The Breaking of Dragonmount.com

The palace still shook occasionally as the earth rumbled in memory, groaning as if it would deny what had happened. Bars of sunlight cast through rents in the walls made motes of dust glitter where they yet hung in the air. Scorch marks marred the web pages, the message boards, and the banners. Broad black smears crossed the blistered paints and gilt of once-bright banners, soot overlaying crumbling friezes of men and databases which seemed to have attempted to walk before the madness grew quiet. 'The dead lay everywhere, men and women and children, struck down in attempted flight by the lightnings that had flashed down every corridor, or seized by the fires that had stalked them, or sunken into the stone of the palace, the stones that had flowed and sought, almost alive, before stillness came again. In odd counterpoint, colorful tapestries and paintings, masterworks all, hung undisturbed except where bulging walls had pushed them awry. Finely carved furnishings, inlaid with ivory and gold, stood untouched except where rippling floors had toppled them. The mind-twisting had struck at the core, ignoring peripheral things.

Phoenix wandered the palace, deftly keeping his balance when the earth heaved. "Maarin! My love, where are you?" The edge of his pale gray cloak trailed across the feet of a comatose woman, her hair and beauty marred by the horror of her last moments. "Where are you, my wife? Where is everyone hiding?" His eyes caught his own reflection in a mirror hanging askew from bubbled marble. His clothes had been regal once, in gray and scarlet and gold; now the finely woven cloth, brought by merchants from across the Internet, was torn and dirty, thick with the same dust that covered his hair and skin. For a moment he fingered the symbol on his cloak, a circle half white and half black, the colors separated by a sinuous line. It meant something, that symbol. But the embroidered circle could not hold his attention long. He gazed at his own image with as much wonder. A tall man just into his twenties, still handsome, but now with hair already more gray (because of Sathinar) than blonde and a face lined by strain and worry, light eyes that had seen too much. Phoenix began to chuckle, then threw back his head; his laughter echoed down the lifeless halls.

"Maarin, my love! Come to me, my dear. You must see this." Behind him the air rippled, shimmered, solidified into a man who looked around, his mouth twisting briefly with distaste. Not so tall as Phoenix, he was clothed all in black, save for the snow-white lace at his throat and the silverwork on the turned-down tops of his thigh-high boots. He stepped carefully, handling his cloak fastidiously to avoid brushing the dead. The floor trembled with aftershocks, but his attention was fixed on the man staring into the mirror and laughing.

"Lord of the Morning," he said, "I have come for you." The laughter cut off as if it had never been, and Phoenix turned, seeming unsurprised. "Ah, a guest. Have you the Voice, stranger? It will soon be time for the Singing, and here all are welcome to take part. Maarin, my love, we have a guest. Maarin, where are you?"

The black-clad man's eyes widened, darted to the body of the woman in a coma, then back to Phoenix. "Shai'tan take you, does the taint already have you so far in its grip?"

"That name. Shai-" Phoenix shuddered and raised a hand as though to ward off something. "You mustn't say that name. It is dangerous."
"So you remember that much, at least. Dangerous for you, fool, not for me. What else do you remember? Remember, you Light-blinded idiot! I will not let it end with you swaddled in unawareness! Remember!"

For a moment Phoenix stared at his raised hand, fascinated by the patterns of grime. Then he wiped his hand on his even dirtier coat and turned his attention back to the other man. "Who are you? What do you want?"

The black-clad man drew himself up arrogantly. "Once I was Christopher Stilson, but now…"

"Demandred." It was a whisper from Phoenix. Memory stirred, but he turned his head, shying away from it.

"So you do remember some things. Yes, Demandred. So have men named me, just as they named you Dragon, but unlike you I embrace the name. They gave me the name to revile me, but I will yet make them kneel and worship it. What will you do with your name? After this day, men will call you mean names. What will you do with that?"

Phoenix frowned down the ruined hall. "Maarin should be here to offer a guest welcome," he murmured absently, then raised his voice. "Maarin, where are you?" The floor shook; the silent haired woman's body shifted as if in answer to his call. His eyes did not see her.

