Power wrapped around Aeld as he stood in the center of the secondary focus, not as much as the Inquisitor had held, but far more than I’d seen him draw from his valskab before. Rather than taking that power into himself, though, as the heltharvis had done, he drew it in through his staff and channeled it down into the ritual he’d laid out on the floor. The lines of that ritual slowly lit up, starting near him and working their way out into the room. I looked down and examined them quickly, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of the damn thing.
“Sara, any clue what this does?” I asked.
“No, John, sorry. I haven’t seen enough of it to really be able to tell.”
“It’s—it’s a calling,” Kadonsel said quietly.
“What?”
“It’s a calling ritual. I recognize parts of it. I don’t know what it’s supposed to call, though.”
“I’m not sure what it could call,” Sara added. “The array’s already drawn practically every spirit in its radius.”
“Aeld, what are you doing?” Fifa screamed, jarring me from my silent dialogue. “It’s over! The Bargain is broken! Our people are safe!”
“Safe? How, Fifa?” the letharvis demanded, his voice haughty but a little wild as he shouted over the screaming wind. “You think the four-legs will simply let us live in peace? That they’ll walk away from the war and death? When have they ever turned away from conflict?”
“I…” The woman’s face looked troubled, but Aeld didn’t wait for her response.
“They won’t! I’ve seen the future—our future—without the Great Bargain, Fifa!”
“Seen the future? What are you talking about, Aeld?”
“A vision from the spirits—but not just any spirits. The Great Dark Spirit from beyond reached out to me, came to me as I meditated! It took me from my body and showed me the world, this world, and how we’ve all been lied to. How we’ve been used!”
“Yes, Aeld, the elders lied to us…”
“No, Fifa, not the foolish elders. They’ve been deceived as much as we have, as much as the four-legs have! And the ones deceiving us are the spirits themselves! And now, I’m punishing them for it!”
I watched as the ritual ignited, and a web of power streaked upward, racing toward the First Spirit hovering above us. The tendrils slammed into the spirit, and a titanic roar filled the air as the power of the array suddenly shot upward, surging toward the spirit and wrapping thick cables of energy around it.
“Well, that answers what he’s calling,” I thought grimly.
“He—he’s trying to bind a great spirit?” Kadonsel asked in a horrified voice. “That isn’t possible!”
“I’m betting that it is. Any idea how to stop him?”
“The array,” Sara said instantly. “Shut it off, and he won’t have the power to maintain his ritual.”
Another roar shook the room, making the entire volcano tremble and shake as a lash of pure white energy tinged with a hint of grayish shadow shot upward and lanced into the spirit. Waves of power rippled and rolled around the room, battering us all as the spirit thrashed and roiled in the sky. Despite its struggles, though, a tendril of golden energy slid down from it, twisting around the white beam. That wisp of power shuddered and jolted its way toward the earth, sinking down until it touched the flawless crystal—and vanishing inside.
“Oh, shit,” I muttered. “He’s not just calling it. He’s binding it into the crystal. Sara, can that thing hold a First Spirit?”
“I don’t know, John. That thing’s power level is beyond the Oikithikiim scale, but that crystal could be technically bottomless. So—maybe?”
“Aeld, stop!” Fifa shrieked, staring at the spirit and the crystal. “What are you doing?”
“What we should have done long ago, Fifa!” he laughed, his voice high and wild and a little crazy. “Binding the First Spirits to our will!”
“You can’t, Aeld! You’ll doom us all!”
“No, you hemskall! The First Spirits have doomed us, and if you think about history for a moment, both ours and the four-legs, you’ll know I’m right!”
“Okay, screw the history lesson,” I thought, tuning the shaman out. “Kadonsel, if I wanted to turn off the array, how would I do it?”
“I—I’m not really sure, Outsider. Typically, arrays run down once they’ve concentrated all the energy within their circle. Otherwise, the typical way is to remove the crystals starting from the innermost layer and working outward.”
“The high spirits, John,” Sara said succinctly. “Take those out of the array, and it’ll stop the flow.”
“Got it. All of them?”
“I—I don’t think that’s necessary, Outsider. The array didn’t activate until the strongest of them entered it. Remove the ancient of this place, and it should stop.”
“Let’s hope I can do that, then.” I activated Fade once more and began to move toward the inner layer of crystals, trying to move slowly and carefully so that my movements wouldn’t attract attention. Fortunately, Aeld was busy monologuing.
“Think, Fifa!” he railed. “Why did the four-legs come to our lands? Because of their drought, but what caused it? The world was cooling, and that would have killed them. So, what did they do? They called the first spirits, and those spirits drove them from their land!”
“Calling the first spirits is always dangerous, Aeld! We all know that! They punish anyone who dares bother them!”
