great black hands to grab her. She ran up the slimy steps of the pit. But parts of the spiral staircase crumbled under her feet so that she slipped, almost falling back down into it. She crawled up the last steps on her hands and knees, out of breath as she struggled to reach the surface. But from below she heard a hideous cackle coming from darkness below.

  Ana then heard its terrible words, saying, “Return to Abrea...return...return. Return to the pool and your fate. There you shall find Ama. There you will find him...return...return...” And with a blast of hot air, its sinister laugh bellowed up and out of the pit.

  With the last of her strength, Ana walked up the last steps of the rotten stairs. She then fell onto the cold mud of Phantaia, grateful to be above ground again. She felt the loud crash of thunder in the chilly air. Frequent flashes of lightning lit up the dark woods about her, bleaching the boughs of the trees in a bright blue sheen.

  The center of the violent storm seemed to lie just beyond the trees to her right. She then knew where it was heading—the Gardens of Abrea. There the storm would be gathering its forces to finally destroy it. She must hurry, race against the storm before it is too late. But as she followed the flashes of lightning, she heard again, roaring up from the depths of the pit behind her, the insane and tortured laughter of the Nothingness, echoing through the forest around her.

  As Ana fled into the woods, she saw within the dark horizon that stretched before her an almost treeless vista. The world seemed bathed in the fog of a deep blue night, beneath whose empty skies lay endless fields of rocks and dirt, heaped and piled up in rolling black mounds around her. What few trees that remained were now only burnt stalks, their trunks blasted by lightning, their boughs ripped away by the violent winds that billowed overhead.

  Only a ghostly fog now clung to that sad earth. The land seemed to be but a lifeless wasteland of rotting logs and debris flung far and wide by the ravages of the Magra. Seeing the state of Phantaia, Ana’s spirit now sank. Yet, she had resolved to get to Abrea. She must reach the hill of the One Tree before the storm and no matter what terrors she might face.

  As she ran on through the mounds of mud and leaves, she came to a barren hill devoid of all grass and trees. But something yet remained upon its highest point that looked familiar. As she climbed to the top, Ana saw the wreckage of Durn, the great oak, his battered trunk still standing boldly upon the blasted hill. His limbs were torn from his trunk. And his leaves stripped away from his shattered boughs. She saw only a pair of closed eyes upon his weathered trunk. Yet his face seemed to move with some faint spirit of life that remained deep within him.

  As Ana approached, he opened his large eyes. But as he looked upon her, he seemed unable to speak. For his grief was great. Ana wept beneath his great roots, begging his forgiveness for what she had done. She then placed her hands on his great trunk, saying, “Great tree, I need to find Ama. Is he alive? Do you know anything of his fate?”

  The great tree then slowly opened his wide mouth. With a creaking and dying voice, he said, “I am happy that you are alive, Ana.” His great face then turned morose, saying, “Many of my children have been slain by Yana. Others have fled into Avaras to battle the evil hazels that now rise up to fight them. With the return of the spirit of the Limitless Void that lies in your father’s dark ring they may now haunt Phantaia freely again. But many have perished, Ana. Yet they lived happy lives knowing that this day would come.”

  He then smiled at Ana’s tear-filled face, saying, “My spirit shall soon leave this world, too. For the hope of a new forest promised us has now been lost. The time of renewal has almost passed. The powers of destruction have won. They shall soon come and finish the destruction that the Connewe had begun. My own spirit shall soon leave this world and return to the father tree that bore it.”

  But the kind tree looked again upon the face of Ana, saying, “You have had great courage in your heart and have faced many trials to try and save us, Ana. Thank you. Leave me now and go forth to the Isle of Adda. There shall you be safe from harm. For the last waters of Avalyr that wrap about it are filled with the Sands of Time, and so are feared by the darker powers. Soon the Magra and the Connewe shall destroy the last of the living spirits that remain in Abrea. For the heart of the Rock Eternal alone remains in Phantaia. For he has been secreted away there.”

  He then looked with sad eyes at Ana, saying, “Ana, I know not of the whereabouts of Ama, except that his spirit has not been seen or felt in Phantaia for many nights. This worries me, for the spirit of my brave brother has always been known to me wherever he might roam in these woods. Take with you my love and the enduring hope that now rests with you and your children.” The withered tree then closed his eyes in a deep and knowing sadness.

