The Stone Sorceress

Chapter 37 - 38

Chapter 37

"This isn't over," Typhon said as he confronted Eros. "Thanatos may be dead but what about the vita obscura? What about the sorceress, and our orders?" Typhon grasped his friend's arm, "What about Bahamut?" He looked hard at the melancholy knight.

Eros still suffered, he was grieving and cared not for duty. Thanatos was his brother, together they'd made a valiant last stand against Lemuria, together they'd brought down the villainous Aavak. But Eros survived and Thanatos did not, or so Eros had believed. He'd carried that burden around with him for 10 years, and then the man returned from the grave to charge him with the crime. Yes, Thanatos blamed him for leaving, and he was right to do so.

To add to his woes, he'd fallen in love and that love, that woman, had betrayed him. She'd another master. The wounds went deep. Perhaps he ought not to have let her go, perhaps Sabriel was right, and the sorceress should have been arrested. Eros massaged his brow because he didn't know. He was so conflicted - his mind a fog.

"It's over," Eros at last said. "The menace has been stopped." There was a pause. "Astraea will do no further harm - I know she isn't evil." Eros looked down to the floor. "As to the vita obscura, we have only the word of an old senile man, and a woman who deceived us from the start." Typhon opened his mouth to speak, but Eros continued. "And the devil, pah! Let another fight him, I no longer have the strength nor the stomach to do so."

Typhon looked despairingly at the titan who crumbled before him.

Sabriel meanwhile stirred in the distance; her horse was saddled and ready.

Typhon asked, "What will you do now?"

"Continue to Nunnehi," Eros nodded, "I don't expect that I will return to Hyperion soon."

A tear might have come to the mage's eye, but he quickly suppressed it.

"What does Aurora do?"

"I won't force her to return. If she wishes to journey to Nunnehi, she can."

The stoical mage thought for a moment: his orders would certainly be to bring her back, she was the princess for heaven's sake, but the mage preferred the felicity in her eyes that he saw of late than the suicide he espied in Lemuria. He too would not force his pupil's return. Afterall, the king didn't know she'd joined them on their mission. No explanations were necessary.

"And Skoll?" Typhon said, emerging from his brief reverie.

"He'll accompany the princess; he grows fond of her."

"And she him."

"One never knows, perhaps some good will come of all this, perhaps Hyperion and Lemuria may yet be united." The grieving cavalier allowed a wry smile to escape his lips.

"Very well."

Eros asked, "Where do you travel to?"

"Hyperion, it's home."

"Take care."

"And you."

The pair embraced; Eros watched Typhon mount his horse, converse with Sabriel a short while, and disappear into the distance. He turned his eyes to Skoll and Aurora who spoke so as not to be heard. They were silent when his eyes fell upon them.

"Let's go," he said.

***

Astraea lingered in Thanatos's mansion like a ghost haunting the stone walls. In the many days that passed she didn't stir from the armchair, her skin became much paler, her body thinner, she looked ill.