“But what if it wasn’t a punishment?” he asked. “What if it was intentional, to force the four-legs to our shores?” His eyes blazed with anger and stored power as he spoke. “To bring beings that thrive on conflict to our people? Beings who themselves credit the first spirits with their need for violence and battle?” He glanced at the circle slowly dimming around the ojaini, and his eyes grew even brighter. “People who deserve to die for what they’ve done to us!”
He slammed his staff down on the stone floor, and an arc of power shot from him and streaked to the circle, which quickly lit up once more as power flowed into it. Kadonsel cried out in my thoughts, and the ojaini’s screams redoubled as the chaining renewed itself, killing the far-distant Oikies with its power.
The volcano rumbled again as the first spirit bellowed in pain and outrage. I glanced upward to see a much thicker stream of golden power pouring into the crystal, which now held an aureate glow in the very center of it. I ignored that and slipped around the crystals of the array, trying to keep the flawless one between Aeld and me. I really didn’t want his attention, and I hoped that my recent Stealth upgrade would let me hide in the powerful magical field surrounding us. I knew that Aeld was a powerful letharvis, and while I didn’t think he was as strong as the heltharvis, I didn’t really want to risk fighting him if I didn’t have to—especially since I didn’t have the advantages I’d had against her. Hopefully, between the crystal and his ongoing argument with Fifa, he wouldn’t notice me.
“And then, the world kept warming!” he shouted at the woman. “That was no punishment for the four-legs! It was a gift to them and a curse to us! The conflict and the warming forced us to retreat, to cede our lands to the four-legs, until we had nowhere to go. And then, facing our own extinction, what did we do? We reached out to the first spirits ourselves, and they created the Bargain!”
“Yes, it was a foolish and desperate thing,” Fifa agreed. “We all know that now…”
“No, Fifa, that’s not my point. The Bargain was foolish, yes, but who set things in motion so that we’d have no choice but to make it? The first spirits themselves! They drove the four-legs to us, gave them a need for conquest, and changed the world to force us to flee from them. They pushed us to make the Bargain, Fifa! It was what they wanted all along!”
I crept slowly through the crystals as the man spoke, only half-listening to him. I wasn’t the only one in my head, though, and someone else seemed to be paying much better attention.
“He—by the spirits, he makes sense!” Kadonsel gasped. “We always assumed that the punishments of the great spirits were random and arbitrary, designed to remind us not to call on them. What if they weren’t, though? What if they did all that just to force this war?”
She was right; Aeld did make a lot of sense, and realistically, he was probably right. More to the point, I had a feeling I knew why they did it, as well: to get the spirits of the people of this world. They were no better than Menogra and the Powers. I’d seen those spirits flowing up into the trapped first spirit above.
The thing was, none of that mattered to me. I’d completed my mission, more or less, and whatever Aeld had in mind, I just needed to stop it. The man was sounding more and more like a fanatic, and fanatics rarely made good decisions. The reasons didn’t matter to me; what mattered was making sure that all this ended so I could get the hell out of here.
Apparently, Aeld disagreed with me.
“I asked the dark spirit, ‘Why? Why would the first spirits do this to us?’” the man continued. “And it showed me. The first spirits need us, Fifa. They need our spirits and our power. They’ve hidden our world away from existence so they can control us without interference, and they harvest our lives like we harvest grain! They set our people against the four-legs to create more deaths, more conflict, more hatred, all to feed their terrible appetites!”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Aeld, that can’t be true,” Fifa said with a touch of despair.
“It is, and you know it! I can see the understanding in your eyes! The first spirits have turned us into cattle, nothing more! Tonight, though, that ends!” He pointed his staff toward the spirit being drawn down into the crystal. “The four-legs may be misguided, but they understand something that we never have. Why bargain with spirits when you can simply trap them and demand their power? Once the first spirit is trapped, I’ll command it to return the world to the way it was, before the Change. I’ll force it to restore the valskabs without the Bargain! With this, I can save our people, Fifa—all of them!”
“I—I won’t let you, Aeld! I’ll stop you!”
“How?” he laughed wildly. “You have no power to face me, not without your valskab! Not while I’m drawing on this array!”
“You aren’t the only one who can do that!” She ran over to the empty circle the heltharvies had left behind. She hesitated for a second, took a deep breath, and stepped inside. She screamed as power exploded into her, pouring through her body, and for a moment, I thought that the overload was going to kill her. To my surprise, one of her hands slowly rose, trembling and shaking as it pointed at Aeld. Power flared in her palm, and a massive wave of ice exploded from her and shot toward the shaman. Aeld’s eyes widened, but a curtain of flame erupted around him, meeting the ice with a roar of steam that filled the room instantly.
“You may have power, Fifa, but I’m the better letharvis!” he shouted at her. “We both know it!”