  Ama then hugged the old oak one last time. And with tears of parting, she said goodbye.

  The storm billowed overhead, its tall blue and gray thunderheads crackling with lightning. Ana rushed down the hill. But she had not taken the old tree’s advice. She would make her way to Abrea. She then saw the old trails that Ama had long ago showed her. The winds began to blow about her as the skies grew blacker and the charcoal gray clouds above her filled every corner of the brighter heavens that had yet remained.

  Torrents and sheets of rain and hail soon fell from the clouds that streamed overhead. As she neared the gardens, the tempest had increased in power as if fed by the large swaths of earth and wood it had consumed into its wide mouth. Its wild cyclonic winds slung the dead and decayed logs of trees about her, until to Ana it seemed as though the storm was trying to block her path.

  Ana saw what was left of the splintered and bent trunks of the elderwood as she approached their groves. She placed her hands on the shattered remains of their once living trunks. But as she gazed upon the towering Hill of Abrea, she gasped. For beyond the stumps she saw what remained of the beautiful Gardens of Abrea. What had once shined so bright and green was now a black mound of dirt and death. Brown and burnt, its withered plants
and bushes were now reduced to a few dead stalks. All about the hill was a muddy ruin of decaying leaves and rotting logs. And the savagery of that wreckage was more than she could comprehend.

  But Ana held her mouth from screaming as she saw upon its summit the splintered and blackened trunk of what was once the One Tree. She was too late. For its great bushy head of leaves was gone, so that only a few shriveled boughs had yet remained on its great trunk. Its hollow body looked as if a great hand from above had ripped its leafy head from its trunk, yanking it up from the earth. Its gray roots bulged from the broken earth in tangled masses. Yet the stump and roots of the once great tree still clung desperately to a ball of dirt, standing proudly upon the summit of the hill as if it had bravely resisted the violent hand that had sought to tear it away from its sacred earth.

  Ana stood for a time and looked with trepidation upon the wreckage of the once-majestic tree. She then saw a faint glow from deep within the dark hollows of its bole. Its last golden lights had somehow remained, cascading out its rare beams like an evening star alone upon the cold horizon.

  Ana descended the slopes of Aron, determined to make her way to the tree upon the hill. The rain and winds had died down, so that everything seemed calm. She gathered her courage and walked quietly through the valley. As the black storm twisted and turned about her head, she walked on towards the once green and bountiful hill.

  As she approached the Hill of Abra, she saw the true violence of the destructive winds that had battered its slopes. For the plants of the gardens that once grew there had been torn away from the rich soil that once sustained them. Heavy rain had then flooded the mound, so that the base of the hill was but a slimy mass of mud and refuse. The youthful trees that once ringed the hill now lay in decaying piles of rotting limbs and leaves, washed down the valley by the torrents of water that had poured from the hill above.

  As she climbed the slippery hill, Ana saw about her the dark limbs of the once-great tree strewn about the slopes. They appeared to have been shattered by the storm. As she climbed the hill, blue bolts of lightning crashed down in the woods around her, while above her the black mouth of the Magra slowly turned. Yet, by some unknown force, the storm had paused on its final destructive path, arresting its final wrath, as if waiting for some final command from an unseen master below.

  As she struggled through the piles of timber that lay strewn about the hill, she saw that the black roses growing at its base had nearly consumed the garden. As she climbed the slopes of the mound, their sharp thorns tore at her gown, so that her arms and legs were covered in scrapes. And she began to feel dizzy from its poison as she clawed her way up the muddy hill.

  As Ana neared the top of the hill, she fell on her hands and knees, exhausted. She then looked up and saw the sad state of the great tree, its splintered remains standing before her. She wept knowing the time to save it was now past. It was gone forever. With tears in her eyes she looked down in horror at the ravaged world below her. And she wondered if her children would ever know of the beauty that once existed in Abrea.

  Seeing the magnificent tree destroyed, she climbed to the top of the hill where its broken form now stood. She reached out to touch its dark wrinkled trunk. She then held her head down in sorrow. But, as she looked down, she saw under its roots the rocky place where the Secret Spring had buried her child, Phanduan. Under the stones of her grave she saw a strange golden aurora. There among the rocks, hidden and unseen for countless ages, glowed the Sacred Light of the world.

