The Count of Dracon’s castle sat just outside of the Coiner gate, as it was called by the town’s residents. The glorious, sparkling white stone, shaped by the rugged hands of laborers into beautiful pillars, arcs, and domes, loomed in clear contrast over the square plaster houses placed on its sides. Many of the past Counts—disgusted to live among those of lesser status—had wished to move the castle to the Coiner area. The Count prior to Verdugo had begun construction on a new castle the moment he assumed the title. When the townspeople heard of foundations being set for the new castle, a throng of enraged hunters ambushed the Count and his guards as they were passing through the Coiner gate to attend a ball. The Count’s remains were found at the site of the new castle, only recognizable from the gaudy blood-soaked silk robe he wore.
Verdugo had not made the same mistake. He accepted the castle's placement, but to enhance its luster, he expanded the sprawling courtyard, adding a large fountain that trickled clear water, lush hedges that caressed the edges of the space, and blue crystal sculptures of fabricated heroic tales.
Those who lived in the plain houses beside the castle were most often middling merchants or those employed by Verdugo to maintain his luxurious lifestyle.
The tight alleys between these houses, unlike those in Solun, were clean besides a few unwanted weeds sticking through the cobble, and vagrant-less. Usually.
On this mist-laden night, two hooded figures were crouched in the alley between the plaster houses that lie 30 steps from the hedges of Verdugo’s courtyard. In their black cloaks, they were as indiscernible to passerby as apparitions haunting the dark.
The apparitions had been waiting in that alley for a sign their plan was working: the smell of smoke, an explosion, the frantic clinks and clanks of guards awoken and running towards a dungeon of rubble.
No such sign came.
In a feverish repetition, Lieutenant Halding formed and re-formed a dagger of ice under the cover of his cloak’s sleeve.
He had known this plan was doomed to fail. Anyone who could form even the simplest of thought-paths would have known this. Even the blonde half-wit had recognized it.
No more. I will suffer no more under that fool Balisk.
As quiet as falling snow, he slowly edged the dagger upwards. The weapon would have difficulty puncturing through the Nerodae’s head. A swift strike through the squishy flesh of the neck, however, would prove fatal in heartbeats.
The Nerodae growled deep in its throat.“...after…”
The sea-dweller stood, still not looking back at Halding, and walked out of the cover of the alley. “I…kill…another…man…now.”
Halding said nothing, content to observe the Nerodae’s folly and wait for Balisk to create the escape rift.
As the Nerodae carefreely strode towards the courtyard, two figures suddenly appeared from behind the hedges and faced the creature.
Halding could not believe it. Verdugo stood on the left in a plain brown frock with brass buttons, loosely holding a shortsword with some kind of engraving on the blade in his right hand. Even in the mist and darkness, he could see the man had undergone a transformation; the decadence and fat had wilted away. Beside Verdugo, the worse and more deadly surprise, a gray petalman.
That filthy rat never told us Verdugo had a petalman.
Impossibly, things were even worse than he expected.
Did that petalman track us?
He had been told by Balisk’s petalman that it was difficult to track anyone in Solun or Dracon, too many connections to the land or some such nonsense. For this reason, the petalman had touched him, the Nerodae, and the other lieutenants. It had said that only by doing so, could it dimly feel their lives in Dracon.
Yet, there Verdugo and the other petalman stood, awaiting them.
Had Balisk trapped them purposely? Was this war a deceit?
The explanation, whether or not Balisk had done this intentionally, was inconsequential. Survive. He must survive. The bliss of revenge would come later. He felt no eyes watching him, perhaps the gray petalman had not tracked them. Perhaps, still hidden in the darkness of the alley, they could not even see him now.
At a crawl’s pace, he moved backwards down the alley.
Something grabbed his ankle and wound tightly around it. He slashed it off with the ice dagger and watched a ragweed unravel, then slither back up from the ground. All around him, the weeds wriggled up his legs and constricted around his body. He willed the flames to come, and they exploded from under his boots. The weeds were pulled from the cracked cobble as he shot up above the alley, and then fell with a painful thud onto one of the house’s roofs. His fall had been cushioned by someth…
The decorative fernbush he had landed on tangled over his entire body, and latched around his throat.
