In the grey light of dawn, I soared with the twins above the shoreline. From overhead the extent of the destruction was plain to see, but also somehow plain to understand as well, like the play-set of some petulant rich-kid, kicked apart in a moment of anger.
Two-thirds of the Tower of the Warlock had simply vanished. The palace square had become a wooden crater as its support-structures were blown apart, and now a jagged field of splintered timbers greeted the eye, sagging and groaning under the weight of the chaos atop it. There were cries, of course – warbling wails, the screams of those shattered by loss – but out of much of the city there seeped only a pervading quiet. The absence of life called out to me louder than the voices of the living. I sensed the white fingers trapped in the breakers, the snapped limbs tangled in the nets beneath the waves. The singers of Enye had fallen silent. Perhaps those heavenly sounds would never again be heard in this place.
Perhaps that was its due.
I brought us down towards the king’s halls, drifting slowly down through the air. Many of the divine statues had fallen, rent in two by the huge, frozen missiles. Wyrda’s mouth was choked with rubble, great glistening boulders of ice lying here and there amidst the tumbled rock. Black-red puddles clung to the motionless elbows and feet, limbs of the fallen protruding from beneath the vast, icy remnants of the dark elves’ spells, and from beneath the piled planks, the caved-in rock.
Me, I thought, surveying the death. It was all me.
“No. We talked about this. You –“
You want me to not take responsibility, but the responsibility is mine. Mine alone.
I fought them for it – the independence, the sense of self –
And, just then, I felt the way they vacated my mind. Willingly. Expectantly.
They want me to do this, I realised. They want me… to see…
To feel it. To know it’s mine.
Nafala…?
They didn’t reply, and permitted me the understanding of what that silence meant.
I didn’t weep, but as we floated ghostlike above the wreckage I felt the tears running down my incorporeal face all the same. They were colder than cold, pouring uncontrolled from my eyes, tickling my cheeks until they fell, regaining their substance to patter on the detritus.
I took the twins through the stone, each of us holding our breath.
Where? I thought.
Before I could even formulate the basic responses that would put ideas in my head, start providing me with best-guessed routes to the hiding places beneath the palace, the twins filled me with their surety.
“Down this way. A little to the left. Down some more.”
They didn’t control my movements but they guided me with little impulses, tugs to one side and then the other, until, after passing through several empty spaces, we fell into a cavern drenched in wizard-light, wizard-warmth.
Over a hundred people were crammed into the area, standing huddled in the wet galleries, crouching upon the irregular boulders. Many wept. Many more simply stared at the floor, at the ceilings, or into the eyes of loved ones, tearless and pale. Perhaps kept isolated from fear and danger for too long, a few dared to wear bored expressions, the full implications of the morning’s events still beyond their grasp.
Almost all here were still decked out in their fineries, the hats and capes and dresses of minor nobles – the garments they’d donned when the terror of the dark elves’ approach had been assuaged. When they’d been brought to the palace and into Deymar’s protection…
Not a commoner amongst them.
I instantly spotted the giant of a king, in a circle of his closest advisors, our target amongst them.
The wizard, for what it was worth, was one of those with a petulant sneer on his face.
I sighed inwardly as we fully penetrated the rock and emerged into the air, drifting down in their midst.
It took them a few seconds to spot us, despite the abundance of yellow-white illumination rebounding off the dark grey walls.
“Not us. Just you. We’re actually invisible, just so you know.”
“Hool Raz!” a voice screamed from the crowd. A finger was pointed at me, and then another.
A handful reacted with anger. Most cowered.
“No need for shields. Don’t land, and there’ll be no violence here. We can guarantee it.”
I slowed, then stopped our descent.
Looking down into King Deymar’s slack-jawed face, there was a part of me that longed to don the leer, extract my vengeance in his terror – he wasn’t to know my newly-invested arch-enchanter siblings had formed a compact against violence.
But I felt all the other eyes on me. Some I wanted to share in the king’s fright, but there were too many here. My disdain was not yet so generalised.
“You’ve been a naughty boy, Deymar. Very naughty. You thought throwing one pup to the wolves would stay the pack but you were wrong. Now, your city’s paid the price for your foolishness.”