  But as she reached out to touch it, a tall black figure walked out from around the trunk of the tree. Its great leathery wings unfurled themselves from around its frame, blowing back behind it like a black sail. The beast then slowly opened the savage slit of its wide mouth, baring its jet black teeth at her. Its wicked red eyes burned bright with hate, as it looked down at the frail girl.

  The Shadow had returned.

  Ana shuddered in horror as that monster of the night stood before her. The malicious Shadow smiled with an evil grin that dripped with the drool of his long-held enmity for her. He looked mightier and more powerful than she had remembered. His muscular black arms and chest bulged with tremendous size and strength. And his own darkness seemed immersed in the depths of an abyssal night, such that its black vapors fumed from his face and body, filling the air and dyeing the earth about him with the ink of midnight’s pitiless gloom.

  What little light that yet remained had been sucked into the dark guise of his broad wings, as they unfurled over her tiny form. As he stood over her, Ana thought she could hear the rustling of the black roses as they crept about the hill, curling their dark stems about her feet and ankles. They had grown with great vigor, nourished by the Glourun cast by the Shadow’s wings. Fed by the dark essence, they blossomed around her, their large blooms shimmering like black satin in the cold rain’s dark dew. The Shadow bent down and picked one of their dark blooms, admiring its rich scent as his sinister lips curled up in disgust at the sight of the girl.

  The Shadow then looked down at Ana with his glowing red eyes, which bulged from his sallow and sunken ebony face. With a sinister grimace, he said, “At last we meet again. Yet joyless it seems. Let it not be like a tragic family reunion, one wrecked by endless disappointments and regrets. Let it be renewed, this kinship we share. I was such a fool to have left you on the very eve of our initial date. For I had so many things to share with you. Forgive my errant ways, my coarseness, and my crudity. I can only offer you this rose, as I seek your forgiveness.” The Shadow reached out with his dark claw to hand her the black bloom. But Ana backed away, cowering in fear of him.

  The Shadow then looked at her, smiling. “It is no matter,” he said, his eyes now blazing forth like dark red coals. “You are indeed your father’s child. You have destroyed the pool, as I have the tree. Like two sickened lovers drawn together by their perverted passions, wed in secret to each other through pleasurable purpose, we have defied the will of the better world by our acts. Have we not committed crimes together, sundering the union of the tree and pool by our own degenerate desires? For the malevolent mind of the evil that yet dwells in the Great Beyond planned these acts long ago. By its own dark seeds has its evil will now been sown in Phantaia through us, its fallen children.”

  He then shouted, “A new age of darkness has now been planted. And by the fruit of our savage acts has its dark deed now been done!” A terrible laugh then bellowed forth from the Shadow’s wide jaws.

  “But I have returned again without fear of you, but with the knowledge that I may slay you, if I wish,” said the Shadow. “For I have contemplated, since last we spoke, the act of ripping out your heart and drinking the blood from its pool. Would they satiate my thirst as this well has satiated yours, I wonder?” The Shadow then bore his long glassy teeth at her. And an evil grin came upon his face, as he watched Ana crawl away from him in terror.

  The Shadow said, “But I need not lift a finger. For your weak heart shall break soon enough.” The Shadow then reached for something dark that lay hidden at the foot of the fallen tree. Ana fell back in dread. For in his hands was that which she could not bear to see. She gazed in disbelief as the Shadow held in his claw the bloodied head of her beloved Ama. Ana then screamed in horror at the sight, crying, “No...no...”

  The Shadow held the severed head before the dark and threatening skies. He then looked up into the Heavens with his wild eyes of madness and cackled with glee. “The son of the great tree is dead!” he shouted, his deep voice bellowing through the icy air.

  The Shadow then held the dark head of Ama before her, as the blood from its gouged eyes and mouth dripped down into the grave that lay at the foot of the tree. Then was heard a faint sound of something breaking.

  With a gratified look upon his face, the Shadow said, “I had heard of your great love for the guardian of the woods. And so I brought his head as a gift to you, so that you might love him still.” The Shadow laughed as Ana recoiled in fear. Hiding her t
ear filled face from the terrible sight, she wept knowing her love was gone forever.

