QUARTZ 9.3: ASCENDED AND ANCIENT
“Do not look to me for guidance. I am everywhere. You stride in my shadow, in the echoes of my footfalls on forest avenues, the empty places I have already trod. Yes! I am everywhere yet you find the emptiness! In emulating me you must abandon pretence, identity, all particularity. And then already you are no longer following me. You too are everywhere at once. You follow only yourself. Then and only then will you know true fear! Look to where the footprints lead!”
– from ‘The Book of Kultemeren’, 1:153-163
We passed over what looked like a sapphire the size of an island, seeming more like the tip of some incomprehensible protrusion from the seabed than a floating object, so still it was upon the surface of the now-calm ocean. I tried to call it out but my breath caught in my throat. Noting my strangled gestures, the wizard informed me in a derisive voice that it was merely an iceberg, flipped over by last night’s storms.
Whatever he wanted to call it, the beauty of the giant sapphire was hardly lessened. The tips of its crags were frosted white, but the majority of its jagged facets gleamed azure, like the world’s most complex shield-structure. The frozen waters clung to its razor-sharp coasts in a sheet, perfectly still, a black mirror extending out around the iceberg as a cloak.
It wasn’t an easy journey. Despite the speed with which we travelled, we could’ve moved faster, I was certain of it. The wizard had done little to improve the comfort of the rock upon which we were draped, soaring across the ocean. Orcan Finfaltik, old and hale, spent most of the time thumbing through a very advanced-looking spellbook. Kirid Oanor, Emrelet’s mirror-image, had thankfully replaced her hood, hunkering down on the edge of the flying rock we rode, and was staring off into Northril’s depths as though she regretted her decision.
Does she? I wondered. Volunteering to leave Telior and come to Mund seemed out of character for her – not that I knew her, I supposed. A choice made in haste – and reverted without difficulty, for one of her particular persuasion. Orcan’s magic was doubtless better equipped to devour distances, but I had some idea of the wingspan she could reach. Returning home would always be on the cards for her.
“Well?” I raised my mental voice.
“Why not ask her?” the twins prodded in response, not even looking my direction.
Why don’t you just tell me?
“Because we know why you won’t ask her. She isn’t Em, you know, Kas. She’s –“
I know that! I flared. She’s –
“She’s not that old.”
It’s not just that!
“Hahaha! Oh, we know… But you have to get over it. So what if she looks like Emrelet? Do you still care about her?”
No!
The lack of retort this time told me all I needed to know.
Maybe! I don’t know!
“But you aren’t going back for her.”
… No.
“We know. But you need to know it too.”
I shook my head, then curled up in my robe, pulling my cloak about me like a blanket. Orcan was doing little to adjust the gusts of wind, it seemed, content to suffer the flicking top corner of his page – but I didn’t really mind the breeze as I tried to drift off. Its constant physical presence was almost soothing. My distractions were altogether internal in nature.
I’d expected the legion faces of strange ghosts to haunt my imagination. The tortured screams of my last remaining blood-kin. The wreck of Telior. Nafala’s unidentifiable body, floating in the bay.
No. What most held me from slumber was the claw of Mal Malas. Its descent into my flesh. His behemoth head with its hideous eyes, its gargantuan black crown. His hidden city of bone he’d summoned and shaped on a whim while waiting for his hapless prey to come sauntering along –
I couldn’t consider it now without shuddering, recoiling away from the memory, stumbling back like a drunk in a tavern only to reel into the same thought, same sequence of events, replaying before my conscious mind like the sick joke of a demented god.
Because he knew, he knew, he knew! He predicted my choices! He knows me – he moved me, like a Minion! I’m just a link in a chain he’s wrapped around the world. I ran from my destiny, and he knew it! He knew I’d be weak – he knew just where to find me. And I say I’m not a Minion – I think I’m a piece with power, a Master of the board – and I do what he wants, when he wants, how he wants… How? How did he know? What eldritch predicted my decisions like that? He came to Telior within a matter of hours… he had to have been on the way when I interrogated the vampire… A link in his chain… What he’s doing – what he’s seen…
Ulu Kalar.
