“Nothing’s changed,” he said, feeling the slow, steady relapse of his despair. “Lascivious… True Divine. She has you. She has the world in her hand.”
“She does,” said Malon. Her voice was academic, free of judgment. Free of the fear and uncertainty the situation should have justified.
Damon couldn’t lie there and pretend, if that’s what this was. He grabbed her wrist, holding her hand between both of his, and looked toward her in the dark.
“Aesta…” he said. “Is it really you? Or is it… Lascivious’s crest sorceress that I’m now speaking with?”
Instead of answering him, she slid the sheets back and climbed into the bed next to him. Damon turned away from her, fearing the worst kind of trick. She hugged his back, letting her soft body press into his. She leaned forward enough to kiss his cheek and then simply stayed as she was, hugging him, holding him close.
“I’m so sorry, solas,” she whispered. “I always suspected… always feared… that this is how it would happen. I’m sure this may seem like a horrible outcome to you. For me though, it was already my nightmare, and now it’s become real.”
“It doesn’t have to be.” He turned around, her hot breath on his cheek as they faced one another in the dark. “We could… find a way. You were there, aesta, when I convinced Austine to stand down. We freed him in killing Avarice!”
“Did we, solas?” asked Malon. “Were we the ones who struck down Avarice and released him from his crest?”
“I’ve gotten stronger since then,” he said.
Malon ran her hands over his shoulders and then his chest. “I know.”
“I’ll die if that’s what it takes to stop her and free you!”
Her fingers dug in. “I don’t ever want to hear you say that again.”
“Aesta, I—”
“Solas!” Her voice had that snap to it, like the perfect crack of a whip. “Please. Don’t make this any worse for me than it already is. I couldn’t bear watching you die in a misguided attempt to save me. I simply couldn’t bear it.”
“What are you saying?”
She leaned forward, finding his face with her hand and gently cupping it. “She has plans for Veridan’s Curve. I’ll attempt to advise her, to dissuade her from them… but many people will die. Please. Leave here. I know you sent Vel with Kastet. Go to Hearthold with them and find a way to move on and live your life.”
“I can’t leave,” he said. “I won’t leave! Not without you.”
He grabbed her, holding her in a tight, dominant embrace against him, as though he was making his point through sheer strength, through his grip. She didn’t wriggle away or push him back. She kissed his shoulder and let her head nuzzle against his.
“Think with your head, solas, not with your heart or anywhere else,” she whispered. “Don’t make your stand here. This is a selfish thing for you to do. Are you thinking of what’s best for everyone, or simply what you find most tolerable?”
“I’m thinking of what’s best for you,” he growled. “I’m thinking of what’s best for our family.”
“You’re impossible,” she said. “Impossible and impulsive.”
There was so much love in that statement, despite the edge she desperately tried to put into it. She did try to wriggle away from him then. Damon held onto her as though it might be the last time he’d ever hold her.
He kissed her, slowly at first, letting his lips touch hers over and over again until he felt her mouth dancing back. He shifted her underneath him, surprised by how light she felt. She was fully dressed, still wearing the same tunic and leggings in which she’d stormed Veridas Keep. Damon eased those leggings down, despite knowing that in this, she would indeed stop him.
“Aesta,” he whispered.
She ran her hand through his hair, content in the moment just to touch him, just to have him so close. Damon cupped one of her breasts and leaned forward, kissing her passionately. She gently shifted him back by the shoulder and gave him a different kind of kiss, gentle and patient. An aesta’s kiss, and it felt so much closer to what he needed, despite how it broke his heart.
The door swung open, and unnatural red light flooded in. Lascivious strode into Damon’s guest chamber, lazily holding a ball of crimson power to light her way. She smiled when she saw them, seeming to delight in their level of intimacy.
Malon stiffened, her eyes pulsing red, and then collapsed back down. Damon reached out, but she was already moving, shifting off the bed and coming to stand closer to Lascivious. He wasn’t sure, but he thought she’d been prompted through her crest.
“Seffi,” said Malon. “We spoke about this.”
“Worry not,” said Lascivious. “I’m not breaking my word. I won’t kill him, and I won’t force you to, either, as long as you uphold your promise. I’ve got something to show him.”
She reached out, taking Malon’s hand. Damon climbed out of bed, fumbling to quickly pull his discarded clothing back on before following after them. They climbed several sets of stairs before exiting onto the roof.
