Chapter One Hundred and Thirteen

Harlock Tunnel

Jack and the others emerged from the war council chamber to see Rose, Carter, and Michael standing in stiff silence on the other side of the door, each several strides from one another with their arms crossed.

Klaryah, now dressed in well-fitted, leather armour with her long head of hair twisted into a bun, came pacing quickly down the corridor. She gave a relieved sigh as Jack exited and said, “There is some tension out here.”

Jack sighed. “Don’t get me started. Any developments out there?” he asked as they strode through the walkway and Rose, Carter, and Michael fell in quietly behind them.

“Nikereus’ forces are still dormant for the most part, but occasionally a unit or two will split off from the main garrison and make their way to the caverns. Nothing’s come out yet. You look like you made up your mind,” she said as Jack’s long strides became sharper and more direct with purpose.

“We’ve got something. I don’t think I’d call it a plan, but it’s something. Just hold the main gate while Sid, Karmine, Rose, Michael, and I try to take the stone from Nikereus. Fall back before they break through. Then reinforce the keep doors, but hold for as long as you can. I need Nikereus to think they’re winning so their armies are all committed away from the camp.”

They broke through into the main hall of the keep heading toward the entrance, and Carter jogged up to Jack’s side, muttering, “I’m not coming with you?”

Jack glanced at the young man and shook his head. “No, I need you here. I heard you have Luck-based Arcancy.”

“I do but it’s a passive Arcancy. I’m not sure it’s any use here.” Carter insisted, “Please, Jack, you’ve got to let me go.”

Jack shook his head without looking at the young man. “No. Even passively, your Arcancy might buy these folks some time. I need you here.”

They pushed out onto the forum and Jack scanned over the ground, spotting Nichole as she and Aroha carried a dead body under the pavilion. “Huntress! Here! Carter take the body for them.”

Carter jogged over, sombrely taking the young Legacy by the arms for Nicky, and she jogged over to the commander. “Need something?”

“You’re with us. Come on.”

Jack and the others began their quick-march through the forum and Nichole scarcely had time to yell to Aroha, “I’ll see you soon!”

Aroha nodded, wanting to call out but they were already too far.

Carter strained under the weight of the body, trying to catch Michael’s face in a glance, but he missed him. He could feel his heart in his throat.

“Carter, it’ll be alright. They have each other.” Aroha was speaking aloud, but half of it was for her own sake.

Carter stared down at his hands and the legs they were wrapped around. The warrior had a helmet on, and it was crushed upon their head so badly it couldn’t be removed. “Who is this?”

Aroha met Carter’s eye and shook her head. “Someone brave.”

*****

A gonging began to sound from the main gate at the rhythm of a heartbeat, spreading to each of the defensive bells in a matter of seconds. Before three seconds had passed, the stronghold resonated with the chimes.

Klaryah let out a weary sigh and mumbled, “Intermission’s over. Good luck. Don’t leave me hanging.” The assassin clapped her hand around Jack’s and parted ways, darting off toward the gate.

Jack led his companions to the base of the wall immediately to the right of the main gate. They came close to an entrance to an inner stair but Jack stopped them going in.

Jack shuffled his foot through the tall grass, back-tracking some thirty feet toward the until eventually a small smile edged his face. He leant down and ripped open a small hatchway buried in the grass, leading down into the bowels of the Fort. It was dark and the air was thick with silence.

They followed the Javen warrior into the underground, finding naught but a passageway hewn from rough stone, dotted with long dead torches.

With every step, little mushroom clouds of filth were erupting from their boots. It seemed only Michael was able to see through the dense shadow.

Flames and light leapt to the wall as Jack sparked one of the torches. As he held it out before them, a rumble of heavy steps thundered overhead, sending small trickles of dirt and stone down the walls of the passageway.

Rose peered through the dark and spotted several long cracks, stretching from the supports to the ceiling. They were ancient, for sure, but no doubt the reason the underpass was closed in the first place. “Step lightly, everyone.”

The tunnel was only wide enough to fit one person and quite low-lying, forcing Karmine and Sidney to duck their heads every so often.

It snaked and ran for a moment, but the Legacies moved slowly, trying their hardest not to give fate a reason to roll its eyes at them in the form of several tonnes of soil and rock.

