It took Riven a good, long while to get down to meet the Captain. Quite longer than he was comfortable with, truth be told. Every step made him worry that too many soldiers had died and that he’d be too late by the time he finally made it down. He tried not to look at the dead bodies strewn here and there over the whole narrow valley. For all that Riven had imbued Captain Rett’s troops with his Essence armour, it was no surety against the powers of a Deathless. As proven by the dead soldiers.
Whom Riven was trying his best to ignore, of course. Deaths were natural when fighting against Deathless. They were strong, their Spirit powerful, their bodies far more durable and undying compared to regular mortals.
It still hurt though. Every broken body, every pool of blood, every moment of ongoing struggle, all of them harassed Riven with one thing. He had failed them.
“Where have you be—” The Captain snapped her mouth shut. “You okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” Riven said. He tried to raise his arms, but spikes of agony drilled through his flesh and skin, and he stopped. “Well, not fine exactly. But alive. More than I can say for a lot of you.”
Captain Rett’s eyes closed for a second. She wasn’t much older than him—definitely no older than Glaven before he’d died—but it looked as though every death had aged her a decade. “We’re losing here.”
“Tell me what’s happened.”
She did. Rett had determined it was best to engage the Phantoms over long distances, favouring the use of rifle fire from multiple directions to wear them slowly but surely. Unfortunately, they’d found that it was too slow. Riven’s armour had protected the men and women from thrown rocks, from twisting currents of air. Mostly. His Essence had limits and one too many impacts had meant several of the soldiers had fallen, a lot of whom weren’t getting back up. Ever.
They had been steadily drawing back as they gave ground to the Phantoms. Strangely, the ghosts were in no rush. A good thing, since that had allowed Captain Rett to fall back with the wounded. The Phantoms were too busy dealing with the soldiers still standing and fighting, still retreating and trying not to be too obvious of a target.
“What do we do now?” Rett asked.
Riven stared out at the ghosts tearing up the land. The frank way in which Rett had asked made him swallow. In a way, she had just admitted defeat—if she didn’t know how she was going to get herself and her soldiers out of this mess, and if Riven hadn’t been that lucky with the Phantom on the ridge, this would be an admission of death.
“I don’t—” No he did know. “You’ll have to trust me on this.”
The Captain looked apprehensive. “On what exactly?”
“I’m going to have to leave you and the soldiers behind for a while.”
“What?”
Riven could see the panic fraying the edges of her composure. Here he was just glibly telling her that he was going to abandon them. Of course she wasn’t going to take it well.
“It’s not what you think.” He paused. Riven needed to be calm and reasonable. Convincing. “I can get help. Only me. It’ll take too long if I try to drag the rest of you along with me, but I know the help I bring will be enough.”
“That’s insane. You think you can just run away like that?”
“I’m not running away. Look, I barely managed to kill the last Phantom I took on, and ended up in this condition.” He tried to raise his arms but only managed to draw out another pained gasp as he let his useless wrists hang at his sides. “I’m basically useless in my current condition anyway. But I can walk. Damn it, I can run if I have to. So I need you to trust me.”
Captain Rett cursed. She looked out over the valley where her soldiers were retreating step by step. One of them was suddenly flung back, and the golden armour around him turned white when he crashed down. It was a frightening moment before the soldier forced herself up.
“We’re going to die like this,” she whispered.
“No.” Riven stepped close, looking her right in her stormy grey eyes. “I’m going to get us all out of here. You just need to trust me. Well that, and do your best to survive.”
“How long?”
“Can’t say. But it’s not far, just the first rise beyond the fork.”
“Go then.”
Riven blinked. He’d been sure he was going to need more convincing. “All right. Just—”
“Go,” she shouted. Her face was fierce, almost furious, grey eyes ready to shoot lightning “Get the Chasm out of here!”
Riven swallowed. Then he set off. Damn, he had set her off. Behind him, she started shouting at her soldiers, yelling out orders to fight, to never surrender, to keep surviving no matter what. Survival.
Scions, he needed to get to Mhell fast. The Phantoms were going to tear through these soldiers in no time at this rate.
#
Riven didn’t face the Phantoms of course. Didn’t get anywhere close. He could have tried to stave them off for a bit while the soldiers regrouped and recovered a little, or he could have at least applied more of his Essence to fix the golden armour he’d granted them. There wasn’t enough time. Riven was banking on the fact he could get to Mhell in time and to do that, he needed to trust the soldiers to handle themselves and the Phantoms they faced.
