Faunia rubbed her fingertips along the beige walls of the palace. Viltar took the front guard, walked at an eager, measured pace deeper and deeper into the tomb. His torch flickered and flared, the flames wobbled with every step. Faunia felt her heart begin to race from just a few steps behind him.
Cedric caressed her cool arm as he passed her. “Akvum’s chamber is just up ahead.”
She nodded. “I know.”
He glanced suspiciously back at the group of sel managing the group's rear van as he went. She's planning to subdue me with Antithesis if Serkukan lashes out… Will such a simple solution really work?
WANT TO FIND OUT?
His hands both began to tingle — Cedric gasped and stumbled against the wall, tensed up all over his body.
“Ekzire.” commanded Faunia. A translucent platinum shield manifested around her.
The lead sel nodded. There was a warble in the air like a ripple in water that swam toward Cedric at great speed.
Serkukan lunged Cedric to the ground on impulse… and then the wave hit.
“AAUUUUUGGGGHHHH!” Cedric screamed out, writhing back and forth. His ears rang louder than any sound he'd ever heard. His whole mind burned and fried from this sort of Antithesis… and Serkukan was completely incapacitated.
They all gave him a moment, all stood and watched the embarrassing display.
And then Faunia lowered her guard, gestured for the sel to fall at ease. She knelt down beside him and offered a hand. “You okay?”
Cedric slobbered, whined… then he wiped his drool with the back of his hand, panted through the words, “Yeah… Yeah, I'm okay…”
Faunia rubbed his back through the red robe. “It's progress. Anything is better than what you were doing before…”
“What I was doing before hurt a whole lot less than this…”
“Sure. But that’s the price of being a hero. Right?”
He scoffed and took her hand. She helped him to his feet, held his shoulders tight to secure him. “Good?”
“Good.”
Then Ekzire approached. “My apologies, King Lorik; I was birthed with an exceptional silence. I'll defer to my men in the future — I did not realize it would be so debilitating.”
“No, no. You did good. I appreciate you volunteering for this.”
“I, well…”
Faunia interrupted from some distance ahead, “He didn't volunteer. I put him on this team. He might have been out of a job otherwise.”
Ekzire smiled awkwardly.
Cedric said, “...Sorry.”
“Don't be. I enjoy the work. The prospect of the Etherian Knights was intriguing… working alongside the king is doubly so.”
“Sorry, then, that the Etherian Knights…”
Ekzire placed a consoling hand onto Cedric's shoulder. “What happened with them was a tragedy. Nobody could have anticipated exactly what happened in Calamon. We all did our best, tried to make ends meet with formidable powers we had nary an understanding of. What matters now is how we continue.”
Cedric nodded affirmingly.
Then a click echoed through the hall. Viltar nodded from the doorway up ahead. “We're in.”
Akvum’s office was exactly as they remembered it: small and quaint, filled with strange artefacts from all over Kylinstrom and beyond. Viltar in particular was busy prodding a pelt that looked eerily similar to his own.
“It's not azarian.” Faunia explained, “Akvum himself was an azar.”
“Oohh…” murmured the big cat. 「And this Akvum, he was a friend of yours?」
Cedric stepped in after the two of them, his eyes locked onto the cork board over the bronze-trimmed dark oak desk. “...Not exactly.”
He approached cautiously. Faunia and Viltar both turned their attentions to him. Vim and Ayla entered the doorway, Ekzire stood behind one of his purple-skinned soldiers.
“You alright, Cedric?” asked Faunia.
Then he was face to face with the corkboard. The dots, the placement of the markers, the strings between them… “He was tracking me…”
“We knew that, didn't we?” She rubbed his back.
“No. No, I've never seen this board up close… These points: Dreslon, Cromer, Freiya… Those were after things had started to go awry for me… But these points… Did Akvum have eyes on me all along?”
His finger traced a path before Dreslon, a point to Siln, a point to the Deadline, a point to Nelreign…
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Faunia cocked her head. “I don't remember these points, either…”
Then something stirred — a lamp in the corner rotated, stumbled, and fell crashing to the floor.
Viltar slammed his hand into the small pouch at his side, drew out a huge knife. Faunia pulled the ley and summoned a glistening, beautiful icicle rapier to her palm.
Cedric hadn't yet decided to move.
“Here it comes!” Faunia lunged her blade.
“Wait!” shouted Viltar, launching between the two of them. “Look, it's…!”
…And from the gap between the shelf and the wall emerged a small bronze creature — a baby dragon…!