  Gazing into the dark Heavens, the Shadow said calmly, “After strangling Ama at the foot of his father’s tree, I carried him far from here, casting his headless body into the gulf of Wendalia. Yet, you should know he fought bravely. Like the burning light of the father-tree, nevermore shall the shining son haunt these forlorn woods. Oh, how tragic...”

  But looking down and seeing her absence, the Shadow flung the head of Ama down the hill in frustration. The head of Ama then rolled over the dripping Falls of Bann, disappearing into the river below. He then stormed down the hill, seeking Ana. For she had secretly crawled away.

  His great clawed feet crashed through the dried brush that lay upon the mound, as he called to her in his thunderous voice. But Ana had hid in fear beneath the roots of the dead tree. There she saw again the fading glow of the Secret Light that lay hidden beneath its roots. And its merciful flame gave her heart hope in that dark hour. But as she reached out to take it in her hand, she paused. For she saw where the tree had wrapped its loving roots around it, as if seeking its nutrients. It had given its light freely to the tree so it might feed its children, the trees of Phantaia. And she knew then of the light’s loving gift, its power, and its true purpose.

  But the Shadow saw the glow from afar, and descended upon her secret hiding place within the roots of the tree. He then dragged her out by her feet, throwing her down before him. But as the Shadow looked upon her in anger, Ana had gathered the strength of will that still shined within her. She then stood bravely before him, closing her eyes, trusting herself.

  The Shadow, surprised, stood still as Ana placed her tiny hand upon his great chest. As she listened to the sounds of his beating heart, she heard something strange that dwelt within. She then said to him, “A vision comes to me. And I see you as you truly are. But in you dwells a terror, some nightmare of the netherworld. That which once cursed your father now lives in you. You are but a vassal to it.”

  The Shadow stood still, as in a trance, Ana slowly removed her hand. The Shadow then awoke. “What trickery is this!” yelled the Shadow. “You take me for a fool? I am the Lord of Darkness, the master of my fate.” Ana backed away, falling to the ground amongst the sharp thorns of the dark roses, as the Shadow came at her with his sharp claws.

  “Come to me, Ana,” the Shadow roared. Enraged, he reached out to grab her. She then screamed in terror as he snatched her up from the ground. But as Ana looked upon the Shadow’s horrid face, his expression suddenly changed. His deadened eyes now had an icy stare. Fear had returned to his sullen face, as he stared at something behind her.

  Ana then heard a familiar voice, powerful and strong. “Back away from the child,” said Agapor. The Shadow then stood up slowly, gazing at Agapor with uncertainty. As Ana looked behind her, she saw her proud father standing at the base of the hill. His great cloak was wrapped about him, but his right arm was exposed, revealing the black manacle he still wore. His face was filled with some long-buried and simmering hatred for the Shadow. But as he looked into her eyes, Ana felt his abiding and undiminished love for her. His eyes were resolute. He had returned for her.

  She then saw again upon his right hand the strange glow of the black ring. For its great stone of jet had cast a morose moonlight glow about the hill as it throbbed. As Ana looked about the forest she saw the woods begin to shift and change, moving towards them slowly, as if drawn to its glow. The trees had come alive. But as Agapor looked at her, its weird light had begun to fade again. And with the ring’s dying light the vast armies of trees began to back away from the hill, slowly creeping into the shadows of the Ringwood from which they had come.

  The turning and churning tumult of the Magra had also retreated. Its once-boiling black and angry storm clouds had calmed, parting in the skies above the hill. The dark clouds born by the Magra then drew themselves back beyond the horizon of the trees, until only a few ghostly clouds now drifted quietly about the Heavens. And all lay calm and quiet as it once had been.

  But Ana now saw the true scope of the powers her father possessed, and the true horror of what he had done. For Yana’s storms had nearly consumed Phantaia. And she looked away from her father in shame. The Shadow then looked with a cautious eye to the skies, as the foul maw of the Magra fled away before them.

  Agapor gazed upon the Shadow, staring him down as he held before him the enchanted bracer of iron. It glowed with a bright light as he commanded its strange powers to stir. Ana then saw the Shadow grimace as a sharp pain filled every part of his wracked body. He backed away from her, stumbling on the hill and holding his heart, as if his spirit and flesh had returned to some infernal dungeon of unending torture and pain.

