Call of the Hero

by Robert J. Crane

  Stiehle threw back his blond, perfectly coiffed head and laughed. He locked eyes with Alaric over the field of battle between them. Swords swung, axes fell. Blood flew, skulls were split, screams echoed. The Coordinator smiled, and it was perfectly demonic, a man entirely in his element.

  Alaric steadied himself. He would not be impaled on the bastard's spells this time, no. He readied Aterum, but more than that, he readied himself, placing the blade before his face. “Ayliiron, harajann, epishee,” he whispered, and Aterum leapt into flame.

  Stiehle barely batted an eye; the hint of his brow raising was all the reaction that prompted, but he did incline his head, that mirthful smile on his lips crying out to be carved off, along with the bastard's head. “You remember your formal training now, at last.”

  “My training was less formal and more a reaction to death coming for me some ten thousand years ago,” Alaric said. “I escaped its claws then, and your power over it is considerably less, so...I think it more that I remembered myself.”

  “Which is why you are here,” Stiehle said, still smiling, “fighting this battle, instead of the one for your beloved Sanctuary.”

  Alaric's blood ran cold, colder than if someone had blasted him with an ice spell. He raised his flaming sword against it, bringing it up but keeping the blade across his face as defense against Stiehle's wicked spellcraft. He would attack, would carve the life out of this bastard's chest—

  A sharp pain ran through Alaric, driving him to his knees. For a moment he wondered how Stiehle's spell could have cut into him, through the guard of his own–

  But...no. This was not a mere dark knight spell. This was something more.

  That cold chill that had rolled down him from the persistent fear of battle at Sanctuary clasped down on his heart. He knew the truth of it in that moment – something had happened, at Sanctuary–

  Something terrible.

  “I sense that your heart is just not in this,” Stiehle said, advancing on him as the battle clamor rang. Alaric felt frozen on his knee, his sword at his side, paralytic cold running through him. Sanctuary – something had happened, something dark, and he felt cold flowing out like his veins had opened and ice was running freely from them–

  So weak–

  He couldn't move–

  “Some souls,” Stiehle said, as his army poured in, pushing back Alaric's own until nothing but Machine thugs and Watch loyalists surrounded them, “might call for mercy in this moment.” Stiehle was there, suddenly, now, blade in his hand and cradled at Alaric's throat. “Might look upon this loss of vitality, this paralysis and think...'I should put this man out of his misery.'”

  Stiehle's smile was ghastly as he tipped Alaric's helm off the old knight's head. “But I am not those men...and I intend to put you only deeper into misery. For mercy...is the province of weak men.” And he lifted his jagged blade.

  Chapter 111

  Vaste

  Birissa's clash with Qualleron atop the wide path of the wall had taken on the quality of one of the epic battles of old. Vaste watched, eyes wide, swatting occasionally at some dimwit who tried to take advantage of the distraction of two mighty trolls engaged in the fight of a life in a fairly tight space.

  “You fight with great honor!” Qualleron shouted, turning aside an attack from Birissa's immense sword with his own. “Truly, you people of Sanctuary have provided me the greatest thrill of my warrior life!” He swung up his blade to block another overhand attack from her, though this one rang hollow, its power abated at the last.

  Birissa seemed to have opened her mouth to reply, but staggered back a step instead, her strike aborted by the attempt. She wobbled on her feet–

  “My lady?” Qualleron stopped, keeping his weapon in a defensive posture, curiously but cautious.

  “Birissa?” Vaste asked, that strange feeling scraping its way down his spine, another pooling in his belly with cold dread. Something was wrong here, and something was wrong elsewhere, as well–

  Birissa staggered back another step, spinning. Her eyes were cloudy, and they found him amid the chaos. “Vas-te–” she managed to get out–

  Then she collapsed, her blade clattering loudly. Qualleron caught her as she fell, inches from the ground, kneeling to keep her from hitting with full force.