I swooned. It all tied in together.
Mal Malas is just Ulu Kalar’s… agent. He’s Heresy wrapped up in a corpse’s skin.
My mind was a black stone hurtling down a hillside into darkness, too heavy to be stopped as it churned through the earth, ripping up the sod as it span. Yet as we sped on across the seas in silence, finally it happened. Sprawled back on the cold rock, I succumbed to the stupor, entering what should’ve been a nightmare.
And awoke, hours later, feeling deliciously numb. The Blind Eye of Kaile was almost fully-open, but he could barely peek through to the world below, the silver face of the moon obscured by endless flowing clouds.
I managed to pull myself together enough to croak my thanks for my nightmare-less slumber, but as I glanced over I found them both asleep, curled up next to each other.
I stared at them for a moment. Still only human. Still just children, as lost in the web of destiny as any of the rest of us.
They were the only thing worth looking at. No more sapphire-islands came into view, no more anything. After so long, Northril itself was monotony. A new morning came, but it was dark even in the daytime as we sped over the open ocean. Sunlight, surprising in its warmth, came spearing down at times through the thick clouds overhead, glancing off the frosty, frothy waves like the pure heat-beam of a wizard.
Like what she’d done to me, after discovering me in grief beside my beheaded friend.
But no meagre ray of light was enough to dispel the miasma hanging over us, the cloak of dismalness, of dismay.
I was going home – to do what? I was a pariah. My friends hated me… The law would come for my head… and Emrelet…
It didn’t even bear thinking about. I’d never known her. She never loved me. What Tyr Kayn had done to her, to me… It was beyond forgiveness.
Not that you got much forgiving done, or avenging, missing a head.
Poor Theor. Caught in the crossfire of a net of lies stretching far beyond any of us could’ve seen, at the time. And it was hardly like he was the only victim, hardly like Everseer was the only spider straddling the web. Ripplewhim. A lowborn champion, given over for what crimes?
I clenched my fist, imagining Henthae’s throat there in my hand.
Morning moved into afternoon. The more time that passed, the more I fancied that returning to Mund was a fascination bestowed upon me by my brother and sister, even if the thought had occurred to me before their… change. And yet, the sheer fact that they permitted me such suspicions – that meant they were okay, didn’t it?
They were it. They were the trump card. But could they protect me without breaking the law, without invading minds and changing opinions wholesale? The last thing I wanted was to install them as dictators. I didn’t help rid the city of the dragon to replace her with a different telepathic tyrant. I did it in Nentheleme’s name. I did it for freedom’s sake.
No I didn’t.
I did it out of fear. And I doubted Tyr Kayn had half the psychic strength of the twins. Their sheer genesis had held hundreds upon hundreds of dark elves in stilled stasis while my ghosts worked on them.
When they eventually came into the fullness of their power…
I laughed at myself inwardly, thinking of that hollow concept. I’d tasted the fullness of my power, once or twice. When I gave in, and tapped that hidden ocean of rage I seemed to share with every archmage I’d met. When they –
“The three of you can’t go on like this,” the twins said. Interrupting my thoughts. “We can’t do it for you – we won’t. We can help but… you’re all acting like children.”
I looked at Jaid, then from her to Jaroan. Seeing the perfect symmetry of their expressions, I shivered – not from the cold, and not for the hundredth time.
“Talk,” they said, their uncanny united voice carrying implacable undertones.
“Talk about what?” Orcan sneered, looking up with hard eyes from his spellbook. The thing was almost as weathered-looking as he was.
It only took that short, sharp sentence to expose the rawness inside of him.
“You’re upset,” I said, trying not to glance at the druidess. Whatever state the wizard was in, Kirid was clearly far worse-off.
“Upset?” He said it with a sneer. “Of course I am upset. You shall hardly capture the depths of my despair with such a mean, a meagre word. Yesterday I saw my city destroyed. You think a wound like this will scar easily?”
“Well, it doesn’t mean you need to generate a headwind.”
