“Do you understand now?” his contemptible voice hissed. “The power of the arch wyverns—you should consider yourselves lucky to stand in its sovereignty while you still draw breath in those lungs.”
I located the snake under our heels, closer to Cordella than to myself, but she wouldn’t be able to fend him off now. Despite the change in events, a soft light already exuded from her fingertips, and to intervene would spell the end for our scheme. I closed in before he could lash out with his fang, throwing his dagger’s strike and causing it to graze my forearm. Another swipe deflected by the broadside of my blade, I reciprocate with a hard swing towards center mass—a near miss, but enough to clear the air and buy her some breathing room.
“Forget about him. I’ll keep him busy for as long as you need. Just focus on bringing that monstrosity down.”
“Like hell, you will,” My adversary growled and thrust his blade towards my exposed hand, glancing off of the pommel with a quick tilt.
“Give it a rest, Asrael. Are you so conceited that you think you can win with that? I remember this being a challenge.”
At my goading, his lip upturned, and the measly dagger fell to the grass. “Careful what you wish for.”
A dog free of its leash, the great blade roared from its scabbard, angrier still after missing my throat. He didn’t give me the time to reflect as he continued in a whirlwind that swung every direction. For now, I played defensively, but with only a little more success than in the summit; he came at me with every bit of speed and force that I recalled, gnawing and biting into my blade with his own. Since our last bout, he’d learned a lesson in kindness, following through each swing with the aim to kill.
He drew his blade into tail stance.
“You, Kaiser. Why do oppose me so vehemently? Do you think I’m wrong, or are you too short-sighted to see that I’m not?”
Wrong about what? Why did he pretend that I knew what he meant? “You left this entire town in despair. How could you be right!? Did you expect us to—”
My breath was cut short by a blow to my gut, and I doubled over face to face with wet turf. While I struggled to breathe, his arm slackened, and his sharp visage mollified if only a little.
“The lies you’ve been told…I had no hand in this. I mean to avert catastrophe, not hasten it!”
I didn’t know what he meant by lies, and I didn’t have the time to find out. I lifted my brand from the wet turf, burning away the muck with a little of my energy. With Cordella’s help and my focused practice, the warping aura now tightly wrapped the metal, and the many shades of red cooled to blue. I assumed the same stance.
“This dance again?” he scoffed. “And the same song down to the note. If you think this will work better for you the second time, I assure you it won’t.”
Not to be outdone, the bastard sword sizzled and sparked, spewing smoke like a chimney as it flared to life and swung out its grievances. He’d gone wild, slinging the torch like a whip. The first slice I dodged without trouble, and the next, I sought to catch in a spiral thrust, but I only succeeded at scalding my hand and losing my armament some ten odd paces away.
I staggered back with a whimper, clutching my shaking blistering arm. The tongue of flames had left a wet red wound clear to my shoulder, still burning where the skin made contact with my chain mail.
“Kaiser!”
Asrael sneered. “What a predicament we have here. The little runt is cornered and toothless. Will your friend drop her little act, or does she watch you meet your maker?”
Through the pain, I endured with a wheezing breath as I tried to concoct an escape. Even were I to recover my sword, I couldn’t wield it left-handed, and he’d never allow himself within striking distance of my knife. Faced with the tip of his blade, I had no choice but to stoop and show him my palms in surrender.
“Enough! You’ve won,” I choked, but it didn’t calm the beast. He lumbered over with a fiery breath, a burning wreath encircling me as he flashed his teeth.
“No, no, no. Not yet I haven’t.”
I lowered my head, and with a mighty roar, he brought down his cleaver with a final thud. In his rage, the strike strayed from the skull to the spine, but it bit plenty deep. Fortunately, with how swiftly it happened, I didn’t feel a thing. My scabbard, on the other hand, had seen better days. I threw my arms over my head and rolled off of the cutting board, and while he wrested his blade from the wood, I retook mine in my offhand. I lunged, and when our blades would bind, I butt my singed palm against the hilt and pressed off of my right leg.
This maneuver of mine didn’t last long, a couple of seconds at the most, but it was long enough. Just as Cordella predicted, he couldn’t anticipate what happened next, and had the exchange been any shorter, it never would have. For as long as our weapons touched, both hands wrapped the handle, and while useful for slowing ether, I’d learned another use for it. As my blade swept over his and the ember crept from edge to edge—a blue tinge in the crimson spiral—the flame convulsed, alternating between swelling and shrinking before it was gone in a black puff. Next we knew it, it had already consumed us; we stood opposite sides of a violet inferno of our intertwining flames, the blast of which sent us reeling.
