A moonlit night has gone before
To wait for heart to break, no more.
Moonlight entered the chamber, falling across the carpet and bed like a bright shroud.
Flint sat just out of its reach, in the shadows, his giant crossbow resting on his lap. Staring at the white beam of light in front of him, he wished that it were fake. He wished it was a spell, that at the merest disturbance, Lord Requar would sense his presence and awake, like that very similar night in Hillbank, weeks ago.
It was ironic, he thought, the situation he found himself in now.
Ferrian had left the castle to try and find a cure for the impossible. He had offered to take Flint with him, but Flint had refused.
At the time, he hadn't been entirely sure why he had not ridden off with the kid, only that some instinct was calling him to stay. Something he didn't understand.
But he understood it now.
He looked sadly at the body beside him. Requar's chamber had been in disarray when he entered. Flint had tidied everything carefully away, stacked the books and papers that Arzath had discarded neatly on top of the dresser. The Sword of Healing still lay on the bed. Flint had arranged it so that its glittering blue hilt lay at its master's feet, the silver tip resting on his chest, just below the terrible black wound that had claimed his life.
Requar's face was still wrapped in bandages, hidden.
Arzath was destroying himself trying to bring his brother back, Flint thought. He didn't like the man, but it was an awful thing to witness. And Flint woke up every day feeling a little darker, the Justifier a greater weight upon his back.
And his own heart a little more broken.
Slowly, Flint got to his feet.
Yes. There was a reason he had stayed.
He turned to the bed, his shadow blocking out the bright gleam of the Sword, turning it dark.
Taking a deep, slow breath, he raised the Justifier.
A bolt was already loaded, but this one was special. This one had Requar's name etched into it, with great care. This one was Justified.
There would be no more doubts, this time, no backing out. His hands were steady as he positioned the Justifier so that the bolt pointed down towards the black hole in Requar's chest.
Somewhere in there, a heart still beat, only to pump trigon through his body.
Moonlight slid off the freshly polished wood of his crossbow. The body beneath him did not stir.
Good choice, a soft voice whispered, somewhere in his memory.
Flint's eyes glimmered. He closed them for a long moment, and when he opened them again, they were clear.
Sorry, Ferrian, he thought regretfully.
“Goodbye, Requar,” he whispered.
Then he fired the bolt.
The newly-repaired grandfather clock tolled the hour ominously as Flint hurried down the sweeping white staircase. He splashed through the shadowed foyer, water rippling across the floor, and raced through the dining room, into the kitchen. There he began stuffing food and other supplies into a sack.
He was shaking as he did so. He had to be fast. When Arzath found out what he had done, the sorcerer was not going to be pleased.
Flint didn't know what had become of the trigonic dagger. The black weapon had disappeared at some point in the confusion after Ferrian had tried to use the Sword of Healing. He assumed Arzath had taken it and stashed it away somewhere. Regardless, Flint did not want to be the next victim of that accursed thing.
He gripped a bench, trying to calm his trembling hands and racing heart.
And then a scream echoed down through the empty hallways.
Flint's heart slowed, all right: it almost stopped.
For a moment, he was paralysed by the sound, it seemed to continue echoing through his skull. Then he pulled himself together, finished what he was doing, picked up the sack and ran back out to the dining room.
A white-purple bolt of lightning blasted across the length of the room and shattered the doorframe beside him.
Flint threw himself to the floor.
“What… have… you… DONE?!” Arzath screamed.
Flint picked himself up, grabbed his hat from where it had fallen, then snatched up the Justifier from the table where he'd left it, and swung it bravely to point at the sorcerer.
“What none of you had the guts to do!” he retorted angrily.
Arzath was hunched over in pain. He staggered forward and grabbed the table for support. “You...” he struggled to speak. “You...”
And then all of the rage and energy seemed to drain out of him, his face becoming ghostly pale. He sank limply into a chair, and Flint noticed tears streaming down his face, glinting in the dim light from the dying hearth embers.
“You… fool,” he sobbed. His hand clenched into a fist on the table. “Damn you! I was so close! I knew… the cure, I just… had to make it work!”
The Justifier lowered in Flint's hands. He felt the blood drain out of himself, as well. “W-what?” he managed.
“I could have saved him!” Arzath cried. “I just… needed more time!”
