Their telepathic laughter resounded in my head, and I returned my focus to the stunned-looking satyrs, driven more by my need to stop thinking about the twins’ new abilities as much as my interest in their answer. It was inappropriate of us, to stand in the midst of such desolation, and partake in levity.
The satyrs were regarding each other intently.
“Master, please!” Zab hissed in a mournful, thin voice. “Please, don’t send me away!”
The little gremlin was staring down at his bright-red shoes, and started grinding his several sets of teeth together, a panicked sound I’d never heard him make before.
Mistrust gnawed away at me.
Zel found him.
I cast my power over him, again and again – but there was nothing. None of the signs of betrayal that had made ‘Zelurra’ stand out. He might’ve looked a bit foul, but his name was clean.
He’s fine.
“It’s okay, Zab,” I said gently. “I’m not sending you anywhere.”
“Where… where is the sylph?” he asked suddenly, gazing up at me.
“I… We had a disagreement. I offered him his freedom. Like this.”
Zab shuddered, but instead of drawing away he clung to me.
The satyrs seemed to have made up their minds.
“Master,” said the second of them, Sarminuid, “we owe you much! It is not a mark of shame amongst our kindred to swear fealty to summoners of mortal blood, so long as they be valorous in nature and steely of spine. We knew from the outset you were of such ilk. We witnessed it with our own eyes, when you bore down upon many of your kindred – you and the red fiend.”
“It was truly a magnificent sight,” the first satyr piped up. He was grinning openly, sharp yellow teeth not hiding his fluorescent green tongue.
“Had you not permitted our sojourn at the court of Yellow Flowers, perhaps our affairs would not be so in order,” the second continued. “As things stand, we are victors. It would honour us to continue to lend you our strength.”
“And to draw upon mine in kind?”
He inclined his head slowly, his eyes suddenly narrowed, wary.
“Don’t worry.” I grinned like he’d been doing. “Tit for tat. I wouldn’t have it any other way, trust me.”
His smile returned, and I turned to the goblin.
“And you?” I asked Blofm.
“Got nowhere else to go,” she sniffed. “And I ain’t hatin’ meself, now, I guess.”
I couldn’t help arching a sanctimonious eyebrow when I cast a glance at the twins. “Well?” I echoed their earlier tone, right back at them.
Very good, Feychilde. And the squirrels?
I cast my gaze across the gigantic critters, which were doing their best to stay still, their big watery eyes glistening and their bushy tails twitching. I fell to studying the closest. The golden fur was long and glorious, softly catching the sky’s first light and amplifying it. The black nose was as big as my fist, the protruding pair of front teeth almost the length of my forearm.
I reached out my hand in invitation. “And you?”
I spoke the words – I extended the power –
The squirrels all vanished into a fizzing green portal, scrambling over each other in what looked to my eyes like a desperate hurry to escape.
“Oh… really…?”
I couldn’t hide my disappointment. Somehow, not having their trust – it stung. Even as I rejoined with Sarcamor and Sarminuid, with Zabalam, the flight of the squirrels disturbed me.
Must be disturbing you two, as well.
Gilaela flashed before my inner eye. Gilaela, as she once was, before the eolastyr –
They didn’t reply, and I soon forgot what I was commenting on anyway.
“So tell us – without any interference, without any of those boundaries and barriers.” Their conjoined voice had a musing quality. “What would you do next? What’s Feychilde’s plan for the following, I don’t know… hour?”
I turned back to face them, and nibbled my lower lip for a moment.
“I suppose we should… see to the injured. Help the ones who can’t help themselves.”
“And once you’ve seen to the injured, will you help them rebuild? Tit for tat?”
“I can…” I struggled with it for a moment. “I have options available to me.”
“You’re needed here.”
I nodded, feeling confused.
“When will it end? When will you come back, Kas?”
I knew what they meant but I couldn’t help it. “Come… back?”
“To Mund.”
My mouth went dry.
“I – I don’t know.”
“I hope you won’t leave us for too long.”
“L-Leave you?”
“And the sea journey’s going to take a lot longer without your help…”
“Just what are you talking about?”
