COBALT 7.9: THE SAVIOUR

“You are trapped in this instant and you do not know why. You know only that you must escape. And that knowledge is all that traps you. Do not listen to the voices; it matters not what they say. All of them will lead you only downwards. No. It is the silence you need to heed. I hereby leave the next page blank for you to fill with your thoughts. Do not be too quick to turn it!”

– from ‘The Book of Kultemeren’, 12:18-26

“Kill them, and Cullimo dies.”

The words were incongruously harsh, given the delicacy of his voice. He must’ve been a crawling thing on the floor or ceiling; whatever his shape, I hadn’t noticed his entrance in the darkness. The druid took his human form right behind me, on the edge of my circle. He was backing me up, facing down his fellow heretic without the slightest tremor in his voice.

“Nighteye,” I choked. The word alone was a prayer of heartfelt gratitude.

But what was this he was saying?

“Cull…” It was the sorcerer’s turn to shudder, and his focus on his shields wavered momentarily, causing his force-blades to wobble chaotically. He still had his claw raised. “You wouldn’t do it. Y-you –“

“I did it like she told me to,” the druid replied smoothly. “You were right, about paying the price alone. I introduced a poison into his bloodstream through his food this afternoon. Ithilya’s diviners couldn’t see it, her druids couldn’t sense it. It’s already over. Unless…” Nighteye reached into his bedraggled robe, retrieving a small glass tube, a gelatinous fluid like glittering honey contained within. “Unless you give him this specific elixir. You wouldn’t have long, either.”

“He killed Fintwyna!”

Despite his vehement response, the sorcerer lowered his claw, bit by bit.

“No, he didn’t,” Nighteye said in a chiding tone. “Vardae explained everything. She won’t let you get to Uwaine, and I won’t let you get to Kas either. Deal with it.”

Uwaine? I thought. Could that be Winterprince’s name?

I had to admit to myself, though – I liked this new, assertive Nighteye.

“You’re… bluffing.” My enemy’s voice was strangled now.

The druid pulled back his hood, making his sad, sincere expression visible to both of us. “I wish I were, Aramas. I… I’m sorry. She, hm… she said this was how I – how I would…”

“It’s okay, Theor,” I murmured.

“Shut up!” the heretic shrieked. “How, then? What d’ you want?”

“Relinquish your shields over Kas’s family. Stand aside. I’ll let you take the elixir to him.”

“Swear by Vaahn!”

“I swear,” the druid whispered.

“No – no, say his name!” the sorcerer roared.

“I swear…” Nighteye licked his lips, “by Grandfather Vaahn.”

I ground my teeth, hearing the vile sound uttered by the champion.

The heretic – Aramas – slowly reduced his shields, one by one, until the blades surmounted his personal circle. He banished his quintet of wights and stepped away from my loved ones.

I circled around the room, moving at a snail’s pace to mirror him, stepping over one of the cast-aside benches to ensure our force-lines didn’t come close to contact.

The moment my shields were over the stacked-up pile of sleeping people, I shrugged out Avaelar. I pressed a healing potion into the sylph’s hands and had him check Xastur over for anything I couldn’t perceive, while keeping my eyes on the others: Aramas was reaching out for the contents of Nighteye’s hand.

There were more things I could do, now – many more. I could summon a thousand things to hold him tight while I flayed him… wrap him in my new octopus… Or I could rip and tear at him with my black talons… test Gilaela’s eolastyr-derived augmentations on his flesh… Perhaps he had a regenerative quality that would permit him to endure a whole sequence of deaths… I could kill him a dozen ways, if I was lucky…

Stolen novel; please report.

“And we’re supposed to just let him go?” I growled as he took the phial from Nighteye. “Let him try again, another time and place? He needs to die!”

“He won’t try,” Nighteye said plainly. “He can’t. And I’d like to speak to my friend, to Kas, not this vampire, thank you.”

The sad, almost elvish eyes were turned towards me in the gloom.

Gong! Gong! Gong!

Of course – he’s right. My knees started to knock suddenly.

Nighteye looked back at Aramas and nodded, stepping away from him towards me, while I just floundered in shock.

The arch-sorcerer wasn’t looking back at Nighteye – his face was centred on me still, the baleful glare burning into me, my vampiric senses going berserk.

