Vorr’s laughter filled the hall.
Ryn’s blood ran cold.
“Mother!” Nuthea cried at the top of her voice, and shoved past the two guards, shooting up the steps of the dais to kneel next to the fallen Queen, heedless of Vorr. “Cid! Heal her!”
“Not so easily done!” Vorr laughed. “You are quite surrounded!”
On the balcony level above, soldier after black-armoured soldier stood side by side, each with a crossbow levelled at the party. They must have been hiding behind the guard rail when the companions had entered the hall.
Ryn looked back at the dais. A red puddle seeped from underneath the Queen where she lay on her front, Nuthea draped over her, face buried somewhere in the Queen’s shoulder as she sobbed uncontrollably. In between sobs she whimpered, “Mother! I’m so sorry! Please! Cid! Please heal her! Someone heal her!”
Ryn watched this all like a statue, numbing cold spreading in his guts. This was too familiar.
“Nobody’s going to be healing her,” said Vorr, “unless they’d like a crossbow quarrel through their neck too. Pitiable girl. Did you realise that you yourself gave us the key to taking Manolia? Once we realised that as Ruby-touched we now have immunity to Manolian lightning, everything was easy! We didn’t even need to invade! All I had to do was request a single little diplomatic meeting, show your ‘Queen’ our immunity, and then I could force her to do whatever I wanted without any fear of your tricks. Most of her ‘guards’ have been following our orders for the last few days without even knowing that we were still here! The vast majority of your ‘Queendom’ doesn’t even know it’s been occupied by the Empire. All I had to do was wait for you to show up with your pitiful little ragtag band of vagrants—”
“—underestimated me,” someone else was whispering nearby. Sagar. “I can take them. I can make a wind shield that deflects their arrows.”
“Don’t,” Cid hissed back. “You’ve seen how many of them there are up there. You can’t handle all of them, Sagar. Stand down. We’re better off letting ourselves be captured.”
“He’s not going to capture us,” whispered Vish. “Once he has gloated over us and explained how he beat us he is going to kill us anyway. I have seen him do it a hundred times before. This could be the only chance we—”
Vorr paused mid-speech and frowned. “SILENCE!” he shouted, voice cracking and going high. “Listen to me when I’m telling you how I defeated you!”
Nuthea suddenly let out a wail. She looked up from her mother at Vorr, face soaked with tears. “She’s stopped breathing! You’ve killed her, you monster, you’ve killed her!”
Ryn stared at the lifeless body of Nuthea’s mother sprawled humiliatingly on the dais, her long dark hair a mess around her head, her blood starting to drip slowly down the steps.
Vorr had killed her, just like he had killed Ryn’s own... Mum. Dad. Cleasor. Found Vorr. Get Vorr. Kill Vorr. Avenge them. Avenge Nuthea.
“VORR!” Ryn ran up the steps towards the General, drawing his sword, the cold in his belly suddenly replaced by heat.
He swung the blade with all his might at Vorr’s head, holding and moving it as Cid had taught him.
Vorr caught the blade with one hand, clasping his gauntleted fingers onto it and holding it in place.
Ryn froze.
Vorr squeezed his fingers and the blade snapped, falling away in two pieces, red-hot at the break.
Before Ryn could recover from his surprise Vorr grabbed him by the neck and lifted him off of his feet.
A tight band of pain constricted around Ryn’s throat.
He gasped for air but found none. He scrabbled at Vorr’s fingers and looked in horror into the man’s bulging, red-veined eyes. The General was crushing his windpipe.
I just did exactly the same thing again. I lost control and threw myself at him. I’ve failed. I’m a failure. And now I’m going to die.
“Miserable whelp. Don’t you ever learn? You have no hope of harming me.”
“Bolt—aaaaagggaahhh!”
Ryn felt a surge of shock rip through him, but then it passed, leaving only the pain around his neck.
It was growing harder to think with every moment, but he realised that Nuthea had hit Vorr with a lightning attack.