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Flint sank into a chair as well, feeling weak. Gods, he thought in horror. What have I done??
A devastating silence filled the room, so deep that he felt both of them were drowning in it. Somewhere, water trickled from the ice still melting in forgotten corners of the castle.
“Kill me,” Arzath said suddenly, from the other end of the table.
Flint looked across at him. Arzath did not look up, his eyes closed, face anguished.
Flint wasn't sure if he could stand, let alone pick up the Justifier again. Eventually, as the silence drew onwards, he forced himself to his feet. He shook his head. “I… c-can't,” he said, and meant it. He did not want to shoot Arzath with the Justifier. He never wanted to touch that crossbow again. Ever.
“If you want to… kill yourself,” Flint went on, “you'll… have to do it yourself.”
Arzath lifted his ruined hands and put his face in them. A tortured noise escaped his throat. After a moment, he lowered his hands again. “P-please,” he begged, his voice utterly broken. “I cannot kill myself. I have tried! The trigon will not allow me to!”
Flint felt sick. He stared at the shadows flickering on the wall beside him, dancing with malicious glee over the painting of a doomed family, looming over him...
He shook his head again and looked down wretchedly at the Justifier, lying on the table. It was already loaded with another bolt.
Fighting back a wave of despair, he picked it up. “Alright,” he told Arzath without looking at him. “I'll do it.”
Taking his crossbow, Flint walked around the long table until he stood behind Arzath's chair. The sorcerer sat with his head bowed and eyes closed.
Flint lifted the Justifier and aimed it at Arzath's back. He glanced up again, hopelessly, at the family portrait across the hall.
How has it come to this? he thought miserably.
He thought, perhaps, as he braced himself, that the next bolt ought to have his own name carved on it…
He focused, staring down the bolt, finger curling around the trigger…
Another scream infiltrated his consciousness.
Flint froze in confusion. He hadn't pressed the trigger yet!
Arzath looked up, his green eyes growing wide.
A moment later, the scream came again. It came not from the dining room but from somewhere in the heights of the castle. It was the most dreadful, agonised wail that Flint had ever heard; it didn't even sound Human.
“Requar,” Arzath breathed.
He turned to look at Flint, and the two shared the same horrifying thought at the same moment.
He has turned into a demon-wraith!
Arzath scrambled from his chair faster than Flint would have believed possible in his feeble state. Flint himself stood frozen in place, like an ice statue, crossbow still raised though pointing now at nothing. He stood that way, shocked, until the next scream melted every organ in his body. Taking a sharp breath, he turned and ran after Arzath.
As he raced across the watery foyer, a fleeting thought passed him by; that he could run straight out the front doors and away from this godforsaken, haunted castle, and never come back.
But for some reason he could not explain, he followed Arzath's flying black cloak up the stairs.
By the time he reached the ante-chamber outside Requar's room, Flint was breathing heavily and covered in a cold sweat. Arzath was already inside, standing at the foot of the bed, staring at something in wide-eyed horror.
Flint took a deep, shaky breath, wiped the sweat from his face, and lifted the Justifier. He didn't suppose a crossbow would be much use at all against a wraith, but at least it deluded him into thinking he could defend himself…
Filled with overwhelming dread, he walked forward and entered the chamber.
No demon-wraith waited to tear out his soul, but what he beheld there was in many ways just as terrible.
Requar still lay on the bed, but he was screaming. Screaming in such agony that he twisted and writhed on the sheets. But even more shocking was the wound in his chest. Black trigon oozed out of it, forming itself into long tendrils that whipped about in the air. Some of them had curled around Flint's bolt and – he stared in disbelief – were pulling it out of him!
Arzath leapt towards the bed, dodging the waving black tentacles. “Restrain him!” he yelled at Flint. “Hurry!”
Flint dropped the Justifier, looking wildly around the room. Noticing the Sword of Healing lying on the floor, he snatched it up and began hacking strips off the edge of the bedsheet, staying low to avoid the trigon. Tossing one strip across the bed to Arzath, he grabbed Requar's left arm and tied it to the bedpost. Opposite him, Arzath did the same.
Requar continued to scream and contort on the bed.
Arzath grabbed his head and began to quickly remove the bandages from most of his face, leaving one strip across his burnt-out eyes. Hands trembling, he retrieved a piece of charcoal from his pocket and began scrawling complicated marks all over Requar's face.
