Eyvallach at the End of the World
A fantasy about oblivion.
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Today, we have my friend Cam Daxon reading. He did such a good job with Brood, that I had to have him read again. Cam is a voice actor and writer living in Los Angeles. If you like his voice, I promise you’ll love his incredible attitude and creativity. He’s open to work and would love to hear from you on LinkedIn.
Without further ado, here’s this month’s story, a fantasy called Eyvallach at the End of the World (ain’t that a mouthful).
Name pronunciation:
Eyvallach: Ey-val-lock
Tunde: Toon-day
Bryste: Brist-uh
Abitha: A-bee-thuh
Luzifar: Loo-zee-far
The heroes gathered themselves like thunderheads, their armor covered in the gristle of the undead, their chests heaving from the effort of battle, hands tired from carrying their weapons and casting spells. They advanced into the circle from an enclosed stair, the wind gusting about them. The tower’s crown was a henge of power, a sacred place where a powerful sorcerer might conjure the strongest of forces to bend the universe to their will. Eyvallach, the heir to the dragonborn, the horned devil of the North, stood at the center of the henge, staff in his right hand raised high, a cosmic light spiraling out from the crystal set into the gnarled end. Eyvallach’s mouth moved, an incantation emanating from deep inside his soul. His intonations shook the tower violently, making the heroes stumble. Tunde, Abitha, and Bryste, the last of their troupe to survive, shared a look, wasting precious seconds.
“Is he close?” Abitha asked.
Bryste, the witch they called the Guardian of Ages, whispered a spell, making her maze of facial tattoos glow silver. Her curls blew wildly in the wind, sending Tunde’s heart fluttering; even now, at the end of all things, he was madly in love with her. Lightning struck Eyvallach’s staff, blinding Tunde for a moment. When his vision cleared, Bryste was on her knees, face contorted with misery.
Abitha, the assassin, tried to pick up her friend. She shook her. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s over,” Bryste muttered, repeated, growing louder until it was a shout, a scream, a terrible cry.
Tunde, the bravest of all knights-errant, stood and hefted his mace. He faced Eyvallach. Runes in his weapon’s handle glowed a violent red. “It can’t be over.”
“It is,” replied Eyvallach. The mage’s voice was clear and loud. How could that be? The incantation was no longer being spoken. The wind had ceased. The henge was surrounded by a pocket of impossible silence.
“Behold, the end,” Eyvallach said, dropping his staff and raising both arms high like he would embrace the broken moon.
“You haven’t won. You—” Tunde’s words died as an emerald-vermillion brilliance exploded towards the sky, streaming upward. It was the final sign that, indeed, Eyvallach had won. There was no reversing the spell now. Tunde, too, fell on his knees as though he’d been stabbed in the gut.
Eyvallach didn’t gloat or maniacally laugh or use this moment to destroy these heroes who had dogged him, scarred him, and ruined many a plan. He stood there and soaked in his victory. There was rest in his heart that he hadn’t felt since he was a child before his village was savagely destroyed and he swore to himself that he would pursue the ultimate revenge.
He closed his eyes and said, “It’s been a long road.”
“For all of us,” Bryste added, her clear tenor echoing off the stone pillars in the henge. “Are you sure you understand what you’ve done?” Her voice broke.
“I’ve fixed everything,” Eyvallach said, walking over to stand by Tunde, who was shaking with fury. He crouched down and offered a clawed hand. “We need not be enemies anymore.”
Tunde glowered, slapped the hand away. One corner of Eyvallach’s mouth quirked up. “Tunde, you are still pure of heart after all this. I have always felt a mixture of hatred and appreciation for that.”
“I should kill you.” But he only looked away.
Abitha left Bryste on the ground. She rubbed her shaved head and blew air out her lips like they were dealing with a broken cart axle and not the end of all things. “How long do we have?”
Eyvallach rubbed the tip of a curled horn like he always did when deep in thought. “A few hours.” They could already see the whorl, like a small spiral galaxy, developing over the planet.