Mother’s counsel floated in his head, a mantra that whispered in his ears all on its own. Faith. Belief. Riven had to show some more trust in matters, had to have greater faith in the people around him.
He’d do that. Riven was capable of doing so. But trust didn’t dictate reality and there was always the chance he’d come back with Mhell only to find all the soldiers mauled to death by the Phantoms. He couldn’t dwell on that though. His job was finding the witch as soon as he could, then hauling her back here.
Or at the very least, make her heal his wrists the way she had healed the wound in his legs so long ago.
Riven edged himself to the side of one of the ridges, banishing his armour so he wasn’t glowing like a beacon. He focused on putting one step in front of the other, trying his best to ignore the pain shooting up his arm at every motion and the screams and noises of battle far to his right.
Near the fork, he had to travel back to the left. Please Scions, let him not be seen now. The Phantom of the old lady who’d been walking in the middle of the path they had intended to take never turned around. Thank the Scions. Riven crossed the path and the mouth of the fork, hurrying away onto the left side as fast as his legs could carry him. There was a small path on the side of the hill he was keeping close to, and he took it to get higher up. Mhell was up there.
Or she’d better be up there. There was no telling how long it had been since he’d seen her from the ridge. Several minutes? An hour? It didn’t matter, not when she could leave at any time.
Riven was huffing and puffing by the time he reached the top. His hands were red-hot anvils tied to the end of his arms, and his legs were blocks of uncompromising granite. He wasn’t going to be able to keep up this punishing pace. Riven paused, wincing at the horrid pain as he wiped away the sweat from his face. Damn it, if only he had some water. He had come this far only to be thwarted by thirst of all things?
Thankfully, Mhell was there.
“My, my,” she said, her icy eyes growing wide in surprise as she beheld him. “What happened to you, dear?”
“No time to explain,” Riven said. “Heal me.”
“I don’t heal, though.”
“You did that other time, remember? With my leg where the bullet had gone in? I need to use my damn hands again.”
“Again, my dear, what has happened to you?” Her icy eyes turned hard and sharp, icicles ready to pierce whatever she was suddenly angry at. “Who did this? Tell me, and I will make them pay.”
Riven blinked. Uncomfortable heat crept up his neck. Why was this woman, this Deadmage who wasn’t even mortal anymore, so intent on getting vengeance on his behalf? It was almost as though she had been personally offended.
“I met some Phantoms,” he said.
Mhell’s eyes widened. “Where?”
“Behind us. I manged to kill one, but there’s at least two more trying to murder the Ascension soldiers. I need your help to help them escape.”
Her demeanour changed instantly. She’d been so fired-up just seconds ago, yet now she was cold as an iceberg. That icy look in her eyes transfixed him. “I don’t care what happens to a bunch of enemy soldiers.”
A part of Riven had been afraid of this, had even expected this to happen. No one in their right mind would go about helping their enemy. Not unless the reward for it out paid any potential risk. But that didn’t help the rest of him when disappointment settled down like a worn blankets, its fabric and feel too familiar. He had hoped that Mhell of all people would see past that and help him figure out what was truly right or wrong.
“It’s the right thing to do,” he argued. “Are you content to let innocent soldiers die when they’re so closely associate with you?”
“There is nothing innocent about any of them. They are Orbray’s dogs. If we don’t put them down now, they’ll come back to hound us soon enough.” She stared at Riven, and her icy eyes seemed to soften, the permafrost melting to a half-frozen puddle. “This is war, Riven. Hard decisions are the bread and butter of conflicts such as these, and we all have to make difficult choices. We can’t do our best to ‘give the best outcome for both sides’. That’s a fallacious way of thinking that leads to nothing but defeat. We need to win, and to do that, we need to let those soldiers die.”
Riven swallowed. She’d said exactly what he’d expected her to say. The logic of something like that was difficult to counter, and besides, he didn’t have time for political or philosophical debates.
He had soldiers to save.
“Why did you leave me, Mhell?” Riven asked.
“Was I obligated to remain at your side?” she asked back. “Am I supposed to babysit you now, Riven?”
“There’s a difference between babysitting and simply making sure everything was all right.”
“There are more important things at stake at the moment. There’s no more time to waste. Orbray needs to be stopped, and soon.”
Stolen story; please report.
“Yet, you’re doing the exact thing he needs you to do. You’re playing right into Orbray’s hands.”
“I’m aware of the summoning Riven. I know he needs a Wraithlock, alongside a Revenant and a Cataclysm. But as you can see, I am no Wraithlock. There is no danger.”
