Image credit: Lady 4 by Simon Weaner
Catch-up on previous posts:
Part 1: From the Deepest Abyss
Part 2: The Burning Darkness
Part 3: Light Scatters; Darkness Ever Creeps
From that dawn onwards, when Lathander hard warmed her soul on the hilltop on, Nadira tirelessly beseeched Sir Johann to let her join him on his excursions to illuminate and extinguish evil. She wanted nothing more than to atone for her nature, to do good in the world in exchange for her own evil.
Sir Johann could see the sincerity in her face, like the gentle wash of the Sun in Spring, but he resisted at first, worrying about the possibilities of where that path could lead her.
He could sense the indomitable inner-strength that the young Tiefling possessed, the fire burning within her, and feared that the fire would lead her down a path of vengeance.
A war on herself would only send her deeper down the dangerous road of darkness.
In the end though, in the face of her unyielding spirit and relentless badgering, his hesitance wavered.
He believed that Lathander’s Light could keep her path true and righteous. He could see that she wished to spread the Morninglord’s Love to those who needed it, and that the sheer force of her will would keep her to His Path.
He knew that if she could pour her piety into Lathander, channel all her faith and devotion into His Name, that the relentless fire within in her could be focused on doing immense good in the world. Spreading His Light would be the only path for her own redemption---the Morninglord would allow her to rally against her dark nature and nurture her sunny intrinsic warmth.
With these thoughts ever present, Sir Johann eventually relented to her wishes, and another three years passed in which Sir Johann taught Nadira how to fight—not to punish, but to defend the weak against the wicked darkness.
A clear path ahead of her, she showed much aptitude to his lessons and her faith brightened with every dawn. Soon, Nadira began to accompany Sir Johann on his ventures to battle against the ebbs and tides of darkness.
She began to feel the faintest of glows of His Light shine down upon her, growing ever stronger as her faith in Him grew. Sir Johann taught her to use it, to channel His Light and share it with others, to heal and to strengthen. He guided her to use that radiance to follow the Morniglord’s path, to sense the presence of darkness in order to root it out and drive it away.
Lathander’s divine Light gave her purpose and strength to do great good in the world, to unleash His Might at will in order to dispel the darkness that ever preyed on the weak.
Nadira prayed everyday in the dawn sun, thanking Lathander for his supreme redemption as He kept at bay any lingering trace of the darkness that nestled deep inside her.
Together, the odd pair, old man and young tiefling, mentor and student, father and daughter, were like two holy beacons spreading Lathander’s Light and dispelling the shadow. They travelled together, bright lanterns illuminating a dark and dangerous road, so that others could travel their paths in safety.
What remained of Nadira’s shorn horns, markers of her demonic heritage, her forgotten past, she kept hidden beneath her veil and coif, as she and Sir Johann basked in the brightness and warmth of Lathander’s Light that shone down upon them.
It had all started after the exorcism of a young girl...
Nadira was merely observing as instructed, irritated that Sir Johann would not let her help, but she stood her ground, dark arms crossed above her shining metal chainmail.
She watched in a huff as Sir Johann channelled the Gift of Lathander’s Light, his hands hovering above the prostrate girl, lending the town’s priest the strength to dispel the infection of the demon within her. As the girl writhed in pain, the demon ravaged her body from within, tormenting her.
Not a trace of the child was left, she was almost completely lost now. Its eyes were completely corrupted by blackness, its skin now webbed in inky tendrils of darkness. With an otherworldly voice it cursed the two men and blasphemed against the Holy Name of Lathander.
The ritual intensified, the two men redoubling their concentration, as Lathander’s Light battled against the darkness that infested the necrosing girl, trying to drag her soul away from the clutches of darkness and into the Light.
Nadira couldn’t take the horrible sight any longer, the poor girl’s torment cut deep into her own childhood, and she took a decisive step forward, calling for the Light of Lathander to protect her.
The demon suddenly ceased its useless thrashing and looked straight at her. As those pitch-black eyes bored into her, seeming to draw her in with their almost infinite depth, Nadira felt a faint twinge as something deep inside seemed to stare back.
Nadira froze, a tremor of panic rushed down her spine, sending paralyzing aftershocks bouncing around her entire body—she couldn’t look away. As if by its own free will, Nadira’s foot lifted and pulled her forward another step.