We both flew apart from where our catalysts conjoined, albeit one of us more forcefully than the other. Even having prepared for it, it felt like I’d taken a mallet to my chest. Nonetheless, I landed on my feet when Asrael’s were yanked out from under him, and as he rocked on his back from the shock of, I pinned him.
Asrael was a powerful foe, more-so than any I’d faced, and we knew before hand how pointless it would be to try and surpass him. Ironically, this was the weakness Cordella sought to take advantage of. We’d trained not to manipulate my aura, but to manipulate his. By pouring so much energy into his own weapon, he’d weakened his grip on it, and it only took a little of my own to free it completely. As it turned out, that strength was too much for anyone to handle.
Whilst he remained dazed, I searched my periphery for Cordella. Judging by the electric floss that arced and spun between her fingertips, she didn’t need much longer. Meanwhile, Asrael struggled weakly under my suppression.
“You—you don’t understand,” he moaned, eyes fluttering as his head swayed. “The mistake you’re making. That creature could be the only ends to the wheel that’s already turning.”
“The only mistake we’ve made is not fixing yours sooner. This town is drowning, and it won’t stop until your little pet falls.”
“The lives of these villages are not lost on me, but they are grains of sand to the millions that will follow. He was never prepared to make the sacrifices that I was.”
And yet another reference to some veiled “he”. He drew sick satisfaction from giving more questions, but this time he would answer for them. I clutched his robe in each of my fists, his half-limp head hovering some six inches off of the ground. “Who wasn’t prepared? Who do you keep talking about?”
His teeth ground into a powder, and his nose flared. The name left a sour taste in his mouth, a splatter of red showing from beneath his alabaster skin as he prepared to spit it out from between his teeth.
“Now!” Cordella called, and like that, it would fall on deaf ears.
Perhaps in retribution, she hadn’t provided much forewarning, but in the briefest of moments after, I sensed the swell: the hair lifting from the back of my neck, and the smell of static that preempted the strike. The energy hummed in her palms a horrible, grating whine, and in a matter of seconds it grew to a pitch too shrill to stand. After our last quarrel, we committed to account for every detail, and though we tried, we were in hopelessly over our heads. We could never anticipate Asrael’s plotting, nor the form taken by the next arch; however, there was an element we could count on, and it had followed us since setting out from Kaldris.
As she hoisted her offering skyward, the heart of the storm released its bounty—an endless golden thread from a black spool, woven into the clouds and around the gliding wyvern. It hadn’t the time left in the world to fight before the burning net had trapped it, tied and cinched as the thread spun faster still. The whole show lasted a fraction of a an instant before dissipating in the water, but its brilliance persisted long enough to stain our eyes, and the thundering applause that followed was enough to pilfer the senses that remained.
Through blind eyes, I watched the angel fall. Awaiting what come next, I buried my face in the rough while below me, Asrael had gone completely slack. Whether he passed out or merely thought he had, he wasn’t alone. If a mere clap of thunder shook the earth, the tsunami created by the crash of the titan sent the heaven’s themselves into disarray. The siren turned to numbness in my ears, and the shock wave ripped through my body with a force I’d never like I’d felt before.
Sometime later, the whistling calmed to a ring, and I could sense that some color returned to the black and white blur. I unclenched my fists and lifted my face from the inches of mud that now pooled under it. The first image was a bleak one. The huts, the pier, and the boats tied to its posts had all but vanished; nothing in proximity of the water remained, and the detritus that didn’t float out with the tide was scattered to our feet. We weren’t any better off. Driftwood, buffeted and beat—ears-throbbing, heads pounding, and splayed flat by the deluge, but we could be sure it was the last.
The water-bearer rejoined the loch, and in the time it took to gather ourselves, it showed no further signs. Even after calamity, the lake’s surface had calmed completely, and with Asrael in a stupor, he’d have no further will to exert on it.
I stood weakly on my two feet, head hung like a flag from a windless rampart. We’d claimed that day as ours. By all accounts, we’d done what we set out to—executed our plan just as we’d devised, but it didn’t for a minute bring the satisfaction I’d hoped it would. The sweet taste on your tongue—that weightless feeling after weeks of it sagging from your shoulders—was nowhere to be found. Instead, there was ruin. There was a corpse of a town, and the nagging that all of our effort wasn’t enough to save it.
I took my belt and cinched it tight around Asrael’s hands. I still had questions, and he had too much to answer for. After that, I hobbled over to Cordella, stooped on her knees and battling a haggard breath. I extended her an arm at which she shook her head.
