The generals and their first ranks had already assembled under a tent. That was where I met them, ornate in white and gold armor with slim plating, eddying with fine gilded ornamental work and set with a billowing gold cape. The shard intertwisted around my bare arm drew immediate attention. The generals signaled to their first ranks to bring forth their tokens, and they did. Three chests with four tokens.
"Excellent."
An explosion of an inexorable force sent everyone in range flying back. Kaia brought me safely to my feet, but the other generals and those flanking them went sprawling on hard rock. Surrounding armies that hemmed the circumference from above stiffened, unsure of what had happened, but I did. At least I thought I did. Velar glared back at me with the force of two darkened suns. Every line and arcane glyph tattooed on his body began to fill with black. His skin splintered with crevices of molten ink. Six shards levitated in the air and began to circulate around him, orbiting his form like rings around a planet.
I'm certain every soul could hear the bass drum that was booming in my chest.
"No. Not you."
"Betrayal comes not from your enemies," he said, his voice resounded to the chorus of a multitude. "Sajatai Akari."
Rage crashed through me, expelling fear to its recesses. "What have you done to him? Free Velar—"
"Who says he is imprisoned?"
Velar was different. He was not like the others; he wasn't being controlled. He was inhabited.
"A worthy host," Velar said with a god-like echo in his voice. The darkness receded from his eyes to showcase the glow of his blue irises. "I devoted my life to this." His voice melded with Murvis. "To you. Guardian after Guardian, we are overshadowed by the Sajatai. Crowning feats that go unacknowledged. Undeserving of such power, least of all you." Black engulfed his eyes. "All glory is bound to saviors that affect no change. The realm is rife with greed, depravity, and envy. Murvis need not possess a soul when so many abound with malevolence."
I hovered on the brink of panic, keeping it at bay one breath at a time.
"Velar, you can overcome this."
He flashed a grisly grin, then a shard arrowed towards me and before it could make contact—it rocketed me right off my feet, sending me bouncing jaggedly from spot to spot before I halted myself. A searing assault that felt like hot glass beneath my skin. Fear returned from its corners like a raring animal ready to attack.
My body absorbed the trauma.
Swallowing the pain, I rose to my feet, agony throbbing through every part of me.
"You are right to envy, but wrong in your ruling. You are not as strong as the Sagetai," I uttered with a wobbly smile. "You are stronger. So prove it to me, Velar. I know you're still in there. Show me that indomitable will can overpower forces such as the Sajatai and Murvis."
Dark eyes radiated a fierce, uncompromising intelligence. And it truly seemed that he was lost to me. Once one's soul was Murvis's own, it could never be reclaimed. I didn't believe that.
He hurled another shard at me. My forearm shot in front of my face and the token tangled around my wrist deflected the blow like a force field. I lowered my hand to see amber light roving through the metallic accents of the shard.
Velar's head tilted curiously, and a shark-like smile tore his face open. Archers perched on the edge above drew and notched their arrows, each of them targeting me. I didn't want to hurt them, but Murvis was not giving me a choice.
Simultaneously, a spray of arrows dove for me. I flipped my fist up so it was aligned with my temple. Everything froze. A stagnant storm of arrows surrounded me from head to toe, mere inches from lethal penetration. I could feel everything. Torrents of kinetic energy on a molecular level, I was the power source, and the shard was the conduit. The catalyst. I channeled that power as easy as it was for one to lift a limb or take a step.
In a rushing wave, each arrow revolved around to aim at him. I freed my hand and with the splay of my fingers. A legion of arrows flashed to him and was dashed to pieces in velocities faster than light, incinerating into nothingness before him. He calmly stood there with his arms folded behind his back, exuding an aura of peril that permeated the air. The ground quivered underfoot, crushed stone and pebbles trembled, knocking faintly against the surface. It was as if nature itself recognized its claim to power. The winds liberated a howl with unnatural fury, and the ground quaked beneath the weight of its proclamation.
With a voice of fire and ash, he spoke, "My being harnesses energy from the sun and stars," he boomed, causing the very air to vibrate. "From the deepest abyss, I have risen, unyielding in my power, and unrivaled in my reign. Your feeble attempt to oppose me is nothing more than the miserable struggles of insects before a tempest."
All six shards barreled toward me and encircled me. Tendrils reached out and seized my wrists to raise them well above my head, coiling around me like the chords of the grave, straining, draining me like a bleeding wound.
"You seem to forget," I muttered, strength sapped but conviction surging. "You're not the only one with the power to wield the Sagus."
With all seven tokens of ten in my domain, a fusion of amber light imbued every tendril and shard. I yanked them all to me, and in a grand collision. The Sagus forged into a shaft and transformed into a metalized staff with an open crown-like head. Replenished with fresh, intoxicating verve swelling within.
Murvis was impressively impassive, completely unfazed, unlike myself.
He sniffed the air theatrically, as if he caught a whiff of a fragrance. "You reek of fear."
"It is not my life I fear for."
