ACT I

VOID

1

The guard died in an eruption of blood and splinters as the iron-bound door across the hallway exploded from its hinges, echoing through the otherwise empty corridor before falling back onto the stone floor with a heavy thud. A hiss, a crackle, viscera boiling away in flame. Smoke rose from the remnants of the wood, the iron glowing pale red.

The prisoner took several cautious steps away from his cell, sparing only a brief glance at the disfigured corpse, feeling no remorse. His mind buzzed, raced, parts of him screaming at the termination of a life while other parts held cold and callous. He knelt beside the body and pressed fingers to the guard’s neck, checking for a sign of life. None. The exploding force of the door saw the guard mangled beyond recognition.

Tracing a finger along the sword sheath hanging at the guard’s hip, he considered arming himself but decided against the weapon. Part of him knew that it would be useless in his hands, and the door’s impact had rendered the weapon itself useless as well.

Distant footfalls echoed through the lower passageways. A cry arose from below, and the prisoner jerked his head to the right, listening. Thoughts tried to break into his mind, but only ones crying for escape held. He ached for it, but forced a moment of patience, stepping backward into his cell to lie in wait. Sweat cutting down his brow burned to mist in the lightning of his eyes. He crouched with fingertips pressed to the cobbled floor and stared outward at the wreckage in the hall, a tangle that had once been a man and a door.

The first of the approaching guards came into view, visibly shaken and revulsed as he knelt beside his compatriot, copying the prisoner’s actions of pressing fingers to the corpse’s neck to check for a pulse.

Blue light flashed brighter around the man’s eyes as he pulled hard on a trickle of aether. That energy had been gone entirely from him for far too long, and he held it lovingly. Black flame licked his hands as he lifted himself from the floor, leaving smaller fires to dance lazily upon the stone before fading to oblivion. The black flame felt cool around his fingers.

The guard still muttered to himself in a panic before noticing the gaping doorway behind him. He made a motion to grab at the shortsword on his hip and stood quickly, but the prisoner was already upon him, closing a flaming hand around the man’s throat, holding tightly as the flesh began to bubble. The guard gurgled and flailed weakly against the prisoner. Blood trickled along the prisoner’s arm as he felt the man’s life dwindling, felt the man’s thoughts of fear, panic, and madness. With his left hand, he jerked the guard’s sword from its scabbard, twisted it in his grip, and rammed the tip into the struggling man’s ribcage with a powerful upward thrust.

The word steel came into his mind. The thought felt significant, but he shook his head. No time.

He gave the sword a quarter-twist before scraping the flat edge along the sternum and shoving upward again. Blood spouted from the body in sickening gushes until it covered the hallway from the prisoner’s cell to the other guard’s corpse. He left the blade in the man’s chest, shoving him into a pile with the other guard and his cell door. The ebbing blood sang in the prisoner’s mind, and he reveled in the force of his own life.

He turned left, away from where the second guard had approached. The prisoner first walked and then ran, blood and desperation hammered through him as he ached for a deep breath that his body would not take. Aether filled him for the first time in weeks, burning, screaming within him.

A large wooden door barred him from the outside, this one much grander and thicker than the one on his cell. He pushed his hands forward, and a gout of black flame rushed toward it and punched through in a single motion. A large chunk broke free from the frame and skittered across the landing. Wood and flame sprayed into the waiting soldiers. Some stepped aside to let the burning chunk of door skitter across the floor and crash into the wall behind them. They fanned into a semicircle as they waited for the prisoner’s next move, each soldier standing with his blade drawn. Torchlight flickered against the blackened night sky. A single bold soldier stepped forward, shortsword at the ready as he shifted, looking for a proper angle of attack. He paused for a moment, and the prisoner lunged. He tasted freedom again, and nothing would ever contain him again.

With a grunt, he kicked away from the landing into a high jump. He locked eyes with the soldier as he spun and jettisoned a wall of flames into the arc of men along the right side. The prisoner felt their life force ebbing as they howled and burned, clawing at their armor to get at the fire, rolling and dying. The bold soldier faltered as the prisoner landed before him. He spun into a kick that struck the soldier’s windpipe. Bone and cartilage creaked and failed against his sole. The soldier dropped to his knees with a gurgling wheeze and died.

What remained of the soldiers from the other side remained cautious. They readied themselves for an assault, but none dared strike first.