“You’ve seen it?” someone cried.
“Vot has happened?” another asked in a shrill voice.
“Telior is no more.”
More gasps, screams, wails.
I looked down at Deymar, still doing my best not to smile.
“The lives lost, dear brother. Do not forget.”
The scenes flashed before my inner eye once more.
I won’t.
I steeled myself, and the other smile spread across my lips. Not gloating. Not amused. Not proud.
The sorrowful smile of the champion, despair mingled with pity. The smile of losing your arm to a dragon at three in the morning and coming home to be handed over to a host of torturers and carrying on regardless.
I might’ve thought I was worse than them because I knew and I didn’t care. Maybe I’d been right. But at least I had eyes to open. At least I could see the truth.
Look at them. The rich and noble of Telior. Men and women of success and vanity.
How little their purses and bloodlines avail them now.
Many were chattering frantically in Telese, even in the king’s circle; but he and Orcan were amongst the few not yet tearing out their hair, still staring up at me warily.
“Did you really think it would work, Mr. Northsword? Did you think they could defeat me? You already knew I beat them once.”
“Now you’re just being liberal with the truth. They totally would’ve killed you, if we didn’t stop them.”
Hush.
“Not that we want to do what you may come to think of as ‘doing-a-Zel’ but, please –“
You’re totally doing a Zel. Let me speak. You know I don’t think I’m invulnerable. The lesson’s stuck.
“Lying to us, and yourself, again… What Malas taught you was that you aren’t made out of glass, either.”
Enough!
I had no idea what Deymar thought of our extended staring-match, but I’d been silent at least fifteen seconds now, conducting my little psychic debate.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
I made my next words a quiet statement, wearing that sad, almost-sympathetic grin.
“You didn’t trust your own countrymen to stand with me. You don’t believe in their strength. When I arrived here you took me in with open arms. I was just to be your tool, then. An offering to the gods of the North, to the dark elves who haunted your dreams.
“I never thought to see such weakness in you. And I fear it would’ve infected me, had I stayed longer. It’s not just blindness. It’s eyelessness…“
If you’re making him stay silent –
“We’re not. He’s just confused.”
Confused! I thought, enraged. Why does he, why should he get the chance to be con-
“He won’t say it, but he was just trying to do his best.” Their mind-voice was low, dignified. “Do his best, in a bad situation. You weren’t a sacrifice – he isn’t evil.”
“He’s not a dark elf.”
“No, he – he thought of you as someone he could be friends with.”
I felt it as my expression morphed to one of horror.
Only then did he break his silence.
“Stayed longer?” His voice was plaintive, close to breaking. “Raz… Must you leave us, then? They said that they would enchant me. They said that I could not resist, no matter what…” He reached up and wrung his beard suddenly. “I took the harder road, because I feared what -” he choked “– what they would make me do…”
Finally he looked away, down at the ground.
“And if it had just been me – if you hadn’t made your son do it too, give up my brother and sister –“
“My son!” he bellowed, turning tear-filled eyes back upon me once more. “My son is missing –“
“He’s still alive, though,” the twins supplied. “About a hundred feet above us. Not alone, either.”
“– if there were options, if I had ideas!” The king stamped on the stone and I could’ve sworn I heard rock fracture beneath his boot. “If you had been here when they came! Your brother and sister, you – three lives, against what could have been… could have been… utter destruction…”
His voice died, and he was still once more, just the eyes stirring, searching the walls.
“Now you preside over utter destruction,” I observed. “Your son is safe, up there.” I gestured at the ceiling with a nod. “I hope it consoles you that you lost little.”
“Lost little!” He howled his retort, and bunched his right fist.
“You’re not exactly making this easy, dear brother.”
“Personally, I mean.” I shrugged at him. “Some lost more. Some had more to lose. Do you really think you’re so special? Any of you? Do you think you aren’t just bags of blood, begging for release?”
I eyed them dangerously, and they could feel it, my ill-will. A shivering moan swept through the throng. No one wanted to answer.
My own right arm came alive but it didn’t end in a fist – cerulean tendrils of death were slowly extending from that unspeakable void-limb –
Extending faster –
Halting.