“GET…OFF OF ME!” He let the orange flames encapsulate him, burning away the filthy plants. Disoriented, he vaguely heard something crash through the house next to him, followed by screams. He wished whoever it was would shut their trap and die quietly.
As he stood, flames still covering his body from head to toe, he jumped backward in surprise, nearly falling over the edge and back into the alley. The gray petalman had somehow made it to the roof, and was sitting on the stone floor, a few steps from him. It was also…whistling?
It stopped suddenly, and spoke. “Give up, and you will live. My master has plans for you.”
Most who carefully listened to a petal creature speak would have noticed this one’s uncanny use of the word ‘my’. Halding did not.
He also trusted no one but himself. So much so, that if the sun did not rise one day, he would be unsurprised. He had never trusted it anyway.
With thunderous speed, he tackled the creature. Flames burgeoned in his hands, turning from orange to blue, as he incinerated the head of the petal creature in its entirety.
The headless petal creature laughed. It was the sound of a hollow skull beaten like a drum. The rest of its body, still being burned by the aura of flame around Halding, coiled into knotted ropes of gray petals and rapidly enshrined themselves over the back of Halding. Layer upon layer, the petal creature weaved itself into a horrific cocoon over him. The pressure crushed him into the ground.
He sought the focus to explode the dwindling flames around his body, but could not find it. Darkness was everywhere, the crushing weight breaking him.
As his eyelids drooped, bowing to the suffocating darkness, he faintly heard the malign voice of the petalman.
“I feel my child’s touch upon you. How strange. When you see my child next, tell them that the end is coming, and I am but one of its many harbingers.”
Thoughts of eradicating every petalman he could swam in his head before it all faded to nothing.
The petal creature retracted its cocoon and re-formed the woven petals into its man-shaped body. It placed a blank, gray bracelet onto Halding’s wrist, which snapped shut, and then turned into a murky mixture of orange and blue.
While Halding attempted his escape, another encounter had taken place.
Taghedd and Verdugo stood motionless, 10 deadly steps in between the two.
Silent observations were made by both before Verdugo spoke his declaration.
“You may leave. I have battled and killed your kind before. It brought me no pleasure, few deaths do.” Taghedd’s ears prickled listening to the man’s voice; it was discordant, unbalanced.
“you…are…verdugo…?”
Verdugo must have found the question humorless, as his colorless lips cut into a thin smile. “Yes.”
Taghedd grinned under the hood of his cloak. “...good..”
The battle started and ended within three heartbeats.
First, in a single motion, Taghedd ripped the blood dripping crystalline sword from his arm and pointed it at Verdugo.
Then, a current of green energy as long and wide as a small tree diffused from the blade, surging through the air. No sound accompanied the current as it cleanly passed through Verdugo’s chest and continued onward, cutting through the hedges and only seeming to dissipate after slicing through the lower floor of the white stone castle.
In the heartbeat after this, an unrecognizable inky black figure materialized behind Taghedd and thrust a sword seemingly made of shadow into his heart.
“I did warn—”
Taghedd growled ferociously, and turned quickly enough to let loose another current of green energy at the shadow-man.
This time, the current reacted differently to its target. Upon collision with the shadow-man, it refracted upwards into the sky, yet still blasted the man backwards with enough force that he ruptured through the wall of the plaster house to his right.
Shrill screams from the house bled into the night. Taghedd’s sword clattered to the ground. He grasped the deep wound in his chest, attempting to stem the tide of crimson.
To die on the land. A disgrace. And the girl still lives. I have forsaken my tribe.
He let go of the wound and fell to his knees.
The cool blood pooling over him offered a small measure of familiar tranquility, as if he was home, reading stories to the tribe sons.
Taghedd, patriarch and forsaker of the green sword tribe, met his end.
The shadow-man rose unsteadily from the shattered home.
He turned the bone ring around his middle finger and murmured to himself quietly.
“Thank you, my little sprout.”
***
Imber, the region of land west of the Bone Sea, was a place of rain. Somedays, the rain was so heavy it sounded like two armies clashing together as it poured over the small clay huts that dotted the land. Valdo’s father had often used the word ‘torrential’ to describe it. He had been a scholar before he settled down in Imber, and he never missed a chance to use words most had never heard of.