“M-maybe,” she called back, her voice trembling. “B-but I won’t let you d-do this to our p-people!” Another wall of ice rolled toward him, but this time, he met it with a blast of flame that struck it. The two powers exploded into steam that washed over me, burning my skin and blanketing the room in a thick fog, but beneath that cover, I ran over to the crystal and lifted my spear, preparing to drive it into the spirit and drain its power.
“John, if you meld it, the whole volcano might erupt!” Sara said sharply. “You need to free it without melding it!”
“How?” I demanded.
“Like you have any other spirit. Grab it and pull.”
“Do I have the power for that? That high spirit’s powerful, Sara!”
“You—you can get it,” Kadonsel offered in a trembling voice. “There’s another source of power that’s even stronger: the great spirit.”
I whirled to face the golden streamer of power rolling into the flawless crystal. “Sara, could I…?”
“It’s risky, John,” she said grimly. “You’ll probably hurt yourself doing it. But if you’re fast—maybe.”
I braced myself, took my spear, and plunged it into the golden tendril, pulling hard as I did.
It felt like licking a fucking taser.
Power exploded into me in torrent, an ocean of energy beyond anything I’d ever experienced. Usually, I drew in a steady trickle of energy, but this time, I sucked in a flood. A river of power slammed into my core, filled it, and overfilled it. Energy rushed into my spirits, until they felt bloated and heavy inside me, yet still more power poured in. It surged down my veins, raced up my spine, plunged into my bones. Every cell seemed to tremble with energy, and my body simultaneously burned and throbbed with strength at the same time. It was intoxicating; it was terrifying; it was beyond anything I’d felt before.
“You’ve got plenty, John!” Sara said urgently, practically shouting to be heard over the rush of energy. “Hurry! Shut down the array before it’s too late!”
That was right. I was here to do a job, not to revel in this power. I had a mark, and that mark waited for me, trapped and helpless. The power flooding me called to me, begging me to embrace it and pull more, but I pushed that desire aside ruthlessly. John Gilliam might have had trouble resisting the seductive energy, but in that moment, I wasn’t John Gilliam. I was the Faceless Man, and once the Faceless Man had a mark, nothing could turn him aside from it.
My thoughts were clear and cold as I pulled my weapon from the golden ribbon of power, ignoring the part of me that yearned to reach out to it. I’d wished for a lot of things in my life that I’d never get. This was just one more added to the list, and like all the rest, it was meaningless. Only the job mattered.
My hands shifted into insubstantiality as I activated Spiritual Strike. Power flooded them as I poured energy into a Channeled Strike, shifting them into claws of golden flame. I lashed out into the crystal, and I felt my fingers plunge through the outer surface into the depths of the spirit within. The spirit screamed as my hands wrapped around it, then shrieked again as I pulled on it, pouring power into my will as I began to tear it free from its cage.
“NO!” Aeld’s shout echoed in the room as he finally realized what I was doing. “Stop, Freyd! This has to happen!” I ignored the man and pulled, hard. Energy surged into me from my Draining Aura, joining the flood I already held, burning in my body. The power sharpened my thoughts, strengthened my muscles, and focused my senses—which meant when the sudden surge of spirit rushed at me from the side, I twisted to face it instead of being caught by surprise. The spirit slammed into me, grabbing me in talons of iron, and I felt myself being yanked from my body as the world went misty around me.
I hurtled backward, flung from my body by the potent spirit towering over me. It wore Aeld’s face, but its body looked more like the stornbyor I’d fought when I first came to this world, grown to immensity. His clawed hands gripped my flesh, biting into it deeply as he drove me backward, away from the high spirit.
he shouted, his voice roaring in the spirit world.
I flew backward and slammed hard into something that burned and froze me at the same time. I growled in pain and looked back to see that he’d shoved me against one of the elder crystals. I felt the draw of the crystal beneath me, trying to pull me beneath its surface, to trap my spirit inside the same way it had the elder spirit. Ice spread up my back as the crystal pulled at the very essence of me. I struggled to break free, but empowered by the array, Aeld’s grip was unbreakable, and I felt the energy slowly seeping out of my body, stolen by the crystal beneath me. I lashed out, tearing at his flesh, but his wounds healed instantly as he pulled on the power of the array, and he shoved me down inexorably into the depths of the crystal…
Aeld screamed as a blazing white flame slammed into his side, tearing him from me and hurling him across the room. I pulled myself free of the crystal and stared at the eaglelike spirit soaring past me, its wings burning with crystalline flame—and Fifa’s face plastered across its skull, her teeth bared in a snarl of fury and determination. Aeld leaped to his feet and charged at her, and in response, she screamed in defiance. The two slammed into one another with an explosion of power, ripping and tearing at each other in a blind fury. Explosions of flame and blasts of ice whipped out from the pair, erupting into gouts of steam, but whatever damage they did seemed to heal instantly as the array’s power surged into them.
she screamed at him, her voice an icy gale that whipped about us.