“No, Kas. We’ll stop the wraith, but you have to change back in its absence.”
I looked down at my living force-whips, suddenly seeing them for what they were for the first time. Knowing what they represented on both its faces.
“Yes. It’ll get easier. It’ll stop happening. Please just relax.”
But – the deaths – all that murder –
“It was you, yes, we know. It’s okay. Calm down. You can –“
But it was mine, mine, mine! And it was necessary! It was what they deserved!
“No, Kas. Relax now.”
And I was relaxed again.
As though he’d been waiting for my expression to soften once more, Orcan carefully removed the panic from his own features, readopting the haughty smirk before speaking.
“Where is Sin-Aidre?” the ancient arch-wizard demanded at last in his flawless Mundic. “What have you done with her?”
“She awaits you, outside.” I fixed my gaze on him finally, and said it as plainly as I could: “Come with us. Come to Mund. You can make a difference.”
“I will make a difference here!” he huffed, clearly offended. “Whatever this talk – Sin-Aidre will not want to go with you –”
“It was her idea, you old clod!” I sighed. “Honestly, I think she just wants to escape… this. What difference will you make here, really? Sure – each to their measure in the making, and all that – but you’re an archmage. What’s really going on in that head of yours? Why do you hate me so much? You know we could’ve fought them together, surely!”
“We do not fight! Our power is not to meddle in the affairs of men!” He looked offended. “We are elevated by the gods themselves, because we have the strength to stand above –“
“You’re a coward,” I summarised. Loudly.
“You do not get to say this – you were not here to fight!” he shrieked. “You are ze coward! You destroy Telior, and now flee back to the black womb that bore you, forked tail between your legs! Go, then! Flee, warlock! But do not think me the weak one!” He swivelled his head towards Deymar. “Kur hool, ku silv –“
“Yes.”
I cut him off, and my word was as the voice of the storm, a crackling wave of sonic power that had them all clutching the sides of their heads.
“Yes, I destroyed Telior! If I hadn’t killed the dark elves on Northril, they wouldn’t have come. But if you hadn’t handed me over, they never would’ve touched your precious city! I spilt the first blood, and I would’ve spilt the last – for you. Now it’s your redness in the waters that’ll draw in the sharks!” I drew a deep breath. “But I’m an agent of Mortiforn, Kultemeren, N-n-n-n…”
I couldn’t speak Nentheleme’s name.
“Not the Prince of Chains,” I managed. “Not Mother-Chaos. And not the Sea-Queen. The sacrifice was just. Maybe some lost less than others, but we all lost.” I eyed the king. “I told you of the Crucible. I have reason to believe it’s coming, more reason than ever before. You think you’ve lost it all now? Send him with me. He’ll do it at your command, won’t he?”
Instead of channelling his authority, Deymar seemed to shrink into himself. He looked furtively at his arch-wizard, suddenly seeming frightened.
He won’t be leading these people much longer.
“No he won’t. He’ll be far happier, we think.”
“The Crucible, really…” Orcan said sceptically, looking between the two of us.
“We’ll make a champion of you yet,” I said, trying the grin once more.
The twins piped up, squirting their enthusiasm directly into my brain, and although they spoke in the same voice, they were constantly tripping over themselves trying to make their arguments.
“It’s the only way without making him our puppet, and –“
“We know you wouldn’t like that, and –“
“We wouldn’t like it either!”
“And the rest deserve to know!”
“Yeah, Vardae was right! Everyone does!”
“Of course!”
I sighed inwardly in response, and they quietened down.
“Prepare for an interesting experience.” I cast my gaze across the crowd. “All of you.”
Three minutes later, Orcan Finfaltik in tow, we made our way back up through the rock, to meet with Kirid Oanor above the ruins of Telior. We left behind the former rulers of this place, reeling in a conglomeration of dark lore, founded upon Everseer’s words, and Mal Malas’s. A vision to approximate the heretics’.
The dragons were coming. The Dracofont was Returning.
And we weren’t staying behind. We were going back to face them.
We were going to fight.