  Ana cried out, “Stop it, Father! Stop his suffering! He is but a servant to a greater evil. He knows not the source of the foul spirit that possesses him.”

  But Agapor looked upon the writhing Shadow with vindictive eyes. He then said to his daughter, “He is a servant to me. But he was doomed long ago, not by that which lies within him, but by the evil path he has chosen.” The Shadow then backed away into the rose bushes atop the hill.

  “Ana, I have come to take you away from Phantaia and the dark powers that shall soon obliterate it,” said Agapor. “There is nothing left for us here. Only evil remains. For it has come to do you great harm. Ana, let us leave this cursed world now.” Looking around and seeing the destruction her father had wrought, Ana looked down in disappointment.

  Agapor then walked towards her, saying, “Ana, you can choose to hate me for all that I have done. But I love you still. Could you ever trust me again?” But Ana looked at her father, doubtful of everything he had told her.

  “I shall not leave without you. I shall not leave you to perish here. If you stay in Phantaia the Shadow shall come looking for you, until the very end of his days. And he shall not stop until he kills you and your children. For this task alone was he made, Ana. Your life shall forever be in jeopardy if you choose to remain here. Ama is dead. Nothing remains here for you now.”

  As Ana pondered her father’s words, she saw a strange darkness rise up from the hill. The black roses about the hill had begun to move about as the Shadow stretched his great wings across the height of the hill. Defying the tortures his master had unleashed upon him, through strength of will, he had drawn to himself the vile essence of the Murgala into his great wings. From out of the roses he drew up into himself their inky essence—the Glourun of his father which for so long had been denied him.

  The deepest shades of night then suddenly fell upon them, such that the outer woods seemed to disappear behind a dark curtain. The skies then became black as pitch, so that it felt as if they were standing alone in some deep abyss at the bottom of the world.

  A hot crimson mist flowed up from the black roses about the hill, filling their senses and emptying their hearts of all feeling. Its strange red tide flowed up and over them, until all was bathed in a bloody mist. Its luminescence then cast aglow the nightmarish monsters, abominations, and undead that erupted from the bloody earth.

  Yet, they were horrors of the mind, creatures of the night that had always been, slithering within the corners of their shadowy dreams, unseen by their inner eye or waking spirits until the mists of their imaginations had unveiled them. Horrific screams, murderous voices, and vague sounds of agony arose from the darkness, as they drew themselves up from the ruddy shadows around them. Ana cried out to her father as they swarmed around her, trying to pull her down into the darkness.

  Ana then heard her father’s calm voice, “Close off your mind and heart to the Shadow. You must concentrate. For he has placed within your imagination the terrors of your mind’s own creation.” Ana closed her eyes. She strove to erase the horrors that now seethed within her fragile mind. The sounds then stopped as the terrors of her mind faded away, like the morning mist.

  Ana opened her eyes again. All was as before. But seeing his dark enchantme
nts dispelled, the Shadow looked down upon Agapor in rage. The Shadow then wrapped his great wings about him, gathering the shadows of the black roses and the dark woods into him again. His wings, imbibed with the forceful Glourun of the Endless Night, began sucking in all darkness into them—the very shadows of Phantaia itself—until a black mist began to seethe around him in a wide whirlwind. Before their eyes, the Shadow began to change and transform into a more monstrous form.

  A colossal, dragon-like serpent now rose before them, with black scales as hard as diamonds, and jaws filled with dagger-like teeth. His thick bat-like wings beat the air violently about him, as hot steam flew from his wide nostrils. His long black body, snake-like, coiled itself around the top of the hill. The great wyrm then thrust his great scaly neck into the sky, as he stretched forth his massive jaws of iron, dripping with drool.

  The black serpent then turned its thick head towards them, looking down at Agapor with a malicious stare. It then said in its slithering tongue, “In this child now dwells the woe of the world. For polluted and poisonous waters yet flow in her. But they are not of the light or of the darkness. For they were forged by the will of the malicious spirit, thy twilit father, who hath sent them here to curse us all. The child must die, Agapor. Even you know this to be true. You have made a vow. Now you must fulfill it.” Agapor held his head down in sorrow.

  Ana then looked upon her father’s face, saying, “Father, is this true? Tell me it is but a lie which evil hath conjured up to deceive me from every quarter.” She stood as one frozen between the serpent and her father.

