Salty air stung his nostrils. Somewhere in the sky, Glim heard seabirds calling out on distant winds. Incense hung thick in the air, perfumed like flowers and spice, but oily somehow. Somewhere behind them, and in the side streets, he was dimly aware of widespread panic. A panic he’d caused.
Glim had gotten accustomed to screams following in his footsteps.
The surging swirls of silver and the alarms had startled Glim. The robed buffoons discussing weather and stars had irked him. And hearing the tale of the Trine Marauders, which he knew more than anyone had been rooted in fact, had chilled his mind with fear.
Sort of.
Yes, the power inside him continued to amaze, astound, and terrify him. The Elderkin devices and towers and traps befuddled him. And learning of two more gods who might, in a very real sense, awaken to ravage the world? Of course, that concerned him.
Sort of.
In truth, the last weeks had been nothing to him but a blur within darkness. An onslaught of revelations and occurrences more immense than the ones before it. None of it affected him much, because he already knew the truth, and that truth would never change: We are all lost.
Glim knew his sanity had ripped. Sometimes his consciousness drifted, incongruous with the world, as if he were watching himself go through the motions within another’s body and mind. Some other Glim, walking and ‘talking.’ Like that time he’d dreamed of entering a room with another Glim, who was himself watching a third Glim. He’d become an abstract concept to himself. A marionette, whose strings he sluggishly pulled, urging it to put one foot in front of the other. To eat. To breathe. Whatever he thought of as real these days was relative.
But in this frozen moment, when the knights parted to reveal Master Willow and the yellow-eyed bird, Glim felt whole. His breath became his own again. His movements too. He found something real: vengeance.
Focus.
In this frozen moment, it had all come to a head. At last, clarity returned to Glim in full. The ringing of his sword brought him into focus.
It had been a struggle to reach this moment. Somehow, seeing Master Willow brought it all rushing back. His mind sputtered to life, like a wet torch trying to ignite.
⋅.˳˳.⋅ॱ˙˙ॱ⋅.˳˳.⋅ॱ˙˙ॱᐧ.˳˳.⋅
Darkness had always defined him. First, the cave. He’d wriggled his way into the dark. But there had been light at the end of it.
Just give up.
With the sight of the sorrowful eye swallowing him hole, Glim stumbled numbly back to Wohn-Grab. Instinct drove him. A desire to protect, that had been drilled into him his entire life by his father and Garrick. Somehow, he managed to make it home, ready to defend those he loved.
Then failed utterly.
Master Willow had left them all to die. But Glim killed them. All of the remaining defenders. He’d unwittingly left all of Æronthrall exposed. Darkness swallowed his mind once more.
We are all lost.
Vague impressions of riding. A river. Then his already tortured mind had been tortured anew. A familiar malice, but keener than ever. Master Willow once more, invading his mind like a dagger slickened with the grime of deceit and greed.
In the dell near the surging whitewater of Adversity, Glim unwittingly killed again. He didn’t know how. He’d not intended the women harm, but they’d fallen before him just as unexpectedly as his father and the guards had.
We are all lost.
He gave up. In essence, killing himself. He truly had nothing left to live for. Like a wounded goat awaiting the hinterjack’s fangs, he collapsed and waited for death to claim him.
In these “last” moments, images flickered through his mind. Swords and spells. A dream of fire and death. Ryn’s mocking laughter, dragging him to understanding and hope where no one else had.
Above all, a vision of his mother’s eyes staring into his own. Only her eyes had not looked into his own. They’d looked into Master Willow’s. Glim had merely been locked in the man’s memory.
Resentment surged in him. There in the frozen dell, with his last remaining willpower, Glim took the vial chained around his neck and unscrewed the lid. The ghost of a scent he’d nearly forgotten wafted through the air. What an irony, to finally see Allora through that vile man’s eyes on the very day of his own death. One final flicker of fire sparked in Glim’s heart. Like Ryn’s laughter, mocking fate. He’d die warmed by its heat.
But he didn’t. His “last” moments had not been. Master Willow had stolen even that comfort from him. The one guarantee each man was born with: the right to die.
His mind retreated.
