Chapter Twenty-Three
Talks
The group of young folk tore up the main hall of the keep and shoved through the admin door, sliding to a stop in front of Amekot’s office.
Michael knocked sharply and a tired voice answered, “Come in.”
They entered in a huddle and Amekot seemed to grow more tired at the sight of them. “What can I do for you all?” The man was leant over several piles of parchment all strewn across his great desk.
“Sir, we had an idea!” Oliver said excitedly.
Amekot kept looking over a particular scroll, uninterested. “Is that so?”
Oliver suddenly grew nervous and patted Michael on the back.
The archer swallowed and said, “We realised it would make very little sense if Nikereus didn’t have the Immortal Flame! Why leave your only weakness with the potential for someone else to find it? Chances are, Nikereus has it or knows where it is which means maybe we can take it from them!”
Amekot pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “And what if the Flame doesn’t exist? Or they’re keeping it somewhere unreachable. Or you’re simply wrong?”
Aroha frowned. “We know it exists, Sir-”
“We know it existed,” Amekot interrupted her. “The Immortal Flame was a tool of pure creation. It was used to don immortality, but that doesn’t mean it was impervious to time. The Gargan themselves created the world upon which you’re standing. And yet, they themselves are dust. There are no certainties. Our best chance is to understand how Nikereus managed to imbue their creatures with this resurrection magic, so that we might learn how to reverse it. Yes, the flame may have been involved, but there’s as much of a chance it was not.”
The group of Legacies all looked rather dejected and they nodded as he spoke.
The man glanced up to see their expressions and sighed as he looked back to his scrolls. “I’m sorry. It was a good idea. Unfortunately, it seems Nikereus was luckier than us, this time...”
His eye caught on a line of the scroll in front of him and Amekot suddenly hunched over the page with interest.
“Sir?”
Amekot didn’t respond. He merely blinked and then a bright smile of pure disbelief spread across his face. “I’ll be damned.” He waved them over and chuckled with incredulity as he gestured to the unrolled scroll. “This is one of the communications we found in Angel’s Archive. It was written about a cycle ago but never sent. I’ve been going through the records we recovered but its been slow going because that place is effectively just records. I don’t believe this…”
The air became tense and Michael asked, “What’s Angel’s Archive?”
Aroha looked to him sadly and murmured, “Angel’s Archive was a stronghold like Fort Guardian, but it was focused more on research than training. It was destroyed last cycle. We sent a war-party to aid them when we found out they were in danger but we were too late. We found nothing but bodies.”
Michael felt his stomach twist.
“Listen to this,” Amekot said, and he began reading aloud, “‘Fortmaster Hillborn, I’m afraid I’ve waited too long to write this letter. I’m sure my pride has meant the death of us. The horde that are at our door-” Amekot’s reading voice stops and he adds, “this part is crossed out then re-penned. He frowns, continuing “–an army, something deathless. I don’t have much time, they’ve broken through the outer-wall and they’ll breach our central citadel by nightfall. We managed to capture one of their soldiers-” Amekot squints and shakes his head, uncertain. “-found something dark. The magic used upon it is older than any other I’ve ever seen. Its Gargan, there’s no doubt. I almost didn’t recognise the way it worked, but now that I have, I can’t un-see it. The reformation is one and the same as their natural curse. Nothing… been added. Their immortality is simply enhanced, so rather than being reborn in the Dark Lands, they’re reborn on Draendica. It has-’ and she stops writing here, I assume when their citadel collapsed atop of them.”
Oliver’s face was paler than the parchment as he asked, “Besides being overwhelmingly grim, what is this supposed to have to revealed to us.”
Amekot began clearing up his desk as he said, “It shows us that we’re not the first to be threatened by a band of undying Shanii. Deathless, she said.”
Sarah snapped her fingers in quick succession, reawakening a memory. “What did they- the Tablets! The Location Tablets! They want this to make it easier to find and eliminate Legacy strongholds! They’re clearly trying to go down the list, and if they want ours, it means they didn’t get a hold of the Archive tablet.”
“More importantly, it shows they have the Immortal Flame, right?” asked Nichole, looking over the scroll herself. “Deathless. That word was picked carefully.”
Amekot made a hesitant face and responded, “It shows Nikereus has something of Gargan-grade magical potency, whether it’s the flame or not.”
Michael realised that no matter what Nikereus wielded, be it the flame or some other dark magic, the only chance they stood at combatting it would be to understand it. “Oh gods.”
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
The group glanced at him in alarm and Sarah snorted in laughter.
Amekot only nodded. “Whatever it is, Nikereus will be bringing it to us in a short few spells. Now, I appreciate you helping me toward this revelation but I…. I have a lot to consider.”
Michael frowned and opened his mouth to say Well, we could go in there after that asshole but when he saw that look, something stopped him. “Sir.”
Michael led the others out of the man’s office and back through the reception. When the doors closed behind him, Michael slowed to a stop and the others all seemed to share his confusion.
Oliver’s face was deeply set in uncertainty. “Did we gain anything from that?”
Aroha huffed and said, “There’s something about that guy... I feel like we were on to something.”
Michael nodded but felt his natural skepticism creep in. “He isn’t always like that?”
The group shook their heads in general disagreement and Sarah mumbled, “He’s easy-going until any kind of bump arrives in the road. That’s roughly when the stress-veins show up.”