  The Shadow then shouted out, “Agapor, tell her! Just as the pool and tree have died, she must die. When she is dead shall the waters also perish, and we both shall be free. This world shall be free. Slay her. Slay her now! For you have made a vow before the Nothingness that dwells in the Great Beyond to surrender her spirit to him.”

  “The Nothingness was right,” Ana said, as tears welled up in her eyes, “How could you?” Ana then looked away from her father in dismay.

  But Agapor looked upon his child, saying, “Ana, soon the sinister twins shall come to destroy us all. You must trust me. We must flee this world. Forget Phantaia. Come to me, Ana.” Ana looked with anxious eyes at her father. She then ran to him. And they embraced as father and daughter. Agapor then felt within his own heart the love for his only child made whole at last, that which he had sought for so long.

  But as father and daughter embraced, Agapor felt the strange beat of the heart within his child. And its mystery weighed upon his mind.

  Ana looked up the hill at the monstrous creature. She then gazed upon the black and broken tree that stood defiantly upon the hill. The faint glow of the Sacred Light still beamed out from beneath its roots. It then cast its warm light upon her face. Ana then realized that a tiny piece of Phantaia had refused to die—refused to give up hope.

  Ana turned to look upon her father’s face one last time. She then stood before him with tears in her eyes, saying, “I shall always love you, Father. You must know this. But I cannot go with you. For I love Phantaia still. I belong here beside the tree and its garden. My children belong here. Please Father, stay with me in Phantaia and live here in peace with us. We can fight the Nothingness. There is goodness yet in your heart, for the light of hope yet lives in you. I feel it. And my mother, the keeper of the destinies of the living, long ago revealed to me in a dream that you would someday stand and defend Phantaia against that darkness.”

  Agapor cried out to her, “Ana, do not to do this.” But Ana could only look down in sadness as she walked away from her father.

  But the shadow-serpent, seeing her alone, flew down upon her and wrapped his dark coils about her. As Ana struggled to get away from him, his great leathery wings beat the ground with such force that great cyclones of dust flew up and about them.

  But Agapor rushed the beast, striking his jaw with his great fists, so that Ana fell away from the serpent’s clutches. The black wyrm then wrapped his thick body about Agapor to suffocate him. He then bit down on the shoulder of Agapor, so that great streams of blood poured out of him. Agapor then turned to Ana and said, “Run Ana. Go to the top of the hill. Save Phantaia!”

  Weak from loss of blood, Agapor stretched forth his right arm, summoning forth the dark powers of the mystical manacle once more. The bracer glowed with a hidden fire as the great serpent, feeling its torment upon him, fell to the ground, coiling about himself in agony. Yet he stared up with a vicious eye at the shackle upon his master’s wrist. And the words of the Twilight Mist then returned to him.

  Agapor called to Ana as she ran up the hill. She then paused to look back. But as she did, she saw the massive head of the dark wyrm rising up behind Agapor. The great beast bared his toothed maw, dripping with drool, as he looked down upon the unknowing Agapor. As Agapor turned, Ana saw a look of dread upon her father’s face as he saw the open jaws of the monstrosity that loomed above him. Agapor then held his right hand before the creature, commanding his dark spirit to obey.

  But the serpent came down upon him with his mighty mouth, biting off the right arm of Agapor, and swallowing it down into his great belly. So was the black manacle that had enslaved the Shadow ripped away from its master. But so too was consumed into him the dark ring that lay upon Agapor’s hand.

  Agapor cried in agony as he fell before the beast, his blood pouring forth from his arm. But as he collapsed to the ground, he turned and looked upon his daughter, as she stood upon the slopes above him. His life was now quickly draining away. And he desired to look upon his daughter one last time.

  The dark ring was now lost. And the spirits of the forests and skies began to stir. For without their master those spirits were now set free. But within the dark bowels of the beast was that evil relic now held. It then began to glow within the shadow-serpent, as a great ringing was heard in the skies. The black wyrm then roared and writhed in agony as the hateful ring burned deep within his belly.