I knew perfectly well what they were talking about but I couldn’t accept it, and in the very moment I tried to take the tone of the superior, the elder brother admonishing them for a poorly thought-through plan – in that moment they struck me with it.
“You don’t have to be nervous. We can help you with that, if you want.”
“Nervous.” I tried to chuckle, tried to brush it off. “Right.”
“You didn’t take off Bor’s amulet. You didn’t fight.”
It took me a moment to pinpoint the exact circumstance to which they were referring – and when I did I felt the flush touch my cheeks. “I didn’t know they were coming for me!” I cried. “I didn’t –“
“You want it to be over because you couldn’t take it anymore.”
“No!” I retorted, feeling sick all of a sudden. “No, I didn’t want it to be over –“
“We mean now. Now, just as much as then. You’ve given up.” They sighed. “Malas tried –“
“Malas!” I shrieked. “He did – this –“
“You were woken, but you fell back to sleep. He was trying to reawaken you. He took your arm to do it. There must be some sense to his nonsense – there simply must be.”
I nodded, feeling bludgeoned, not even knowing how to react.
“Your nervousness – it was because of us. But you’ve said it yourself. We’re in your world now. You can afford to be… reckless.”
I stared at them.
“Can you still create shields?”
The question came as such a surprise, such a shift in topic that it took me a moment to comply.
I put out my left hand, imagining a right one there beside it, copying the motions.
Circle. That came up stronger than before, even with its borders fluctuating, due to the sheer force with which the power flowed from me.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Triangle. What was a triangle without corners?
Weakness incarnate. It collapsed.
“I… Yes,” I reported after a moment. “The power comes out of me more quickly, now, but it ebbs more quickly too… And arranging it into the correct shape, that’s the tricky part… I can’t pinch it in the right places –“
We see what you mean, the voice suddenly said in my head. Try it now – try again.
I extruded the energies, watched them uncoil frantically across the field of my vision. I attempted once more to bring them into focus but aside from the circle-shield, which I suspected I could create with mere thought, the others were haphazard blobs.
Let your right arm be the source – feed it through your left – bit by bit –
It took longer, but I could still raise the triangle. The square. The pentagon. They were right. It was like squeezing sausage-meat out in dollops.
Good. Keep working on it. That’s it.
Their reassurances thrumming through my head, their guidance feeding me optimism, I slowly worked my way up to the octagon.
I was panting by now –
And then I felt the sudden absences of sensation as they chipped away at those negative feelings, every experience of difficulty being removed one by one from my mind.
I might’ve been panting, but I no longer knew it. I might’ve been straining mental muscles I hadn’t exercised properly in months, but I could only imagine the pain I should’ve been undergoing.
Shield Twelve came flickering into existence, each obtuse angle crisply-formed.
Th-thank you… Thank you…
Save it for a moment. We have company.
Can you stop talking in my own mind’s voice, please. I have… no idea what I mean. Company?
“Fine.” The difference was startling, reassuring. “She’s coming – Greenheart.”
I trained my gaze on the remnants of Telior, and I made out the albatross winging its way towards us from the city’s broken upper-levels. The bird was big enough as it was, but it grew as it neared us, more than could be explained by the shrinking of the distance between us.
She wants to fight?
Instinct brought my wraith into focus; I stopped leaning on the post, feeling the power surge once more into my legs.
“No. She wants to apologise.”
I gritted my teeth, and my arm-whips flailed of their own accord. Somehow, apologising was worse.
“Yes,” they agreed, “but there’ll be no more loss of life, not on our watch.”
I looked back at them, the twins standing there unbending despite the wind, despite the charnel-house they’d found themselves in.
You’re making her apologise.
“Of course not! This is a surprise to us too – we’re not diviners, you know… Anyway, if she wanted to fight you, we’d let her. She’s not so foolish.”
Not so foolish? I imagined the hosts she could summon, flocks of birds, swarms of insects – given cause and opportunity she could even augment them, make each and every one a fearsome opponent…
To pit them, against my host?
I glanced again across the silent, guilty-looking faces of my multitude. Hundreds of ghosts, and not just standard ones. Dark elven spirits, steeped in wickedness from birth.
“Don’t forget their shells.”