* * *
Despite his obvious prowess, it seemed our wizard wasn’t comfortable with flying unsupported. Instead he brought a thin, smooth shelf of the coast’s black stone with him, and we stood or sat upon the soaring rock, gazing down as we drew closer to the dark elves’ ships. If anything, for me this method was worse, and a touch of my old nausea came back; I tapped a little more wraith, settling myself. I vastly preferred flying the other way, but I supposed there was no chance of falling, and he’d incorporated a back-rest into the rock so that we weren’t completely open on all sides.
“You okay with all this, then, Orcan?” I asked to break the uncomfortable silence, distract my thoughts.
“Okay?” the wizard growled through gritted teeth. He was standing with his back against the back-rest, arms folded in his sleeves beneath the fur cloak. “Dragons? Five ancient dragons?”
He shook his head.
“But you’re as brave as you said.” I tried to smile reassuringly at him, but he had his eyes fixed on the bony goliaths ahead. “You didn’t hesitate even for a moment.”
“Do not flatter me, warlock.” The hate had gone out of his voice, but not the bitterness. “I only do my duty.”
“I thought we archmages weren’t supposed to go to war.”
“This is not a battle,” he grunted. “This is not an army, mortal souls locked in contest. What you showed me…” He glanced at the twins, glanced away again. “I said you fled. But I was wrong. It’s coming, for all of us, and we can’t escape. This is… yes – this is a natural disaster.” His brow furrowed into a look of intense determination. “I will help.”
I loosed a ‘heh’ of appreciation, then turned to glance at Greenheart. She’d taken the twins’ vision without any outward sign of dismay, but their reports told me she’d been thrown back into self-doubt. Her gaze wasn’t on the dark elf ships we were approaching, their nethernal energies still burning bright in the morning dimness. She stared instead into the sky above the bleak horizon, as if searching for the sun beyond the clouds.
“She’ll be okay, Kas. We’re being careful not to change people. We’ll help her come round, when it’s time.”
All this talk of ‘not changing’ people – the ease with which their new powers had come to them, it worried me, and I couldn’t help but –
“We know it worries you. The fact it’s worrying you should tell you you don’t need to worry!”
I… I suppose you’re right. I –
I didn’t quite know how to think it.
“We know, Kas. We feel the same way.”
It was never about the glory, you know. Or the money. It was… the apartment, at first. But it was always you. Always. When I escaped Zyger – all I wanted – all I needed to do –
“We all gave it up together. It was the same for us. You were all that mattered. And we’re inseparable now. You don’t need to worry anymore. Wherever you go, we’ll reach you.”
Except Zyger.
The three of us chuckled dryly together in our shared mind-space.
For the first time in a very long time, a kind of contentedness came over me. Sure, I’d lost, here. And I was on my way to face trials the likes of which the world had never seen before, untested allies beside me.
But I had purpose. I had what Malas wanted to instil in me.
So is this all his plan, do you think?
Unexpectedly, the twins spoke in their one voice, aloud so that all of us could hear.
“He’s right. We can’t escape. We can only face it, and win, or lose.”
I looked over at them, as they reached out for each others’ hands.
“But we can handle loss,” they finished. “Let’s see if they can.”
“The dragons?” I murmured.
They nodded.
“The dragons fought against loss,” I surmised. “All this time.”
“They fought it for aeons,” they replied. “They are more scared of death than we are.”
We passed over the dark elves’ ships, and I collected my bounty: the throngs of ascended ancients hanging on the wind, and the mindless wights lying silent and still across the decks.
The astral recoil of so many nethernal gates clanging shut simultaneously served to disrupt the spells binding the ships together. Like flames snuffed to embers, the amethyst energies surging about the surfaces of the titanic vessels fell to a dim glow.
I reached out with my shapes and poked the ships with my power. Just a touch. A gentle nudge. But they were keyed to me.
One by one they fell apart, shuddering as ten million unjustly-stolen pieces of bone showered down into the waves.
The tide carried the corpse-parts back to Telior, where the singers no longer sang. Yet for all the destruction, for all the death, for all the silence… I knew even this would not fill Wyrda’s maw, choke her, sate her black hunger, slake the thirst salted by a thousand ocean depths.
For all the destruction, all the death… all the silence…
There was more to come.