Movement in the dark. More riding. Tortured screams of broken animals. Silver light. Then the indistinct visage of a woman chasing the darkness away.
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Had Allora come for him at last? A twisted hope wrested him from his lethargy. A dull red ember among ashes, igniting the dry twig of his flesh. He had something to live for after all. One last thing. To see Allora with his own eyes and let her know the fate she’d abandoned him to. Her screams of remorse gave him no pleasure. But at least she’d know his suffering.
Only the woman had not been Allora. A stranger’s cries filled his ears.
Ice doused flame. He clamped down on his ire. He’d caused enough pain for a lifetime.
What have I become?
He’d lost the one true purpose he’d ever had. To protect.
But protect what?
Strangers surrounded him. They’d saved him, at great cost. He owed them whatever scrap of life he had left.
The Unshattered One.
He’d been named that once. By… her. The wind. With a cold trickle he knew it to be true. The fragile glass bauble of his spirit, which by all rights should be shards on the ground by now, had somehow remained unshattered. Cracked and crazed, but intact. She’d seen it.
Would this be the arcane name he finally lived up to? Would his greatest deed be the least glorious? To merely subsist?
If so, he needed to pass on the truth of what he’d awakened. He cast about for a way. And he found one.
Lhani.
Her name filled him with warmth. He recognized the wind, his oldest friend, in her. But without the fear he’d come to know.
He let the wind of Lhani’s voice coax him, and drifted through memory. An eye swallowing him.
We are all lost.
Perhaps. But maybe she’d inspire others. Perhaps someone else might have a chance. Wohn-Grab had fallen, but its last soldier remained to fight.
He thought of them. His father. Garrick. At the Mage-at-Arms.
Master Willow.
Revulsion filled him once more. Glim would succumb, but that man would live on?
No.
Glim thought of Adversity once more. He’d returned to it somehow. Then Lhani punched him, over and over. A physical reminder of his debt to the world. A reminder that warmth still burned in the cold.
Lhani was that warmth. She’d been inside his thoughts, just as Master Willow had. But unlike the oily, nauseating violation he felt from Willow, Lhani invigorated him. He felt connected to her in a way he never had to anyone before. She’d seen his innermost thoughts and it hadn’t weakened him, but given him strength. He knew almost nothing about her. But everything he knew left him wanting to know more. Even the way she punched him in anger reinforced their growing bond. She knew she wasn’t hurting him.
Just as he knew he was hurting her.
Lhani, he’d said, as if from a great distance. I would have done anything to spare you that vision. I see my own madness reflected in your eyes.
Would that be his legacy? Madness passed on?
No.
He refused to let it end this way. He’d see this woman restored. Somehow he’d make it right. And that weasel of a tutor would not make Glim his plaything. Not ever again.
But hadn’t Willow himself been a plaything? These gray-cloaked women had their hands in it. He didn’t know how. But one had given her life. Glim had seen his own resolve in her. The desire to protect. Some unnamed witch had thwarted Master Willow’s ambition.
If she could, so could he. Whatever conflict existed between these sages, Glim wanted no part in it. Let those obsessed with the arcane have their struggle. He had his own struggle: vengeance.
That thought reminded him of the frozen moment. He drew the fractured pieces of his mind together.
Focus.
⋅.˳˳.⋅ॱ˙˙ॱ⋅.˳˳.⋅ॱ˙˙ॱᐧ.˳˳.⋅
A line of knights faced them. Nine, plus Master Willow. He saw their grips on their weapons, and the set of their stances, and smiled to himself.
Five of them would be no concern. Their fingers trembled on the hilts of their daggers, like children dreading their first full spar. For a fleeting moment, Glim envied them their innocence, and longed for a time when his blade had never drawn blood.
Two of them were too far away to matter, guarding the rear of their group.
That left the other two. They held not daggers, but staves, to gain greater reach. Their knees flexed, their hands gripped surely, and their eyes had the glassy appearance of men using their peripheral vision to scan an entire area at once. These two knights looked not only at him, but at his companions also. They’d be a problem. But the way they’d positioned themselves, he had an idea of how to get past them. They were too close to each other, and that would give him a chance.
Glim drew his sword from its sheath.