“Don’t worry. I’m fine. It just…it took a lot out of me.” Her face was flush, a bead of sweat dripping from her forehead to the mud. Even from her, I’d expect as much.
“You shouldn’t force yourself. Anyone else would be lucky to be alive pulling off a stunt like that. You did well. Now, why don’t you rest here while I run through the village? I can at least do that.”
“Don’t play it off, Kaiser. You did your old teacher proud out there. Even I couldn’t do that.”
I took her praise and went on, dragging my feet all the way. I wasn’t ready. This was the part I most dreaded, and I had imagined every night, every waking moment how it might go: the rancid odor, starved bodies laid out like sheets to dry in the breeze. Or would there be much of anything left but the rooftops as the rest of it was finally swallowed by the marsh.
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But as I walked through the fog, and the last of it lifted, I realized I wouldn’t have to search so far. That immortal gray which reigned the sky for so long now began to break, and the clouds took a silver edge as sunlight poured through. Most importantly, I wasn’t the first to bear witness. In the bulk of town I heard a commotion as a family opened its doors and made sense of the great crash, and then turned to delight as they saw for the first time the end of the monsoon.
More than just good spirits, I was surprised to see them in good shape, better at least than the two of us were in, and as far away as I stood, I could already see the relief that shined from their faces onto mine. I turned as my eyes burned with tears. All along, they waited for us, and here I’d all but written them off. These people were stronger than that. With good news and one less chain to burden us, I left the town to right itself. If they made it this far through troubled waters, the rest would be smooth sailing; we needed our rest, and it finally felt like we’d earned it.
Cordella was better oriented when I returned, standing as tall and proud as a tower having never wavered to begin with. Her ear turned to the wet slosh of my two-stone boots. In the dry air, her hood had fallen on one shoulder, a messy black braid on the other.
“Back already?” She said, already sounding more like herself, but her face turned white when she saw mine. “No. Please don’t tell me…”
A soft chuckle to myself. I always wore my emotions on my face, but this time, the red was a softer shade. I reassured her with the best smile I could muster. “They’re going to be okay.”
She gasped once into the air and then repeatedly into a shaking hand, fighting herself from breaking into laughter. Without warning, she threw herself into my arms, crumpling handfuls of my tunic in her fists. “I told you. I told you they would,” she repeated softly, her words muffled while her face was pressed tight to my chest.
Her joy was infectious, and I closed my eyes as I returned it ten-fold. “You’ve yet to be wrong.”
Wonderful warmth; the same feeling as the last time we’d enfolded only longer lasting, but then, these were sweeter circumstances. This time we’d really won, and we had each other to thank.
My hands slipped from her side, that sweetness made bitter by the first rustling of a lowly sort, a grunt from the mouth of a spindly grey weasel whose filthy claw marks still embedded themselves in the soil beneath us. When the man fully awoke thrashing against his fibrous prison, we were there waiting, and his dark eyes would have no choice but to meet ours. As soon as he understood, he stopped.
The affection I’d felt moments earlier turned to seething. There was no satisfaction in seeing him here. I’d known his face for less than an hour, and I’d developed contempt enough to last a lifetime. It was a different kind of ire that he sparked in me—an itching redness in my face, an ache in the back of my molars, all for a pitiful old man sulking like a child once he’d been beat.
“Was it worth it? Was it everything you hoped for?”
“More.”
I scoffed. “At least you’re still in good spirits considering that’s twice now that you’ve lost. By now, I’m suspecting that you enjoy it. Maybe this time you’ll be willing to answer for what you’ve done.”
Slowly his eyes lifted in his still head. “Ask away,” he said, conceding for the first time since our meeting, though the acrid residue hadn’t left his voice.
Cordella and I exchanged nods before asking what was first and foremost on our minds.
“You said to me that you wanted to avert catastrophe, then why raise these infernal things? Did you not see the destruction left in its wake? You caused that, not the wyvern.”
“And had I not arrived, would this town have suffered a lesser fate? The arch didn’t need my provocation to wreak havoc. I sought to channel that power where it would have gone wasted, something you’ve disallowed.”
“Do you hear yourself? In what world does that start to explain this insanity?” Cordella balked. “You want to twist these abominations around your finger for the damn thrill of it!”
“The abominations may be the only end to a cycle that is well underway, and thanks to you, we’re running short on time,” he said, growing short as he deflected our accusations. “But if you know where our world is headed, how do you justify idling by while it runs its course? Why are you so blind to follow?”
“If anything, that’s what you want, right? Our complacence while you play God.”