  “Birissa!” Vaste leapt forward, hitting his knees in a slide against the rough stone pathway atop the wall. She was shaking, her cloak spread out across the stones of the wall like a flood had borne its farthest edge from her body. Her eyes were murky, they reached skyward, unseeing–

  Then they found him, spearing him in place for but one moment. Her lips quivered.

  “What is it?” Vaste clutched her hand in his own. Her skin was clammy, like a fish pulled fresh from the sea. “What is it, my dear?”

  “I didn't land a strike on her,” Qualleron said, right there next to them both, leaning over. “What sickness is this?”

  “I don't know!” Vaste shouted, louder by far than the earnest question warranted. There was silence on the parapets of the wall; all watched the spectacle unfold. That cold, clutching at Vaste's spine was matched by the one in his belly as he looked down upon this woman he'd found against all odds, that he loved, that he'd wanted more than anything–

  And as she looked into his eyes, he saw the clouds of grey in hers, staring back, her green skin beginning to fade. “I was going to tell you,” she whispered.

  Her hand faded into his, turning into a wisp of fog so familiar that it jarred him when he saw it. The rest of her followed, becoming a puff of smoke that dispersed so quickly that he barely had time to register it and then it seemed as if she'd never been there at all–

  “What magic is this?” Qualleron rumbled. “How...?”

  But Vaste knew, for the chill in him had grown to encompass him all, all the way, and with it came an answer that he did not want – indeed, that he hated.

  “Sanctuary has fallen,” he whispered, for he knew it was true.

  And with it had gone Birissa, his love, the thing he'd wanted more than anything – and like Windrider or the guildhall, she had merely been a part of Sanctuary all along.

  Chapter 112

  Guy

  Guy didn't want to look back as he ran, but he did, that same curiosity hauling his head around on his shoulders when the thundering crack echoed like cannon fire down the street where it all had happened.

  Looking back, he saw it – the temple-building, Sanctuary, whatever – it was at the center of what looked like the fiercest lightning storm Guy had ever seen. It cracked, it boomed like a battle – louder than the one he could hear going on just streets away-

  Then it stopped, spent.

  And then the building...was gone. Nothing but a vacant lot left in its place, along with the foundation of a fallen house that looked nothing like where he'd been standing with Curatio earlier.

  It was, truly, gone.

  A high-pitched cackle reached his ears, that same sound he'd heard in the darkness, and a glowing red figure shot into the sky faster than any bird or airship Guy had ever seen. It went straight up, then bent in a low arc back toward the center of Reikonos.

  Toward the Citadel.

  Guy stood at the corner, looking back for just a moment. He could see the shadowy corpse of Curatio, still resting, now in repose on the grass, no stone beneath him. Guy hesitated; tempted to go back.

  No, that was foolish. He should run. Run far, run fast–

  But he clutched at the sword in his hand, and remembered the elf's words.

  He needed to run, all right. But instead of away, down his original path, Guy found his feet steering their own course – and they were leading him back to the dockyards.

  Chapter 113

  Cyrus

  “What was that?” Cyrus wondered, feeling it run through his veins like cold magic, giving him the urge to double over in sickness, though he barely felt queasy.

  “What was what?” Baynvyn asked, not even bothering to ca
st a look at him across the truck's cab. The engine roared dully; the assassin had his foot upon the pedal and was standing on it with all his weight, as though that would make them go faster.

  “Did you feel that?” Cyrus asked. It was a strange, faded feeling, as though a ghostly dagger had pierced him. Cold, but not too sharp, it left him with a phantom pain akin to a wound healed by spell, piercing him with its chill right to the heart. And the belly.

  “The only thing I feel is unease,” Baynvyn said, still not favoring him with so much as a look. “For there is no way Malpravus would foolishly set so limited a means of entrapment against you.”

  Cyrus cringed; now he knew.

  “He didn't want me,” Cyrus said, finding himself rocking slightly on the rough seat. “Or you. Not really.”

  Baynvyn cast him a look, at last. “What did he want, then?”

  A screeching laugh filled the cab as something glowing flew over them without slowing. It shot toward the Citadel as surely as a spell flashing across the sky.