“Not yet.”
“You don’t trust me?”
Riven only stared flatly at her when she looked back. How far they had come. There was a time, just yesterday to be honest, when he would’ve said that Mhell was one of the few people he trusted most. That despite the fact she was a Deadmage, he was ready to go along with whatever she had planned and would have implicitly told her whatever he learned. She had educated him on a lot of matters too, after all.
Yes trust itself was a fickle thing. She wasn’t out to look out for him. No, what she wanted lay not too far ahead.
Stopping Orbray.
“What’s so important about stopping him?” Riven asked. He didn’t have to say what he really thought—what did Mhell really gain from all this? It was obvious in his tone.
Mhell picked up on it too. “You waste time by repeating the same thing.”
“Yet I don’t have an answer.”
“I am an Essentier, still. Stuck between two worlds.” She turned to him, her icy eyes like the frozen depths of an ocean again, where ice was never supposed to reach. “Can you imagine that Riven? Knowing and trusting everything you used to as a human, as a living, breathing mortal, yet plagued with these visions from the Beyond? Can you know what it’s like to be hated by both sides and belong to neither. Where does your sense of morals come from then? How do you decide what is right and wrong, who to save and who to forego, what to prioritize? It’s… not easy, I can assure you.”
Riven pressed his lips into a tight line. He could understand, or if not fully comprehend, then at least sympathize with the quandary she faced. But she hadn’t answered him. “And Orbray?”
Mhell sighed. “I’ve long debated on what I think is right, and I have supreme belief in my sense of judgement. There is no objective morality, no one good that benefits everyone. On the surface, it’s easy to say, ‘kill Deathless and let mortals live, that’s the only right thing to do’. It really isn’t. I’ve decided that stopping Orbray from bringing down this Scion is the best course of action since that will prevent the whole world from devolving into chaos, and I’d like the world to last a little longer. I need some more time to figure things out. To flesh out my plans.”
Riven took a deep breath, then stepped around and in front of Mhell. His arms and hands hurt like he had been hammering on them, but he raised them all the same. The pain made him gasp a little, but he bit through it and placed the reddened flesh near Mhell’s face.
Mhell stood still for a moment, her face shadowed. He hadn’t noticed it before thanks to the burgeoning Septstorm—the clods now so close they had shaded the whole land in a permanent gloom—but the day was wearing down. Evening was coming on, though Riven had no room to rest. Eventually, she raised her own hands and placed them on Riven’s. Her touch was cool, and slightly crumbly as though her limbs were made from compacted sand.
Grey Spirit weaved out. Riven breathed in deep again as it swirled around his hands and seeped into his skin. There was a tingling sensation all along his flesh and Mhell’s Spirt faded.
Riven pulled back his arms, the pain gone. He marvelled at it for a moment. Hadn’t she sad that her Spirit was Corrosion? How in the world did Corrosion of any form allow her to heal? Then again, she had said she wasn’t healing anything, but if so, how in the world had his pain disappeared without a trace?
“Thank you,” Riven said. He took a moment to consider his words before speaking. “I don’t understand. I’m not a Deathless and I’ve seen only the briefest glimpses of what you probably go through every day. But I can sympathize, and more importantly, I can trust. My mother keeps telling me to have faith, and Scions know I’ve been trying. So all I’m asking is that you have a little faith in me too. A little trust that what I want isn’t something harmful. Will you please come and help me?”
Her face seemed to twist at his words, the cracks lining it everywhere deepening into caverns. Riven swallowed, and he was suddenly aware of high he stood. Here, at the top of this rise, Mhell could push him off without a moment’s trouble and no one would be the wiser. But it wasn’t anger on her face. Just a deep sadness. Almost regret.
She mastered herself, considering him for a moment before relaxing. “Lead the way.”
Riven smiled. He threaded down the path, carefully swinging his arms to test the pain. There was still some twinges here and there, but he had no trouble moving them along.
“What were you doing here?” he asked Mhell.
The witch answered him without hesitation. Maybe she was heeding his little speech on trust. “Calling in other Deadmages.”
“Other Deadmages?”
“Well, yes. We need allies if we’re going to win against Orbray.”
“But what if one of them turn into Wraithlocks?”
“My point exactly.”
Riven stumbled, barely catching himself before he fell off the hill and met an untimely demise. He turned to face Mhell, who had raised her brows at him. Damn but she was diabolical to do something like that. Everything in her voice suggested she had called in the Deadmages in a pretence to help, but she intended to eradicate them to prevent any chance of the next Wraithlock rising. She was going to kill all the Deadmages.
