Naereni
I heaved for breath as I leaned against a wall, trying to get my breathing under control. I brushed my hands against the bricks as I looked up, spotting Karsien's mist bubble at last. It had been a tense few minutes as Sevren and I had run toward the Joans' estate, and sure enough, I could see the blithe gas concentrating over the estate.
I walked toward the mist, the one-armed highblood in tow behind me. Something in what old Renton Morthelm had done had shaken the man deeply, his steps almost coming a moment too late every time we moved.
I entered the mist without reservations. As expected, it didn't hamper my senses at all. Karsien had keyed his spell to the both of us, after all.
Caera ran through the fog, enveloping her brother in a tender hug. "Took you long enough to get back," she said tiredly. "After you were knocked out of the bubble, the others said you'd be back. That Naereni would lead you here just fine, but I didn't entirely believe them." Caera looked at me, swallowing with emotion. "Thank you."
I waved dismissively. "It's no problem, Boulders," I said. "Your brother here can't help but throw himself into danger."
Boulders, of course, looked as affronted as the first time I'd called her by her new moniker. Then her features shifted into something more devious. "So you say, twitter-fingers," she said, puffing her chest out slightly.
I blinked, then looked down at my hands. Sure enough, I'd been wriggling them as I sometimes did subconsciously whenever I was stressed.
Oh, she can hit back too, I thought, a grin stretching across my face. I patted Caera's arm playfully as I passed her, and for once, I didn't even try and steal something by doing so. "You're a quick learner."
Karsien was camped outside the gate into the Joans' estate. The leaves had finally started to come in on the trees surrounding the large courtyard, and they provided excellent cover. His eyes traced a spot of blithe mist as it entered the dilapidated estate, still decrepit and broken from the battle that went down inside months ago. The area was silent as a grave, the only sound the occasional explosion or rumble from the far distance.
"It's too quiet," Karsien said. "The attacks from the vicars dropped off shortly after we got closer."
I hummed nervously, acknowledging that truth. There was an almost palpable darkness radiating from the estate, a queasy sickness that seemed to infect the air and make breathing difficult. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, a silent warning as power gathered in that estate.
How much mana has been siphoned from the people of Fiachra? I thought, licking my lips which felt suddenly dry. The trees around me seemed to cringe away from the ominous aura that churned in the heart of our destination.
"Our plans don't change," Sevren said, patting his sister on the back as he walked forward. He withdrew the beastward from his dimension ring. "Breaking this around the central node of basilisk blood should disrupt the hivemind functions of the blithe itself. And once the blithe is inert, it shouldn't spread so dangerously."
I summoned a dagger of ice, closing my eyes as I kissed the pommel. I remembered my father's cold body, the blithe needle stuck in his arm just like a dagger.
We end this today, one way or another, I thought, walking in lockstep with my mentor as we passed the gate. The Joans' estate yawned like the mouth of an old mausoleum. Yet a mausoleum would hold nothing but dusty bones and forgotten memories.
This place? It held demons.
Karsien's hands gripped the doornob. He looked at everyone present, giving them each a quiet nod of acknowledgment, before opening the door.
The inside of the estate had changed from the last time I'd seen it. Most of the roof had collapsed as months of weathering wore away at the already weakened structure. A large room stretched before us: doubly larger due to crumbling walls and unsupported floors. What had once been a picture of decadence had fallen into the deepest sort of decay. That of being forgotten.
But my attention was immediately drawn to something at the center of the room. A massive heart-shaped ruby-red crystal vibrated audibly, the noxious aura emanating from it scraping against my skin. Green energy roiled within, a streaking red seeming to tie it back into the crystalline form. The sheer amount of compressed mana in that thing made it hard to think, the pressure scrambling my thoughts and causing my reason to run dry. Two black spikes, each as long as my forearm, thrust into the heart like nails driven into wood.
How many people? I thought, struggling to speak. How many others lost their fathers to this drug to make whatever this horrid heart is?