That was true. I had double the force, if you counted the elven-zombies. Even the mere concept of raising them as an army brought the shapes into sharp relief.
No, not zombies… Wights? But mindless…
“Yes. Yes, that looks right, given what you know.”
How is that possible?
“How are we supposed to know that?”
But doesn’t that mean –
“They’re stronger.”
And I’m –
“The master of all of them.”
All of them? But… these aren’t low-ranked, are they? How? Zel always said –
“She may have exaggerated. That, or she may have wanted you to come to an understanding…”
Understanding?
“Look, dear brother… You’ve got a… deeper Wellspring than many other archmages you’ve met, right? Think it through. Every piece of data in your mind corroborates the hypothesis that the later the archmage is awakened, the greater their average potential influence over reality. Each generation produced champions mightier than the last. It’s just the anomaly of the Founders, maybe just the first few generations, that throws off the curve.”
I suppose…
“All ending in the twins.”
I… guess I never thought of it that way.
“Further hypothesis: the twins are the last. Each variant of archmagery culminates in our arrival.”
I thought it through: I’d not heard of a single arch-wizard awakening after Saff and Tarr. No arch-sorcerers after Arxine and Orieg…
Culminates? You mean, you think it’s likely that…
“Likely? Yeah. There will be no more of us.”
But that’s meaningless! I protested. That’s not nearly enough evidence to –
“You don’t have to fight it. Roll with it.”
No more of us!
“No more of us, anywhere.”
The thoughts of doom I’d been entertaining for months finally sank in and I had no words, just staring at them slack-jawed. It was all too terrifying.
Mund –
The next Incursion –
Oh gods. These really are the End Times. We – we have to go back. We have to return!
By sheer instinct I twisted about, orienting myself towards the south-east, as though I could start to effect change in the Realm even at such a distant remove.
“Yes, but she’s coming. Deal with this first.”
Mund…
“Kas, please.”
I shook off my reverie, floating upwards to meet her in the air, but it proved unnecessary; the gleaming albatross swiftly swooped down at the deck and came to land, perched upon its rail just thirty feet away.
Well within my invisible shields.
“Hool Raz,” she hailed me, the druidess-voice pouring breathlessly from the bird’s beak. “Hool Raz, you haf killed zem. Killed zem all!”
I inclined my head solemnly, saying nothing. I probably didn’t make for an especially-reassuring sight, hovering half-shadowed in my tattered robe.
“I come viz… viz my sorry, Hool Raz. I voz made to act as I act. I thought ve… I voz save my city.”
I looked pointedly at Telior’s corpse.
Can you translate?
“Sure.”
“I don’t know you,” I said aloud. “I came here to escape something. I found… something worse. I brought it with me.”
I came to escape destiny. Doom found me. In my back-pocket all along.
“Pliz… Raz… Do not kill my people. Zey are ignorant but zey are innocent. Do not –”
“You think I’m going to hurt them?”
“You are not?”
“I shouldn’t have killed the dark elves!” My voice throbbed. “Even them! I shouldn’t have done it, okay?”
The great grey bird nodded warily.
“But they came. They pushed. I had to push back. It’s what I do.”
It’s what I used to do…
“And what I will do.”
The albatross cocked her head, as though to better regard me with the nearby eye.
“You travel to Vilthrazia?”
Viltrazi? I’ve seen something like that on the maps.
“Vilthrazia. The dark elf homeland, or, properly, the city in which they dwell. Far to the north. She hasn’t seen it, but she can imagine it.”
I saw a vast plain that I somehow knew to be the surface of Northril, frozen solid, covered in crisp white snow –
Crimson-brown trees, looming tall and pockmarked over the landscape like the rusted corpses of iron giants, trees which obtained their nutrition from a unique source.
And high above the frozen ocean, looking somehow upside down, three triangular black towers were suspended, spinning lazily at the centre of a storm –
“I don’t mean them,” I cried, shutting down my imagination and focussing on the druidess. “There’s something in Mund I have to deal with.”
“Mundt…”
The albatross shrank, just a little.
“Take me viz you.”
I stared at Greenheart in fascination.