Torrential was an apt word for the emotions flooding Valdo. Contempt, rage, sadness, all tunneling through him, hollowing him out from the inside. Barog was dead. And the night was not over yet.
The petal creature sat in the castle garden’s section of redbell flowers. The orange petals of its body were vibrating rapidly as it attempted to keep itself in tune with the remaining connections of Halding, Taghedd, and Jemeen.
Valdo looked at the man who had just sent his friends to their deaths.
Balisk was seated on one of the dining hall chairs which had been brought out to the garden. His hands were clasped together tightly as he watched the petal creature.
Valdo walled off the anger and sadness; he had to collect himself.
“Count, something has gone very wrong. Barog would not…he is not someone that would die easily.”
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Balisk said nothing, not even an acknowledgement that he had heard what Valdo said.
Before Valdo could continue his pleading, the petal creature spoke in its buzzing voice.
“Taghedd is gone.”
“Speak plainly petalman. The Nerodae is dead?”
“Yes.”
Balisk’s hands clenched even tighter. “The mission may still succeed. Lieutenant Halding is strong enough to do it.” His voice was brittle, barren of its regular unbreakable confidence.
Valdo’s walls broke down and the flood rushed through. “The Nerodae was far stronger than Halding, AND HE IS FUCKING DEAD! JEMEEN AND HALDING HAVE NO CHANCE. YOU MUST GO THERE AND SAVE THEM!”
Balisk rose from his chair, a look of unfiltered disgust on his face as he scrutinized Valdo. “And leave the protection of the city to…you? A meatless coward? No, the mission may still…”
Again, the buzzing voice interrupted. “Lieutenant Halding is…dead.”
Valdo rebuilt the walls and took this as his chance to reach the unfeeling logic Balisk operated with.
“The mission is a failure. You know this is true. The only path to success is if you go to Dracon yourself, and kill Verdugo. Burn the entire town if you must.”
Balisk’s emotionless mask became torn, seams of rage and indecisiveness splitting across his face. He paced back and forth along the dirt path.
“No, no. I cannot. If I were to form a rift to Dracon now…I am not sure if I could form another. Not for a long time. The risk is too great.”
Somewhere buried inside Valdo, he felt guilt as he placed more word-daggers in the vulnerable gaps Balisk was showing.
“Once Verdugo is eliminated, you will not need to. The coiners will kill each other to become the next Count, and even when a successor is chosen, Dracon will not be what it is now. The threat will be gone.”
As his words sunk in, for the first time, Valdo saw Balisk for what he truly was: a warrior, a man of rage, not a leader.
Balisk seemed to come to his own realization at the same time. He stopped pacing and faced Valdo.
“Lieutenant, go to the walls with the petalman, and remain there until I return.”
“Yes, Count.” Valdo waited for the petal creature to stand, and then walked out of the garden. He prayed to gods he did not worship for Jemeen to make it back.
Balisk closed his eyes, and imagined the alley in Dracon as he had last seen it. Ragweeds popped up from the gray cobble; the lush green hedges of Verdugo’s courtyard were just in sight. He captured the image, ripped it from his mind and slowly traced a circle through the air with his finger. He opened his eyes, and reached his hand through the circular vortex of twisting colors.
Creating the rift was not difficult. Going through it was far more onerous. The heartbeat before you reached your destination, it felt like the entire land was convulsing and as it cracked, so did you.
Still, a heartbeat of pain was an easy sacrifice for such an incredible ability.
Balisk stepped into the alley. The cobble he stood on was scorched black and a small crater was imprinted in the ground. As he walked out of the alley, his eye was first caught by the glimmering green sword. Then, the pool of murky blood, and the black-cloaked body lying in it.
Perhaps the Nerodae was not as strong as I expected.
He took a closer look at the body. A single puncture wound from behind and into the heart.
Was this Halding’s doing? The petalman said he was dead, but where is his body?
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something move near the hedges. He reacted instantly, unleashing a torrent of spiraling blue flames from his left hand at the spot.
Only after three heartbeats did he abate the roaring flames.
As the smoke and flames cleared, they revealed only the gray ashes of the hedge, and the blue- tinted goo of melted crystal sculptures.
He felt the creature behind him before he felt the blade slice through his calf. Screaming from the pain, he let loose a shockwave of blue flame that burned through every direction. The flames stretched outwards for 10 steps before he reeled them back in, forming a circular inferno around himself. He placed a weaker, orange flaming hand on his calf and ground his teeth into nothing as he cauterized the wound.