“I am not…” It took him a moment to master himself. “I am not generating a headwind. But we are not needing to rush, and –“
“We need to arrive before the next Incursion.”
“Which as you say yourself may have already happened, or may not happen yet for days, weeks, moons!”
I had no answer for that. I looked down over the edge of the rock at the glassy waves.
Has it already happened?
Then, from out of nowhere, the druidess spoke up, her voice barely a murmur.
“Vot is Mundt like, zere?” she asked timidly. “I have seen, ze globes…”
I looked up, met her glittering eyes, and she fell silent.
“Silv, Sin-Aidre,” Orcan said, waving a hand dismissively.
The beautiful woman instantly dropped her gaze to her hands, and twisted them in her lap. She suddenly looked as though she might start crying.
No, she wasn’t much like Em.
“I’ll answer her question, thank you very much.” I glared at the wizard but he fixed his eyes back on the page of his spellbook. “Mund… It’s a difficult one. There’s a lot you can’t see in the enchanters’ toys, a lot they don’t bother to capture…”
She knew the great white walls, the spires of the temples, the unbelievable pinnacle of the Maginox – but there was so much more. I started talking, and after a few moments the twins crystallised my words in images, fleeting but heart-rending.
The Blackrush roaring, gleaming under a midnight moon. The yellow leaves of Hightown’s avenues. The noise and laughter in the squares, the markets. The winding streets of Undernight, the busy bazaars.
Slowly, I became acclimatised to the wonder of the vision they were crafting. “I wonder if my brother and sister can do some of the smells,” I said, grinning.
But when I blinked away the amazing images, I saw that Orcan and Kirid were still under their spell, staring blank-eyed across the empty seas, and the last thing I wanted was to ruin it now.
The twins knew. They allowed the two Telese archmages a glimpse of what Mund was. What it would still be, continue to be, if we played our parts. If we let the sword of destiny loose to swing at our necks.
I joined them, returning to the vision, enjoying it for what it was worth.
Everything.
Gods, I found myself praying, not naming any in particular. O gods above… I don’t ask for our lives. I just ask… if we die…
Let it be worth it. Let it be worth something.
* * *
My enemy hadn’t used frost or fire. No eldritch-sword or destruction-spell claimed the lives of his victims. Making landfall at last, and catching a distant glimpse of Blackice Bay to our north as we angled past it towards the south, we would have had no cause for alarm. No smoke rose from smouldering roofs. None of the little figures in the fields were screaming for help, clutching at wounds.
But the twins turned us around anyway with a simple phrase, made all the more ominous by the mandatory non-echo, the default double-voice they had to employ.
“No thoughts in the town.”
And as we coursed high above the meadows, the sun illuminating those figures in the fields, my sense of alarm grew. They were lying down. All of them.
They couldn’t have been dead, surely? Not all of them…
We were still farther out than I anticipated when my sorcerous senses began to confirm my worst fears, and I shuddered, adrift in my confusion.
The twins’ silence spoke volumes, and when Orcan swooped low with the rock, bringing us to earth in the centre of the little harbour-town, it didn’t take too long to ascertain what had happened.
I animated the corpses to gather them together while my bintaborax swiftly dug a temporary grave, but I wasn’t going to be forced to bind a spirit to get my answers; there were more than enough ghosts pottering about. Three of them, in fact. Two proved far too deranged to make sense under my questioning – they didn’t understand Mundic or Netheric, it seemed, gibbering away unintelligibly as they patrolled random sections of the streets. Grimly, I waved them through doorways to the shadowland. However, there was an old transparent fisherman sitting at his wharf, seemingly incapable of noticing that the waves were lapping not only over his boots, but literally through them. He stared out to sea, blinking every now and again in a stuttering fashion – not when the spray came up at his bearded, wrinkled old face, but at random intervals, like a misfiring response trapped in his memory, cursed to endlessly loop.
I hovered out beside him, letting my own feet slide unfeeling into the chilly water.
“You look mildly sane,” I observed, shifting into his field of view. “What happened here?”
I moved round further, until he was staring right through me. It probably didn’t help that I was almost as transparent as him.