All but herself.
“I will help you Riven,” she said, her words holding a note of warning. “But in return, you must promise that you’ll return the piece of the Scion you have with you.”
“I don’t have it with me,” he replied. “But what do you need it for?”
He couldn’t keep the suspicion from coming out. So much for a showing of trust. But really, no one could blame him since the last time he’d given Mhell the Sept crystal, she’d turned from a lowly Necromancer into a formidable Deadmage.
Mhell jumped down the last few yards to the ground, floating down like a feather. “Safeguarding. I have no wish to rise further, only to make sure no one else does either. “
Riven would have pressed her some more, but they had to get to the soldiers first. He’d wasted enough time trying to convince her. Answers to his many questions, digging deeper to the real truth, they could all wait once they had dealt with the Phantoms.
It didn’t take long to get to the battlefield. The evening wore on, and though the shadows of the highlands bordering the valley seemed to lengthen on the ground, the Phantoms were bright, easily visible pinpricks, their jagged outlines glimmering in many hues. Riven charged in, Mhell following quickly behind. The sound of gunfire reassured him that there were still enough soldiers to save.
This wasn’t a disaster yet.
“I’ll take care of this one,” Mhell said from behind. “Go get the other.”
Riven nodded. With his hands fixed and usable again, he wasn’t even sure he needed Mhell, but it was good to have a capable ally all the same. He cursed himself. That was overconfidence speaking. He was too giddy with his arms returned to him. The last Phantom had nearly killed him, disabling his hands for good—Mhell’s fix was temporary and he’d have to seek proper medical attention at some point—and hoping to kill two on his own was worse than foolhardy. It was downright suicidal.
Not that any of that was going to slow Riven on his warpath. He raced towards the Phantom in the distance, little golden lines shooting into the gloomy air like bullets. They were the bullets the soldiers were firing, but they reminded him of his Essence.
Essence which he now needed to use. The Phantom had formed a whirlwind of debris around himself, rocks of different sizes swirling around his body. Most were very large, easily big enough to crush the whole Invigilator’s Office back in Providence. As Riven ran, the Phantom jerked his hand. One of the flying rocks broke into chunks the size of a car, all of which shot towards the soldiers.
Thank the Scions Riven was close enough. He focused, willing out his golden Essence to form a shield in mid-air before them, thirty yards away. The rocks smashed into them like overlarge cannonballs, shattering his shield with ease. But their momentum had dissipated, and they crashed into the ground far before the soldiers they were meant to hit.
The Phantom turned as though he had sensed Riven as soon as he had seen the golden shield. Not that Riven had been trying to hide. He had already drawn up his Essence armour, charging in to meet the ghost head-on.
He didn’t see the pocket of twisting air and space that rammed into him. It threw him back, his feet leaving the ground for several heart-stopping seconds before Riven crashed back down to the ground again. He blamed the dusk. It was too dark to see much of anything without enough light. A quick check showed that his armour was fine. There weren’t any cracks anywhere. He had nothing to worry about, not his armour, nor himself, nor the soldiers now that he had the Phantom’s full attention.
Probably not the best of things. Riven rose and focused to create a shield around the Phantom. The ghost shouted in alarm as golden Essence trapped him in an orb, a fly immortalized in amber. He struggled to free himself, the air inside the shield twisting in vicious currents that made the sphere crack.
Riven was belching out more Essence though, and the cracks went away as soon as they were brought up.
He approached on flying feet. This needed to end, and soon. Only once the Phantom was dealt with could Riven go and check in on the soldiers. Too dangerous otherwise.
With some more focus, Riven started crushing the shield around the Phantom. Just like the first one he had tried to do this with, this one’s struggles were useless. The tiny space that his Essence shield afforded was far too little for the ghost to use his Spirit for anything. And unlike Riven’s first victim, there weren’t any others to help him out.
The Phantom was screaming from within the shield, the Essence muffling the sound. It still hurt to hear though. Riven shook his head. This was an enemy who had been Chasm-bent on killing him and all these soldiers. Mhell was right. Sometimes, there was no room for mercy.
When Riven focused more, the pressure within him, already flowing out with the force of a geyser, now doubled in output. He was struck by the sheer ferocity he was able to draw out, now lost in its vicious current and at the mercy of wherever it chose to bore him. Golden lines shot him with such force and consistency, he glowed, lighting up the evening as though he was turning into a star. All of it went to that orb around the Phantom, all the lines concentrated on killing the Deathless.