The shaman’s eyes widened as he turned his gaze toward me, seeing me rushing toward him, my body glowing with golden energy stolen from the first spirit. He tried to tear free from Fifa, but her talons sank into him, and her mouth snapped down on his throat, holding him in place. As she did, her eyes seemed to widen, and she yanked her head back, tearing out a hunk of his flesh. That hunk shifted instantly to mist, then flowed down her body—and sank into her.
Part of me wanted to laugh. After all this time, after everything I’d tried to show her how to do it, Fifa had finally figured out Spirit Melding. Fucking took her long enough.
Aeld screamed in pain as Fifa’s teeth plunged back into him, and he arched his back to escape her. As he did, I dove onto his back, sinking my fingers into his flesh.
I growled, lifting one hand high above me, my fingers stiffened into a flat blade.
My hand flashed down, sinking into his flesh, and I rode it, following the blow into his spirit as I had the spirit of Aldhyor. His spirit was solid, thicker than the high spirit’s and far more resilient, but it didn’t matter. He was my mark, and that meant he had to die. My killing intent rode at the edge of my fingers as I drove into him, cutting into his spiritual flesh. He towered over me, his strength dwarfing mine, but strength didn’t matter if it lacked the will to use it. He should have killed me when he had the chance, but he’d hesitated. I wouldn’t make the same mistake.
Filled with the power I’d taken from the first spirit, my body gleamed like the blade of a golden knife, and that knife cut into him, parting his spiritual flesh with ease. Flames exploded around me, white-hot and searing my body, but ice surged out from Fifa and doused them before they could burn me. I felt him thrashing and writhing, trying to break free, but trapped in her grip, he couldn’t turn his powers against me, and in seconds, I sliced through the man’s body until I exploded into the core of his being.
Aeld’s spirit wasn’t what I expected. I’d anticipated a place of flame and fury, but his core was a churning morass of shadows that swirled thickly around me. This, I assumed, was the work of the spirit I’d seen before. How he’d hidden this from his valskab, I’d never know, but it wasn’t really important. What mattered was that this was his true self, not the calm and wise shaman he’d presented to me. That made me feel a little better about what I was about to do.
I reached out and grabbed the man’s spirit, then pulled, drawing it into me. Aeld roared, and the shadows around me sharpened into blades that cut and hacked at me, but I simply sliced away more of his essence, taking it into myself and using it to heal the dreadful wounds he’d given me. Spears stabbed into my sides; knives sliced across my chest; blades cut my face and shoulders. I endured them all, all my intent keenly focused on carving away the man’s spirit. The space around me slowly shrank, and the blades cutting me dulled as I took his strength as my own.
I growled back.
He suddenly hesitated, and I felt something flash through his spirit, a tearing sensation as if something ripped it free from his body.
I raced after him, plunging into my own body to find it kneeling on the floor, my hands still lodged in the spirit. I staggered to my feet, my muscles shaky and burning with fatigue, looked around for Fifa. The woman still stood, swaying, in the center of the heltharvis’ circle, and with her there and Aeld seemingly out of action, I saw another way to end this.
“Fifa!” I shouted. “The first spirit! Send it back to Enverthen!”
“N-not possible!” she screamed, her voice pained and halting.
“Yes, it is! You have the power and the ability. Use them! Try!”
The woman slowly lifted her arms, and I felt another surge of power flow out of her. “Be-begone, first of spirits!” she intoned, her voice halting but slowly gaining strength. “L-leave this world behind, and r-return to the darkness of Enverthen. Trouble th-this world no longer! I c-command it!”
Power exploded from the woman and surged into the flawless crystal. The first spirit shrieked again in rage and fury as the power in the array pushed it free of the crystal, driving its essence back into the sky as it overwhelmed the ritual calling the thing. The power kept flowing, rising as a wall of radiance that drove the spirit upward. As it rose, spirits fell from its body like rain, flowing down to be sucked back into the flawless crystal, and the glow surrounding it diminished as Fifa’s will and power drove it back toward the darkness.
“B-begone!” Fifa commanded. “I b-bind you to the darkness! R-return to this world no m-more!”
The first spirit screamed again as the power drove it into the blackness, and the rift in the sky sealed shut behind it. The moment it vanished, I tensed my grip and pulled, tearing the spirit of Aldhyor out of the crystal and drawing it into myself. The spirit raged and wailed, but with the last of the golden energy filling me, I bound it to myself. The flow of power around me surged inward, stilled for a moment—and rebounded. Power tore through the room in a wave, lifting me from my feet and flinging me into one of the nearby crystals. My head slammed into the crystal with a crack, and everything went dark.