“What killed you?”
The waves crashed. The gulls cried. If I closed my eyes, removing the ghost and the ghost town behind him from my sight, everything could’ve been normal.
But it wasn’t. Nothing was going to be normal, ever again.
I kept my eyes on him, searching him for a flicker of recognition.
“What happened here?” I pressed. “What happened to you?”
Nothing.
It was only as I raised my left hand to tear open a hole between worlds that he reacted.
“It came over the sea,” he said in excellent Netheric, his voice clear but dispassionate.
He was still staring right through me, at the black expanse of Northril.
I slowly lowered my arm. “A ship? A ship of bones?”
He cringed then, as though he were about to burst into tears.
“No.”
“What, then?” I didn’t even think it looked like a dark elf attack – unless they’d had no need to use frostbolts on a little, undefended harbour-town like this one. They could’ve come ashore, used magic to accomplish these murders… “If not them – what? Who?”
I supposed there were lots of options I hadn’t considered. A sea-monster? A manifestation of a dark god?
His cringe had faded; he’d resumed his previous position, falling back into silence and resuming his distant stare.
I shuddered, suddenly hating that we were trapped like this in our paltry existence, just waiting for our deaths to come and claim us, claim us and take us on to such an unforgiving afterlife.
“I’m sorry.” He gave no sign that he heard my words and yet I had to say them. “I’m sorry what happened to you… that it broke you. Your soul. You’re not alone, you know? Heh.” I looked down at his feet, where the waves washed clean through his nethernal flesh, their gleaming surfaces rising up and surging forwards, falling down and receding… “One day, I suppose we’ll all join you. May you find the Door quickly, old man. I’ll give you the same advice I gave the other two – it’s not like I’m an expert on the local terrain, but – head inland.”
I’d located a natural seam, lying only a few yards away. I coaxed it closer with a gesture, and peeled Nethernum open.
In the shadowland Northril was no sea, but rather an endless mist-filled pit, black lightning flickering deep within its clouds. This place, this bay, seemed like the edge of an impossible canyon descending down into madness.
Woe to the drowned sailor, I supposed.
I’d almost swallowed him with the planar gate when he said it. The five words that brought context to everything. The five words that sent me racing back to the others, banishing my eldritches, Orcan finishing the grave crudely with a single gesture.
“Black smoke.”
The old man said it without cringing, but some life returned to his face all the same. He met my eyes, seeing me for the first time, and leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially, true human emotion in his voice.
“Bones. With wings.”
* * *
“We need to get better at eldritch minds. Especially nethernal ones. They’re only a little bit different to ours. We should’ve sensed the ghosts, if nothing else.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I managed to say through clenched teeth, staring out at the mountains ahead of us.
“No way we can practice on the undead Kas has access to. They have the craziest minds… But we could’ve asked him to keep that old man, couldn’t we? How much would something like that infringe on his freedom? He wasn’t fully-formed yet on this plane. No evil in him. Would it be wrong to control him?”
“Can’t have it both ways.” I tightened my one remaining fist; the force-tendrils extending from my stump started to coil and twist as if to emulate the gesture.
“It would be awesome to have access to a diviner. We should be able to make less mistakes then. And we could enhance them, maybe. If we can get a good glimpse at the future, maybe we can expand it in our memories, and –”
“Guys.” I drew a deep breath. “I’m trying to get a serious brood on over here. Can you not do that, you know, mind to mind instead?”
“Oh, sure. So, we might be able to capture details that –”
“No, guys! I mean, between each other.”
Finally in silence, I smiled despite myself. Whatever they’d done to me – whatever they were doing – it was clearly working. The mountains ahead loomed blue against a clear, pale sky, and I thought I was almost looking forward to –
“That goes for me too,” Orcan barked.
“And me!” Kirid said in a strangled voice.
When the twins laughed, I laughed, and, in spite of the offended-looking Telese, it almost felt good.