As they walked, Michael felt the passage descending lower and lower, falling, he assumed, beneath the trench of the moat before it would rise on the other side. With each step, he found the flickering torch less comforting.

“What was that?” Sidney asked, standing behind him in their queue.

Michael flushed with embarrassment. He’d began singing to himself. “Nothing.”

“No, it was nice, what was it.”

Michael bit his tongue and swallowed the pride.

“Watch the Winds,

For you will see,

The darkness rises,

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Oh, so steadily.”

“Who wrote that?” she asked, quietly, as though not to disturb the stone.

“It's just a poem my mum used to sing to me, actually. Not sure if she wrote it or not.” Michael frowned. “I never asked.”

They walked on in silence, listening to the far away muffled sounds of combat, hoping beyond hope that the worst of it fell on Nikereus’ forces.

Jack led the group and found his steps growing smaller as he was unnerved by the deadness of the quiet. “How’d it go? The song.”

Michael pursed his lips and glanced behind him to see Sidney, Nichole, and Karmine all waiting expectantly. Only Rose seemed disinterested, but it was a pointed disinterest, the kind which only really existed when you knew someone was interested in you being interested in them being interested. The mad kind.

Michael spent a moment remembering the way his mother’s voice sounded when she sang it. The archer tried to utter the first few lyrics, but what came out was, “Maybe some other time.”

Jack looked over his shoulder and saw Michael taking shallow breaths as his eyes glassed over. He wanted to say something, anything, when his foot clanged against something dead ahead, and he twisted to find himself face to face with a barred iron gate.

The column of Legacies stopped as Jack inspected the heavy bolt and the keyhole in the lock metal.

Sidney squeezed past Michael to assist Jack and as he flattened himself, Michael looked at Rose. Her thick curled hair was dark in the low light. Loose strands fell about her face and the icy blue of her eyes seemed to cut through the shadow.

Nichole glanced at Michael, seeing the softness in his face, and watched as he turned back around, only then to catch Rose glancing up at him. They missed each other by a fraction of a breath and Nichole let out a quiet, thin sigh.

Down the end of the hall, Jack suddenly looked up and let a small curse fall from his mouth.

Sidney frowned, gripping her quarterstaff instinctually. “What?”

“I remember where the key is,” he mumbled, tightening his grip on his shield, knowing he’d have to drop his torch to draw his mace.

“Where?” Sidney asked, barely above a whisper as she watched his indecisive hand.

“Oh, its here.” Jack looked back down the line, and held his torch up, showering light over the Legacies as they all turned to Rose, whereupon she stiffly twisted around to find herself face to face with a figure of pure, deep shadow, no more than three inches away.

The wraith loomed in the dark like a cobra on the sands. It was swirling lightless mass in the shape of a person. Its body seemed to shudder and flinch at the bite of the torchlight, but otherwise it didn’t move.

Rose held in every instinct to scream. She clutched her wand tightly in-hand as the wraith looked her over coldly.

The shadow glanced down the line to Jack and when they spoke, their words came from every patch of darkness in the corridor, endlessly resounding in a tangled heap, like twenty voices arguing the same point. “Who seeks entry?”

Jack laid a sharp hand on Sidney before she could react, but in a hallway as tight as that one, there was no fighting. He lowered the torch and politely said, “Just us, Nakaen. We don’t want any trouble. We didn’t mean to disturb you.”

Michael glanced to Nichole and whispered, “What is this thing?”

The wraith stepped through Rose like a gust of wind, forcing her into a convulsing tremble.

The wraith looked down on Michael, vacant as a starless sky. “Do you mean me, Legacy?”

Michael felt his blood grow ice-cold as he backed up to the wall and they inched closer. He scoured the dark mass, seeing the others panic in the corner of his eye, but before anyone could force the situation into brawl, he stammered on a whim, “My apologies, I spoke out of ignorance. My manners. I forgot to ask, how are you guided?”

Nakaen paused, and although made from the purest silhouette, Michael was half sure they blinked in confusion. “I- I’m guided as Her.” Nakaen turned to glance at Jack at the others, as though hoping they’d explain Michael’s situationally questionable politeness. “I haven’t had anyone ask me that in...”

She never finished the sentence.

Michael frowned, sincerely replying, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

The wraith eased away slightly, and she linked her fingers together somewhat nervously. “And you?” The echoing voice softened, and seemed to be coming only from the shadows which bound her.