Then, still staring daggers at me, he utilised a power I’d never seen before. It was somewhat similar to a mizelikon: waves of shadow were rippling over him from his head to his toes, giving his body the quality of smoke. As though he were enwraithed, he turned aside and disappeared through the wall, leaving an after-image that hung there briefly in the air before it dissipated.

I flung the vampire out of me, then sent it back to the shadowland in a burst of amethyst mist. Freed of its influence, I almost sobbed, looking down in the darkness at my loved ones, piled as sacrifices…

I could tell from Avaelar’s demeanour that they were all going to be okay.

I couldn’t help myself – my body took over and it threw itself at Nighteye, as he’d thrown himself at me several hours ago. I held onto him, and I wept.

So close… they were so close…

“You,” I gasped, “you –“

I couldn’t even muster the wherewithal to thank him properly, but he seemed to understand. With what must’ve been excruciating gentleness, given his strength, he patted me on the back.

Then after a few moments the embarrassment came over me and I released him, looking aside, scowling in self-directed scorn.

“W-what was I thinking?” I moaned, pulling off my mask and pawing at my face with the heel of my hand. “Stupid stupid stupid!”

“Vardae’s got our back,” he replied. The new confidence was there in his voice again.

I shook my head. “There’ll be more. He won’t be the last, and she won’t stop them all. I just – I didn’t realise –“

The champions whose identities are public… they don’t have people like this. Sure, threatening to kill any innocent is going to bring any champion to their knees. But threatening to kill their loved ones, it’s going to break a champion in two.

Break me in two…

We are all broken, came my own voice from months back, winging its way down the corridors of my memory, causing me to shudder again.

“Is it our fate?” I asked bitterly. “It’s a curse, power. I – I thought it was a blessing in disguise, but it’s not. It’s really a curse, isn’t it? All the way through…”

I remembered my life before all this. How selfish was I? To drag them into this? All of them, victims not of heretics, not of criminals – victims of me… Sure, I saved a bunch of lives – but why did I get to choose those innocents over these? Xantaire never volunteered her son’s life for his place as collateral in my arrogant games. And at its core, wasn’t it just that I wanted this? – the excitement? I wanted to be standing here, making life-or-death decisions, dancing on the razor’s edge that threatened in every moment to topple me into darkness.

I’d read too many books, envied too many false heroes, and emulated the legends as they were passed down by word of mouth. I had acted throughout as though, because I was invincible, nothing could ever touch me. The truth was the exact opposite.

A curse.

Nighteye was nodding, his expression still sorrowful as he sighed in resignation and pulled up his hood, hiding his face once more.

“She made you kill a horse, and, now, you kill a human for her –“

“No, Kas,” he said, turning away towards the apartment door. “I was bluffing.”

He moved towards the exit, putting out his hand to grip the edge of the slightly-ajar door.

“Then, Vardae might kill you for that,” I warned him.

“She’s not evil, Kas. She told me I could bluff, if I wanted.”

She did, did she?

He was still heading outside, swinging the door open.

This is the time to save him.

“You’ve always known best, Nighteye. Always. But you must know she’s indulging you, just to bring you deeper into her trust. You can stop now. Before you do it for real. One day you’ll look back at tonight and you won’t even be able to remember why you didn’t. Then you’ll be lost forever.“

He froze right on the threshold, silhouetted against the dreary light of Mud Lane. His head was bowed, and voice was low when he replied, not turning.

“I always wanted to kill them, Kas. My father, my brothers… And I could do it. It would be so easy. I’ve seen it, a thousand ways, a million times… Vardae even sh-showed them to me. But I – I think I’m not going to. I think I’m… g-going to go.”

“Go?”

“Away. From Mund. From everything. I can –“

A hollow boom far above Mud Lane fills me with sudden, unspeakable horror.

Another voice, a single word, comes down as if from a goddess beyond the skies, louder than thunder, flooding the lane with light:

“No!”

I don’t even see the stroke of her lightning-blade – only the shining line of radiance that is burned into my vision after it passes through his spine at the base of the skull, biting clean through the walls on either side of him too.

There is no fountain of blood, no spray – the wound is perfectly cauterised, the action perfectly irreversible.

Nighteye’s head doesn’t roll, but lands with a dull smack then sits there, at rest inside the smouldering hood.

* * *