by Regina Watts
“So you would rather flee again than lose another battle with me, demon? I won’t permit such cowardly behavior a second time. Have at you! I’ll die before I see you return once more to threaten Valeria’s life.”
Yes, agreed the demon, as I charged and its servant made the response. You will.
Our steel rang through the air from the first point of contact, the wadjita’s strength surprising behind the gleaming scimitar. Strife had, on more than one occasion, broken the blades of lesser weapons at first contact; but the sword crafted by Kyrie was of no weak design. It sang with every parry, bouncing off to slice again through the air, and amid her hasty blows I was soon reduced to the defensive position. From the corner of my eye I maintained perpetual awareness of the growing portal, its every ebb out to the sides a little greater than the last. We were on a time limit: I had to slay Al-listux before his means of escape was traversable.
Luckily, I had some assistance in the matter. The wadjita elicited a cry of surprise from me with a particularly strong series of blows that occurred in rapid succession. Though I managed to parry and dodge most of them, my muscles rang like a church bell. Hearing my call, the trigger of a crossbow saved me as it had the first time I skirmished with the hateful sorcerer: Indra and Odile charged into the room, where Al-listux’s tentacles glowed faint purple with a spell.
“You take the spirit-thief,” called Odile, raising her dagger to sink it into Kyrie’s tail. As the wadjita hissed sharply, Indra loaded her crossbow with another bolt and lifted it to fire.
“We’ll get Kyrie out of the way for you.”
“Weltyr keep you both,” I said, turning to find the spirit-thief had once more thrown up a magical barrier against my physical attacks. Gritting my teeth, I pressed the flat of my blade to my forehead and prayed for strength from my god—prayed for the might by means of which I could slay this demon and put an end to its heretical designs. The evocation provoked a faint white glow to the edges of my sword as my watchful Lord responded kindly, blessing Strife with divine favor to strengthen the blade.
Thus resolved, I charged forth and slashed into the spirit-thief’s glowing shield. Each contact provoked a sizzle before Strife bounced off. Similarly, the force of my blows did nothing to damage the demon, but did push it back step on step behind the shield that went with it.
My magic is powerful beyond your comprehension, Paladin. You are a fool to throw your life away for this! All you had to do was fetch me the ring upon your mistress’s finger—had you but done this, you and she would have been permitted to live as it pleased you.
I told it between glances of Strife off the surface of its shield, “That ring means too much to her—I would never let you have it. I would never betray Valeria. And she could not live if she betrayed her people. She has infinitely more honor in her heart than you do in yours, spirit-thief.”
Honor is an arbitrary notion of fairness, only necessary to keep mortals obedient and cooperative with one another. My kind have no need of honor: only power.
“And that’s why you’ll never acquire what you seek,” I assured it, grip tightening around the handle of my blade as the trembling of its tentacles and the light of its magic renewed. Hoping that, if nothing else, the destruction of the glowing box would halt the growth of the portal on the other side of the room, I took a calculated risk and turned my back to Al-listux.
Strife’s blade cut through the air and shattered the glowing side of the box. All its light died at once, that bright face of bluish light proven nothing but glass.
The portal did not halt its development, but Al-listux produced a terrible hiss that seemed as though it ought to have come from the wadjita who gradually struggled more and more to fend off the dexterous attacks of the rogues.
You fool, the spirit-thief condemned me, its tentacles curling up around the awful hole of its dripping, fanged mouth. You fool! You cannot imagine how long it took me to restore that device to working order—you cannot fathom how rare, how invaluable, the artifact you just destroyed truly is.
Before I could so much as mock it with another slice through the gleaming glass that had revealed an interior of blue and black and red veins of some kind, bolts of bright crimson light arced from the demon’s tentacles and closed in on me like a set of missiles. I hefted Strife and successfully countered two such shots, but four more made it through, each impacting upon my body and searing my flesh with a rattle of pain that seized my muscles much as had the lightning strike at the Palace.