Is the creature dead?
Intuitively, he knew it was not.
So, I am left with one option. The entire town must be destroyed.
Sweeping blue wings of flame alit on his back.
A heartbeat from blasting into the sky, he felt another blade pierce through his gut.
His wings dissipated into nothingness. Pain became his only source of feeling.
“Thi..is..wh…you’ve beco…?”
The words were distorted, barely understandable through the crackling inferno of flames surrounding him. The voice though…it sounded familiar.
This time he felt the blade sweeping towards his leg, and pivoted out of its arc before it could reach him. He loosed a rush of flames in the blade’s direction, and let the inferno dissipate. It was blocking his vision and the creature’s blade was somehow passing through regardless.
His surroundings remained the same, besides the charred buildings beside him and still flaming parts of the hedges. He saw no sign of his attacker.
“You’ve lost, Bal.” He recognized the crow-like murmur instantly.
How foolish he was, to think he would never see them again. How foolish to believe he could start anew when his roots had grown in blood, not water.
His wounded leg wobbled under him. He cursed the pain, but remained standing.
This time, I will kill him. I just need a moment to collect myself. Distract him.
“Why…are you here Netsu?”
Squinting in the misty darkness, he could see the outline of Netsu’s shadow body standing beside one of the flaming hedges.
“Why?” His croaking laugh was the same as ever. “I am Count Verdugo, protector of Dracon. I will not let you and your villainous comrades harm this town.”
“WHY? WHY DID YOU DO THIS?”
“I’ve done so many things, Bal, you’ll have to be more specific. Perhaps, you mean puppeteering Verdugo so that I could manufacture a war with you?” Netsu’s white teeth carved into a smile on his otherwise shadowed face.
Yes, smile, believe you have won. Just a few more moments, and I will scorch you and this town.
Netsu picked up a flaming bundle of hedge, using it as a torch as he approached Balisk.
“Oh, or perhaps you mean allying with the Niven, who are now destroying your city as we speak?”
His knee began to shake. NO, no, it can't be.
Unbeknownst to either, the Niven were currently in the Black Forest, undergoing the rituals for a new warrior to ascend to the position of Caliwa.
“Funny, is it not? You’ve been in this land quite some time, much longer than me. And yet, in the short time I’ve been here, I’ve already destroyed everything you built. Your city, your comrades, all turned to bones and blood in the mud.”
Finally, his leg gave out. His hands grasped the cobble for balance and became slick with wet ashes.
1,106 days. For 1,106 days, I had peace.
Netsu dropped the makeshift torch, and placed his hand of shadow on Balisk’s shoulder.
“You are needed, Bal.”
“HAHAHAHAHA!” He laughed like a dead farmer who has just been told that they must return to the fields to harvest their crops.
“You ruin me, and now you say I am needed?”
Netsu’s shadow blade swung upwards, stopping a fingernail from his throat.
“YOU WERE ALWAYS NEEDED, YOU FILTH!” His blade shook from rage. He took a deep shuddering breath before lowering it.
“I am not here, because I want to be. Things are…dire. After what we did, one of the greatest victories in our history—” He stopped, looking into the night sky as if a beam of light was shining on their glory.
“…they have come out of hiding, Bal. Of stone, of water, of light—an alliance has been formed and they will not stop until we are ash in the wind.
A death to all shadebringers. That was your vow, and you will uphold it.”
***
Their escape through town so far had been slow, but remarkably, they had traveled 10 or so blocks without a single incident.
David’s breathing was still in the form of wheezes and his back screamed at him, but he somehow managed to maintain a half-jogging, half-walking pace beside Jemeen as they slipped through misty alleys that circumvented the main streets.
Neither spoke. If David could, he would have asked where they were going. He had hoped they were escaping the town, but everytime he looked back, it seemed they were farther from the large crystal wall that surrounded the town, and closer to the huge palaces he had seen when he first arrived with Tunk.
He gratefully rested against the back wall of a plaster house, as Jemeen peeked around its corner. The smell of smoke dominated the air and he struggled once more to breathe.
Jemeen whispered in his ear.
“Get ready. We may have to fight.”