I watched mutely as a stream of blithe mist descended from the hole in the ceiling, no doubt having come from some poor fool who'd been converted to a mana battery. I watched in disgust as the mist wrapped itself around the red crystal, being absorbed at a rapid pace.
Sevren stepped forward, the beastward covertly held in his palm. A mask of grim determination spread across his face.
"I've waited for far too long," a voice like oozing slime said from above, "far too long to see my purpose fulfilled."
My limbs locked up, the contained pressure radiating from the crystal battery suddenly overwhelmed by a power beyond my ken. My breath left my body as an aura in the air stole it from me greedily. My knees shook, my mana stalling as I looked up, my wide eyes drinking in the horrible sight before me.
Mardeth, the Vicar of Plague, hovered near the ceiling, his long, gangly legs crossed nonchalantly and a misshapen finger tapping against the side of his skull. I'd never seen the man before this, but I knew it was him. His mottled skin was riddled with blithe stains, and a milky white eye, though clearly blind, seemed to strip me bare. It seemed set too far forward in his skull, like it wished to crawl its way out to get even closer to me. An aura of quiet menace radiated from the vicar, making everyone present quake.
Yet that aura was only compounded by the long, protruding horn that jutted from his forehead. It looked mismatched for his body: it was smooth and elegant, bearing striations of deep red across its onyx surface that seemed to dance with the shadows. It had the same air of regality as a dark iron crown, though the king who wore it seemed paltry in comparison. Through the haze of my terror, I was able to recognize what I was looking at. Around the base of the horn, ugly black stitches and bloody cuts belied the truth.
That horn had been grafted on. Transplanted from somewhere.
"Do you know what makes power, Rats?" Mardeth asked the silent room. I dared not breathe, some primal part of me hoping that if I didn't move, he wouldn't see me. "It is pain. The pain of struggle."
His good eye burrowed into me for a moment, and I heard myself whimper slightly as his aura pressed down on me. All of us coming on this mission were aware Mardeth could be here. We hadn't said anything, fearing to make our terrors a reality. If we didn't think about the guardian of our final destination, then he wouldn't haunt our steps.
But we couldn't ignore it any longer. He was here.
"I plateaued in power long ago," Mardeth said with a snort, content to hover in the air and twiddle his fingers. "I wanted to become Scythe Melzri's Retainer to help me push past my limits. Then I'd kill her, too, taking her position as Scythe. One day, I would take Varadoth's head for myself as well."
Mardeth's eyes left me, and I almost felt I could breathe. Instead, his sole eye narrowed to Sevren Denoir, who shook visibly, clutching the remains of his sleeve. "Until I discovered something. Something ancient, dark, and powerful," he said, brushing his hand against the deadly beautiful horn grafted to his skull. "They say a god died where the Redwater flows. Nobody knows where the rumor started. Who witnessed such a battle, or when exactly it took place. Every account differs on why there was a fight. Some say a basilisk was protecting you petty lessers. Another claims it was simply bloodlust driving the fighters. But every. Single. Account. Says that a god died. That their blood and sacrifice tainted that river forevermore."
Mardeth smiled, his lips stretching nearly to his ears. His mouth was unnaturally wide as he smiled with blackened teeth, the maw seeming to invite my death. "It wasn't just any god that died. I found what was left, the remains seeping into the Redwater. A Vritra died in those waters, their corpse long gone. But there was something that remained for me, as if fated. And so I knew what I had to do. I would make myself a god."
"You think you'll be a god?" my mouth said. My brain desperately told me to shut up. To slink away, back to East Fiachra. That's where I belonged, not here doing something so important. I was simply a slumrat. "You're no Vritra. And you never will be. That horn on your head would fit the shit on my shoes better than you," I snarled, emotion overriding sense.