Whatever chord I struck rang out, a roar from ancient lungs. His face was awash with boiling blood. “Is this rehearsed? You echo those hollow preachings—how do you not see that you’re being used?!”
“What are you talking about? Used by who?”
“Don’t pretend now. You’ve followed me every step of the way; I know you were sent by that whoreson old fool.”
“You call my aunt a fool?” Cordella snapped. “You don’t know the meaning! Samara would never use us for her gain.”
For a second, his eyebrows lifted, and his irate countenance shifted to one of confusion before the next words crawled from his lips. “Samara? I speak of Israfel.”
I must have heard wrong. It must have been a curse he breathed, because my heart turned to stone, sinking like a rock to the base of my chest. It had been years since I heard the word from another mouth, and it would have been another thousand before I expected it to come from his. My composure shattered, my mind raced for somewhere rational to hide, but when nowhere could be found, it escaped as nervous laughter.
“Kaiser?” Cordella eyed me uneasily.
“Where did you learn his name?”
“Frankly, as much as that pompous swine likes to lecture, I’m more surprised that you never learned mine. He and I were close once—research partners, but those times are long past.”
His face was unrevealing, earnest if not still somewhat puzzled. I spoke again after a consoling breath. “I’m not convinced. A man like Israfel would never have been affiliated with the likes of you.”
“Not for long, anyway. The two of us never agreed on much. ‘No man should hold that much power’ he prattled, the righteous ass. That crooked finger was always ready to stamp out my ideas even if he never had any of his own. Good to see his passed his torch to a right set of fools.”
I chose to ignore his off-handed remarks and continued down a separate line of questions. I’d play his game for as long as it led to answers. “And what did the two of you research?”
He shifted where he sat, tensing as though he’d forgotten for an instant that he was still tied. “It started with a fascination for magic. We’d studied every renowned master, but we didn’t stop at the end of the lineage. As luck would have it, we dug too deep, and we retrieved that stone script from a fallen city. The rest is new history.” When he finished, he broke into a rasping cough.
“What did it tell you?”
He dragged his chin against the leather strap to dry the saliva. “Now, why do you need me to tell you that? You two keep asking me what you should already know. You’ve predicted my movements twice now, but you don’t understand why? Your little shepherd owes you a lot of explanation.”
“Why do you keep going on about us being led?” Cordella pressed. “Kaiser hasn’t seen Israfel in years. Hell, I’ve never met the man, let alone been swindled by him. Samara is the one that showed us the stone. She interpreted it herself.”
Finally, the bewildered look subsided, and in its place was a wry grin. “And if I may, how did your Samara come into possession of the artifact? A mystery donor?” Cordella choked on her words as the epiphany struck. “It looks like your friend Israfel has been pulling strings. Funny, he told me once that he’d find someone to enact his plan, but it seems he never told you.”
Cordella looked to me for a response, but I’d all but withdrawn. My hands were balled, and I found it took tremendous effort not to grab the man by the nape. “You said we were running out of time,” she asked when I wouldn’t. “Before what? What happens next?”
“It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? If you’ve been in the dark all this time, then what else don’t you know?”
“How about we do away with the games and focus on what’s in front of us? Answer the question, or it will be my pleasure to reunite you and your beloved pet.”
He swallowed his grin. “If you’ve truly laid eyes on the tablet, then you know as much as I do: the end of our ancestors caused by a cycle of suffering, starting with the stir of these ancient powers. One to reroute the waterways, another to bend the earth under our feet, and their efforts combined to realize the world anew. But they’re only the heralds to a greater scheme than I’ve yet to predict. My hope was that, if the archs could start the cycle, then by their power I may be able to stop it.”
“If that was your intent, why would Israfel—”
“Enough. You can go on and on, but I don’t believe a word from your godforsaken muzzle.”
“Believe whatever you like; it won’t change the fact. Your anger is misplaced.” He said so calmly, confident enough to try and deceive me while he stared down the length of my sword but flinching at my first motion, and then again to reinterpret my intent.
“What the hell, Kaiser?!”
“Go,” I said under my breath.
He rubbed the back of his wrists as his chains fell away, and he stood from the wet ground. Another smirk rose and faded as he turned away, his eyes drifting to the drying village. But we weren’t rid of him so soon. “A change of heart? Maybe I misjudged you.”
“Don’t think for a second that you’ve convinced me. This is nothing more than a debt repaid. If you see either of us again, they’ll be nothing left holding us back.”
“Is that so? Act stoic all you like, but if you’re letting me go, you must have heard at least some of what I had to say.”