Ire rose to anger, foretelling my own undoing. Battalions from three of the armies charged towards us with weapons violently leveled at me, soldiers pouring down from all sides like a tsunami of armored troops. With a roar of reverberant energy, I lifted the staff and stomped the foot, releasing a surge of power. A crackling energy field domed over Murvis and me, keeping us in and everyone else out. It was difficult to look back at him. Even though I was dealing with Murvis. The face of true evil was one I came to adore.
"You need others to do your bidding?" I goaded. "You must dread me so if you fear to face me on your own. Imagine. Your unrivaled reign thwarted by a fledgling."
Velar peeled out his long daggers that were imbued with dark energy, pulsing with malevolence. He launched himself at me, and I raised the staff above my head to block his blow. I released a surge of power that blasted him into the energy shield. And his resurgence was an excruciating retribution, diminishing my life force with every onslaught, and I responded with equal measures of ferocity and terror.
"You harm me, you harm your guardian."
A gap of weakness that he exploited mercilessly. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground with my vision struggling to swim into focus. I gasped raggedly at the clamping agony. A blast had caught my side, scorching my skin, festering with a venomous black.
"Behold," Murvis boasted, tone dripping with disdain, its voice reaching a booming crescendo. "The tainted. The Sajatai is corruptible."
I clutched the staff, and I used it as support to assist my ascent.
"I am," I declared. "I am a sum of good and evil, but who I become is a choice of either. That is where the true power lies."
Pure fire burst in the head of the staff, and I struck him with a powerful surge of amber that thrusts him back. He landed with a bone-jarring crash and was pinned flat on his back. I climbed on top of him, and I raised the staff—the foot tapering to the fine point of a blade. I hesitated. Alike to ink, spills of it dissolved, and one eye was blue, and the other was black. Half Murvis, half Velar. He was still in there.
The staff began to shake in my grasp. Thoughts clamored and calculations flitted through my mind as to how to fell one without felling the other. His eyes bulged out of his sockets, staring at me with a strangled expression, muscles tautened and the streaming black bursting through his skin like thick ropes of ink.
A war within. Velar was restraining Murvis to give me a fatal, final strike.
When his hand lifted, I assumed it was for a counterattack, but his finger crisscrossed over his chest, drawing an unseen x, reminding me of his promise. His providence. I knew what Velar not only wanted but expected me to do.
I plunged the end into the ground right beside his head. My knuckles grazed the peak of his cheekbone before my two fingertips pressed into his forehead. From the rim of his form, a gush of ink went rushing to the point of contact. Tributaries of black drained from him and were instilled into me until blue eyes as bright as seaglass were gazing back at me.
Velar erupted into frame-wracking coughs, his chest heaving, bellowing for air.
I stumbled back, commanding strength as Muvris battled me viciously, charring my insides and decimating my life force. I freed a skull-rattling scream that cleaved to the air as it felt like a sharp-toothed fiend was gnawing, trying to claw itself out of me.
Velar clambered to his feet. "What have you done?"
"Take the Sagus," I ordered quickly. "No time. If Murvis breaks free—the Sajatai's soul becomes Murvis's own and all is lost. Slay me to safeguard all."
"Never!" he barked back.
Agony lacerated me, threatening to tear me asunder. "Either one of us can sur–survive. You cannot let it be Murvis—do it now."
Velar retrieved the Sagus. With a wince, he rammed the sharp end into my gut with a roar—a shockwave exploded out, shattering the energy shield. My world was afire. Pain dragged my soul through thresholds of torment. A clash of fire and ice as a cold chill coursed through my veins. With only one image, one thought that my life clung to. Velar wrenched out the staff and captured me. My skin fissured with amber light, devouring the dark veins. Velar took my face in his hands, angling me so I would face him as he inspected my eyes.
Bleary-eyed, my eyelids fluttered to look up at him. "Destiny fulfilled."
He rested his forehead against mine, releasing a relieved breath. I mustered a weak smile. Depleted, I sagged against him like a sail without wind. He wrapped an arm around my waist to hoist me back up.
Submerged in a cauldron of three armies, surrounded on all sides, not to mention the multitudes above and on the edge. Primus Eris shouldered his way to the front. He dropped to the ground with a hard thud. He knelt and placed his hands before his knees and crouched low to place his forehead against the back of his hand. His legionnaires, along with Kaia, followed suit. And in a flourish, scores of soldiers dropped to their knees from below to above, observing endless rows of soldiers and their generals bowing, honoring me with the reverence I thought I could never earn.
Ironhelm's general was the first to rise. "Great Sajatai, the realm owes you an unpayable debt for defeating an ancient enemy that even all before you had failed to accomplish."
Gripping my wound, still blooming with blood. I shook my head absently. Spliced into my soul was darkness, woven with its dark fibers. But I knew the merge with Murvis went beyond a malevolent force. Corruption wasn't control, it indeed was exposure.
"You need your wound bound, now," Velar demanded.
"And you, all of you, must know that Murvis is not defeated. He lives within me as he does with us all. Containment is a choice."
THE END