“The demons have grown too numerous,” Vah’mor said.
“I am not strong enough,” Vah’mor admitted.
“I need help,” Vah’mor pleaded.
Not once did they look at D’Argen when they explained how the demons started spilling out of the mountains. Not once did they apologize for being wrong. And, technically, not once did they admit that they were wrong.
D’Argen tasted the copper of their scent even after Vah’mor stopped talking. It was a heavy weight, stuck in his throat, making it feel like he was trying to breathe through a bloody nose.
Apparently, the spell that would come was one that Vah’mor had already discussed with Acela. It was Acela that gathered all the gods in the hall and told them of it.
“It is just a small piece,” Acela tried to calm them. “None of you would notice the difference. I promise.”
D’Argen knew she was lying, but her scent was overpowering in the hall, convincing them all to agree with her. Even Zetha did not fight her mahee. Eventually, Upates was the first to agree.
“How does it work?” Upates asked, standing tall in front of Vah’mor on the platform against the back wall of the hall. D’Argen was as close to the doors as he could be without stepping outside.
“I consume from you,” Vah’mor explained. “While you are releasing your mahee.”
“So, you only take what I release?”
“Yes.”
Upates nodded and then held out his hand to Vah’mor. Acela was the one that came up between them and put a short knife in Vah’mor’s hand.
“Only a few drops,” she confirmed and raised Vah’mor’s hand.
Then Vah’mor took over and made a quick and shallow cut on Upates’ palm. When Upates released his scent, dust and time passing by, Vah’mor lowered their head and kissed the wound.
A single drop in the ocean.
D’Argen watched as Zetha and Darania followed Upates’ example. Vah’mor’s lips were already stained red. D’Argen clutched at his chest. He felt like there was something there he should be protecting and keeping hidden, but the only thing between his robes and skin was an old worn piece of paper with both Lilian’s and Thar’s names scrawled on it.
There were some that were hesitant, but eventually, everybody agreed. Vah’mor consumed from each and every one of them. Except D’Argen. He had looked away every time Acela looked at him, turned to sit when someone near him got up to the platform, and at one point leaned against the wall and closed his eyes, faking sleep.
Eventually, though, he was the only one left. And even with his eyes closed, he felt the others looking at him.
“I can’t refuse, can I?” he whispered under his breath after Acela called his name.
There was no answer.
D’Argen opened his eyes and looked at Vah’mor. Vah’mor. Their protector. The one who made them bleed now in order to take a piece of them into themselves. In order to keep protecting them. In his other memories, Vah’mor’s fight against the demons did not last even a century when they had the mahee of all the others. Now, with Tassikar and a dozen others already dead, Vah’mor would have even less.
With a sigh, D’Argen strode to the platform. “I will need my hands,” he said and instead of thrusting his hand at the other, he bared his throat. Acela’s sharp intake was loud.
Vah’mor said nothing, though the blade did hesitate at his collar.
D’Argen felt the sharp metal tear through his skin, the cold blood that welled up to the surface, and then Vah’mor wiped the wound closed with a thumb and brought that finger to their mouth.
The doors opened and D’Argen felt like running. There were no orders for him to follow right at that moment, so he ran away. It was only once he was far from the city that he felt the compulsion from Acela’s scent fade away. Except it was not from Acela.
He had wanted to refuse, even though he knew it would be pointless, and he knew that this was not the same Vah’mor he had shared his mahee with in his other memories – but he had agreed all the same. Without his consent. Acela had consented for him. Vah’mor had consented for him. The thought burned at him and made him kick at the ground in anger.
The weight of the quiver and bow at his waist had him running again out of the open field he was in, until he found a forest. There, he snapped the bow open and forwent the gloves Upates had given him. He rolled up his sleeves and started loosening arrow after arrow. The burn of the string as it scraped against his inner arm was hot. Once the quiver was empty, he ran to the poor and abused tree, then beyond it for the few arrows that had flown wide, and started up again.
By the time his draw fingers were bleeding a steady stream down the bow’s string, most of the anger had simmered away and turned into resignation. Unfortunately, the scent of his own blood only made him think more and more of Vah’mor and that made the anger rise up again. The scrape against his already torn up inner arm and the cuts on his fingers as he continued to notch, aim, and loose arrow after arrow calmed him. Until the scent came to his nose again.
It turned into an endless loop, and he broke one of the arrows Upates had crafted for him and tore the fletching on another four.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
In his other memories, Vah’mor continued to fight alone for another seventy years.
D’Argen barely made it a decade before he either broke or lost all his arrows. He tried to make his own, but the wood was not strong enough and splintered in his bow. When his latest attempt at crafting an arrow turned to splinters that scraped at his eyes, he conceded and returned to Evadia.
The city had grown, yet again. Acela had ordered more houses and buildings to go up to house the mortal refugees. D’Argen spoke with someone other than the animals from the forest for the first time in a decade and learned that the demons had already reached the northern ocean.
That never happened. Not last time.
D’Argen rushed to the stone hall.
“Where have you been?!” Acela yelled at him without a greeting at all as soon as she saw him. It caused multiple eyes to turn to him and D’Argen felt completely put on the spot. “I have wasted efforts, sending out others to look for you, when they could have been helping!”
“Helping what?” D’Argen asked, quieter. He made to go to the stairs leading to the second level of the stone hall, but Acela did not budge. Clearly, she wanted to have this conversation out in the open in front of everyone.
“You were the one who volunteered,” she pointed out. “And then you ran away. Do you know how many have already died?” she sounded angry and sad both.