They stepped back outside into the dim light of day and watched as the rest of the fortress ambled around in silence. There was a hush lying thick among everyone. The soft ting and hsss of the smithing forges sang in the distance but even they were muted somehow.
The day seemed to fall away.
Michael wasn’t sure exactly how he spent it, but he moved aimlessly between activities with Sarah and Oliver, all the while unable to distract himself. His head was so full of questions and not of all them were tied to Nikereus. He wanted to think about magic and the Gargan and the idea that some secret power lurked in his veins.
But he couldn’t. All he could think about was his mother’s face. Slowly as he thought on it, the face became Carter’s and then James’, and every now and again he’d catch Oliver looking at him, concern tight in his face.
*****
The dinner crowd had long since dispersed and a small band of Legacies were playing their instruments on the pop-up stage in the distance.
Michael sat in front of one of the bonfires and watched the coals as they smouldered amidst the curling flames.
Sarah fell down beside the boy and looked him over for a moment. “How you doing, bowman?”
Michael watched as one of the wooden logs popped and sent up a plume of sparks. He shrugged and opened his mouth to speak, only to realise he was unsure of what he wanted to say.
Oliver sat down on his other side and nudged him gently with his shoulder.
Together the three of them sat for some time, when deep into the moment Oliver sighed, and said softly, “I’m sorry, Michael.”
“For what?”
“For such a shit start to your new life.”
Michael couldn’t help but chuckle at his abruptness and Sarah too smothered a laugh.
Oliver smiled but tried to maintain his tone. “What? I’m serious!”
Michael sighed the humour away and thought about his day. “Yeah, it was certainly somethin’. Getting abandoned by my mother and threatened by a rock formation in the same day was not something I would’ve guessed at.”
Oliver nodded gently, holding in a smirk, but quickly the smile faded. He’d never met his own parents. Instead he’d spent his childhood being passed around different orphanages for being too much of a hassle. He couldn’t help but wonder if there was any similar feeling Michael’s heart.
Sarah looked quietly at the two boys thinking about her own parents. Her father had been around but only in the technical sense. He was there on paper, to say the least. And her mother had left when she was born, though not for no reason.
The trio felt the gentle breeze of the night and watched as the flames grew taller, reaching high into the vast and deep dark, all orphans in one way or another.
“What are we going to do?” asked Oliver, as though speaking to the coals. His sandy hair seemed dark in the firelight. It hung over his eyes as he stared into the coals with his head bowed. “Nikereus is going to be here before autumn’s end. Are we really just going to sit here?”
Michael knew by the distance in his voice that he wasn’t really speaking to them but he answered anyway. His mind was far away, timid and scared. “How long have you been here, Oli?”
Oliver furrowed his brow and said, “Nearly two cycles? Less? I was about fifteen when Ari and Nichole brought me here...just a shade younger than you, I’d bet.”
“I’ll wager this fortress has been here for a thousand cycles. Look at it, for Rii’s sake!” Michael lay flat on his back and gestured to the towering grey walls, splayed with bright, burnished veins of steel and bronze.
“I want to be sad, you know? I want to be angry and confused and scared… but look at this place!” The archer waved all the more at the great, magical landscape and laughed into the night at the bizarre nature of it all. “It’s ridiculous! If God herself wanted to wipe this place from the face of Draendica, it’d take her a month. There’s no telling how many piss-ants like Nikereus have tried their luck here only to end up treading in the moat.”
Sarah and Oliver lay down next to him, enticed by his spur of joy and Sarah piled onto his comment. “He’s right, Oli. The library here has a whole set of histories on it. This place is older than Talis Windbringer and nowhere near as sketchy.” She glanced at him, smiling widely as her sharp blue eyes pierced the shadows above.
Oliver gave a long, low whistle. He lay there for some time and slowly the tension in his chest fell away. “Screw you guys for makin’ me feel better.”
Sarah twisted her head to see his dimples return. She was content watching him when he glanced sideways at her and they both held eyes for a moment before breaking away again, looking deep into the void as their hearts leapt.
Michael listened as the music began to come alive again beyond their bonfire.
Fear is an interesting thing, but it’s not something which keeps. Some things can make you scared over and over and over again but it’s the keeping you scared while its gone, that’s the tough part. Even when you know that darkness is coming, the idea of it can only hold so much weight. But, it really has to be there, in your face. And when you’re lying in the grass, staring up into heaven while music plays and your friends speak softly... well, we forget what the word even means.
Michael had a plan. He didn’t know much about the world in which he stood, but he understood one thing: You can’t play if you don’t know the rules. Some part of him wondered Why are you thinking about this as if it’s a game? but he realised it was nothing more. Nikereus could have shown up with their full might and laid them low, but no. Because Nikereus wanted them to know there was nothing they could do, even with all the time in the world.
But there was something Nikereus didn’t know. Something he never could have predicted. That there was a new Paladin in Fort Guardian, and he read far too many stories.
Michael thought about telling them his plan when the rangers showed up, liquor in-hand. I’ll wait till morning, he decided.
He took a deep swig and immediately knew the taste was of Crekaen Dark and quickly his head began to sway. He took another drink and leapt up to his feet, grabbing his friends by their hands.
Midday.