Vorr’s gaze shifted down and to the side beyond Ryn. “Stop that, girl. Haven’t you learned your lesson either? I have resistance to lightning as well as fire! You stay there and wait your turn. I knew that you had more about the Jewels than I got out of you in Imfis. I’ll happily torture the rest of that information out of you if you’ll just wait a moment. Let me deal with this mongrel first.”
The pain around Ryn’s neck went tight as death.
Darkness prickled at the corners of his vision. He was passing out. He was about to die.
He was about to die bitter, unavenged and unfulfilled, full of hate and anger and despair.
Ryn’s eyes drooped and his vision faded. The last thing he saw was a pair of short silver chains hung around Vorr’s neck, over his armour.
One chain had a ruby set in it.
The other held a crystal pendant.
Behind his closed eyes, with the last thoughts of his life, Ryn found himself remembering something Nuthea had said to him once.
The Way of the One is to forgive, her voice echoed in his mind.
Fine, Nuthea, there’s nothing left to lose: I’ll try it your way. I forgive you for revealing the location of the Fire Ruby to Vorr. I even forgive Vorr for killing my parents and burning down my hometown. And…I forgive myself for failing to save them.
Fire exploded all around Ryn.
The grip on his neck loosened slightly and some breath came back into him.
He opened his eyes.
Bright white and orange heat enveloped him; a glowing ball of incandescent flame that grew from his heart and enshrouded all of him, all of Vorr.
Through the fire Ryn saw Vorr’s red irises, and in them—fear.
It was clear what he must do.
Ryn reached out for the crystal pendant which hung from one of the chains around Vorr’s neck.
But it was too far away, too high up on Vorr’s chest, and the General was squeezing again, trying to squeeze the last of the life out of him.
Ryn concentrated, willing the fire radiating out of him to burn brighter, hotter than it ever had before, and focused on one particular place.
The chain turned red, then orange, then white, then…
...melted.
Ryn caught the Lightning Crystal as it fell.
As his hand closed around it a strange tingling sensation rippled down his arm and through the rest of his body.
The fire around him disappeared.
Vorr’s face contorted into a puzzled frown. Before he could react, Ryn had just enough time to throw the crystal at his face.
Vorr flinched as the crystal bounced off his cheek, then dropped Ryn.
As soon as he hit the floor Ryn sprang back up and leapt at Vorr.
The general was ready for him, though, and grabbed him with both arms, encircling his body in a crushing bear-hug even as sparks of lightning crackled around him.
But Ryn didn’t care.
In his hand, still on its chain round Vorr’s neck, Ryn grasped the Fire Ruby.
He felt a familiar rush of warmth flow down from his hand…
...and flared.
Ryn’s whole body lit on fire.
“Aaaaaaarrrgggghhh!” Vorr screamed as Ryn’s fire flashed over him, no longer invulnerable to it thanks to his new lightning alignment.
Ryn landed on his backside on the dais with a thump as the General dropped him again.
He gasped for air and found it, taking it in in a huge hungry gulp.
His neck still hurt like hell as he rubbed it, but at least he could breathe. Vorr hadn’t completely crushed his windpipe or his chest.
He got to his feet.
Steam coiled up from the general where he lay on his back. The man’s eyes were shut in his round face. His skin was charred, red, even black in places, from where Ryn had burned him. He lay still, and Ryn couldn’t see his chest rising and falling.
I did it.
He had finally killed General Vorr. And in the end, he hadn’t even meant to.
Mum. Dad. Cleasor. Found Vorr. Got Vorr. Killed Vorr.
He reached down and grasped the Fire Ruby, raised the heat around it, then tore it from its chain. Links of molten metal scattered around the dais.
The other sounds in the room came back to him.
“Ryn, help them!” cried Nuthea.
Ryn turned.