In his current state, he did not think him being “ready” would be of much help, but he steeled himself regardless.
He followed her as she crept around the edge of the house.
They were in an alley, or what had been one. Ash coated the broken cobble ground and the houses forming the alley were blackened and crumbling.
Beyond the alley, the scene looked similar—a large street of burned cobble and ashes just outside a huge, white stone castle and its courtyard. One of the castle walls looked like it had been sliced through with a gigantic butter knife. They slinked forward, hugging the wall to their left. In the street, David spotted what looked like the back of a man in a white robe.
A healer?
Jemeen peered around the corner to the right for a second, before instantly bringing her head back behind the cover of the wall. She looked ready to pitch the glob of acid in her right hand.
“Lieutenant, come out here.” In the dead quiet of the night, they easily heard the sharp slash of the man’s voice.
Jemeen looked at war with a decision. Once more, she whispered in his ear.
“Stay here.”
She walked out of the alley, the glob of acid still in her hand.
After she made it a few steps out, another man’s voice, one that sounded like a vulture or some other kind of sadistic bird, spoke.
“Your companion, as well.”
David was seized by the same existential dread he had when the coiner almost kidnapped him. He wanted to run, but he couldn’t, both physically and figuratively; his body wasn’t capable of it, and to run away would mean leaving Jemeen alone to face whatever fate they now courted.
She stood still, and seemed to ignore the vulture. “Count, who is this man? What the fuck is happening here?”
The sharp voice responded. “He is a…friend.”
“HAHAHAHA! Yes, we are friends.” The croaking laugh was almost as unnerving as Kleymon’s.
David realized that Kleymon had still not spoken to him. He prayed the bastard was truly gone.
“Come lieutenant, let the white robe attend to you. We can speak as you are restored.”
The acid glob in her hand grew larger, slipping through her fingers and melting though the stone as it leaked.
“I…I don’t understand. We were ambushed, Barog was fucking beaten to death by an Ormer, and now you want to stand out here in the open with—a white robe and this man who clearly fucking hates you?”
The acid glob had grown to the size of a head.
“Lieutenant, if you do not wish to be restored, you may leave. Return to…return to Solun. You will not be stopped." The sharp voice was fragmented by regret.
She did not budge. “I am not going anywhere until I get an explanation.”
“Must you be so fucking stubborn, Jemeen? I…I cannot—”
“Oh, it’s actually quite simple. Long ago, your Count was drafted to a war. He left, abandoned the war to play king in this shithole, but the war never stopped. Now, he will return to it and fulfill his duties.
And, I will make matters here just as simple. You will leave. Your companion will stop lurking like a shed rat, and come out here. If these two things do not happen, I kill both of you. Make your choices.”
“Lieutenant, leave now. That is an order.”
“Ha. Fine.” She let the glob drop and sizzle through the cobble before turning around and walking back into the alley.
The moment she was back behind the wall’s cover, another glob appeared in her hand, and a small leather pouch in the other.
“Run.”
His heart raced in his chest and howled to get free.
“..no.”
Her eyes popped with disbelief. “Are you fucking crazy? Get out of here, now.”
He mustered enough energy to raise his voice so that it could be heard past the alley. “Does that offer of restoration apply to me as well?”
The vulture responded. “Of course. My petalman has told me of you. We have much to discuss.”
He gave Jemeen a cheap smile, wished her good luck, and brushed past her into the open street.
He was tired. Tired and broken. He wanted to be whole again before he left this world.
Jemeen’s boots striking the cobble echoed towards him and stuck small pins of guilt in his back. He hoped she could find safety somewhere.
In the hellscape of a street, three individuals stood, two beside each other and the other a few feet away.
As he approached them, he began to question his decision not to run.
Of the two standing close together, one was cloaked in simple white robes that flowed to their feet, with a brick colored rope tied around the waist. Their face was obscured by the robe’s hood, but judging by the figure, it was a woman.
The man standing beside her—despite wearing the tatters of an amber tunic and golden cloak that had been consumed by flames—radiated a tactile power and authority.
He guessed this was the sharp-voiced man. Even his face, a few shades lighter than the night, looked like a wooden mask that had been whittled by the precise sword of a soldier. It was as unchanging as a mask too; stoic was too strong a word to describe the completely neutral expression he held as his monolid eyes sliced through every fiber of David’s being.