  “That was...horrifying,” Baynvyn said, leaning down to look overhead.

  Cyrus spared a look out the back window. The shape of Malpravus flew onward, at speed, toward the Citadel tower. “He wanted Sanctuary,” Cyrus said, feeling that cold hollow where his heart should have been. “And I think...” He tried to swallow, but found his mouth suddenly dry as dust, “...that he got it.”

  Chapter 114

  Alaric

  “Misery is merely the starting point for my master,” Stiehle said, holding his blade over Alaric's head, swinging it down slowly, painfully slowly. The battle had raged past them; they were enswirled in the lines of City Watch loyalists and Machine thugs, cawing their jubilant cries.

  Alaric was surrounded by enemies. Stiehle's weapon hit his arm, cutting into the nerves by pushing chain mail into his skin. The pain was sudden, serious, and Aterum fell from his grasp without a fight.

  There was a cold, clutching feeling beneath Alaric's ribcage. He didn't know it, specifically, but it was no spell.

  It was so much worse.

  Sanctuary was gone.

  The ether had pulled back from him, and it was as though it had torn his heart along with it. Alaric gasped a breath, sure that he was dying even absent the ministrations of Stiehle. He was on his knees and could fall neither forward nor back, he so lacked strength. The hilt of Aterum was mere inches away; he had but to reach out his hand–

  Yet he couldn't. Stiehle kicked the blade far from him, and it disappeared under the legs and feet of a hundred Machine thugs and loyalist Watchmen. The cries of victory were loud in his ears, and not the good kind of victory. This was the sort of victory that would see Alaric and all the men they'd recruited to join their cause with their heads on pikes, lining the avenues of Reikonos.

  But not before a long torture. Alaric could already feel that coming on, a distant remembrance of his time with Boreagann crashing through the paralysis that came from the loss of Sanctuary, of contact with the ark and the ether, the withdrawal of that magic of ten thousand years' association from his very blood–

  Alaric came up and crashed his shoulder into Stiehle's midsection with all the force he could muster. The Coordinator let out a wild oomph! as he lost his breath and they both tumbled into the advancing crowd. Atop Stiehle now, Alaric could feel his very limbs refusing to move, as though he'd been frozen deeply. Everything was slow, trapped in amber, in ice. He tried to throw a punch but it came up just a backhand that Stiehle turned aside easily–

  Laughter filled Alaric's ears as Stiehle threw him off and rose, easily. Alaric, for his part, could not rise. He lay on his back, the cold drenching him. “I...I–”

  “You have grown old, Alaric,” Stiehle said with a cruel smile. “Without the magic of Sanctuary to hold you up, you fall over, your dotage revealed at last.” He leaned closer. “But do not worry. The fear, the pain that paralyzes you with its loss? Will be but a whisper of what I shall bring in the coming days.” He lifted his blade, and smiled as the men behind him were suddenly thrown aside–

  A blade speared through Stiehle's chest, glowing blue and forcing the Coordinator to jerk back as though kicked in the arse. His eyes grew plate-wide, he clawed at the wound-channel, and he turned his head, unable to move his torso with it speared through with Praelior–

  “Curatio,” Alaric whispered, a faint smile working its way onto his lips.

  But as Stiehle's eyes rolled and he fell to the side, Alaric blinked his surprise, for it was not Curatio at all.

  “...Guy?” Alaric whispered, as the squat figure spun the blade around, catching unawares some half-dozen Machine men who'd been knocked aside or off their feat by his approach.

  “Sorry I'm late,” Guy said, kicking Aterum back to Alaric with the unerring precision that only the power of a godly weapon could have granted the clumsy oaf. There was a strange determination in the man's voice, some resolve that gave Alaric courage to take up his sword, to rise again to his feet. It was a look that warmed Alaric all the way to the fingertips, and he raised Aterum as Guy spoke once more. “It took me a little while to figure out where I belonged.”

  Chapter 115

  Vaste

  “I don't understand,” Qualleron said, holding the empty air where Birissa's arm had been moments earlier. “What magic is this?”