Streaks of orange filled the air, being deflected away from Ryn’s friends and the two Manolian guards as Sagar stood at their centre and flung his hands around in mad circles, drawing huge gusts of air across the hall. The soldiers had abandoned their crossbows and chosen to throw down fire at the party instead. Vorr must have touched them with the Ruby too. Sagar was doing a good job of turning the fireballs away, but sweat was streaking down the back of his head and he was having to move his hands incredibly fast. He wouldn’t be able to keep this up forever.
Found Vorr. Got Vorr. Killed Vorr. Forgave Nuthea. Stay with Nuthea. Protect Nuthea.
Nuthea, who was about to be blasted by fire from the hands of an Imperial soldier who was down on ground level, out of Sagar’s line of sight, about twenty paces away...
He got in the way of her just in time for the soldier’s fireball to ripple over his chest and spread out to the sides of him as his body took it full force.
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He remained standing, unscathed.
The soldier’s mouth dropped open in horror.
Energy rose up from Ryn’s stomach and the top of his head tingled.
He sprang from the dais, clearing its steps in one leap, and pelted for the soldier.
The soldier thrust out both hands on reflex and yelled, pouring a jet of flame at Ryn.
Ryn took the flame-jet head-on and kept on running right through it.
The soldier ceased his fire attack and reached for his sword, but Ryn got to it first, drew it in a swift, clean motion, then stabbed it into the soldier’s neck before the man could react.
“That’s what happens if you try to kill my princess!”
He slid the blade out of the man who fell back to the floor. Ryn looked at it for a moment, decorated red, his fury abated. The second time he had killed in so many moments. Vorr, and now this man. Sickness turned over his stomach. But it had been necessary. This was life or death. He needed to protect his friends. He needed to protect Nuthea.
He looked back at the battle.
Sagar still drew the air around the room in a frenzy, pushing fireballs away. Cid had his eyes shut and was chanting something with a hand outstretched towards the skypirate. Elrann, Nuthea and Vish were now launching gunshots, lightning bolts and throwing stars up at the soldiers above, as they could. The Manolian guards stood among them, sheltering behind Sagar’s wind-shield. They must not have Jewel-powers like Nuthea.
Ryn had an idea.
He charged back into the fray, unafraid what with being impervious to fire.
“Here, take this!” he yelled to the first of the guards he came to, and threw the Fire Ruby to her.
She caught it deftly with her spare hand.
“What’s this?” the woman called.
“It’s a Primeval Jewel. It will make you safe from fire, and able to use it yourself. Go! Get all the other guards in the palace to touch it, and bring them back here! I’ll cover you!”
The guardswoman didn’t need telling twice. She nodded at Ryn, then turned and began to run in the direction of the hall’s entry doors.
Ryn sprinted back to join the party, yelling “Watch out! Sagar, take a break!”
The pirate snapped his head round to look at him, mid-wind-spell.
“What?!”
Ryn stretched out his open palms towards the balcony.
“FIRE-AGAH!” were the sounds he found himself shouting.
An inferno exploded from Ryn’s hands and obscured the soldiers, making the air around it shimmer.
Ryn kept the fire up for a long count of three, then dropped his arms when the ache grew too great. The flames subsided, revealing the soldiers blinking in confusion.
“What was the point of that?” Sagar barked. “They’re invulnerable to fire, you moron! When are you going to learn this?”
“I wasn’t trying to hurt them, only distract them for a moment.” Ryn pointed towards the doors of the hall. The Manolian guards were just reaching them. “I gave them the Ruby.”
“Oh. Not bad, pup...”
Ryn watched as the guards wrenched open the double doors…
...to find Elpis, the lady Shadowfinger, stood waiting for them, all in black except for her grotesque painted-lady mask, twirling her length of chain with a ball on the end covered in sharp spikes.
The Shadowfinger’s arm twitched, and the spiked mace shot out of its rotation at a tangent, pulling the chain along with it straight into the face of the guardswoman carrying the Ruby. The Manolian screamed and dropped to the floor.
Nuthea cried out in grief.
Ryn sprinted for the doors, the sword he had taken from the Imperial still in his hand, calling over his shoulder, “Hold them off while I take care of this!”, even as new fire fell from the balcony and Sagar threw up his hands to gust it to one side.