He could no longer bear to look at the man, so he switched to observing the other figure that stood a few feet away.
This proved even more difficult.
Three quarters of the man’s face was a red knotted scar of burned skin tissue. Only his thin lips—now curved in a toothless smile—and his left eye seemed to escape whatever accident or battle that warped him.
The white and gold accented tunic he wore, and its matching cloak did nothing to obscure the fact that he was undoubtedly a killer.
That was not a judgment based on his scarred face, but because he was looking at David like he was envisioning chopping off his head.
David quickly reverted his gaze to the other two.
The white-robed woman approached him, with her hands held out.
“May I?” Her voice was as smooth as melted chocolate and made him instinctively relax.
“Uh, yes. Do I need to do anything?”
“Remain calm during the restoration. You have many injuries to address and the process can be overwhelming. I suggest you close your eyes. Some find it difficult to watch.”
He felt anything but comfortable closing his eyes around the two men here, but he assumed she knew what she was talking about.
Her hands were cool to the touch on his forearm.
Why this arm? It’s the other that’s injured.
The cool of her hands seemed to quickly spread to the rest of him. Epicenters of the icy sensation formed in certain parts of his body: his wrist, the middle of his back, his right forearm, his lungs, and his head.
The cold turned into a searing burn, and from each epicenter a different process unfolded.
In his wrist, it felt like a sheet of ice was inserted. A cold hammer pounded his back. Tendrils of delicate ice sinewed around his forearm. A pool of freezing water drained from his lungs and his head.
It was painful, rather, it should have been painful, but it almost felt like it was happening to a different person.
After a few minutes, the regular sensations of reality came back to him, and the cold faded.
“I have finished. You may open your eyes.”
He moved his wrist and felt no pain. He sucked in a deep breath of the crisp night air, and relished it. Finally, he looked at his arm. The bloody, teeth-marked wound he had grown so accustomed to seeing was gone, as if it had never existed. The white flame enshrined around it, however, remained.
His eyes puddled.
My scars of this world healed. Finally.
“You really are a shed rat. Is he not, Bal?”
A grunt came in reply.
The burned man moved closer, his white cloak slithering over the burned cobble.
“Show me your ability.”
David stepped backwards.
“I..I am not supposed to be here, so…I’m going home.”
His toothless smile was fixed in place as he took another step forward.
“And where is your home? Dracon? Solun? Past the Ash?”
David was seconds away from forming a flaming sword.
“No. It is very far. Nowhere you would know.”
The smile peeled away while a shortsword as black as obsidian appeared in his hand.
“You could not know what I know. Show me your ability, now.”
Five orbs of blue flame sprouted to life around the burned man, circling his body.
“We have a long journey, Netsu. Leave the boy.” It was an order, but there were footholds of uncertainty.
The burned man watched the rotating flames, and tried to suffocate the rage writhing in his face. He turned back to look at the other man he referred to as Bal.
“If what I have been told is correct, the boy will be coming with us.”
One of Bal’s eyebrows perked slightly. “What?! What is the point? He will not even make it to the Ash.”
“Yes, show us the point, little rat, in the next heartbeat, or I stick the point of my blade through your heart.”
David was not going to beat him. Nothing had ever been more clear to him in his entire life. Running granted an even worse chance at survival.
“...fine.”
He stretched his arm out in front of him, and clenched his hand into a fist.
For a moment, he struggled to remember what his studio looked like. It felt like an eternity had passed since he had last been there.
The old hardwood floors. The same twin mattress and its oak frame he had slept on since he was 14. A small corner desk he thrifted which held his oversized gaming laptop he had stopped gaming on. Posters of anime and framed comics he no longer watched or read. On the IKEA nightstand beside his bed, a shitty flickering lamp, and an old curling photo of him and his sister as kids. In the photo they were sprawled on the couch at angles only children could find comfortable, giggling, because they had just created their first secret society. He had meant to get the photo framed.
Slowly he opened his fist, and then his eyes.
The triangular vortex was no longer a rainbow of shifting color; geometric bars of red and black bars pinged and bounced off of each other, never merging or colluding as they had before.
Five pairs of eyes stared at the rift in astonishment.
Three hands instantly rushed through before it closed.