Catharsis In The Luminarch's Embrace
The first whisper came on the back of the breeze as I passed through the wall of mist. Voices speaking varied, incoherent tongues, yet their emotion purveyed so very clearly to me. Despair. Fear. Misery. Empty words crashed against my ears like waves, sending me stumbling back against the cold and hard wood of the small boat I had constructed with my own hands. My head cleared as I began to pick myself back up, and the horizon ahead unveiled itself. Far in the distance, it stood: the reason for my voyage now directly in front of these sad eyes. The place I had left behind with the death of the ones I loved. The remains of what I had once called a god.
Using basic estimation, it would be quite some time before I reached my goal. More time to sit in my sorrow as I prepared to reach my destination, still struggling with the very fact that I would have a chance to mourn the people I lost. The ocean below me was not fighting my advance, yet the charred corpse was still a few days away. I continued to steer the ship as best I could until the Lighthouse turned its eye away, allowing me a reason to turn my attention to slumber rather than continuing to stare only at the small dot beyond the skyline. I walked from the wheel down towards my quarters, the path illuminated by fading candlelight. Those dirty rags and the mattress still waited for me despite my negligence in treating them well. I laid my face against the cloth and let my mind wander to happier memories, if not for but a moment, allowing calm egress into the world of the unconscious.
Their faces appeared first, as they always did. Wordless. Incoherent and half-manifested, twisted into a nightmarish reflection of my memories. A soundless judgment cast upon the pain I carried for continuing to live in a world without them. Every time I attempted this pilgrimage, they stood through every moment of my sleep. I sobbed and screamed, begging for even a fragment of forgiveness, yet they remained frozen. More faces appeared slowly, as days upon days passed. Those same whispers as before returned. Babble began to turn to pieces of words until its voice was clear.
“It returns yet again, destined to turn back out of fear. So annoyingly persistent in approaching the grave of my singular purpose.”
Words do not exit my mouth. Instead, I can only muster stammering grunts as I look upon its body surrounding me. Incomprehensible. Indescribable. It tightened its grip on my entire body slowly, imposing itself as the predator that had once again hunted me down. The warped collective of faces, including them, grinned with glee at my attempts to speak.
“No harm will befall it if it turns back. You know all else we have to say to its face.”
I awakened with a guttural yell, tears freely flowing down my face. Rays of light ran across the bed, breaking through the wood above. I felt my composure return slowly as I looked at the empty room, now given illumination by the Lighthouse. I got to my feet and returned to the deck above, now unobscured by any shadows of the night. The steering wheel fit perfectly in my rough hands as I continued forward, unshaken by the message I had been given. This was my fifth time trying to make it to the body of Resinheart. It would be my last, no matter what happened.
The day proceeded as expected. The blip in the distance was analyzable now, allowing me to remember a piece of its former glory even though it still sat so far away. It was wonderful, even while being dead and decrepit and halfway sunken into the ocean. I had not come to pillage the fruits of its demise, unlike almost all who made this journey. My goal was simple. I wished to mourn the ones I lost on the day when the very floor fell out from under me and the god I saw slowly burned to ashes. As the final hours passed, so very quickly the sky turned black, but I was not satisfied with the progress I had made. I sailed in the same direction blindly for hours, with only the sloshing of the Aurorine against wood to keep me company. Anything to avoid the horrors of my mind for now, even if it was inevitable.
The light returned to the sky, and another day of silent progress began. It wouldn’t be long before I reached Resinheart. Without realizing it, I had gotten closer to the remains than ever before. When it eventually hit me, I did end up crying again. It was a difficult process, but I finally had the strength to carry forth toward my goal. By the time the world went dark, Resinheart seemed so very close, like a distant city beaming its lights outwards across the landscape. I took the walk down to my bed, knowing what awaited me in my dreams. This was part of the journey, after all. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself without dispelling these disgusting amalgamations of the ones I once loved from my head. Fully prepared, I laid my head against the pillow and leaped into what I thought would be hell.
Their faces did not greet me when I became lucid soon after. Nothing did. I sat in the middle of the ocean, slowly drowning as a glimmer in the distance got closer and closer. The Luminarch. The bane of my dreams. All I felt was anger as I faced the threat approaching head-on. Yet, The Luminarch did not attack me. It swept me onto its back, rapidly moving towards the surface. We broke through, and I saw a sight I thought was not possible.
The world had been restored. Distant cries of joy and music rang out as light poured through Resinheart’s canopy down onto the many villages spread across the island it held in the air with its geyser. Utterly magnificent. A golden age from decades upon decades ago. Why would The Luminarch show me this? To make me feel more sadness. More regret on what had been lost.
“We wish to do no such thing.” It commanded, a now singular voice sharing conversation with my thoughts.
“We see it now. We see its intentions. We see the sorrow it drowns in. We see a victim of fate who desires closure.”
It had wormed its way through my memories. Looked through my darkest moments to “see me.” Yet it had tormented me in my dreams for all this time, threatening my every attempt to reconcile with my past. I wondered why things were different now than they were.
“What changed? Why am I now, in this moment, exempt from the torture you bestow onto all others?” I asked.
The Luminarch paused for a moment. “It was here once before. Standing in the youth of the great tree when the world was sacred and safe. Who are we to deny it egress to wail and mourn as we have for the past ninety-two years?”
It let out a small sigh.
“Its will was unclear before to us, easily swayed by words and threats and imagery. We find it interesting to observe that it has changed so quickly and surpassed the expectations we had held for it.”
I had no words. I looked out at the beautiful day ahead, staring at the paradise that had been destroyed so easily. The place where I had raised my family from nothing. A final question made itself clear.
“My wife. My daughter. You used their visages to torment me. How?”
“We are your wife's memory. We are your daughter's very soul. We are the exhibition of the suffering of all those who were lost on that day when hope itself was burnt to the roots. That burden will never change. It has the path to let go of its burden. Walk that path.”
With that statement, The Luminarch vanished, sending me screaming back toward the ocean.
The sound of birds woke me. I couldn’t even begin to process what I had just seen or heard and why The Luminarch’s opinion of me had swayed so quickly. I instead opted to slowly rise and step outside, letting the waves absorb whatever had occurred in my dream from my brain. Yet no Aurorine awaited me when I took the first step past the frame of my door. I instead found myself on solid land. My ship washed ashore on the body of Resinheart. The Luminarch had done this for me. I quickly ran to the tail end of the boat to try and catch a glimpse of anything, yet the waters were boundless and empty as always.
Perhaps it had pitied me or felt a kinship to my emotions and regrets. I will never know. As I write this, I return home after spending some days walking around the remains of Resinheart, coming to terms with the loss of everything I had once cherished all those years ago. I haven’t seen The Luminarch in my dreams since our talk. I don’t think I could have fully come to terms with things without it. I villainized it for so long, yet with so little spoken, it changed its perspective on the intentions I carried and my perspective on the grief I held in my heart. The grief I have now been able to leave with the decaying flesh of my god. Now, the world has been opened to me once again. I could go anywhere.
Still, if I returned from all my planned expeditions and came back, I think The Luminarch would remain here, protecting the memories of those it lost. I regret that I didn’t learn more about why exactly it had chosen to change its mind about my intentions so easily. What was once little more than an impediment to my progress now appears to me as a distressed beast attempting to protect the last pieces of its happier memories. A noble goal for a being beyond the mind's comprehension.