Charomera

The 24th of Elaphebolion

The Year 4631 in the Era of Mortals

“Arche, it’s not your—”

“Bullshit. Yes, it fucking is my fault.”

They had retreated down the passage from the others. Not quite out of earshot, but far enough to not be in the way. Abraxios was keeping an eye on the beastmar they had captured and Odelia was tending to Tess, who had yet to regain consciousness. The Life Shaman’s Mana regeneration was truly prodigious; it seemed she could cast a new healing spell every half minute, but even still, Tess’s survival was a coin-toss.

“You need to be there for her.”

“I’m the reason she’s like this. The best thing for her is for me to stay away before I do any more harm.”

Lyssa’s eyes flashed with anger. Faster than Arche’s eyes could track, she shoved him up against the wall and spoke with a grit to her voice that Arche had never heard before.

“You played a fool; this is the price. You don’t get to run from that. Go to her, Arche. She needs you. Whatever happens, you will be there because she needs you to be there. She followed you this far, do not betray that.”

If she hadn’t pinned him to the wall, he would have crumpled. Everything had gone so wrong so quickly. He’d fucked up—god, he’d fucked up—and he couldn’t explain to anybody, not even himself, why he’d done what he had. Things had gone well enough for so long that he’d forgotten how dangerous the world really was. Even after almost dying to the chímaira, even after all his close calls, he’d let himself get caught up in his emotions instead of thinking. Tess was paying the price when it should have been him lying on the floor, bleeding out.

Arche found his feet under him, took a shuddering breath, and nodded. Lyssa let him go, her own expression growing inscrutable. He followed her back to the others and sat on the stone floor, taking Tess’s hand in his own again. Her skin was cool to the touch, as if she were already dead, but a subtle, arhythmic rise and fall in her chest showed she still lived. For the moment.

He pressed her hand to his chest with both of his, willing heat back into it. Helpless was too small a word for the emptiness inside of him. He felt small, like a child confronted by the inevitability of death. He wanted to retreat inside of himself, curl up and push everything out. He wanted it to be him on the ground, being operated on, so at least if he died it would have been his own fault and no one else would pay the price for his mistakes.

Cold droplets splashed across the back of his hands. Arche realized he was crying. He didn’t know if he’d been crying the whole time or if he’d just started, but when he rubbed his face against his shoulder, his cheeks were slick. A flash of green light, another healing spell. Odelia’s face was flushed and sweaty from the effort of constantly draining Mana, though her evident control and skill with magic must have staved away all risk of Mana Burnout.

The light triggered a memory, one Arche had almost forgotten. An experience from a dream, when he had met a strange figure who had extinguished a green candle from a world similar to Tartarus but not quite the same. Arche didn’t know if he’d be able to contact the being, or even if it would be able to help, but it was something.

Arche rearranged himself into a poor-man’s lotus position and straightened his spine. He held Tess’s hand in his own, focusing the full extent of his attention on her. He tried to trace a path from his heart to hers, willing his mind to open up and accept her in its awareness, like it accepted the Tridory. When he called out to the spear to return to him, he got the vaguest sense of where it was. The slightest hint of direction, of something existing outside of himself. He tried to find Tess in that same way, calling to her with sheer will.

He had no idea if what he was attempting was even possible. He was skating by on half-baked instincts, desperation, and the barest seeds of hope he was too afraid to let grow. The alternative was to do nothing and that wasn’t an option.

For several minutes, he felt nothing but her hand in his, her weak pulse beneath his fingers. Then his mind brushed against something. He felt her. She was an awareness on the edge of his mental boundaries. Her mind’s walls were like stone but they were weak, deteriorating. His own were mud, shoddy and unkempt, but he could still feel her through them, however faintly. He focused on his own walls first, fashioning a gate that would allow him to exit and others to enter by his desire, and reinforced the walls around it, turning that portion of his mind into hardened stone. Strangely, his Mana dipped as he manipulated the mental construct. He felt he could continue strengthening the borders of his mind, but it would take considerable time and effort. Time he didn’t have.

With a command, he lowered the gate to his mind and forced his consciousness to leave its safety, stepping out into the ephemeral nothingness that stood between his walls and Tess’s. The negative space was unexpectedly aggressive in its expanse. Arche was struck with sudden fear as he became aware of the sheer expanse that awaited him in this new domain. It was almost enough to make him turn and bolt back into the safety of his mind, but his purpose kept him where he was. He forced himself closer to Tess’s mental walls and reached out his consciousness to brush against them. They shuddered at his touch but he kept the contact, trying to project reassurance and support.

He felt instinctively that he would be able to break through her walls if he tried, given the weakness of her condition, but he also felt the shock from doing so could kill her. He was in the untested waters of ephemerality, where instinct and logic clashed. There were secrets out in the nothingness that could never be revealed in the physical world. He could discover things no mortal mind could conceive, but to go that far would be to lose himself as well, leaving his body behind forever without hope of ever finding his way back.

Arche ignored the impossibilities and focused on Tess’s mind alone. He pushed more complex emotions toward her. His gratitude for sparing his life. His guilt for what had happened. His burning need to do something, anything, to help her. A few stone blocks tumbled away in front of him, leaving a gap large enough for him to slip inside.