  “The worst kind,” Vaste said bitterly. He was on his haunches, arse on cold stone, Letum clenched in his fist.

  “Where did she go?” Qualleron asked. “Will she be back?”

  “No,” Vaste said, flatly, ignoring the mutter of the armies behind each of them. “No, I don't believe she will.”

  Was it really that easy? And that horrifying?

  Yes. Yes, it was.

  She'd been part of Sanctuary's magical essence all this time, just as surely as Cyrus's effing horse or Alaric's misty arse. Some wish fulfilled by a magical ark that had so pitied him in his loneliness that it had created a perfect troll woman out of absolute nothingness in order to placate his sad self.

  If he weren't damnably angry and hurt and furious...why he might have broken down crying right there.

  “She fought with such honor,” Qualleron said, making Vaste want to slap him across the face with Letum, hard enough to cost the fool some teeth. But then, was Qualleron any more the fool for falling for the Birissa deception than he? Qualleron had merely fought her. Vaste had–

  Well, that didn't bear thinking about.

  “Do not move,” Qualleron barked behind him. The armies that had come in his wake were edging up, ready to charge now that the troll battle was over. “I will have this matter of honor solved, and any man who tries to breach this noble truce will find his body cleaved in half. Do you hear m – what is that?”

  Vaste turned his head to look. Qualleron was pointing very clearly at what he meant, and it would have been impossible to miss.

  A red flash came from the top of the Citadel tower, glowing from the wreckage. It was magic, obviously, and took the shape of a sphere. It started small, then grew, widening in a slow expansion, like a crimson bubble blown from bloody lips.

  But it glowed with the light of death.

  Even then, when Vaste thought that the pit in his stomach could grow no deeper, he was once again proven wrong.

  “Gods,” he said, rising to his feet as the bubble of spell-magic grew, again, touching the ground somewhere near the base of the Citadel for the first time – but not the last, as it continued to swell with every moment. His body was cold from head to toe, and Vaste shouted, “Everyone, RUN! Run for the airships!” for it was all he could think to say before he, himself, burst into a sprint for his very life.

  Chapter 116

  Cyrus

  The glow was otherworldly, the sort of magic Cyrus would have preferred to leave in the days of yore, if he was being honest. He'd seen its like before – from Curatio, from his mother, even Malpravus. It was red, red as the most crimson sunset, and it cast the whole city of Reiko
nos in its glow as it expanded ever outward from the Citadel tower.

  “What happens if that touches us?” Baynvyn asked into the still quiet, just louder than the truck's engine as they screamed down the wide avenue toward what had once been the Elf Gate, but was now the dockyards. “You know, out of curiosity.”

  “Probably exactly what you think,” Cyrus said, turned completely around to look upon the horror of this thing that Malpravus was unleashing. “You're absorbed into that son of a bitch's spell power, and become a sacrifice on the pyre of his godhood.” There were no words for this vileness; Cyrus had seen it employed once before, visited like wrath upon the army of Goliath. It had been terrible to behold then, even as it fell upon his enemies.

  Now, expanding outward in an ever-widening gyre over the city of Reikonos...

  This was ever so much worse.

  “I cannot make this truck go any faster,” Baynvyn said, chancing a look back over his shoulder.

  “Where would we go, in any case?” Cyrus whispered, the words tumbling from his lips. Despair had come.

  “To the dockyards, of course,” Baynvyn said. “To the ships, from which we will depart and damned sure not return.” He cast a fearful look at Cyrus. “Will...will this extend beyond Reikonos?”

  To this Cyrus could only summon a terrified reply: “I don't know.” Baynvyn put his foot down harder, but they did not seem to move even a little faster.

  Chapter 117

  Alaric

  “It feels good to fight for something!” Guy roared at the top of his voice, felling another loyalist Watchman under the blade of Praelior. His technique was pitiful, but the speed of the sword gave him license to do more than he might have done otherwise. He was cautious, too, and that was to the good, for Alaric had seen overconfidence set in more than once upon the wielder of a godly weapon.