Abitha pursed her full lips. “Let’s then enjoy them. Bryste, open a portal to the Ten-Sum Lagoons.”
The witch wiped tears, nodding. She stood, shakily. Tunde ran to her, his mace abandoned, and helped her stand. She muttered a spell, the tattoos glowing, and a circular portal opened up, unveiling a landscape that shocked the senses: the smell of brine and warm air, the sound of seagulls and clack-crabs and crashing waves, the shimmer of a perfect ocean.
Bryste and Tunde walked through, arm in arm, their tears littering the stone floor of the henge.
“Come,” Abitha said, holding her hand toward Eyvallach. Around them, the wind moaned as its strength returned. The light intensified, falling around them as the energy of Eyvallach’s spell surged through the tower and into the sky and beyond. He met Abitha’s gaze and felt fear. Not of death, though this was likely, but of being forgiven. Or even worse, being understood.
“I would walk and speak with you,” she said, beckoning.
With strange and great courage, Eyvallach took his enemy’s hand and walked into paradise.
The Ten-Sum Lagoons were an idyllic archipelago in the Suffering Sea—named so not only for the incredibly dangerous waters surrounding them, but also because one could almost forget their suffering at these islands. The locals welcomed travelers and gave them a taste of their life. One only needed a roof, a hammock, and a fishing line to live well there. Eyvallach, warm in his many layers, shed his cloak and wool-lined tunic until he stood only in his breeches. So did the other heroes, becoming more like poor beggars than the most dangerous and skilled individuals of their age. They milled about near a beach, awkwardly avoiding each other’s gaze. Bryste and Tunde soon went away, whispering to each other.
Eyvallach used a spell to listen in:
Tunde: We can still kill him.
Bryste: That doesn’t matter anymore.
It matters to me.
Please, let’s take a breath. Get a drink?
“Let them be.” Abitha took Eyvallach’s hand again and led him in the opposite direction. The jungle on their right was lush, blessed with birdsong and bright flowers. An oasis of life, in stark contrast to the harsh tundra where Eyvallach’s tower stood.
“I’ve never been to a warm place like this,” he said.
Abitha sighed. “I always thought I would come here when it was over.”
“And here you are.”
She briefly smiled. “Here I am.” Her dark skin was taut over her bones, her cheeks gaunt, as though etched with worry and hunger. The journey to Eyvallach’s tower had been hard—and now all she had suffered was for naught. “A drink?”
A hut drew near. The grass roof lay flat in the still air, and the pair picked up the sound of wooden cups clattering and liquid being shaken and poured. Vacationers from the world over were enjoying themselves; they stayed at a large beachside lodge nearby. Eyvallach noted the reclining chairs, the rope swings over the water, and the fishing boats anchored nearby. He wondered how things might have been if he’d grown up here.
I’d still be me, angry at everything, but with a tan.
Abitha purchased their drinks with an unnecessary amount of gold coins—to the bar-back’s surprise—and they made their way to the waterfront, where worn, sun-kissed chairs sat with their legs in the water.
“To you. To victory,” she said, raising her wooden cup, a small bowl, to her nemesis.
“To you and your valiant effort.” They finished their drinks in one go.
“What does it do, your spell?”
“Bryste didn’t tell you?”
“I want to hear it out of your mouth.” Her amber eyes danced from his to the sea. “In hindsight, there was much I assumed about your intentions. Destroying the world for destruction’s sake.”
“I’m not such a cynic, no.” Eyvallach took a breath, enjoying the fresh air and the sun on his lithe form. His curled horns prickled, as though they had been dunked in freezing water and then into a hot pool. His pale skin drank in the sun recklessly and would soon burn. How long had he lingered in the dark domains of the earth? How long had he labored in his tower to this end?
“The spell,” he said, finally, “draws all souls from this world. And by soul, I mean life that is self-aware, intelligent.”
Abitha frowned. “What for?”