  With the cries of the ring, Yana was now unleashed from her prison in the skies. The gates of the storm-filled Heavens were then opened wide to the mighty mouth of the Magra mother once more. Her great vortex began to hover above the great hill of the tree. As she spun about in the Heavens, it seemed to Ana that the whole universe now revolved around Abrea. Down upon her then poured a great blast of wind from the storm. The muddy ruin of Phantaia then began to lift up around Ana, rising up into the mouth of Yana.

  Into its great orifice was flung large logs and limbs from below. Huge hunks of the earth below the hill were then sucked up into its cloud. It drew forth the soil from under her feet, so that as Ana neared the hilltop, she felt herself begin to slip downward. A terrible rumble and roar was then heard all around as the very earth seemed to groan and quake. Ana knew the end was near for Abrea.

  “Go Ana!” Agapor yelled. “Death draws near. It shall soon take us!” Agapor then collapsed on the hill, where he lay dying from his wounds.

  Ana approached the top of the hill, as the dust and debris from the Magra swirled about her. Great billows of leaves and limbs began to spiral about the hill below, forming a thick cloud of brown dirt and debris.

  The Shadow, having taken into his belly the source of his slavery, roared in the chaotic gale with exhilaration at his new freedom. The serpent then looked down at his fallen master as he lay weak and near death. “I am now free of my enslavement to you!” he cried. The Shadow then bent his dragon-like head down to devour Agapor.

  Seeing her father in peril, Ana screamed. The serpent, hearing her cry, then turned and gazed at Ana. But seeing her close to the top of the hill, he became enraged. For he knew now what she would do.

  With his mighty clawed feet, he stepped over the fallen form of Agapor. As Ana climbed out onto the summit of the hill, she crawled on her hands and knees, over the scattered roots and rocks until she lay beside the rocky ruin of the pool. She slowly climbed to her feet, not knowing if she had any more to give. As she staggered to th
e edge of the empty well, she closed her eyes, summoning up the last of her courage from deep inside her.

  She then felt the icy breath of the serpent behind her, blowing down her back and across her shoulders. As she looked down at the ground, she saw the shadow of the dragon-like head of the serpent looming over her. Ana watched in horror as the shadows of his black jaws slowly opened above her.

  Closing her eyes, she gazed down into the empty depths of the pool. She placed both hands upon her heart, trusting that everything she did from that moment would be as she imagined—a calm and peaceful journey.

  The serpent reached out with his hooked claws, as his black head rose up to devour her. He then thrust his giant jaws violently down upon her. But Ana was gone.

  The Wings of Night

  Ana felt herself falling, farther and farther, into the silent depths of the pool. She seemed to be floating, almost weightlessly, as she drifted down into the darkness of that seemingly endless pit. It felt as if she was in a perpetual state of rest and calm, as she fell deeper into the earth. And so she was not fearful.

  A feeling of endless peace had come over her. For an eternity had passed since she stepped into the well. She then saw in her dreaming mind again the glowing faces of her children. They appeared before her, bathed in the light of a shining new age which she had known would someday arrive. Their smiles and laughter now sustained her. Yet strangely, three faces did she see.

  Ana then felt the gentle arms of some being holding her body, slowing her fall, and suspending her in the shadows of the cold earth. The living roots of the One Tree had reached out to hold her. They had wrapped their soft roots about her small frame as they carried her downward. Cradled in their many arms, she felt herself embraced by the tree’s loving spirit.

  Deep under the Hill of Abra lay the forsaken tomb of the Secret Spring. Upon a sacred slab of enchanted stone the roots of the tree laid their precious cargo. Within the rocks of the hill would Ana lie for all eternity, and like her mother bound to infinite sleep in timeless dreams encased. And so was the fate of this sad world now woven and wound within the tangled webs of the visions of Ana and An.

  The tree then sent forth its thick roots around her frame, wrapping Ana in its cocoon. They then pierced the Sacred Heart of the Luffa she had long held within her chest. The Sacred Waters then burst forth from her breast, flowing down and around the cave of her tomb in a great flood.

  Only the tree could release the waters from her flesh. And so was Ana left unharmed. The tree had drawn her spirit to him with abiding love and care. And so were they bound as one beneath the Hill of Abra, renewing, by their loving matrimony, the dying spirit of Phantaia.