Mardeth's hands slowly lowered from the horn on his shoulders. "I am going to kill you slowly, Rat, if not for that statement, then to make the little mage feel a fraction of the pain he put me through by denying me my goal," he said, slowly lowering in the air. "But I need an audience. What is a god without worshippers? So you'll live until my ascension," he said with a smile that looked like a grimace. "And then I shall allow you to die."
I felt a horrid, turbulent shift in the mana, the roiling mass of energy inside the basilisk crystal lurching and churning. Only Caera seemed to recognize what was happening as the decay-attribute blithe churned in the heart crystal, entering the spikes–no, horns–embedded into it. They began to glow with a bright green light, the energy within focusing to a razor-sharp point. It traveled through the air in a barely visible tendril, a murky green energy questing for something.
And then that tendril of purified mana touched the horn on Mardeth's forehead. I watched in horror as it was sucked into the beautiful horn, the Vicar of Plague shaking visibly as he closed his eyes in bliss–or agony. "I will be a Sovereign," he declared, the mana pumping through him in waves. "My purpose will finally be fulfilled!"
My body moved. My mind still stayed in that place of terror, where I was a little girl again unknowingly on the streets and running from every shadow. But my instincts blared at me: I needed to stop this. I couldn't let whatever Mardeth was doing with the energy come to pass. Every fiber of my being told me that whatever the Vicar of Plague was trying, the completion would spell doom for all I knew.
I threw an ice knife at Mardeth, leaving behind several glyphs as I ran forward. The knife dissolved with the Vicar's skin on contact, sickly green ooze absorbing the spell. He opened his eyes, a frown plastered on his face as he stared down at me.
An all-encompassing mist surged through the room like galloping stallions, covering every corner as Karsien engaged his regalia. I felt the cool water vapor surrounding me as it covered me in a protective embrace, the dewdrops kissing my skin. Though the mist sizzled away whenever it neared the massive red crystal, I felt a wave of relief as a bit of Mardeth's pressure relented.
A mist clone leapt at Mardeth, swinging a knife made of solid mist. A tendril of deep green punched through it, dispersing it as if it were never there. Hofal leaped forward, scraping his axe against the floor and pulling walls from the ground. They rose in a steplike pattern, ascending toward Mardeth's waiting form. Along the topmost step was one of the glyphs I'd placed earlier.
The vicar seemed surprised by the mist, his single good eye turning and trying to focus. They passed right over me as I circled the floating monstrosity, laying down glyphs with every other step. I felt my mana squeeze as I wrung myself dry, each rune taxing me more. I could no longer distinguish the sweat glistening on my forehead from Karsien's mist condensing along my body.
Hofal followed behind me, slamming his axe into the ground around each of my glyphs. The earth underneath spurted up like a tower every time, intricate little details and architectural sculpting inlaid into his spell. Yet my runes rose to Mardeth's height, pillars ascending one by one.
A blade of wind rocketed toward the vicar from Caera, who was wielding a single-edged ruby blade as long as she was tall. I recognized the material immediately: the same basilisk blood that formed the crystal behind us. But as I continued my circle of the vicar, Caera's devastating wind blades kept the monster focused. He had to visibly focus to sense where they were coming from, the mist damning even his perception to oblivion. When they neared, tendrils of murky green acid ate away at the mana, but Caera repositioned with the grace and speed of a trained fighter, never using the same exact cut twice.
"You think this can kill me, Rats?" Mardeth asked, his slippery voice sounding amused as he chuckled. Intermittently, mist clones surged from the pervading vapor, trying to stab Mardeth in the back or pull on his leg. The vicar's tendrils of sludge seemed to detect these automatically, dissolving them or constricting around each clone. "This mist is nothing to me. I can destroy it with the twitch of my fingers."
None responded to the vicar's jibes, every single person too wary of giving away their location. Instead, we cast our spells with near perfect synchronization. There was no time for quips. No time for banter, as I usually did. Only survival.