Valeria’s cry drew the demon’s attention as, watching the battle from the doorway, she shouted, “Rorke!”
So you brought her with you, the demon remarked while I gathered my strength, making its way to her at once. What an idiotic thing to do! But convenient for me, to be certain…
Before it could take even a third step toward Valeria, I sprang at the beast and brought Strife against its shoulder with every ounce of my remaining strength. That magical shield rotated without its owner even turning to face me, but I sensed it was less sturdy than it had been for my first few blows. Bolstered, I threw my all into destroying the magical barrier with strike on strike of my broadsword. Each contact, Strife rattled to worsen the headache that had begun when the magical missiles took their toll on me. No matter: I fought through it, satisfied as the irritated spirit-thief stopped to face me. Another spell gathered on its tentacles, but Valeria extended her hand and the creature was flung away as if it had been gored by an invisible animal.
“Master,” cried Kyrie, turning toward him and receiving an opportune dagger in the chest. With a noise of shock, she touched the wound and collapsed. While her heart pumped blood from her supine body, the spirit-thief righted itself to snarl as its shield faded into oblivion.
If you wish, I’ll kill all four of you rather than just your cult leader.
Those twisting tendrils renewed their summoning. Soon an enchanted blade once more danced between myself and the hideous being. I gritted my teeth and slashed against the mystical opponent with all my might, but that might had been significantly reduced as a consequence of my injuries. While Indra hurried to hold Valeria back from the fray and protect her from assault, Odile dashed to my side to attempt, by weaving beneath the slicing of the blade, to bury her dagger in the spirit-thief.
A blast of light halted her in the deed, and as it cleared from both our sets of wincing eyes we shared a look of dark displeasure. Two spirit-thieves, now: each the same size and shape, each moving perfect unison. Each befit with its own dangerously magical blade.
“It’s only a magic trick,” called Indra while my lady raised her ringed hand and prayed. I lifted my blade and did not look at Odile as I spoke to her.
“One of us has to be right,” I said.
In my periphery, she nodded. She raised her blade, her other leathered hand in a fist, both arms in a defensive cross. The swords kept moving all the while and I launched into the defense, meeting strike on strike to make the perhaps illusory blade glance off of Strife. Then the unseen opponent would charge forth again, on and on, Al-listux or his double advancing all the while.
With certain magics, such things as the illusory nature of a faerie object were difficult to tell. I had heard it said even permanent cloning was possible when a skilled sorcerer or wizard was the one up to the business. With such magical doppelgängers and all other convincing images, I was always taught that it is best to consider them real until they prove themselves otherwise.
Or until someone else proves them otherwise. While nimble Odile dodged and ducked her share of swipes from the magical sword, never getting quite close enough to put a knife into her visible opponent to see if it disappeared, Valeria prayed on and on.
Just as my opponent’s blasted sword was poised to stab past Strife, her prayer raised to an elvish cry. The light that revealed the figure before me to be a sham was sudden and bright, a more vivid cousin of that gloomy indigo stone upon her finger. When it faded, so did the false Al-listux be
fore me.
I lifted my sword with renewed urgency. Odile was forced to parry with her dagger, which flew away. Behind it the portal ebbed to the edges of its frame and caught there like soapy water in a loop: as if one might blow through the great portal and send it floating off, a bubble.
While my disarmed friend darted away, I met the magical sword of my hideous opponent amid a second wind. Al-listux watched calmly from behind the blade, its words patronizing in the patience they exhibited within my mind.
You’re extremely powerful, Paladin. I hate to think I find myself your enemy. I could teach you very much.
“There’s nothing I want to know from you,” I managed to grunt between the final two slashes I was forced to lay against my magical opponent. At last the enchanted blade broke to pieces beneath Strife’s force, those shards vanishing like wine left out in the sun. “Nothing except your word that you will leave Valeria alone, but you only just told me you find honor a valueless notion…and, at any rate, you have tried too many times to kill her for me to let you live now.”