Eyvallach raised a brow. “My home was destroyed by King Begool’s father, Vegool the Great. His knights cut my parents to pieces in front of me. He did so for his political machinations. That’s how it all started. I promised myself I would kill him, and then he died all on his own. But my desire for revenge never wavered, and so I turned to fixing the source of the thing that robbed me of my childhood: the human heart.”
“So killing us all does that…how?”
“I tried other methods, first. Many others. You’d have to ask Bryste, but, I guess, there isn’t time. In the end, though,” Eyvallach sighed, “the easiest thing was just to get rid of everyone. Then life, in general, can restart. Maybe, in many eons, a new intelligence will rise up. Otherwise, this will be a wild, peaceful world.”
“Wow. As a permanent fixer of human hearts myself, I’m impressed. I’ve killed many. But not everyone.” Her strange wonder filled the moment. They watched a wave approach their feet, raising the water level. With it came a round leather ball.
“Hey!” someone called out; the assassin and the mage turned to look. A total hunk of an ork waved at them, his broad shoulders shining in the sun. “Toss the pelo!”
Abitha stood. “Only if we can play!”
“No,” Eyvallach said.
“Sure!” replied the Ork, broad smile beaming at them, almost brighter than the sun.
Abitha pulled Eyvallach up, muttering, “You owe me a bit of fun, don’t you think?”
The ork’s skin was a deep green, tanned from a life enjoyed beneath the sun. He introduced his friends, a human, an elf, and another ork. Eyvallach joined the handsome ork’s team, already anxious about the game. Of course, he’d played tup-tap. Everyone did. But it only reminded him of his early years, of home, of learning the game from his mothers.
Abitha, on the opposing team, served the ball with a kick over a high string. Eyvallach’s team returned the soft leather pelo quickly, tupping it with any of their body parts as a pass, and tapping it over the line with a strike. Back and forth they went, the number of successful tup-taps racking up points, tallied by a magic counter. There were a total of three rounds, the winner being declared by having the most number of tup-taps for time. Abitha’s team was down for the first round, and when the magic counter went off, they all took a break. Eyvallach downed water and tried to get his heart rate under control. For so long, he’d used magic for everything, from levitating to cooking to making himself able to walk through walls. He clenched his sharp teeth and endeavored to play as hard as Abitha did, no matter how his muscles screamed at him.
Eyvallach and his team made the strategy to be smart and reserved. As they walked back to the court, they watched Abitha’s team. They were in a huddle, whispering, their voices growing louder, the chant led by Abitha herself.
“...and glory. Blood and glory. BLOOD and GLORY! BLOOOD AAAND GLORYYY!”
Eyvallach and his team didn’t feel so confident after that.
The final round was upon them and the score was close. Fifty blinks of the clock remained. All players were sweating, covered in sand from head to toe, even in the nether regions. Eyvallach was confused. The tone had changed. Abitha glared at him, snarled when she tapped the pelo over, and muttered things he probably didn’t want to hear when he got points. Why had it gone this way? Eyvallach knew.
Abitha was still trying to win. He smiled, wiped the sweat from his face.
“What’s so funny?” Abitha said.
“I’m just enjoying the game,” he lied.
It all came down to the wire. Eyvallach tupped it to the Ork, who leaped and made as if to strike. But it was a fake-out. Their third player, a human, leaped a second after, tapping the pelo with speed and accuracy, sending it flying toward the right corner, and straight toward the sand.
But before it could bounce, an Ork’s foot slid underneath—and Eyvallach swore only magic could have made her move so fast—bouncing the pelo back toward the string.
Abitha was waiting. She pounced, smashing the pelo right at Eyvallach.
Stars. A burning in his nose. The sky.
Abitha, standing over him, crouching down, hissing at him: “I wish you had done us a favor and just ended your miserable life.”
Eyvallach licked his lip and tasted blood. He wasn’t angry at all. He didn’t even need to gloat.
He said, “You play a marvelous game. Want to go another round?”