A gasp passed a few of the audiences’ lips. There was a long pause — and then Faunia dispelled her blade. She stepped back so Cedric could get a better view of it, and he knelt down to see.
“...It's so young… Is this Akvum’s Etherian?”
Faunia's eyes lit up at the suggestion. “It's entirely possible — he never revealed his power. Now that you mention it, we never learned anything about his Etherian… but then again, we didn't know as much about the Twelve until after Akvum was killed.”
“The only thing we know was that he took Dyosius… He committed the Rejoining.”
Another gasp rattled the room. Viltar murmured something inaudible.
Cedric reached his hand for the baby Etherian, no bigger than his palm. “Come to me, please. I won't harm you. I just want to learn. Ithlo’vatis—”
His lip quivered when the name slipped. His open hand clenched.
Faunia rubbed his shoulder. “I'm sorry—”
“It's not your fault, not remotely. If you hadn't used him to kill Tartys… There was no way I was going to be able to. I was…”
“Neither of us were in a state to fight.”
Liar, he thought. And he opened his hand to the baby Etherian again.
It flexed it's small wings, whined out a small snickering groan. Then it stumbled forward, fell sideways into his palm.
And it began to glow.
It wasn't long before the dragon had dissipated entirely, before Cedric had welcomed another being into his already frayed mind.
He shut his eyes. He concentrated on the being. He tried to understand it.
But Serkukan stood in the way, as he always did. There is no path to understanding when fueled by brutality and cruelty.
Cedric stood, let his crimson robes flutter. “I don't know. It'll take some time — I don't even know if it's old enough to know anything, let alone to do anything.”
“You think, then, that Akvum was sheltering it? Maybe he had hoped it might turn into something. Or maybe he knew.”
“As Llestren'vatis did for me…” He rubbed his fingers uncomfortably. “We'll see. We can only do what we can do, and only one step at a time.”
“Right.” she said, and turned to shuffle through Akvum’s drawers.
Cedric passed her close, crept out of the room between the spectators they'd invited to their lives.
When he managed to get some space in the dark corridor, away from prying eyes, he took a deep breath and slid down the familiar bronze walls of the fortress until he was sat with his knees up to his chest, his head in his hands. And he sighed.
The wall behind him rippled.
Cedric only muttered, “It’s impossible to get a moment alone, isn’t it?”
Tirolith emerged through the ripple like a ghost. “Yup!”
And she floated from the wall, floated up over him, and gently hovered down to her feet.
“Tirolith… You’ve been awfully quiet.”
She feigned a tired smile. “Faunia is trying to keep all Etherian activity quiet… That means no commentary from me.”
“I see. So, she let you off the hook to talk to me?”
The girl reluctantly nodded.
Cedric sighed and stood up from the floor. "Then I suppose nothing I say here will remain a secret from her."
“What happened in Calamon was awful, Cedric.”
“You don’t need to tell me.”
“It’s not your fault. Those souls… they’ll arrive in the deadworld. They’ll find peace.”
Cedric scoffed. “But their loved ones won’t.”
“Cedric…”
“Why is everyone trying to lecture me on this? I know what happened, I was fucking there! I’m half the reason it happened… Don’t tell me that it wasn’t a great big loss, or that it was necessary, or… or any damn excuses for it! I don’t want to hear it.”
Tirolith pouted. “I just don’t want you to blame yourself. You’ve given up…”
“I haven’t given up. I came up with a better solution.”
“A better solution…?”
Cedric stomped away down the hall, back to the office. He asked into the doorway, “Well? Are we ready to get a move on?”
But now, to his surprise, the room was trashed. The desk was toppled, the papers scattered senselessly to the floor. The shelves had been shattered and dropped flat to the ground. The corkboard had been thrown off of the wall, broken off from a hidden hinge which seemed to reveal a deep cavern hidden behind it, a secret cavity within the room.
Cedric’s jaw fell slightly open.
Faunia, from beside the door, only stepped once to his side and jokingly shut his jaw with a gloved finger. She smiled, “Looks like that Etherian wasn’t the only thing Akvum was hiding.”
And in her other hand was a stack of notes, maps, diagrams, and all sorts of secrets that had once been preserved in the impassable safe behind the corkboard.
Viltar smiled, crossed his arms, leaned up against the doorframe in glowing victory.
“And…” Faunia took a particularly strange, round container, poured it out into her hand… but only a single clear marble fell into her palm. “...This appears quite significant.”
Cedric’s eyes widened. He knew suddenly, all at once, exactly what it was. Exactly what Akvum had intended to use it for…
“This is…”
And the memories came flooding back like a tidal wave, beneath which his consciousness became buried...