I swept Strife at the spirit-thief and gritted my teeth when the nimble thing dodged away. If I could only sink my blade into its flesh! I knew it would be physically weak. All of them were, or had been when I and my traitorous party members from before interrupted their ceremonies. After a certain point, the most dangerous thing about spirit-thieves was their blood…but until then, they were extremely dangerous in all other ways, and I recognized one of the most dangerous things about them at work. Al-listux braced upon one heel and lifted taloned hands to its throbbing cephalopod head.
“Get through the door,” I shouted to my friends, repeating the command more urgently at the glowing of the demon’s eyes. I charged, attempting to interrupt its psionic stunning with the help of Strife.
Too late: a shock wave rippled through the room from the center of the spirit-thief’s mind, and it rolled through me as though I were merely the medium for that violent wave. My bones were rattled like my sword, and in my head I swore my brain rippled like the ocean. A great sickness overcame me: had I not been so stunned, I might have vomited. Instead I stumbled forward, Strife falling from my hand.
The beast had collected Odile’s dagger.
I staggered, unable to maintain my balance amid the bright shock of pain any more than I was able to keep a hold on my sword.
“Rorke,” screamed Valeria, already defying my demand to stay away. In fact, she pushed back through the door in time to see me stabbed.
My gasp was sharp, but the sting of my lungs was so severe I delayed in taking another breath. The thing drew out the blade and stabbed me again, this time in the stomach. I lurched uneasily into the dagger, then back from it. While it drew back the blade one more time, Valeria, expression desperate, skidded to a halt near enough for the beast to see clearly the ring she slipped from her finger.
“Is this what you want? This?”
The sorcerer stared her down, perhaps weighing what sort of trick this was. But it was, sadly, no trick. To my astonishment, (and the gasps of Indra and Odile), the Materna of El’ryh hurled Roserpine’s ring across the floor and off to the direction of the portal before I could wheeze the word, “Don’t.”
The band rolled, skipping across the masonry, while the squid-demon’s greedy eye followed it.
Al-listux quite literally dropped the dagger to hurry after the prize. Valeria knelt to embrace me, tears filling her eyes. Her hand smoothed my brow, then lifted my tunic to see the wound beneath. Her expression transfigured in even sharper fear to see the blood flowing from my lung.
“Valiant Burningsoul,” my lady whispered, pressing her hand to my side wound. “Oh, my friend! My champion.”
“Ring,” I managed with struggle. “The ring, Valeria.”
“The love of Roserpine is not worth half as much as your love,” she answered earnestly, looking up only when Al-listux filled our minds with speech.
I never thought the Materna of El’ryh would show so much sense, the spirit-thief mockingly commended while straightening up with the ring between its slimy fingertips. Admiring the gem in the light, the beast then studied the two of us. I think I’ll leave you here to die, it told me, turning away.
Indra called out and took a step forward, lifting her crossbow too late. The demon touched the portal and the bluish bubble light shifted. A brilliant gold-orange glow manifested from within, quickly resolving to the image of some great chamber. Braziers burned; a window let in the beauty of my long-missed night sky.
An old man stared back—not at the spirit-thief who passed into his domain, but at me.
My vision failed; I wondered if perhaps I was going mad. Yet, I recognized the man. This gray-bearded fellow in a dark cloak, his face appeared to me as might the face of an old friend—one whom we meet after years of estrangement and find, to our shock, still recognizable in spite of perhaps decades’ worth of change. It was in this way that I recognized the man on the other side of Al-listux’s portal before I lost my tenuous grip on consciousness.
I was looking at myself.
A NEW PARTY
HILDOLFR GUTTED A trout beside the stream, then flung the organs into our fire.
“For Weltyr,” he said.
I looked around, somehow disoriented to realize we were alone. “Where are Branwen and Grimalkin?”