Sir Johann stepped in front of her, for a moment cutting off line of sight to the demon’s interminable scrutiny. He instructed her to stay back, the shear strain of the present ordeal emblazoned on his face.
Nadira felt an insatiable need to push past him, the small pip of darkness inside of her growing, compelling her forward. But Sir Johann stayed firm, blocking her mesmerized march with the back of an outstretched arm.
All the while, the demon’s gaze never wavered.
As Nadira absentmindedly tried to push past Sir Johann’s barring gesture, a smirk slowly grew on its corrupted face. Ever so slowly the smirk turned to a grin, barely exposing the tiny pointed tips of the transformed child’s rotting teeth. Its beady eyes glistened with glee as the grin widened, baring its innumerous razor-sharp teeth into an insanely wide, contorted smile.
It spoke directly to her, hissed in a register of discord, the deep bass of the demon almost entirely drowning out the girl’s weak voice as at it used her body like a sending stone.
It beckoned Nadira closer, calling her Sister. It hailed her and called her Daughter of Darkness, bowing its head in a debased gesture worthy of royalty while hailing her as Princess.
All Nadira could do was stare blankly into its void-pit eyes.
Within her the darkness swelled, scuttling around her like millions of tiny spiders. Anxiety and panic cascaded through her alert, her mind left reeling uselessly as she leaned limply against Sir Johanns outstretched arm.
Then, it called Nadira a name; a name whispered in an inharmonious chord, a guttural intonation undertoned by an insidious syballence, coiling out from the demon’s overlong and festering black tongue. The demon looked deep into Nadira’s soul, both growling and hissing the name over and over again:
Aᴘᴏᴋᴀʟʏᴘsɪs, Aᴘᴏᴋᴀʟʏᴘsɪs, Aᴘᴏᴋᴀʟʏᴘsssɪssss…
The word slithered into Nadira’s brain, creeping into its deepest recesses, worming its way into a crack in her mind, a fissure formed by the fear and panic coursing through her. It snaked its way in Nadira’s haphazardly constructed mental wall, a blockade that guarded her from the sheer trauma of the rituals inflicted upon her during her childhood.
And she heard the rumbling chorus of that same horrible word, intoned by her mothers and fathers, as atrocities were committed on an onyx altar…
The name bashed back and forth inside her head like those guttural chants, echoing off the walls in the dark stone basement that was her entire world from the moment her conception until her skin was first graced with the warmth of Lathander’s Light.
The anger deep inside Nadira began to surge through her, igniting cold black lumps of condensed pain and suffering in her belly like coal. Her muscles tightened as she fought against the demon’s hypnotic glare.
With all her might, Nadira managed to break free of the demon’s psychic grip. She fought through her paralysis, barely managing to wrap her slender charcoal fingers around the immaculately patterned and gold-plated hilt of her scimitar. The same scimitar Sir Johann had gifted to her on the seventh memorial day following her emancipation from that impossibly dark womb.
Her jade eyes burned with fury as her gaze seared into the demon as it howled in elation, goading her on, feeding on her anger.
She wished for nothing more than to wreak divine vengeance on the demon for its pure chaotic evilness, for corrupting the innocent girl lying on the table, for infesting her with its darkness.
She wanted to destroy its very essence, punish it for the darkness that had seeped into her being, slowly and surely, becoming inseparably bound to her from the moment of her birth.
The rage that was bubbling inside of Nadira seemed to mirror a writhing mass beneath the girl’s rotting skin. All Nadira knew was that she had to eradicate the demon from this plane, burn it to nothingness.
As she surged forward, her bistre hand jerked up, revealing an inch of her scimitar’s brilliantly polished blade, gleaming bright against the pure darkness in front of her.
As Nadira’s inner fury burst open, so too did the girl’s corrupted chest.
Nadira became aware of herself again as she felt something hard and flat slam against her back, winding her.
She lay slumped against the rough stone wall of the priest’s chambers. It took her moment to realise that Sir Johann had bodily thrown her backwards as she had rushed the demon.
As the soft embrace of her daze waned, she let her eyes remain closed, feeling the warm radiance of Lathander soothe her inner fury and dispel the darkness, burning it off her soul.