I completed my circle, heaving for breath as my mana core ached. I stumbled as I reached the first pillar Hofal had created, leaning into the stone and trying to gather myself. My fingers brushed over the intricate arches and designs he wove into each and every structure, the tactile familiarity grounding me. But there was still one thing more I needed to do.
I concentrated nearly every remaining drop of my mana into a single spell. Ice formed over my palms, condensing a dozen times over into a compact dagger. The weapon that eventually formed was a deep, static blue that seemed to freeze even the mists around it. My legs trembled from the effort I'd expended to create it.
I held the dagger out into the mists. "This is the focus," I said, slumping against the pillar.
As expected, I felt a phantom hand take the knife from my grasp. Hofal skidded to a stop next to me a moment later, wrapping his beefy arms under my shoulder. "You can't stay in one place too long," he admonished as he helped me move. "You need to be in every place at once to allow the mist to work at its best."
I locked eyes with Caera, who seemed to understand the silent communication I sent her. With her next swipe of wind, she backed off, ready to allow our plan to settle into place.
A dozen mist clones coalesced around the many earthen pillars that surrounded Mardeth like the bars of a cage. They stood stock still, each looking up at the vicar with grim determination.
I saw a flash of Karsien's body as he bound toward Mardeth, running up steps of earth as his clones looked on seriously. He jumped as he reached the top step, my deep blue dagger flashing in his hands as he held it in a reverse grip, prepared to drive it into the vicar's back.
The vicar spun, his hand whipping out faster than I could track as his fingers closed around Karsien's throat. My mentor lurched in midair, my stomach doing a perfect mirror of the action as the monster held him suspended by his neck. Mardeth sneered contemptuously as he wrenched the dagger from Karsien's hand, his touch dissolving the appendage down to the bone just on contact.
Karsien screamed in pain. I felt compelled to do the same, feeling a grim terror wash over me as green lines spread through my mentor's throat. But I couldn't.
The battlefield froze as Mardeth inspected the dagger in his hand. "You thought this was enough to kill me, did you?" he asked, inspecting the spellforged knife. Karsien grunted in pain as he clawed at the vicar's hand, still clasping his throat. But as my mentor's bandana slowly decayed, I saw his signature smile. The one he wore as a mask from the moment I'd met him.
"No," he ground out, his voice pained and watery. "No, I didn't. I expected it to… to hold you."
I exhaled a shuddering breath, then smashed my hands together. The glyphs on every single pillar glowed once, twice, then erupted with icy chains as they streaked toward the dagger. As was the nature of this spell, each interlocking chain wove around the target before cinching back toward the deep blue knife. Thick bonds grew taut as the vicar was bound fast, a hundred wrappings tying him to Hofal's raised stone monuments. My ice hissed and popped with power, the utter focus I'd put into them evident. The mist clones below darted away in every direction as the trap was finally sprung.
Mardeth looked at Karsien, whom he still clutched tightly in one hand. Karsien grinned. "First rule of thievery, Mardeth," he said cheerily, his voice strong despite the agonizing pain he must have been in.
As each and every mist clone ran away, they fanned out in a perfect circle. Yet as one of the mist clones neared the basilisk blood crystal, it dispersed from the radiating energy, which still tracked toward Mardeth's grafted horn.
And underneath that mist clone was the one-armed Sevren Denoir. He held the beastward in his hand, primed to smash it against the crystal. By hiding within the presence-obscuring effects of the mist clone, he'd been able to get far closer to the source of that power than otherwise. And because a dozen clones ran in different directions, it wasn't immediately clear that this was the target.
The highblood was so close, barely ten feet away! He would make it! My chains only needed to hold the vicar for a second! Hope surged in my breast as I grinned, feeling the oncoming euphoria of a heist completed. We'd conned so many people, but this? This was a masterpiece!
Everything that happened next seemed to come in slow motion. Mardeth's eyes widened, a sense of horror twisting his face as realization dawned.