Michael felt his breath return as she gave him space and he managed a weak smile. “I’m guided as Him. My name is Michael.”

Nakaen nodded softly and her lightless form looked shyly down the way before she glanced to Jack. “I’m not supposed to let people through here.”

Jack looked to Michael, almost unable to comprehend how his kindness may have saved six lives and said, “I know. I forgot you were here, Nakaen. I’m sorry.”

Nichole gently slung her bow back over her shoulder, so as not to make any sudden movements, and said, “You’ve been down here all alone?”

Nakaen, no longer driven by her initial wave of cold anger, now simply seemed lost and confused. She glanced back and forth numbly, like she was trying to remember something, and eventually just nodded.

More specs of dust rained from above and stones skittered to the ground, sending a wave of nerves through everyone but Michael, who was busily focused on the wraith.

She stayed quiet as Jack began inspecting the gate again, and Michael watched her head wander back and forth again, until finally he realised she was looking at the torches on the wall, all long burnt out. He was sure he would’ve missed it, if he hadn’t used to do the same when his mother doused the lamps in his house. He’d spend hours awake at night, unable to sleep, too scared to go ask his mother to relight them, and unable to do it himself.

“Nakaen?”

She turned to him, cocking her head. “Yes?”

“Would you like me to light one of these torches?”

Karmine began saying, “Michael, light injures-”

Michael raised his hand as politely as he could, stopping him.

Rose and Nichole watched in confusion as the ancient Creation nodded slowly, and with a choked voice, said, “That would be very kind of you.”

Karmine frowned and Michael could ask for Jack’s flint.

The shadow-figure looked at the older man’s confused face, before staring at her formless hands and said, “Water spares us, until we drown. Love warms us, until we burn. Much that we yearn for, hurts us. Such is life. Such is death.”

Michael looked into her blank, unyielding face, unable to see a thing, but anyone with ears would know the sound of a tortured soul when it spoke. He raised his hand said, “What about Starfire? Would you prefer that?”

Nakaen looked up so quickly that Michael was worried he’d overstepped when she said, “I’d take one clove of Creator’s light over a window to the rising sun. Would you really offer me such a gift?”

Michael shielded his hand and summoned a small, gemstone of amber light, softly revealing it to Nakaen as she let out the gentlest gasp he’d heard in the waking world. He held his hand over to her, closed his eyes and rolled his palm, willing the light to leave him, but stay in the world. And where every previous iota of his power had felt like he was dipping into a pool of water within him, it now felt like he was taking a cupped handful out.

The perfect marble of sunset light rolled off his palm and landed in her shadow-made hands, where she stood staring at it, unable or perhaps unwilling to look away.

For a moment, Michael felt smaller. He knew, though had no understanding of how, that some part of him had been given away, and no longer obeyed him.

He felt emptier, until he looked up at Nakaen’s face, and at the light reflecting in her eyes. Michael stifled his own surprise. Her eyes were green, and in the light of his magic, the shadow was banished. And in that moment, he’d never felt more powerful in his life, than by the smile that lived in her.

“Is that okay?” Michael asked.

Nakaen cradled the light in her hands, and the darkness returned to her face. She was not so much as squeezing it, as though afraid she might crush the magic in her grip. She rolled the light into one palm, then summoned a dark, angular key into the fingers of her other, passing it to Michael without looking.

Michael handed it off to Sidney and shortly after the gate was opened, the Legacies squeezed passed, making their way down the hall as they called for the archer to follow.

Michael ignored them for a moment, watching the shade marvel at his creation while Jack’s torchlight faded away, leaving only the light of the magic.

“Why don’t you leave this place?” Michael asked.

She caressed the light, though her fingers tensed with pain to do so. “This is where I failed. Where I turned. I cannot leave until I’ve saved them.” When Michael went to ask more when she looked up for the first time in minutes, holding his gaze in a faceless glance. “Hurry along now, I sense your friends will need you.”

Michael nodded, feeling a weight in his heart. “I hope you find peace.”

“Thank you, Paladin.” Nakaen watched him turn and run after Jack’s torchlight. “I hope the same for you,” she whispered, turning her attention back to the fragment of starfire and beginning to sing, “Watch the winds…”