Tess had let him in. That simple fact nearly broke him.

His consciousness filtered into her mind and her emotions washed over him. Fear was near the top. Fear of death, fear of pain, fear of betrayal, fear of being alone. All of it came crashing down on Arche’s consciousness even as Tess herself appeared to be trying to hold it back, in vain.

‘It’s all right, Theresa. I’m here.’

Arche projected reassurance. He was with her, he wouldn’t leave her. In those moments, he could hide nothing from her and she could hide nothing from him. Their lives coexisted. She saw his every memory, his every mistake and every triumph, from the time he had woken up in the woods to that very moment. She saw his profession trial and the choices he made, she saw his first encounter with Lyssa and how he’d nearly died to a diseased wolf, and she saw how he had stood up for Helwan and given him a chance when it would have been easy to let the satyr die.

In return, he saw her life. He saw her grow up in the house of a merchant lord, doted on by servants. Saw her rebelliousness as she would slip away from the house and her caretakers to go play in the city with her friends. Tasted the nectar of stolen fruit, pinched from stalls for childhood dares. Felt the deep laughs of clever jokes and the solemnity of pacts that only the young can make with their entire hearts.

He also saw darkness. A betrayal at the hands of her friends. She was stolen away and held for ransom against her father. She had been abused, tortured, and led to believe she would die. Two months she was kept captive, waiting for her father to rescue her, for his guards to come sweeping in and take her to safety. Her friends had used her trust to lure her somewhere her father couldn’t find; their own fathers wrote the ransom note. Five thousand drachmae for her life. A life that was belittled and tortured with every passing day. A life that was violated and degraded. A life that came to wish for its own end.

She was twelve.

The ransom was paid and she was freed, but the scars were heavy upon her mind. She bore their weight everywhere. She did not eat, she did not speak. Sleep came only upon exhaustion’s beckoning and it was restless. Her father was patient with her, at first, but grew angry by her sixteenth birthday. He didn’t understand how deep the scars went. Didn’t understand how shattered Theresa’s mind had become. All he knew was the price he had paid and that what he’d received wasn’t the same girl that had been stolen. She felt her father’s resentment for what had become of her and Arche felt it through her.

At seventeen, she left her father’s house.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

She wandered the streets for days, sleeping in alleyways and stealing from stalls like she had as a child, but she did not go unnoticed. The local thieves’ guild, Hekatonkheires, had taken an interest in her and sent her an invitation. Here, the memories became shiny, hopeful. She had joined, reluctantly at first, but grew to appreciate what they provided her with. They taught her skills and gave her the confidence she needed to look after herself. She had forced herself to be strong, to be self-reliant, because she never forgot what had been done to her, and she never trusted anyone the way she had trusted her childhood friends.

Ten years passed as she worked for the Hekatonkheires, then the guild was attacked by a rival, the Keres, and her chapter was destroyed. Theresa had barely escaped with her life. She spent the next year scrounging up what she could, running from the Keres, who still tried to hunt her down, and finally found a place in the expedition to create the village of Buton. The shininess faded.

Arche saw Callias Buteo approach Tess, offering her coin and an ultimatum. Kill Arche and be paid a hefty sum or be left to fend for herself once again. So far from the city, the only home she knew, she had no choice. The forest was a death sentence. She knew nothing of Arche, either, other than that he had shown up and fought. It was his life or hers, and she had long since refused to place other lives above hers. He saw the party from her perspective, how she had maneuvered drinks into his hands, danced with him, led him away from the party and the prying eyes of Lyssa. How she had waited until he’d passed out, robbed him, then dragged him deep into the forest where none would find his body.

Then she had made her fatal mistake. Instead of simply killing Arche, she had decided to speak with him first. She was a thief, not a killer, and she needed reassurance that Arche deserved the fate coming to him. After their talk, she had decided he didn’t. Then he had saved her, both from the mantikhoras and the forest itself, when she was too weak to carry herself back to the village. Saved her when it would have been the easiest thing in the world to let her die. When she would have deserved it. When she would have done it, had their positions been reversed.

There was an emotion wrapped up in that memory. One too complex and ethereal for Arche to recognize, but it was strong. Joy and fear, guilt and attraction. All roiled together in a seething mass, until he couldn’t tell them apart anymore.

Arche’s heart broke for her, for the struggle that had been her life. He didn’t know if she had shared her life purposefully or if it had been a side-effect of allowing his consciousness into her mind, but he was grateful for the trust. Now that he was here, he was unsure of what to do, but he knew he needed to find a way of contacting that being. The one that claimed to be Death. He reached his consciousness out toward the world he had only seen in his dreams.

At first, nothing happened. Then, slowly, he felt his consciousness bleed into that strange world. Tartarus, but not Tartarus. Arche’s eyes opened and he became aware that, for the first time in several minutes, his consciousness was connected to a body. He stood, trying to get a sense of his surroundings.

He was still underground, but the rock was red instead of gray. The passage continued for a long way in both directions before eventually disappearing into nothing. Several dim, green candles floated around him.

“What’s going on? Why can’t I see my vitals?”