D’Argen startled at the news. He had not felt a thing. He did not even realize he was reaching for his chest until he felt his fingers grip there tight. “Who?” he barely whispered the question out.
Acela’s anger finally seemed to fade away. Instead of listing the names, though D’Argen was sure she knew them, she walked to a long table against the wall and shuffled through a few papers. As soon as D’Argen was beside her, she handed him a piece of paper.
D’Argen’s eyes scanned the list quickly. He knew all of them, obviously, but it was the count that surprised. Close to fifty. His hand tightened on the paper.
“Since when?” he asked and put the paper down, smoothing out the wrinkles he caused. “When did you order for them to start fighting?”
“I did not,” Acela answered, her voice finally softer. “They volunteered. Like you did. Like they all thought you were doing, this past decade. The only ones of us that have not gone to fight are those needed here.”
D’Argen felt the shame heavy on his shoulders. “And where is Vah’mor?” he asked. He had not seen their name on the paper.
“Still fighting. Protecting us all, as best as they can.”
“I’ll go.”
“I did not tell you this so you will go kill yourself too!”
“I will go,” D’Argen repeated, slower. “I just need to talk to Upates. Is he…”
Acela let out a heavy sigh then motioned to the gates of the stone hall. “His workshop.”
D’Argen nodded and watched his feet as he left and made his way to Upates’ house. When the head artificer opened the door, he was scowling.
“I need more,” D’Argen said without looking up at him, instead unhooking the empty quiver from his side.
Upates sucked at his teeth but nodded. He snatched the quiver, bow still attached, from D’Argen’s hands, and then slammed the door closed in his face.
Abbot’s name had not been on that paper. Neither had Yaling’s. D’Argen considered looking for either of the two, but then realized that the scent of blood was still thick in his nose. He did not have the energy to look at either of them, let alone hear their opinions on his disappearance. Slinking through the shadows, he made his way to that old wooden house where he sometimes slept. Two of the pallets were gone and there was a hole the size of a foot in the floor. Everything was covered in dust. When he sat on one of the two remaining pallets, bare of mattress and with threadbare blankets, the wood creaked loudly.
Early the following morning, there was a heavy knock on the doors. D’Argen had barely slept at all, so he was quick to rise and answer the door. Even so, there was nobody there. Upates’ back, clad in a long green robe that picked up the dust and dirt of the ground, was walking away. Leaning against the frame of the door were three quivers, filled to the brim with metal arrows. This time, all of them had feather fletching.
They would not be enough.
D’Argen took them inside the house and moved arrows about until he could remove one from the quiver easily without pulling out others with it. It was even lighter than before. The bow itself was lighter too. When he snapped it open, the recoil was much softer than the last time. He tested the string, and it was not as tight. D’Argen closed the bow, clipped it to the quiver around his waist, then used the threadbare blankets to empty out the other two quivers.
Upon turning the last one, after the arrows fluttered out a piece of paper. On it was a simple diagram along with the most basic instructions of which wood to use, how to clean the fletching, and how to attach an arrowhead. Instructions on making his own arrows. D’Argen doubted he would get more of the metal ones after this set. He tucked the instructions away at his waist, tied the bundle of extra arrows into a rough sling over his back, and then left.
The demons had not made it only to the northern ocean. They had made it deep into Oltrian lands and some had even escaped beyond that into the waters to the east. D’Argen knew his speed would be an advantage to take care of the wranglers, so he did not bother to even stop by the frontlines where Vah’mor was leading gods and mortals alike in keeping the demons from advancing further west.
The east, however, was mostly lost to them.
D’Argen crossed the boundary as fast as he could, the world fading away into nothing at all.
It was when he slid to a stop in soot and ash, burned lands and destroyed crops, under skies covered in dark clouds from multiple fires, that he realized how badly he had miscalculated. He doubted any mortals at all were alive. Then, he decided, his job would be to find those that had made it and take them somewhere safe.
He opened his mahee to run again, though this time much slower. Able to see the world around him, he kept his bow out with an arrow already notched and ready to fly. It took him three days before he saw the first demon. The creature was huge, standing taller than him with light blue skin intercepted by patches of white fur. It had a pair of bone wings growing from its sides, which looked more like extensions of its ribs, and long claws on its arms and legs that were dried with the black blood of other demons.
D’Argen knew that he would be able to take it down on his own, but Thar’s shade motioned with a single hand for him to stay still. It took some guessing and prompting, but eventually D’Argen figured out what Thar’s shade was doing. Together, they stalked the demon.
They followed it over empty fields and through desolate forests, until they encountered a smaller group of demons. There, the large demon they had been following rushed the group and tore them apart, ate them, then moved on. D’Argen delayed stalking it again until he felt like he could breathe without throwing up.
He continued to follow it to another three clusters of demons. On two occasions, the shack demon—for that was what they would call it in the future—left some of the smaller demons alive. D’Argen did not give them such mercy. But he let the large demon guide him and only interfered when the demon’s nose proved stronger than his own. It led him to a small camp in the forest of a dozen mortals huddled around a fire.
Instead of using his bow, D’Argen drew the sword from his hip. Thar’s shade slid between the demon and the mortals, a sword almost as tall as him in his hands, but nobody saw him. And then the demon hesitated. While the demon was distracted, D’Argen cleanly took its head off its shoulders.
Only seven of the mortals made it back across the still waters to the refugee camps Acela had set up. There was a camp there, tents and roughly built houses in a line barely a few hundred steps from a squat stone wall and deep trenches. Vah’mor, at the head of it all.