“But… won’t they come back?” I pondered aloud. “You don’t want to go – to this Vilthrazia –”
“Vot use am I here?” she cried, and flapped her wings suddenly. “I can do nozzing – I can only vatch, and zey –“
“The people need a real leader,” I said sternly. “Someone who won’t betray an ally at the drop of a hat. Maybe you can be that.”
She lowered her great head, almost letting the tip of her beak rest on the deck.
“She’s needed where we’re going if we’re right, dear brother. We don’t know if the druid twins have come into their awakening yet…”
We’ve been away months… There’s no new arch-druids left in Mund – is that what you’re saying?
“We have to consider that it’s possible. Probable, even.”
And she really can’t restore the arm? That wasn’t part of Deymar’s game?
“Oh… oh Kas no. I’m sorry. That bit was real. What Mal Malas did to you…”
I get it. I couldn’t quite keep the bitterness from my mind-voice, but I was trying. Irreversible.
“Why do you want to go to Mund, anyway?” I called at last.
The head snaked back up slowly. The strange green eyes of the druidess just stared back at me for a moment, as though the question had nonplussed her.
“It…” she started, then clacked her beak in frustration. “It is Mundt.”
I barked laughter. I couldn’t help it.
“Ha! Hahahaha! You want to go to Mund? Fine. We’ll go to Mund. I’ll take you, show you what you’re missing. You didn’t take payment, did you? For your heroics?”
She shook her head in what looked to be a wary motion, her eyes staring with uncanny focus.
“Maybe that’s something we’ve been missing. Yeah, you can rejoin the nightmare with me. But – who are you? Reveal yourself.”
She flowed back into woman-shape, returning to her leather coat and woollen clothing. As she stood erect, perfectly balanced on the rail despite her boots resting on the slick surface, she reached up to remove her mask.
My heart almost stopped beating as she exposed her face.
The same almost-cleft chin, the same dimpled cheeks… Were it not for the emerald-glittering eyes, the darkness of her hair – she would’ve almost been Emrelet’s twin. Older, certainly, but by how much I was uncertain.
“I am Kirid Oanor, daughter of Telior. Sin-Aidre, Greenheart as you vould have it.”
I loosened my hold on my wraith a little, letting myself appear as almost an ordinary mortal once more.
“I am Kas. Kastyr Mortenn, son of Mund. Formerly Feychilde… Formerly Raz.”
“Feychilt…”
Hearing it from her lips – it sounded so similar – so familiar…
“But I have heard of you! Zey called you ze – ze Liberator of Zat-hal.”
I couldn’t believe it. “You – heard of me? Here? How?”
“From ze sailors! Orcan – he always collect vord from Mundt. Timesnaaatcher. Lifcloak.”
“Leafcloak?” I retorted, perhaps a bit harshly. “She’s dead. She died, in Zadhal. We even had a ceremony…”
The druidess nodded.
“She’s not lying, Kas,” came the twins’ prompting. “Right now in Orcan’s head – oh. Oh, my…”
What?
“It seems Orcan’s heard from travellers aboard two separate ships that Timesnatcher has been driven mad. And – everyone thinks Nightfell is leading the city now.”
Nightfell? I haven’t even heard –
“We’ve got something to tell you, about Tanra…”
Tanra!
“It never came up… Ah… Why don’t we return to Telior first? Pack our things?”
The image rose up before my mind – digging in the rubble for my belongings, watching priceless books of magic floating on the morning waves, shredded down to the near-invulnerable pages…
“No,” I said aloud.
Kirid Oanor, druidess of Telior, looked at me in concern, but I turned my head to regard my siblings, ignoring her completely.
“We don’t go back,” I said. “We don’t confront the king and his people, and we don’t save them either. Anything we need the imps can fetch. We go home, now. And you tell me everything you know. Everything you think you know.” I drew a shuddering breath. “She’s the only friend I had left.”
Jaid nodded as Jaroan shook his head, but when they spoke it was still in unison:
“We think… she needs your help.”
I clenched my fist. How could they let this go, for so long, if they knew something was wrong?
“But you mistake us,” they said. “The real reason we need to go to Telior…
“Good luck getting your imps to fetch Orcan.”
* * *