I spent the next several hours just waiting, letting my half-wraith state encapsulate me, hide me from the wind and rain more reliably than Orcan’s spells. I dwelled on Mal Malas, going over the memories at a level of precision I’d never before managed. The twins were helping me, letting me inspect the details such that I could scrutinise a single flapping scale on the dracolich’s flank. The degree to which such mental activity was helping my overall emotional state, rather than hindering it, was dubious. I saw it, again and again in my mind’s eye, the way he had brought his magenta sabre down, sundering all my defences at a single blow. There was fear in me, yes. But there was elation, too. I was finally feeling like myself again – my old self.
You have to be prepared.
It sounded like the twins, but it spoke in my mind using my own voice, and I chose not to question it. At least, I hoped it was me choosing not to question it…
I cast the twins a sidelong glance, and they winked at me in unison.
I had no more shudders left. I just had to accept it.
At least they are alive.
More than once I thought I caught a glimpse of a purple tinge to the clouds ahead of us, but it was just my imagination playing tricks on me. When at last I did see a pinkish glow smearing the horizon, there was a perfectly natural explanation: the sun was setting over my right shoulder, and we were rising into the highlands, the mountains slowly becoming shapes graven in rock rather than shadows.
“What if he isn’t out in front of us?” I blurted once the internal pressure became too much for me to take. “What if he lied?”
“He toldt you he vould see you in Mundt, no?” Kirid asked. “He vould lie at zis, you think?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I mean, I think we haven’t gone over him, or close to him. But he can hide himself from me, from my magic, from all onlooking eyes probably… He has at least one decent illusionist… And if he went a different way – he could’ve sacked a different town –”
“What he did to Blackice Bay, he did for you.” Orcan closed his spellbook smartly, sitting forward and rubbing at his back with both hands. “You know this. It is so that you will follow. But he will not expect all three of us. Now, Kirid, my dear – bring us a few birds, if you would be so kind.”
The silent druidess complied, though I could tell from the look in her eyes that she still didn’t entirely approve of this use of her power. She’d seemed far more at ease hunting for us in her own osprey-shape, when we crossed Northril. Wordlessly, she summoned and entranced our evening meal; I looked on dubiously as Orcan carefully roasted the birds, and then I feasted on mountain-eagle for the first time.
I chewed mechanically – even the twins couldn’t improve the flavour much, apparently –
“Will you stop doing that! We can hear you, but we are trying to learn how to butt out, and you aren’t making it any easier! We can instinctively pick up thoughts about us. If you want it to taste like salted pork –”
It instantly changed on my tongue.
“– or boiled socks –”
I froze.
“– just you keep on the way you’re going.”
I chewed mechanically, keeping my thoughts to myself.
I didn’t need to trouble the others with my doubts. Orcan was right. It would be textbook Malas to invite me to chase him. And, in any case, Prince Deathwyrm had to remain a secondary concern. For all that he could lay waste to thousands, I couldn’t make that my responsibility. I had to keep my eye on the goal.
Getting to Mund. Stopping the madness before it started. I didn’t want to add Xantaire and Xastur and Orstrum to my tally of dead family members. The list was quite long enough already. One Incursion was probably all it would take. And even if they survived, it wouldn’t be mere thousands who would suffer. Tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Maybe millions. Who else would die? Would Hontor and his sons be amongst the dead? What about Salli Meleine? What about Emrelet?
If not the demons, then Everseer… or, just maybe, Malas’s ancestors…
Measured against them, the dracolich would be a mere annoyance. I had to think of him like that.
As a stepping-stone. Part of my schooling.
Once I finished my eagle breast, I finally sat down on the edge of the wizard’s rock, dangling my feet over the mountainside we were currently scaling. The drop was a couple of hundred feet, but it was hard to get a grip on, what with the speed at which the ground beneath us was climbing up, the angle of our ascent ever-steepening.
As we capped a rise, coursing suddenly over a lifeless stony gorge between two great pillars of rock, our angle flattened again. I dropped the left-over bone and gristle, letting it plummet, instantly dropping out of view behind us.