A sudden snap, and the sphere imploded in on itself. The golden ball collapsed shrinking—no sucked in—to form a glowing ball no bigger than Riven’s head. He swallowed, then took a step back. What in the world was happening?
Another snap, and this time the ball exploded.
Riven cowered back, shielding his face with his forearm and bending over to make himself small even though he had his Essence armour to protect himself with. He didn’t have to. All he suffered was a smattering of dusty dead Sept. His Essence faded as soon as it was free from the small sphere.
The Phantom had been destroyed.
“I didn’t realize these things spontaneously exploded.” one of the soldiers muttered.
Riven sighed. Relief stole into his muscles for a moment, before he whirled, alarm bells gonging in his head. He’d almost forgotten about the other Phantom.
His worry was unfounded. When he turned to survey the valley behind him, all he saw was a sea of wispy grey aura smothering the air like a glowing mixture of ash and fog. Mhell’s Spirit had swamped the Phantom. There was no sign of the ghost anywhere. He had to wonder if Mhell felt any reluctance about it, if she hesitated for even a second before striking the Phantom. He was a Deathless after all, a potential ally against Orbray. One she herself had just killed.
The grey Spirit began to dissipate. Riven walked over to Mhell, the soldiers finally regrouping with Captain Rett and the wounded behind him.
“It’s done,” she said as he neared. “Now your turn to fulfil the remainder of your bargain.”
“Why did you kill him on your own?”
She blinked. “The Spectres are busy with other duties, and it was faster this way. Less thought necessary.”
Riven surveyed the area where the Phantom had been moments ago. “They were a lot weaker than you, weren’t they?”
“That they were.”
He peered at her through the corner of his eyes. Mhell’s face gave away nothing. No regret, no sadness, no glee definitely. No discernible reaction in any way. Nothing. She wasn’t some unfeeling monster as many would claim all Deathless were, but here and now, Riven could see why it was easy for that assumption to come up. Mhell had no trouble looking unfazed.
One of the aforementioned Spirits suddenly ran in. Riven and Mhell both turned to see the ghost come to a halt, his breath ragged and his countenance haggard. He’d probably run all the way from wherever he’d been.
“Ma’am,” the Spectre wheezed out.
“Don’t ma’am me,” Mhell snapped. “What is it?”
“The meeting’s started!”
It looked like Mhell was using all her willpower not to curse out loud. Her icy eyes were as furious as an avalanche.
“Meeting?” Riven asked.
“Deathless meeting,” Mhell replied.
“Deathless meeting?”
“On the hill?” Mhell asked the Spectre. He nodded and she frowned, her brow turning into one long crack. “This is coming in too fast. I was supposed to be given more time.”
The Spectre looked like he was too afraid to speak, but he summoned the courage to do so. “Shall I tell them to wait, ma’am?”
“No. I’ll be joining them soon.”
“What in the world is going on here?”
Riven turned at the questions, hear hammering again. Damn it, he hadn’t thought of explanations yet.
Captain Rett and her soldiers had come up, all of them with their rifles pointed at Riven and Mhell. The wounded had been slung onto shoulders or carried between small groups of them. Nevertheless, all of them looked ready to deal with more Deathless. Beaten and bruised, weary beyond comprehension, barely alive after facing down a couple of Phantoms, they still looked ready to fight and survive. Riven had to give them their due. Rett and her soldiers were true professionals till the end.
Mhell sighed, utterly unfazed by the bristling jaw of rifles aimed at her. “We don’t have time for this. Leave before you make a scene and call down greater danger than two pathetic Phantoms.”
“Three Phantoms, actually,” Riven interjected before they carried on with their misconception.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Rett said. “Explain yourself, Deathless.”
The Spectre looked like he was regretting having become Deathless and not dying like a regular mortal. “Ma’am, they saw everything. They know you helped these mortals. They want to meet them.”
Riven swallowed. That didn’t sound nice.
“They want to meet them?” Mhell stood still as a statue for a moment. “Fine. Riven, come with me. Tell your Captain she will have to wait. Apparently, you are to be my guest.”
Mhell walked away, disregarding the rifles and the soldiers holding them. Riven was sure they were going to shoot her in the back, but he put himself in between them, face filled with a warning. There was absolutely no need to make the situation worse than it already was.
Riven swallowed. Captain Rett’s questioning glare settled on him after Mhell and her Spectre had departed. He had a lot of explaining to do.