“No. I’ve beaten you.” Abitha reached for her thigh and pulled out a gilded knife, its hilt hollow and filled with a dark liquid. She’d had it strapped to her the whole time. The blade was the length of her little finger but was deadly enough to bring down the great krakens in the depths or the war-bats from the East.
It sunk into the sand by Eyvallach’s face.
He groaned and said, “Blood and glory.”
Eyvallach got another drink and walked the other way up the beach, feeling unsettled. The bright sun and balmy weather grew oppressive. He cast a spell of comfort, easing the symptoms of the incessant light. He wondered if he had grown too accustomed to candlelit interiors and moldy stone walls. His walking took him up a rise, steep enough to make him huff with effort, his body not yet recovered from the game of tup-tap. When he did get to the top, he found a rocky overlook, adorned with a stone bench. He was not alone.
Tunde and Bryste were there, leaning on each other. Eyvallach cleared his throat.
“It’s you. You kept it?”
Eyvallach followed Tunde’s eye-line to the scar beneath his navel. Even five years on, the wound had sickly purple veins around it. A venom blade of Arturian make, Eyvallach recalled, had nearly spilled his guts and made him so ill that, for a while, many thought him dead.
Eyvallach rubbed the scar with his claws. “An important memento: to never trust a knight-errant.” Tunde smirked at that. “I wish to speak with Bryste.” The smirk evaporated. He rubbed his shaved head, also littered with scars. Eyvallach recalled giving him one in particular, across Tunde’s scalp. The spell was dancing knives, one of Eyvallach’s favorites. As good at carving up enemies as it was for roasted sickle-boar.
“We will speak,” Bryste said. “And all will be well.” She put her hand on Tunde’s arm. “But if you want to throw him off the cliff, I won’t stop you.”
“I’ll think about it,” the knight replied, walking away. He stopped abruptly, turned back, and kissed Bryste passionately. Eyvallach rolled his eyes.
Bryste and Eyvallach sat together, as they once had in an eternal garden, back when they were both students of the dragonborn mage, Luzifar. They watched the world with practiced eyes. Orange-crested pelicans swooped low over the waters and raced. A single dolphin made an appearance in the distance. Carpets of stinking kelp rolled with the waves, their green darkness obscuring the life that flitted beneath them.
“We used to only manage a few seconds of silence, remember? Then, Master would start the timer over.”
“A month it took us to manage even five minutes of silence,” Eyvallach said. He eyed Tunde, who was holding a squat toward the ocean. “A brute,” he grunted.
“Not just.”
Eyvallach eyed her sidelong, taking in the lines crawling across her neck and cheeks. “The Source has marked you further.”
“I was willing to be completely marked if it meant stopping you. And no, I didn’t tell Tunde what the Source required of me. ” She refused to meet him eye to eye. He hated that.
“Will you tell me?”
“It hardly matters now,” she said, looking upward. “Your handiwork is becoming evident.” Up in the sky, the galactic whorl was growing in darkness and size, its tendrils curling, reaching out like a vile cephalopod. It would, in time, encircle the world, inhale countless souls, and disperse their energy among the stars.
“I remember a time when this wasn’t the answer. When you were searching for answers.”
She looked at him then, even put a hand to his cheek. Eyvallach drank in her face, which had been so young, and now was scarred, lightly wrinkled, marked by the maze of tattoos from the Source. Her septum was pierced by a ring of pure amber, a gift he had given her when they could do little more than lift pebbles with the wind. It had cost him much.
“I have wondered if this was Luzifar’s influence that made you choose this path.” She traced her fingers down the curled horns. “I also wish I could have witnessed the grafting. What was it like?”
“I would not undergo it again.” His hand covered hers. “I chose this. And the grafting.” Eyvallach rubbed the base of his horns where Luzifar himself had placed them, granting Eyvallach the power of the dragons. It had also made him angrier, more greedy, and prone to manic behavior. “Truly, it simply made me more…myself.”
She pulled away. “I know there’s nothing I can do to make you believe what I used to see in you,” she replied, her face marked with tears again. “And there wouldn’t be any point to it, anyway.”