The twins had finished first, rejecting more of the bird than the rest of us. Orcan was still eating noisily, eagle held nonchalantly in his right hand while his left worked the pages of his spell-lit spellbook. Kirid would be at hers for the best part of an hour, the way she was nibbling at it, methodically consuming every stringy tendon like one of those mad people who ate apple cores.
“What’s the deal with Timesnatcher, then?”
There were realities I had to face. This was one of them.
When I looked to Jaid and Jaroan, they smiled and deflected it, turning their heads to the grizzled old wizard.
Orcan swallowed his mouthful too quickly, and he almost choked, producing a horrible-sounding cough. “What is he, to you?” he asked, sounding more curious than I’d heard him in a long time. “You are Feychilde. This means you knew him?”
“He was my friend.”
The bitterness of the reply which found its way out of my mouth seemed to leave the implication clear.
He was my friend… once.
“From what I have heard, I would no longer look to him for friendship, Feychilde.” There was a kind of sneer on his face when he used my champion’s name. “It is said that when he laughs, it is as the laughter of fate itself, mocking all that transpires.”
“Tell him the rest,” the twins murmured.
“Yes.” Orcan’s eyes suddenly sparkled. “It is said no more champions step forward. That after – I suppose it is, after your Everseer – that Nightfell is the only one. And Timesnatcher now defers to Nightfell in all things. There is talk in the taverns of your home city. What spell has she put him under? Was it her, who has accomplished his downfall? And so many other of the champions have fallen. Glancefall, yes? He is dead. There is rumour that the killer – Dreamlaugher –”
“Dreamlaughter.”
“Yes! They say she killed him. Fangmoon was killed by the heretic, Higher Arch Nine or vhichever…”
He was getting excited, his accent slipping.
I was the opposite. I shrank into myself.
Sol…
So many times, she’d saved my ass.
She fixed me after Zyger! She… Theor…
I redirected my stare, fixing it blankly on the twins. I could feel tears welling up behind my eyes.
They shook their heads sadly in unison.
Why didn’t they tell me?
“… ze former champion, Stormsword –”
I swung my head back around.
“– slain on Magisterium business, on foreign soil. They held parades in her honour.”
I felt the blood drain from my face.
“You knew her too, did you not? Slew many demons together, no?”
He fell silent, looking plainly curious, no more cruelty on his face than there’d been in his voice – if anything, the old wizard just seemed thrilled to finally have his invitation to gossip freely without having to initiate the topic…
He was completely ignorant of the loss of self I underwent.
For just a moment, there was only a hair between the old shrivelled head of Orcan and the old shrivelled head of Shadowcrafter. The casualness with which he sliced me, pierced me, question after question, glance after glance, each one producing a wound in me he could never see, never understand. It was beneath the impassive exterior, the outer skin which was so swiftly transformed to ice, colder than any armour Winterprince ever wore. Even as he punctured my heart, the darkness enveloped me, the chill of Northril overcoming my willpower.
Only a hair of difference between them.
Only the head atop Orcan’s shoulders.
Despite his powers, I would’ve found it so easy to cut him down then and there. It wouldn’t have helped, though, would it? It would’ve just been one more pointless death to lay at my feet.
Emrelet…
I couldn’t even process the cascade of thoughts. The images, sounds. Scents.
“Vill you stay vith me? Just until ze dawn?”
At least I know now why Jaid and Jaroan didn’t say anything.
And then their voices came to me, solemn and low:
“Our condolences, brother.”
My voice was hoarse when at last I responded.
“Yes. Yes, I knew her.”
* * *
Night deepened. Bare mountain-peaks passed beneath me in the moonlight like rows of spears, as if daring me to fall upon them.
Instead, I fell into a mercifully-dreamless sleep. When I awoke in the predawn twilight, I found I was the last one up. Thanks to the ministrations of the twins and a gesture from Kirid, I felt like I’d had the best rest I’d ever enjoyed, despite the roughness of sleeping here sprawled out on the stone.
Beneath us, I saw the forested slopes and tilled fields of House Sentelemeth. Agormand proper. Our course should’ve taken us close to Irontooth Gates, as I’d imagined it, but I was hardly some master of geography, and I’d been hoping to spot the landmark even if only from afar, if only to set my mind at ease. Now I’d slept right through, and we were closer to home than I’d expected.