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A hammer cocked from behind, and the prisoner spun in that direction. Too slow. A crack, a lick of fire, a flash of light down the hallway. The bullet sailed true, but then fragmented and disintegrated against a splash of flame and raw aether erupting around the prisoner. Yet even as the bullet broke apart, the prisoner felt his ability to call aether dwindle drastically with the effort it took to maintain a flaming defense. He spun to see the gunman and other soldiers rushing down the hallway he had fled only a moment earlier, and these were much more equipped to handle an escape. He faced these men for a moment before turning to cast his black flame into the soldiers who remained on the platform with him. They fell to the stones with a cacophony. Bodies all around the prisoner burned, smoke boiling into the night sky.

When he looked back into the hallway, more riflemen fell into stance and brought their weapons to bear. He pushed both hands together and used a large amount of what he had left to cast a midnight ball of flame down the hallway, filling the corridor from floor to ceiling. More screams, and he felt the lives winking out against his assault. Bullets sang out from the attack, but none found him. His fireball passed through to the other end, and he was left with a view of charred bodies among blackened stone.

More would come soon.

In a panic, he approached the tower’s edge. A bright light shone high in the western sky. Cirellias, the low moon. The word felt strange in his mind, but the low moon called to him, urged him to take flight and soar beneath the stars. Something about that meant home, did it not? With hands pressed against the battlements, he peered over the edge. No, flight was impossible, and the fall would surely kill him. The rush of aether might save him, but it would leave him drained. The intense buzz was quickly fading from his mind, but it was still difficult to think.

The prisoner stepped away, bare feet padding against the stone. Granite. Did stone mean something to him? He clutched his hands to the sides of his head and tried to hold on to the thoughts. No time for that. He shook his head, and the thoughts fell away. Aether was rapidly withdrawing, but still he summoned what remained into himself. He unleashed it against the platform, and the floor collapsed into the room below, dropping stone along with mangled bodies and wooden support struts. He leaped into the open hole and was again within the compound’s interior. When he landed, he staggered against some wreckage, barely able to support himself against one of the walls. More shouts hailed from above. Perhaps they thought the prisoner had somehow called upon sympathetic liberators.

He rushed headlong into the darkness of another corridor, clawing through his mind for access to the vanishing aether. Flame sprouted above his fingers, blue this time, the same hue as the light that flashed in patterns before his eyes, lighting his way well enough to keep from getting lost in the maze. He ran forward, sometimes cautiously, sometimes blindly, sometimes launching precious arcs of flame down hallways as a precaution. Guards crashed down into the rooms above him as he made his way down, and the sounds drove him forward.

The interior blurred as he worked his way along halls and stairwells. The tower was of a sensible design, but panic drove him into dead ends several times, forcing him to backtrack and search for a different path. As he descended, the sound of his pursuers remained close behind.

With a heaving breath, he forced his way through a door that opened into a large room filled with long rows of tables. A dining hall? He raced forward into the room, hoping to finally find himself on the lowest floor. Light flickered in a doorway some distance along the left wall, and he wove a path toward it, summoning feeble black flames around his hands. They burned as pitiful incarnations, and any attack he made with them would likely be stamped out before causing much damage.

“Caru?”

He turned, and the flame swelled in his hands. It was the last he could muster, and he knew it.

A young woman stepped from the shadows at the far end of the room and stood in slanting light next to one of the long tables. She peered at him in closer examination and finally exhaled. “Caru!” She seemed excited. “I thought…” She stepped closer and paused. “I thought,” she repeated. Then she smiled. “So it was you. They didn’t get rid of you, and they didn’t get everything.”

The prisoner considered unleashing the flame, but then she looked up to him, and her eyes shone in the scant light. Pale green eyes, the color of distant seas, centered in a lovely face, framed by raven hair. A memory flashed: a whisper, a sponge, a prayer, an apology, a cup, and the flames around his hands vanished. Gone, and they would not return.

He pressed his hands to his head and sank to his knees. All that power, gone, and something else was rushing in to fill it, a sense of self. He howled wordlessly in frustration, but the woman still approached, possibly sensing he was no longer a threat.

“That way,” she said, pointing to a doorway on the left side of the room. Flickering light danced through the gap. “Go!”

Half certain he was headed into a trap, he nodded and stood to rush through the lit doorway into a kitchen. Pans and utensils dangled from racks bound to the ceiling, and heavy iron pots formed neat rows across the floor. The prisoner rushed along a lane between large cookpots, careful not to make more noise than was necessary.

He shoved the opposite door open in a panic, leaving the woman behind as he pushed out into the chill night. Guards would be upon him soon, but the woman had pointed him to freedom, for the moment.

He darted through a blind maze of alleys, hoping to put bends and distance between himself and the guards to make good his escape. Two plumes of smoke and dust poured from other points over the city into the night sky, and he wondered if others like him escaped as well.

Pausing for a ragged breath, he knew the aether had abandoned him. Caru Freehaven was again sane enough to recall his own name.