I’ve come so far. I’ve killed Vorr. I’m not about to let the Empire take my life and my friends from me now.
As he approached the Shadowfinger who had been rounding on the next guard he flung fire at her, but she saw him coming and leapt to one side.
Before he knew what was happening, her mace hurtled towards him, hitting him in the stomach.
Pain sang from Ryn’s abdomen from uncountable needle-points as the spikes pierced it.
Stupid boy, he thought to himself as Elpis yanked back her chain and he put his hands to his stomach to clutch at his bloodying shirt, you’re invulnerable to fire, not metal. This is a really stupid way to die.
He sat down on the floor, stunned by the wound.
Elpis twirled her chain and brought her arm up and round again, about to whip it out at him for the finishing blow.
Ryn couldn’t move. He shut his eyes.
Metal clanged against metal.
Ryn opened his eyes.
Vish stood in front of him, black sword out to one side. The spiked ball of Elpis’s flail lay a little way away at the end of its chain. He must have deflected it.
A frustrated growl came from behind Elpis’s mask and she flicked the chain, sending a wave along it which made the ball leap, then flung it back out again at the other Manolian guard who had retrieved the Ruby and made a run for the door. She caught the woman on the side of her helmet and the ball bounced off without sticking in. The Manolian cried out and hit the floor, then rolled and came back up on her feet. She backed away from the door, wary but alive.
No sooner than the ball had rebounded off the Manolian’s helmet Elpis yanked the chain and spun, bringing it around herself and back at Vish, who had been running towards her but now had to duck and roll to avoid being impaled.
A dance had begun. The lady Shadowfinger fought like some sort of demon, shouting with rage behind her mask as she leapt and spun and flung her spiked ball at Vish, the guardswoman, Vish, the guardswoman, never letting up, never letting them get any closer to the doors. Her opponents were managing to dodge or deflect the attacks, but they couldn’t keep this up forever. She was so wild, so hell-bent, so persistent.
Ryn moaned as the pain throbbed in his stomach. He doubled over, unable to concentrate on the battle any more. Blood leaked through his fingers, running over his hands. Cid. I need Cid.
He managed to twist round, grimacing at the protest from his stomach muscles. Cid and the others were still clustered at the centre of the hall, pinned down by a barrage of fire which Sagar held off with gusts of wind. Cid had his eyes shut and a hand held out towards Sagar, lips murmuring. Ryn had no idea what he was doing but it must have something to do with the reason that Sagar was able to keep up this defence for so long.
“Cid!” Ryn called out in a weak voice, but just loud enough to make the healer open his eyes and look over. Cid’s mouth dropped in concern and he started out in Ryn’s direction, then stopped when a fireball hit the floor in front of him, missing him by inches.
“Wait!” a female voice cried from somewhere behind Ryn.
Ryn turned back round.
The other Manolian guard lay in a heap on the floor by the doors, breastplate cracked, blood trickling from underneath her.
A few paces in front of her stood Vish, sword pointed at Elpis. The lady Shadowfinger’s spiked ball lay on the floor next to her severed from its chain, which now lay like a sleeping snake at her feet. Instead of it, Elpis now held a black-bladed sword of her own up in front of her face.
“Wait!” the lady Shadowfinger said again. Her voice sounded surprisingly delicate, almost like Nuthea’s. “Don’t do this, Vish.”
“You may be skilled with that flail of yours,” Vish replied, “but I was always your better at swords. Give it up.”
“You may favour blades over stars, but you haven’t beaten me every time we’ve sparred. And...I can give you poppy.”
Vish hesitated. “So what? This traveling party have poppy too. And they give me it whenever I want.”
“Yes, but they will all be dead in a moment and their poppy will belong to the Empire. I can give you two poppy seeds right now if you put down your weapon and return your allegiance. Come back to the Empire, Vish. All will be forgiven. Whatever led you astray temporarily, Kivvest will understand. He is most merciful.”