Flint watched the mass of writhing trigon that had grown grotesquely out of Requar's chest, staying well away from it. As he stared at it, the bolt came free and dropped onto the floor.
“Shoot him again!” Arzath cried.
“What?!” Flint exclaimed.
“SHOOT HIM AGAIN!”
“Are you crazy?!” he demanded, but nevertheless hurriedly retrieved his crossbow. “What the hell...”
Arzath glared at him across Requar's twisting body. “JUST DO IT!” He waved an angry hand at the tendrils. “The trigon has pulled back from his mind! It is trying to protect his heart, to keep his body alive! It will not let him die! Shoot him again!”
Flint gave up arguing. He raised the Justifier once more and aimed it at the black mass.
He fired another bolt.
The trigon reacted instantly, withdrawing in on itself, it caught the bolt and once again began slowly pulling it out.
“Keep shooting him,” Arzath ordered, “until I tell you not to!”
The sorcerer's eyes glowed violet as he bent over his brother's head, gripping it in his hands, staring intently, Flint presumed, into whatever was left of the man's mind.
The Universe has it in for me, Flint thought dismally, as he cranked the first bolt back on, the one with 'Requar' marked on it. Lady Fate has an obscene sense of humour…
* * *
“The Angels have an Aegis?” Hawk exclaimed, dismounting. “Since when??”
“This was not here when I left ten years ago,” Mekka responded. “It must be recent.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because,” the Angel replied, “I suspect I know the cause.”
Hawk came forward to stand with him on the edge of the cliff, staring out at the view in awe. “I thought Angels didn't use magic.”
Mekka gave him a suffering look. “They do not study sorcery. That does not necessarily mean they do not use magic.”
Hawk scowled, putting his hands on his hips. “Would you like to be a little more vague?”
The Angel folded his lean arms, and nodded at the great golden dome rising below them. “This Aegis is ancient. It is the original Aegis, the one that inspired the red shield that now imprisons the Dragons.
“The Aegis over the Middle Isle,” Mekka went on, “is generated by ten large crystals. A rather crude mechanism, but it works. This–” he gestured, “has been created by Seraphim.”
“Seraphim?”
“Yes,” Mekka said. “Seraphim. Three of them, to be precise. They are immortal beings who reside in the heart of Caer Sync. They spend most of their existence as statues.” Mekka frowned.
“And?”
“And...” Mekka gazed out at his former homeland, expression troubled. “Someone must have prayed to them, begged them for assistance to protect Arkana.” He shook his head. “The Seraphim awaken only in times of dire need, if Arkana is threatened with true catastrophe.”
They fell silent, staring at the view. The grey clouds over their heads seemed to darken, as though foretelling what was to come.
“Crud,” Hawk said. “Dragons.”
Mekka nodded.
“So that mirror thing you said the Ambassador was waffling on about, the...”
“Aurellian?”
“Yeah. That thing.” He waved a hand. “So, the visions it was showing were true?”
Mekka stared ahead pensively. “This would seem to confirm it, yes.”
Hawk scowled at distant Fleetfleer, shining white in the sunlight above verdant treetops. “So,” he said, “do you mean to say that the Angels are going to hide down there under their shield while the rest of Arvanor is laid to waste by Dragons?”
Mekka raised an eyebrow. “Did you expect anything else?”
Hawk made a sound of disgust. “Can't those Seraphim fix the Middle Isle?”
“No,” Mekka replied at once. “They will not move far from the Holy Tower. Their purpose is to protect the Angelican race. They have no interest in anyone or anything else. The Middle Isle means nothing to them.”
Hawk shook his head and folded his arms. “Charming.”
“That shield,” Ferrian spoke up suddenly. They turned to look at him in surprise. It was the first time the boy had spoken in a long while. “Can we get through it?”
Mekka's mouth twitched into a smirk. He gave Ferrian a wink. “I can.”
Hawk rolled his eyes. “Oh, sure,” he grumbled. “Go figure. Only Angels can pass through the shield!”
“That would be my guess,” Mekka replied, then his expression turned serious. “For the two of you, however, it will be a problem.”
“Well,” Hawk said, walking back to the horses. “No point standing around here gawking.” He leapt upon Ardance. “Let's go and find out!”