And then he blurred. The bindings I'd conjured shattered around him as he dropped Karsien, then grabbed one of my icy chains. He heaved on the chain, a primal power coursing through him as he wrenched the pillar free from the earth with my spell as leverage. In one swift motion, he flicked the chain at Sevren, several tons of stone following in its wake.
The one-armed man, who had been so, so so close, barely managed to duck the attack, throwing himself to his stomach. The pillar whooshed overhead, arcing back around toward–
Hofal leapt in front of me, slamming his axe into the ground and conjuring a wall to protect us both as his own earthen block hurtled toward us on a leash of my own ice. Yet Hofal's defensive wall was hastily made; conjured in the spur of the moment. The pillar he'd formed before had the same amount of powerful condensation as my ice chains.
The pillar broke through Hofal's makeshift barrier, tearing through half the Joan estate's remaining walls in the process. The horrible sound of rock shattering was the last thing I perceived as the pillar smashed into Hofal, blowing us both away.
My world erupted in pain as I hit something hard. I felt something in my leg snap as I cracked against stone, a scream wrenching itself from my throat. I struggled not to black out as I tumbled forward from the wall I'd crashed into, falling onto the floor. Hofal's body–bloodied and beaten–rested nearby, the older man coughing blood from his lips.
I whimpered as I looked back up at the battlefield, some primitive part of my mind terrified of what I might see. Agony surged from my broken leg, my thoughts hazy after the sudden impact. But that agony felt miniscule as I watched Mardeth stalk toward Sevren.
The highblood man heir stumbled backward, his face wrought with fear. Mardeth knelt, picking up a nondescript black object from the ground. "A beastward," he hissed angrily, his intent rushing out once more. Sevren must've dropped it when he hastily ducked that pillar.
Mardeth's hand clenched around the beastward, subsuming it in plague. I felt something in me crack as I watched our last hope wither away.
I thought I'd known true terror before when the vicar's intent was bearing down on us. I'd known he'd been playing around. Toying with us. But for the first time, I saw fury on his features.
I wished for nothing more than to curl into a ball and hide. I was a little girl again and the darkness had come for me with more anger and hatred than ever before. Mardeth's intent told me the truth of my existence. I was weak. Insignificant. I'd never help anyone, and I never had helped anyone.
The Vicar of Plague stalked forward, mana roiling and snapping at his call. "I'm going to make your death as slow as Toren Daen's," Mardeth spat, his horn glowing with energy. "I'm going to string you up by your spine, allowing you to feel but never end!" He raised a hand, which pulsed with green energy. "You'll wish you never dared defy me, you skulking lesser!"
A surge of decay mana rushed for Sevren. In the part of my mind that was still conscious, I felt certain that this was where I was going to watch the man die. He'd be little more than a puddle on the floor as the mana consumed him, the rest of us not far behind.
But something else intercepted Mardeth's spell. In the darkness of the decimated Joan estate, I struggled to see what it was as it battled against the Vicar's mana, matching it in power.
It was… black fire? Yes, a nimbus of black fire ate away at the surging acid seeking Sevren's form. They swirled and intertwined, a dance of deep dark and sickly green before they both faded away into nothing.
Caera Denoir limped forward, placing herself in front of her fallen brother. Her navy hair was in horrid disarray. Dust and dirt lined every inch of her red dress, the once-marvelous outfit marred by the cuts of battle. A stream of blood trailed down the edge of her lip, and an aura of condensed power trailed in her wake, one that I was baffled I hadn't sensed before. She hefted her large basilisk-blood sword, pointing it at the vicar not ten feet away. After a second, black soulfire popped and fizzed into existence along the edge of the blade, coating it in a decaying wave of Vritra-blooded flame.
"You won't take him from me, Vicar of Plague," Caera said, her knees shaking slightly as she settled into stance. "You'll have to rip the horns from my head to do so," she declared.
Sevren gaped from the floor, his eyes darting from the black fire along the red blade, to his sisters' grimly determined face, and back again.