“I heard enough,” I said coldly, “And I won’t entertain your sardonic humor any longer. If this is all you have left for us, then we have no more need for you.”
“Need or not, as long as I know you’re listening, I’ll offer one last piece of advice. As I see it, you have two options: you could disregard everything I’ve told you—accept countless coincidences as nothing but—or, you can follow the string of lies back as far as it will go and see for yourself that it ends at one man’s feet, and they aren’t mine.
“Wonderful. Now, if you’ve had your fill, I’ll tell you one last time to leave this place and hope to God that we never cross glances again.”
He smiled one more loathsome smile. “Pray as I like, it didn’t save me the first time.” He held up a hand before turning from the scene and starting away from the village. “Until the next.”
We watched him until he was good and gone, all the while I kept in the corner of my heart the hopes that he’d show his face again so that I might follow through with my promise. When the thought passed and I finally turned to Cordella, she was there waiting with worry in her eyes. I didn’t let her find mine.
“Was that wise?” she asked.
“What else were we to do? Kill him? Shackle him to someone’s stoop?”
“You know damn well that’s not what I’m suggesting. It’s just—after all of this, we’re letting him go?” she asked, only studying me harder when I didn’t respond.
We were just headed back into the broken city ourselves when we heard the thump at the heart of it. Bells ringing, singing their praise for an end to their pray. The airy chime led families one by one from their dilapidated homes, luring them under the reign of a new shining heir. They bathed in the sunlight, soaking and scrubbing away the rot left by weeks of rain.
“I don’t know what you’re feeling right now, but you can’t let him get to you or he’s as good as won. We did a good thing today.” She gestured ahead, but we faced different directions. “Kaiser? Where are you going?”
I had veered away from the fanfare and back in Escalus’ direction. Her call was the first to slow my gait, but I didn’t stop until her fingers curled around my wrist.
“You won’t stay here?”
“Stay?” I asked.
“To inform the village? To see to it that it lives for another day? If you plan on leaving, then where are you going to go?”
If they could persevere through the calamity, they would thrive in the aftermath. For these lives, the storm had passed, but for my own, it seemed darker skies brewed. He was right. Try as I might, I couldn’t plug my ears well enough to cast out his lingering voice. He had successfully sewn the seeds of doubt, and I knew that, given time, the saplings would only grow. I had to cut them down.
“There’s so much asked of us now, so much at stake that it feels like I’ll drown if I stop moving. And now—now I’m not sure we walk the right path.”
Her hand brushed the back of my arm, prompting my turn. “Kaiser,” she started, but I broke away before our eyes lingered. I’d fallen for the same trap before.
“Before anything else, I have to return to Abdera and seek out Israfel. If he knows even one thing about this, then I have to ask for his help.”
“I understand, but you know I’m too drained to leave so soon.”
“And that’s why I won’t ask you to follow. I need to see this through. All I ask is that you wait on the other side.”
As before, I had expected protest, but it seemed she knew her efforts would be wasted. “I won’t stop you. You’ve bowed to my whim long enough that I owe you at least that.”
I smiled. “You owe me nothing.”
After our understanding, she agreed to see me off, remaining by my side until we came to Escalus. Swaying his tail and tapping his feet as we came to rescue him from his ramshackle stable, he was as ecstatic as always upon my return, though I daresay happier to see Cordella.
“I’ll miss you most of all,” she said into his, her arm stretched as far around him as possible while the other stroked his mane. Her arms remain splayed when she turned to me, and a shimmer formed under eye. “But I’ll miss you too.”
With open arms, I offered her one more chance to finish what Asrael had interrupted, and with a limp smile and her arms tucked to her chest, she leaned in. I didn’t mind it either way. There were no expectations. I only to make the most of it since I didn’t know how long I’d be without it.
“It won’t be nearly as fun traveling without you, you know.”
“Don’t get any ideas thinking you’re through with me, now! You have until the turn of the month to send word lest you want me to come drag you out of Abdera myself.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. I know better now than to get on your bad side.”
“Smart man,” she snorted, laughing with me one more time.
When the time came, I still struggled to let go. Even if she didn’t intend to, she had a way of making me reassess my choices, and climbing into the groove of the saddle, I found it cold and spacious without someone to share it with. I fought the instinct to offer her a hand up while my feet wrestled with the stirrups. Meanwhile, Cordella retrieved her effects—every trace reminding me that I hadn’t made the journey alone.
“Then I guess I’ll see you soon,” she said, soft but assured. “I just hope you find what you’re looking for, Kaiser. And I hope you’re certain of what that is.”
“Truth be told, I’m not certain of anything anymore.”