Just hours away.
“Master!”
Pinktongue returned to my shoulder in a flash of flame, staggering everyone, even me. In his pale clawed fist he held the wrist of another imp, his fellow dangling by his arm. Pinktongue grabbed hold of the neck of my robe and flapped his wings to steady himself.
“Master, it has been seen! The Bilgebreath, he has seen it!”
“It?” I took Bilgebreath from him, to both of their relief, and stared at the mint-allergic imp. “You saw the dragon?”
“Yes my Master!” he squeaked. “The tail, the tail of the dragon entering the earth, where the paladins did go!”
Even in these circumstances, he managed to fill the word with spite.
“Paladins?”
“P-paladins of Mund!”
I cast a swift glance over the nonplussed faces of the others, then barked at him:
“Well… where?”
Bilgebreath, for his part, looked at Pinktongue desperately.
I leaned aside so I could turn my head, look my messenger right in the glowing red eyes. “Where, Pinktongue?”
He licked his teeth.
“Master… Master I know not the name of the place, yet it has many roofs –”
I went cold inside. They’d found Mal Malas, but didn’t know how to identify –
“– roofs clad in green and gold grasses, where it seems the ground has grown over the houses, or they have buried their homes –”
“Hidden Hedge,” I said, and he fell silent instantly, fixing me with a hesitant, toothy little grin. “Hidden Hedge!” I repeated, turning to Orcan. “It’s not far.”
He shrugged at me from over the edge of his book.
“Double our speed!” I got my bearings and pointed, angling my arm towards the curve of the mountain-range, almost directly at the rising sun.
“I can’t,” he huffed, though I felt the lurch as he adjusted the direction of our flying rock. “I am moving us at maximum speed.”
“You’ve got to have some more juice than this, come on!” I was filled with energy; the force-whips extending from my stump of a right arm were rigid, like branches caught in a hurricane-wind.
A hurricane-wind Orcan seemed incapable of producing.
He shrugged once more, and moved his eyes back to the page of his text.
Kirid looked between us, and then back to the clouds, far off in thought… but it wasn’t her I had a problem with.
“Don’t blame him,” the twins thought at me. “He’s more nervous than your imp there, believe us.”
Okay. I shrugged my shoulders, knowing what I had to do. You can keep him on track, if I go out ahead with a flight-spell on me –
“We know what you’re planning. We understand your urgency. We… won’t stop you.”
I felt the tension in that statement, and it gave me pause.
But you want to.
“We aren’t sure just how much you’ll take on board what we have to say… We aren’t sure how much it’ll help.”
I looked down at the woodlands smearing past like paint in the wake of an artist’s brush.
You’re afraid of damaging my confidence.
“Exactly.”
I smiled.
Don’t worry. You don’t go into something like this weighing up odds, figuring out your chances. You just do the right thing. Live or die, it doesn’t much matter.
“Mortiforn loves you, Kas.”
The strangeness of this statement made me blink, look back up at their faces.
Jaroan had his eyes closed, a tranquil expression on his features. It was Jaid whose gaze met my own.
“Don’t fear it. You forget that while your thoughts and deeds lend shape to Materium, every helping hand and sinful whisper echoes across the eldritch planes, sculpting the future in ways you cannot begin to dream. Your soul, Kas. It may be many things – you may be many things – but impure isn’t one of them.”
I stared at my sister for a few moments, not quite knowing what to say, or even to think.
Th-thank you.
“You’re more than welcome.”
My heart swelled in my breast, such that I thought for a moment I might die of it.
I suppose… I can wait. For the fight, I mean. I have some other things to prepare.
“Knock yourself out.”
I already had Zab and the satyrs along for the ride, plus wraith-boy of course…
A gesture summoned and ingested Blofm – I had it down to an art-form now, and Orcan, whose inquisitive glare came beaming from over the edge of the book again, bore witness only to a flash of verdant energy.
And then, throwing caution to the winds, I did the same with an ascended ancient.
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