She held out her hand. Two small round seeds lay in the centre of it, even darker than the black of her glove.
Vish made no reply.
“Oh no,” said Ryn. “Not this again.” His stomach hurt so much, and it hurt to talk, but if he didn’t he feared he would bleed out soon, so he had nothing left to lose. “Don’t listen to her, Vish! You’ve been here before! You’ve resisted before!”
Vish threw him a quick glance, grey eyes unusually wide, then looked back at Elpis. He was still for a long moment, and for a while Ryn only heard the shouts and cries and gusts of wind behind him.
Vish put down his sword and held out his hand.
“No!”
The lady Shadowfinger handed Vish the seeds. He lifted his hand to his mouth, then fell backwards with a moan of pleasure.
“YES!” Elpis cried from behind her mask and leapt over Vish’s body towards Ryn, raising her sword high.
As she did so Vish’s hand shot out and grabbed her leg, pulling her down to land face-first on the floor with a smack.
In the same movement, he stood up with his sword and thrust it down through Elpis, literally stabbing her in the back.
Elpis screamed, twitched a couple of times, and then abruptly went rigid.
“How…?” Ryn said to Vish as the Shadowfinger withdrew his sword and ran over.
Vish showed him the two black seeds in his free palm. “Why settle for two seeds and slavery, when I could have two seeds and even more whenever I want?” He stowed them somewhere in the folds of his garments.
“Vish, quick!” Ryn said. “There’s no time! The guard—take the Fire Ruby from her and get it to the other Manolians!”
“You are hurt.”
“You can’t do anything about that now! Go!”
Vish nodded, sprinted to the guard who had dropped the Ruby’s ring, picked it up then pelted out the doors.
One God, please let him find help quickly, Ryn found himself praying.
He wrenched his head around again and black spots filled his vision; the pain in his stomach nearly made him pass out.
“Cid!” he called again with everything he had left.
This time Sagar heard him too, stealing a quick glance at Ryn in between fireballs.
“Hold on, pup!” he shouted back.
Sagar bit his lip, then jumped to one side, away from Ryn.
What’s he doing?
Sagar thrust out his hands at Cid, Elrann and Nuthea.
“GO!” he shouted, and blasted the trio with air.
Ryn’s eyes watered as the healer, engineer and princess were swept off their feet and sent flying down the hall towards him.
Nuthea put her hands out and managed to ride the wind more or less gracefully, dress billowing up behind her. Elrann curled into a ball and shot past Ryn, cursing as she went.
Cid turned head over heels in the air and crashed right into him.
Excruciating pain as something tore in Ryn’s stomach.
He must be on his back, but he barely knew it the pain was so bad.
“Cure!” Cid’s voice said.
The pain finally ceased, replaced by soothing warmth as the wound in his stomach closed up.
Oh, thank the One.
Cid helped him sit up.
“That was a close one,” Ryn said. “Again.”
Cid’s brow stayed knotted in concern. “Quick, lad! I don’t have much mana left; I was lending mine to Sagar, but he can’t have much left either!” He pointed back towards the centre of the hall. “You’ve got to help him!”
With only Sagar left as a clear target, the soldiers on the balcony were focusing all of their fire on him at once, hurling fireball after fireball at him.
Sagar was on his knees, both hands held up, keeping back the flames with a continual gust of air, jaw clenched tight.
Ryn wasted no more time.
He dashed back across the hall, leapt in front of Sagar, facing him, and stood with his arms held out to either side, taking the fireballs on his back. As they broke against him, rather than hurting him he felt them replenishing him and giving him energy.
Sagar groaned and lowered his arms, at last able to drop his defence. He was red-cheeked and drenched in sweat.
“Thanks, pup...” Sagar rasped with just a hint of reluctance.
The flames at Ryn’s back subsided. Shouts of “Get down there! Find a way down!” from the balcony.
Ryn had an idea.
“You got anything left in you?” he asked Sagar.