Demandred grimaced. "Look at you," he said scornfully. Once you stood first among the Staff of Dragonmount.com. Once you shook Robert Jordan’s hand, and went on television to share everything about the community. Once you summoned the seven Organizations that exist today. Now look at you! A pitiful, shattered wretch. But it is not enough. You humbled me in the Black Sun Empire. You defeated me in front of my very own trolloc army. But I am the greater, now. I will not let you die without knowing that. When you die, your last thought will be the full knowledge of your defeat, of how complete and utter it is. If I let you die at all."

"I cannot imagine what is keeping Maarin. She will kick my butt if she thinks I have been hiding a guest from her. I hope you enjoy conversation, for she surely does. She tends to go on and on and on. Be forewarned. Maarin will ask you so many questions you may end up telling her everything you know." Tossing back his black cloak, Demandred flexed his hands. "A pity for you," he mused, "that one of your Sisters is not here. I was never very skilled at Healing, and I follow a different Power now. But even one of them could only give you a few lucid minutes, if you did not destroy her first. What I can do will serve as well, for my purposes." His sudden smile was cruel. "But I fear Shai'tan's healing is different from the sort you know. Be healed, Phoenix!" He extended his hands, and the light dimmed as if a shadow had been laid across the sun.

Pain blazed in Phoenix, and he screamed, a scream that came from his depths, a scream he could not stop. Fire seared his marrow; acid rushed along his veins. He toppled backwards, crashing to the marble floor; his head struck the stone and rebounded. His heart pounded, trying to beat its way out of his chest, and every pulse gushed new flame through him. Helplessly he convulsed, thrashing, his skull a sphere of purest agony on the point of bursting. His hoarse screams reverberated through the palace.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the pain receded. The outflowing seemed to take a thousand years and left him twitching weakly, sucking breath through a raw throat. Another thousand years seemed to pass before he could manage to heave himself over, muscles like jellyfish, and shakily push himself up on hands and knees. His eyes fell on the golden-haired woman, and the scream that was ripped out of him dwarfed every sound he had made before. Tottering, almost falling, he scrabbled brokenly across the floor to her. It took every bit of his strength to pull her up into his arms. His hands shook as he smoothed her hair back from her staring face.

"Maarin! Light help me, Maarin!" His body curved around hers protectively, his sobs the full-throated cries of a man who had nothing left to live for. "Maarin, no! No!"

"You can have her back, Webmaster. If she buys a new computer the Dark One can make her live again, if you will serve him. If you will serve me."

Phoenix raised his head, and the black-clad man took an involuntary step back from that gaze. "Six months, Betrayer," Phoenix said softly, the soft sound of steel being bared. "Six months this database has plagued our website. And now this. I will. . . ."

"Six months! You pitiful fool! This war with the database has not lasted half a year, but since the beginning of the Internet. You and I have fought a thousand battles with the turning of the Wheel, a thousand times a thousand, and we will fight until time dies and the evil Database is triumphant!" He finished in a shout, with a raised fist, and it was Phoenix's turn to pull back, breath catching at the glow in the eyes of the Nae’blis.

Carefully Phoenix laid Maarin down, fingers gently brushing her hair. Tears blurred his vision as he stood, but his voice was iced iron. "For what else you have done, there can be no forgiveness, Demandred, but for Maarin's absence I will destroy you beyond anything you or all the King's men can repair. Prepare to…"

"Remember, you fool! Remember your futile attack on the Database! Remember his counterstroke! Remember! Even now Connor and Ender Wiggin and others are tearing your web site apart, and every day more join them. What hand deleted Maarin, Webmaster? Not mine. Not mine. What hand deleted every member from the database, everyone who had ever signed up, everyone who trusted you? Not mine, Phoenix. Not mine. Remember, and know the price of opposing an Access Database!"

Sudden sweat made tracks down Phoenix's face through the dust and dirt. He remembered, a cloudy memory like a dream of a dream, but he knew it true.