  With the releasing of the Sacred Waters into the well, the Sacred Heart of the Luffa had fallen away beside her bed within the tomb. As a bejeweled brooch of woven gold and silver inlays was it made, with four faces of the Primordial Ones bent outward. But its inner shape was of the tree, sitting atop a circular cauldron that swirled with the tragic waters of life. This treasure would remain hidden in her tomb until it would be given to another even more deserving, and its enchanted powers summoned forth again. For it had been made to carry the wild and relentless waters of the pool into a new world.

  Those waters had been imprisoned within her heart. But freed, they would not hide in the darkness of her lonely crypt. Rising swiftly from the rocks below, they swirled through the cracks and crevices of the dying hill. Rushing up into the empty pool, jubilant and free, they rushed forth with great vigor into its earthen cauldron, filling its deep cup, and flowing over its brim.

  The virginal waters, pure and chaste, then spilled over the lip of the pool that held them. They laughed as they fell about the gardens, until their waters had replenished Lilu’s barren streams. With a joyous and frothing display, they then rushed headlong over the Falls of Bann and into the awaiting arms of Avalyr. The river then sparkled with many lights and colors, greater than before, refreshed with the radiance and life of the loving waters.

  The cauldron of the pool had swelled with the spirit of the Sacred Waters, drawing them continually up from their undying source. The unspoken language of their dancing reflections sparkled with a thousand suns upon its trembling surface. Its mirror then cast its spectral beams upon the ravaged tree and gardens, as the first tender lights of a happy spring awaken a frozen and forlorn winter world.

  Thus was reborn the Sacred Pool of Eternity in this troubled world, as it had been remade in many worlds prior.

  The wounded spirit of Phantaia was then revived and healed. The roots of the great tree then drew forth its nourishing waters from the well, renewing its heart and spirit, until the One Tree’s battered boughs and leaves began to stir again. The shining spirit of Celebreava was then awakened once more within its great trunk. The living tree then thrust up from the mound, bursting forth from the black bole that imprisoned it. A new trunk now grew forth as the old one fell away. Yet it was not a new tree reborn from the old, but the old tree resurrected.

  Shedding its former skin, it stretched its thick white limbs into the skies, reaching new heights even greater than before. In the ecstasy of its youth, its new leaves and limbs beamed out with a perfect light, shining forth with a new brilliance, chasing back the shadows of the night that had come to possess the sky and earth. The ghostly trees that had descended upon the nearby woods fled before its golden beams, back into the farthest fringes and darkest haunts of Avaras, where the shade and mist that crept there had long shielded them from its former sun.

  Atop the Hill of Abra, the Shadow had returned to his original form, having shed away his scaly skin. He then stood upon the edge of the pool, looking into its hypnotic waters, seeing again the haunting visions of his own forbidding future.

  He watched with fascination and yet horror as the Sacred Waters that Ana had borne within her now filled its cauldron. And the dread of them filled his mind again. It was then he saw the One Tree grow upon the mound, its great lights shining forth from its mighty trunk to blind him. Before the burning glow the Shadow cried out to his father, begging for mercy as he fell to his knees.

  But with the return of the waters of eternal springtime, the tree had cast its vengeful fire upon that vile Child of Night. The Shadow then flew forth with haste into the skies, trying with all his might to escape its searing flame. For his dark wings were filled with the powers of the Glourun, the essence of the Endless Night, which he thought would shield him. But against the mighty beams of the Sacred Light, fed by its enchanted pool, were those powers defenseless. For as he flew from the top of the hill, the tree’s great fires burned away his face. And he cried out in agony as his black body began to smoke before its radiance.

  Its light scorched his flesh, burning away his mighty wings, igniting his body, and casting it aflame. Agapor watched as the Shadow exploded in a ball of fire, falling through the sky like a comet burning bright in the Heavens. The smoking ruin of the Shadow then fell to the earth as a molten mass. Its hot embers, like a shower of sparks, were thrown down upon Abrea, into the dark roses of the Murgala that lay about the hill. And so from that which is of darkness made would yet come light. What was left of the Child of Night then disintegrated into coarse ash, which blew about in the winds as its dark sands sifted down into the earth, becoming one with the Gardens of Abrea.

  His bat-winged servants and spirits of the night that had come from the Lands of Midnight were chased back into the depths, fleeing in terror before that blazing sun. But so too were heard the shrieks and howls of their master’s tortured spirit as it fled away into the blacker woods of distant Avaras.