The skypirate frowned. “Maybe a little. Why?”
“Could you do what you just did to the others to me, to get me up to the balcony?”
“What, like a wind-assisted jump?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
The skypirate’s eyes glinted. “Now you’re talking.”
Ryn spun to see the soldiers above running up the stepped balcony level, making for its exit.
He crouched.
“Now!” he yelled.
Ryn jumped, and hung in the air for a moment, propelled only by the meagre strength of his legs.
“WIND!” shouted Sagar.
Air rushed up to meet Ryn, so forcefully it lifted him up further, his body going weightless, his stomach dropping out below him, as he flew upwards towards the balcony rail.
Only, he wasn’t quite going to reach it; he was going to fall short of it, fall back down…
Acting on instinct, Ryn focused on the soles of his feet and willed fire from them.
He felt his feet catch alight and project jets of flame downwards with enough push-back to get him up over the rail.
He landed clumsily on the balcony level, smacking into one of the benches with his shoulder, bouncing off it and rolling between them.
He came up as quickly as he could.
The soldiers who had seen him threw fire at him.
Ryn simply absorbed it. It made the top of his head and his fingertips tingle.
He gripped his sword and rushed at the nearest soldier.
“Cleasor!” Ryn yelled.
He parried away the soldier’s first blow, then automatically followed up with a thrust to the soldier’s neck where he knew the Imperial armour had a gap.
He withdrew his sword and the soldier toppled over.
“That’s more like it!” Ryn was shaking with adrenaline. All the practice with Cid was finally paying off.
No time to bask in it. Another soldier was on him, making him raise his blade and block high, middle, low, high again. He saw an opening and tried a slash at the man’s chest, more to drive him back than anything, but the soldier blocked it in kind, and Ryn was forced to dodge the counter-attack.
Ryn had to move faster to block and parry more cuts and thrusts the soldier drove him back towards the balcony rail. This was more what he was used to—he wouldn’t be able to keep this up for long.
Another soldier joined the fight, and Ryn’s two opponents pressed in on him together.
Panic seized Ryn’s chest and he tried to keep both soldiers at a distance, blocking and parrying more manically, backing closer and closer to the balcony rail.
There was no way he could defeat two of them once, let alone any more. He had gotten carried away when he had absorbed the fire attacks. How had he thought he could fight all of these soldiers by himself in weapon-to-weapon combat?
“Argh!”
A flash of pain in Ryn’s leg, and he dropped his sword and went down, rolling down the last few steps of the balcony and slamming into the rail
He clutched his leg. One of the soldiers had finally found his mark and caught him with a vicious cut.
The same one that was standing over him now, desperate hate in his eyes visible through his helmet-visor, pulling back his sword for the killing thrust.
“For the One!” cried a chorus of furious female voices.
The soldier above Ryn froze, then turned to see what was happening.
Ryn stumbled up as a wave of gold crashed into the soldiers on the balcony.
A stampede of armoured Manolian guardswomen.
The Imperials threw fire at them, but their attacks simply dissipated on contact without causing any harm.
A stampede of armoured Manolian guardswomen invulnerable to fire.
He did it, thought Ryn. Vish got the Ruby to them.
Pistol-shots. Elrann was here too.
The soldier who had been standing over Ryn screamed as he flew off his feet and over the balcony, pushed off it by a targeted gust of wind. And there’s Sagar.
And that black streak of death was Vish.
All Ryn needed now was…
“Young man, do you think you could refrain from being grievously wounded just for a few moments?” said Cid as the old man arrived at his side.
Ryn chuckled, but then shut his eyes at another wave of pain from his leg.
Cid crouched next to him and laid a hand on the leg, whispered a spell, and the pain departed.
“Well, I think that’s about all I had left in me. Come on, we better make sure nobody else gets wounded, as I won’t be healing anybody for a while.” Cid drew his own sword, then helped Ryn up by the hand.
Ryn retrieved his dropped blade from nearby and rejoined the battle with Cid, charging into the fray.