She interlocked her fingers with his. He squeezed her hand, taking care not to let his claws cut her. His chest hurt. Love, that damn thing, had refused to die.
A shout of joy reached them from behind. An elf and his child raced up the hill, laughing. Eyvallach watched the child, a girl with strikingly dark hair and a smattering of freckles. The tips of her pointed ears poked out from her wet hair. They were both dripping from swimming in the ocean. She got away from her parent, racing ahead, straight toward the cliff.
“Wait!” her father shouted, holding out an arm. She was giggling too hard to hear the panic. She didn’t slow. But within a second—thanks to magic, Eyvallach assumed—her father was there, scooping her up into his arms. She shrieked with joy even as his expression was dire. Eyvallach’s heart fluttered with panic, his lips poised to utter his own spell that would save her.
But why? She was dead anyway.
The elf took his little girl to the edge, showing her the danger, telling her that, sometimes, she needed to keep her eyes open and not just her heart. She went wide-eyed, then buried her head in his neck. Noticing Eyvallach and Bryste, he nodded to them, then found another bench nearby and sat, the girl sniffling, saying something only he could hear. He replied, “All is well. Come, now, let’s enjoy the view.” The father conjured, out of thin air, cups of water and a plate of fruit.
Bryste said, “Do you feel nothing for that child?”
Eyvallach was feeling many things. But he didn’t try to name his emotions. He looked back toward the sea. “I only feel for the suffering she’ll experience.”
“Would have,” Bryste corrected. “I remember that argument of yours. ‘I didn’t get to choose life, so why should I embrace it?’”
“Indeed.”
“You’ve finally found a way to make the world experience the emptiness inside of you,” she replied hollowly, which was worse than if she had spat the words out or cursed him or used magic to tear him asunder.
He bristled. “You felt it too, as I recall. But I guess that’s the difference between us. You never stopped looking for a salve, a cure. I realized there was no cure but death.”
“I did find one. I will survive even your emptiness.”
“What do you mean?”
She looked up at the whorl again. “I wish you’d given me the chance—” she trailed off.
“Chance for what?”
“To…see if we couldn’t find the cure together. Now, I’ll be alone.”
Eyvallach stood, his fury stoked. “As if love is the thing of tales and legends?! As if it’s a fountain we may drink from and forget our cares.” The elves, and Tunde, looked on. “I tried everything, Bryste. All there is is oblivion.”
“No,” she said, standing. “Oblivion is one of many things to experience. I’ll show you, if you let me.” Yet again, one of his enemies offered a hand.
Eyvallach stood resolute. He couldn’t turn his back on himself, now, could he? Give it all up to gain…what exactly? What was she offering? Tunde drew near, his presence like a growling wolf.
Bryste dropped it and stood, saying softly, “Join us, to see what comfort oblivion can bring. If you can find it in your heart.”
Eyvallach watched them go down the hill and back to the huts. The elves followed soon after, the child waving to the wizard. As the sun set, more people gathered around the hut. Eyvallach caught the scent of roasting fish, the melody of live music, and the shouts of joyous folk. They were dancing, he knew. Yet, he remained.
Above, the whorl continued to swallow the sky. Within its embrace was pure nothingness. Soon, Eyvallach would exhale and his soul would depart with the air. So would all souls.
As the sea, now midnight’s blue, crashed on the cliffs below, as the people partied like it might be their last chance at feeling alive—it was—, as the greatest wizard who ever lived considered his life and actions and their repercussions, he wondered if he had missed something all along.
And despaired knowing he wasn’t brave enough to face it.
Thank you for reading Eyvallach at the End of the World.
Some questions for you:
Tell me, what do you think Bryste meant about finding a cure?
Have you experienced oblivion like Eyvallach has? What’s your cure?
If you’d like to see more stories in this universe, what kind of stories would you like to see?
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Until next time, Realmwalkers, I’m Zach and you’re listening to Realms.