Mardeth sneered contemptuously. "Every single step is riddled with pain," he muttered, floating up a bit higher in the air. "Every step. It is just another challenge for me to overcome."
His eye flicked over the battlefield, the energy slowly coursing from the basilisk blood crystal still surging into his horn. "I wanted an audience for my ascension, but now I realize the foolishness of my actions. I will be a god to you lessers. I do not need your worship!"
He hovered higher into the sky, raising a gnarled and decrepit hand above his head. Mana sparked and sputtered there, before popping with a disgusting squelch. A torrent of energy filtered into his palm as he looked down on us like ants, more and more decaying sludge condensing into a sphere above his head.
It enlarged once. Twice. And then a third time, till the sphere of compressed decay magic roiled like the heart of a bonfire. Chunky, acidic liquid seethed and popped in a ball of power as large as a house.
I could smell it, too. I'd grown accustomed to the stench of filth over my years as a street rat. The sewers of Fiachra were my home in a way I could never explain, and I'd long grown to tolerate the seeping smell of everyone's refuse. After all, everyone in East Fiachra was a part of that refuse, too.
But the stench of the spell that cast a shadow over all of us was nearly as overwhelming as the mana within. I gagged, tears gathering at the edge of my eyes as I vomited, shaking slightly. I tried to pull myself forward, dragging myself toward Hofal.
If I was going to die here, I didn't want it to be alone. I saw Hofal struggling to stand, blood leaking from a dozen spots on his body. He was another father who was going stiff and cold, except this time it would be together.
I grasped his hand with mine, my shattered leg screaming in agony as I pulled myself against the man who had been a father to me for the past few years. He held me in bloody arms, whispering soft, comforting words I couldn't understand through red-stained lips.
Caera Denoir's body shook as she set her sword into position for a diagonally upward cut, the highblood woman lowering her body into a stance for an iai. Power surged from her as she funneled black soulfire into her sword, the warrior facing the palpable waves of power with her own stalwart resolve. Behind her, Sevren Denoir struggled to stand.
We're going to die here, I thought, the realization crystal clear. This is how the Rats end. By biting the tail of a cat.
Even Mardeth seemed winded from the effort of conjuring the looming mass of swirling liquid above us, his fury-burned eye glaring down at us even as he heaved for breath. His long, gangly limbs twitched once, twice, and then he waved his hand downward.
The ball of horrid sludge moved ominously slow as it traced a path down to us. I didn't take my eyes off of it as it approached, feeling the energy that would take my life. Caera exhaled, preparing to swing her soulfire-coated sword.
But then a long, humming streak of deep red flashed into existence, blinding and bright and angry. Far faster than I could see, the burning blur smashed into Mardeth's spell with a streak of light, solid and sure. I heard the crack of sound a split second later as the wind blew around me, sending rocks and debris flying.
Mardeth's spell bulged inward. For the barest instant of impact, it appeared as if a rod of red-hot iron were poking a rubber ball, compressing the material inward as it pierced the surface. Time seemed to slow as I watched the red and green intermingle with pent-up fury, the mana clashing and warping the air. A second shockwave sent me rolling to the side as the vicar's spell splashed backward, pierced through as the spear of plasma found victory. A hundred tons of compressed rot splashed all through the Joans' estate, but none reached us. I felt the floorboards creak as I looked up with wide, uncomprehending eyes.
That streak of light had punched through the walls of the estate once more as it sought its target, revealing the nighttime world outside. I peered through that hole, my jaw agape and my limbs trembling as I saw the source of that power.
Toren Daen stood in the center of the courtyard, his breathing slightly uneven. His red chain tattoo glowed angrily, and runic orange feather stems pulsed brightly under his eyes. His mouth was bared in a savage grimace as he stalked forward, his lips pulled back in a horrible snarl.
"Mardeth," he ground out, his voice echoing unnaturally through the air. "It's time I fulfilled my Oath on your blood."