Arche turned and found Tess lying on the ground. Her positioning was the same as it had been but she was conscious and moving. Her armor was gone, replaced by the same crude, white clothing that Arche also wore. He helped her to her feet.

“I entered this world once in a dream and saw a creature here that affected the dead. It was the only thing I could think of that might help.”

“I’m…dead, then.”

“Not if I can help it. I didn’t actually know you would come here, too. Not quite sure how I managed that. Not quite sure how I got here myself, actually. As far as I know, I didn’t fall asleep.”

Tess looked at him for a moment, then nodded as if to herself.

“That was you, in my head. I didn’t know if I had dreamed it.” Her face fell. “So…you saw.”

“I did. I’m sorry.”

Tess turned away.

“I suppose that was my choice. I didn’t want to die alone. Sorry you had to see all that, bet it wasn’t what you were expecting.”

“I…I know it doesn’t mean anything coming from me, but it wasn’t your fault. Any of it.”

Tess looked at him, eyes wide and discerning. She cocked her head and gave him a small smile.

“It doesn’t mean nothing. I’m pretty sure I’m still dreaming, though.”

“You should not be here.”

The voice swept through them like a chill wind. Arche and Tess whirled to find a figure standing near them. An amorphous helmet covered its face, shifting between humanoid features and a smooth, metallic surface. Two eyeholes cut deep into the mask, the only permanent blemish. Arche shuddered under the weight of Death’s glare. Two white pupils surrounded by sclera as black as the void. The figure took a single step toward them, its interlocking black metal plated armor making a chinking noise as it moved. The black cape at its back billowed despite the lack of wind.

“You said that last time,” Arche said as the being advanced.

“It was true then. It is true now.”

The entity’s voice was mellow and smooth, like it had lived a thousand lifetimes and was now simply bored. No, bored implied it had something better to do. It was as if the creature cared for nothing, despite the words it spoke.

“Arche, who is that?” Tess’s voice quavered as she spoke, a sound that Arche had never heard from the normally implacable woman.

“I am the end that comes for all things. I am become Death.”

The being said this plainly, without boast or pride, as if they were simply commenting on the weather.

“And I have come for you, Theresa Eliades.”

“No.” Arche moved between them. “You want her, you go through me. I don’t care if you are Death.”

Death raised a gauntleted hand. Every muscle in Arche’s body froze. His nerves fired erratically but he couldn’t move despite every instinct telling him he’d been thrust into an ice bath of pointy needles. Death drew closer to him, peering at him with those horrible, inverted eyes, any emotion hidden behind the ever-shifting mask.

Arche was left with no choice but to stare back into the uncaring eyes in front of him as they searched his, seeming to scour into his very soul, which was a very real possibility. After several long moments, Death pulled away.

“You have fire, spirit. I can see why you were chosen. But this is not about you. Theresa Eliades, it is time.”

“To…die?” Tess’s voice shook. “I’m not ready.”

“No one ever is, young one, but I come for them all, in the end.”

Arche raged, still held prisoner in his own body. He was helpless, again, and the one being he had sought out to try to deal with was also the thing that was going to take Tess away. He struggled against the invisible chains binding him, but he couldn’t even exert enough control over his own body to blink. There was a deep, aching, tearing pain in his chest as Death stepped past him.

Help me.

It was a desperate plea, laden with all the sorrow in Arche’s heart, all the weight of his mistakes.

Help me. Please.

“What are you doing here?” Death’s voice was confused, the first emotion the entity had shown, but Arche was grateful for the delay.

There was no reply that Arche could hear but Death responded anyway, as though carrying on a conversation.

“You are weak. Perhaps you have forgotten yourself. You should be resting with the others before I come for you myself. Again.”

Silence again. Arche burned anew, this time with curiosity. Everything that was going on was happening behind him, and he could only hear part of the conversation. It was maddening.

“Speak not to me of the knave king. You would spend that debt now? For these mortals? Not even for your own life, but for theirs…very well. But know this: I shall grant it only this once. Interfere again, and I will come for you.”

There was a sound like a flapping cape and Arche could move again. He whirled around, hoping to catch a glimpse of whoever had intervened on his behalf, but saw only Tess. She collapsed, apparently likewise frozen. Arche rushed to her side, scanning the passage to make sure that they were actually alone before returning his attention to her.

“What’s wrong?”

“I can feel it,” she hissed. “My side. Titan’s Blood, it hurts. What happened? I don’t understand.”

“Death spared us, it seems. We can talk later; we should get back to the real world. I think this means you’re going to live.”

“Lucky me. Why did no one mention how much this was going to hurt?”

Tess groaned, loud and guttural. Her eyes clenched shut as her entire body seized. Arche grabbed her hand and tried to focus on returning to their bodies back to the tunnel with the others. He felt a pull in his center, not dissimilar to that from the Profession Trial, and succumbed to it. The world around him blurred and he shut his eyes against the motion.

He was floating in space.

No, not floating. He was hurtling through space. He could see nothing, feel nothing, but he knew he was traveling. Too much had happened in much too short a time for him to explore the feeling. He only hoped that wherever he landed, it wouldn’t hurt.