“Wandered off,” said my one-eyed friend, deftly slicing off the fins and commencing to scale it with his hunting knife. “Don’t worry too much about them. Worry about yourself.”
“I can’t help but worry for my friends. I love Branwen—and even Grimalkin does have his charms.”
Speaking of love reminded me, with a pang of guilt for having forgotten her, of Valeria. I straightened up where I sat in the grass, looking around again and asking, “Why, where is she? Valeria? Indra and Odile, too. My friends—”
“They’re around,” he said. “And you must do all that you can to help them. Especially Valeria.”
“I would never fail her.”
“It’s easy to get distracted in this world,” the ranger assured me. “It’s easy to give into the temptation to be comfortable, and stop the pursuits that are most important. Just remember: it may seem like this is about Valeria…but this is really about you.”
As I puzzled over his words, the whinny of a horse drew my attention. My heart warmed at the thought of seeing Hildolfr’s steed, a white mare left in the care of an innkeeper before we made our way to the Nightlands. I looked, expecting to see it—to stroke its mane and pat its powerful neck.
The eight-legged stallion that reared there instead was so startling that I awoke at once.
“He’s back,” said Odile, her voice overflowing with relief as she set an empty bottle aside. Delirious, disoriented, I looked between the faces of the women bending over me and belatedly remembered Al-listux.
“The ring,” I said with a gasp, sitting up only to be pushed back upon the floor of the temple.
“Al-listux is gone,” said Valeria softly, running her soothing fingers across my forehead and into my hair. “Oh! Burningsoul—and you’re here. My love…thank Roserpine, oh, praise your god and mine!”
“He’s gone? But your ring—”
Now I did sit up, ignoring the elfin hands attempting to push me back down. They had spoken the truth: the frame of that vast portal was empty. Just to set eyes upon it brought to mind the vision that I had caught within. My blood chilled with the memory and I looked between the women before settling on Valeria. “Did you see anything inside?”
“A man,” said Valeria. Odile and Indra nodded in agreement while my lady went on, “But aside from that, no landmarks I could identify.”
“That was what I perceived as well,” said Odile, who slipped the empty potion bottle back into the pack at her hip. “The portal showed its destination for but a few seconds before shutting behind the spirit-thief.”
“By Weltyr, what are we to do? Why did you throw your ring away, Valeria? It h
old all El’ryh’s power. Without it—”
“I would throw away all my magical abilities twenty times over if it meant saving you once.” The Materna of El’ryh took up my hand and caressed my knuckles before, with a sad gasp, she fit her hands to my face and buried a kiss deep in my mouth.
“It’s the least I could do,” she said as we parted, “to repay the kindness you’ve already showed in protecting me.”
“I only wish the cost were not so high.”
“It’s nothing. I am still Roserpine’s servant, now more than ever. Surely—surely my people will understand.”
Indra and Odile exchanged a look that said they were even less sure than the woman whose tone faltered to say such a thing. Looking driven, my lady stood upright and said, “Let’s make our way back to the city and explain what’s happened. We’ll come up with a solution of some kind, I’m sure.”
Her optimism was moving, but the general atmosphere was one of hopelessness. In the new silence of the temple, with Kyrie’s dead body not far from us and the vibrating of the portal having disappeared entirely, a strange anxiety took hold. Perhaps that was only my perception—the anxiety accompanying the question of how I would get out of returning to El’ryh, and in such a way that Valeria’s heart would not be broken.
You must do all that you can to help them—especially Valeria.
My vision of Hildolfr—surely one that only arose in my mind because of my earlier encounter with the thing that took his form—seemed to speak in me again, so clearly I heard it a second time. Hand running over my face and into my hair, I thought also of my vision of the horse. Such clear and significant dream-signs were the purview of Weltyr and handed directly from him, but I did not know in detail what these things meant just then. I only knew that I had been firmly instructed to remain with Valeria. To help her. There was an implication there that I might have to sacrifice something desirable or distracting if need be; at least, I perceived the message as such.