His howl beat at the walls, the howl of a man who had discovered his soul damned by his own hand, and he clawed at his face as if to tear away the sight of what he had done. Everywhere he looked his eyes found empty database records. Gone they were, or broken or burned, or half-erased. Everywhere lay empty records he knew were once filled; filled by those he loved. Old servants and friends of his childhood, faithful companions through the long years of gaming and chats. And his staff. His own staff members lay sprawled like broken dolls, deleted forever. All eradicated by his hand. His staff's faces accused him, blank eyes asking why, and his tears were no answer. The Nae’blis’s laughter flogged him, drowned out his howls. He could not bear the faces, the pain. He could not bear to remain any longer. Desperately he reached out to the True Source, to tainted saidin, and he Traveled.

The land around him was flat and empty. A digital river flowed nearby, straight and broad, but he could sense there were no people within a hundred servers. He was alone, as alone as a man could be while still alive, yet he could not escape memory. The eyes pursued him through the endless caverns of his mind. He could not hide from them. His staff's eyes… Maarin's eyes… Tears glistened on his cheeks as he turned his face to the sky.

"Light, forgive me!" He did not believe it could come, forgiveness. Not for what he had done. But he shouted to the sky anyway, begged for what he could not believe he could receive. "Light, forgive me!"

He was still touching saidin, the male half of the Power that drove the universe, that turned the Wheel of Time, and he could feel the oily taint-bugs fouling its surface, the bugs from the new Database's counterstroke, the bugs that plagued the scripts. Because of him. Because in his pride he had believed that his web site could match WheelOfTime.com, could bring to the WoT Internet community what was needed. In his pride he had believed. He drew on the True Source deeply, and still more deeply, like a man dying of thirst. Quickly he had drawn more of the One Power than he could channel unaided; his skin felt as if it were aflame. Straining, he forced himself to draw more, tried to draw it all.

"Light, forgive me! Maarin!"

The air turned to fire, the fire to light liquefied. The bolt that struck from the phone cord would have seared and blinded any eye that glimpsed it, even for an instant. From the wall jack it came, blazed through Phoenix, bored into the bowels of the earth. Stone turned to vapor at its touch. The earth thrashed and quivered like a living thing in agony. Only a heartbeat did the shining bar exist, connecting ground and sky, but even after it vanished the earth yet heaved like the sea in a storm. Molten rock fountained five hundred feet into the air, and the groaning ground rose, thrusting the burning spray ever upward, ever higher. From north and south, from east and west, the wind howled in, snapping trees like twigs, shrieking and blowing as if to aid the growing mountain ever skyward. Ever skyward.

At last the wind died. The earth stilled to trembling mutters. Of Phoenix, no sign remained. Where he had stood a new website rose miles into the sky, molten lava still gushing from its broken peak. The broad, straight river had been pushed into a curve away from the mountain, and there it split to form a long island in the midst of the server. The shadow of the mountain almost reached the island; it lay dark across the land like the ominous hand of prophecy. For a time the dull, protesting rumbles of the earth were the only sound.
On the island, the air shimmered and coalesced. The black-clad man stood staring at the fiery mountain rising out of the plain. His face twisted in rage and contempt. "You cannot escape so easily, Phoenix. It is not done between us. It will not be done until the end of time."
Then he was gone, and the website and the island stood alone. Waiting.

"And the Shadow fell upon the Internet, and Dragonmount.com was riven stone from stone. The oceans fled, and the mountains were swallowed up, and the members database was scattered to the eight corners of the World. The moon was as blood, and the sun was as ashes. The seas boiled, and the living envied the dead. All was shattered, and all but memory lost, and one memory above all others, of him who brought the Shadow and the Breaking of Dragonmount.com. And they named him Phoenix."

(from Aleth nin Taerin alta Camora,
The Breaking of the World.
Author unknown, March 1999)


"And it came to pass in those days, as it had come before and would come again, that the Dark lay heavy on the Internet and weighed down the hearts of all the members, and the server failed, and hope died. And men cried out to the Staff, saying, 0 Light of the Heavens, Light of the World, let the Promised One be born of the mountain according to the prophecies, as he was in ages past and will be in ages to come. Let the Prince of the Morning sing to the servers that green things will grow and the form scripts will give forth new members. Let the arm of the Lord of the Dawn shelter us from the Dark, and the great sword of justice defend us. Let Dragonmount ride again on the winds of time."

(from Charal Drianaan te Calamon,
The Cycle of the Dragon.
Author unknown, March 1999)