Despite everything, Lathander was there for her still, shining down all his Love and Mercy. She could feel His Supreme Redemption beating down on the back of her neck like the fierce sun of midday.
She took a moment to murmur a word of prayer to her Lord before snapping her eyes open.
In front of her the scene was sheer chaos: tendrils of jet-black shadow extended from the corrupted girl’s chest, thrashing around indiscriminately. The girl, her tiny voice distinct, screamed and writhed in agony, piercing past the sound of the demon’s ecstatic cackle.
The priest was cowering on his knees in a corner shouting sacred hymns uselessly, while a battered Sir Johann dodged the merciless reach of the shadowy tentacles, stealing a desperate moment here and there to look back at the slumped figure of his tiefling charge, a look of worry sunk deep into the lines of his face.
Nadira locked eyes with him, and his searching look turned to relief as he saw the determined, but composed look in her sparkling deep-green eyes. For an instant his body relaxed as he flashed grim smile in her direction, before grim determination settled back in and he turned back towards the source of darkness.
It was an instant too long.
His expression slackened instantly into surprise as Nadira saw one of those dark tendrils pierce directly into his chest, extending through him in an ethereal wisp of intense shadow.
He dropped to his knees, his complexion almost instantly becoming pale and feverish as pitch-black tendrils invaded his flesh like carnivorous vines. He was muttering something meekly, a towering peak of fear cracked in his voice.
In an instant Nadira was on her feet and lurching towards Sir Johann. With one swipe she deftly severed the tendril with her scimitar and gently caught him as his legs buckled. The tentacle turned to ash and drifted to the floor harmlessly as she cradled Sir Johann in her arms, weak but alive.
As the demon howled in pain, Nadira took the a moment to gently lay her mentor down, cradling his head like that of a child, as she uttered a prayer of healing.
Then, ever so slowly, she straightened up, swivelling to face the screeching demon. As she turned, her eyes slowly revealed themselves, ablaze—not with anger, but with light and love.
She gracefully sidestepped the mass of wildly thrashing tentacles, as she slowly made her way towards the suffering child. Her dark skin was luminous as she extended glowing hands towards the child, placing them gently on either side of her black-veined face.
Willing the child to calm down, whispering that she was forgiven, that she was loved, that Lathander would accept her with wide-open arms, Nadira channelled Lathander’s Light into the child, trying to sooth her.
The demon put up a fight, devouring the young child’s terror, using it to fuel its evil. It screamed that corrupted name over and over, but Nadira resisted, allowing the corona of Lathander’s Inner Light to strike it out of her mind.
It took all her strength but she pushed onwards, guiding Lathander’s Mercy, forcing it down into the pit of shadow occupying the child’s heart.
She began to feel the darkness wane as the Light slowly extinguished it, driving it back into the cracks abyss from which it came.
Nadira’s body couldn’t handle the sheer radiance of the light coursing through her body, her legs weakened and she dropped to one knee. Her vision blurred as it took every ounce of strength she had to focus the Morninglord’s Power.
She couldn’t hold it any longer, she could feel the darkness clawing back, making up territory as the intensity of Lathander’s Light weakened. And just as all was lost, the Light surged again, intensifying to such a searing white light that it almost blinded her.
Nadira looked back to see the pale face of Sir Johann, his salt and pepper dusted brows furrowed with concentration. He was lying on the stone floor on his stomach, arms outstretched, channeling his power into Nadira.
She felt the familiar warmth of his Light—and for a moment she thought she felt something else there, beneath the surface, but she cast the thought aside as she redoubled her own efforts.
With one final brilliant burst of light the demon screamed in agony as the room was bathed in a blinding golden light, and when it faded the room was silent and still, except for Nadira’s panting.
On the table in the centre of the room lay the girl, her skin perfect and lily-white, uncorrupted by darkness.
She lay motionless as Nadira held her breath in anticipation, watching on, waiting…
When nothing happened, Nadira scrambled to her knees using every bit of strength she had left, and crawled towards the motionless girl. She pulled herself up beside the table, and saw on the girl’s face serene peace.
She cradled the girl’s tiny hand, it was as cold as ice, and uttered a healing prayer to Lathander as fat welts of tears streamed down her face.
But the girl did not move ever again.