The wind was intense so high up, making his shirt flap as it gusted around him. In one direction, Damon could see the lazy purplish pre-dawn sky. In the other, all he could see was fire, and he could barely see it through its intensity. A fireball the size of Veridas Keep itself hovered in the sky no more than a few hundred feet away from them, radiating enough heat to name itself a competitor to the sun.
Damon’s awe turned to horror as he looked down at the landscape beneath them and realized they were still flying over Avaricia. He wondered how much of the population of Veridan’s Curve was clustered in and around that city, housed in ramshackle wooden buildings. Tinderboxes stuffed with people who would have nowhere to run and no one to help.
“I know you, Damon,” said Lascivious. “You have no love for this place, these people, the way so many of them live like parasites in this land. Watch what I’ll do with my worldfire. See how it will scour away everything that’s wrong with Veridan’s Curve. I hope you’ll try to understand, as you do. If you could bring yourself to see things from my perspective, we could all do such great things together.”
Damon stared in horror as he became aware of how much more fire was within Lascivious’s creation than he’d first realized. It was clustered together, held by a thin, crimson barrier to contain the heat and energy until the moment of impact. It wouldn’t just destroy Avaricia. It would, as she’d said, create a fire that would run over the entire region, destroy everything he’d ever known.
“This…” He shook his head, stepping back in disbelief. “Why? What could ever justify this? You’ll kill thousands of people… tens of thousands.”
Lascivious seemed to barely be listening and didn’t deign to respond. Damon looked at Malon, pleading to her with his eyes, and then his words.
“Aesta,” he said, voice a thin rasp. “This is murder. This is… the culling of an entire region. How can you just stand there and watch?”
He was shouting, and his voice seemed to pick up a righteous, angry sort of momentum.
“You were the kindest, most just-minded woman I knew,” he continued. “You would never have stood by and watched something like this, let alone aided the person, the monster, responsible for it.”
Malon wouldn’t meet his gaze. Lascivious stepped closer to her and took her hand in an attempt to offer emotional support that made Damon’s skin crawl.
“She was conflicted,” said Lascivious. “She is too great a woman not to have been. But I helped her think through the situation, and she repledged herself to both me and our cause.”
“You think she’s here willingly?” snapped Damon.
“Of course, she is,” said Lascivious. “She’s my mentor. My guide. In a very real sense… She’s more my aesta now than she is yours.”
“You…” Damon’s blood ran cold. “No. That’s complete nonsense. You’re one of the Forsaken! I know how the crest contract works! You give her orders, you tug on her chain,
and force her to follow your commands.”
He spoke to Seffi but looked toward Malon, searching for even just a flicker of conflict or agreement on her face. She finally met his gaze, and what Damon saw there threatened to break his heart.
“It’s complicated, solas,” she said.
He understood what she meant, though he didn’t want to. It was one thing to be forced into doing Lascivious’s bidding by the threat of pain inflicted through the crest. It was another to, as Lascivious herself had put it, pledge oneself entirely to a cause.
He remembered their early exchange and felt the last piece slide into place. Malon had made another deal with Lascivious, one which represented a commitment that went beyond the enticements of the crest contract.
“That’s why I’m still alive,” he said slowly. “And that’s also why this fire hasn’t crashed down on Veridan’s Curve yet. She promised you that we… Vel and I… would be left unharmed. Ria would be out of direct danger in the Malagantyan, so you didn’t have to concern yourself as much with her immediately. I’m right, aren’t I?”
Malon wouldn’t even look at him, which all but confirmed it She’d traded away her conscience, her morals, her inner goodness, no less… All for a chance to save her family. Damon felt nauseated, but there was no time for him to stand around and mourn his aesta’s tragic choice.
Lascivious had risen into the air. She floated over the worldfire, her body surrounded by a smear of crimson against the purpled morning sky. She pushed her arms down, and the fireball began to descend toward the land it would soon destroy.
CHAPTER 42
Damon didn’t hesitate. It was almost a way of defending his limited resolve, forcing himself to commit to the only path which seemed righteous within the moment. He heard Malon calling to him as he jumped the railing and leapt into the sky. He couldn’t look back, couldn’t see the heartbreak and despair he knew would be on her face.
They were both trying to save the world they knew. It just so happened that Malon’s world… was their family.
Damon pulled his arms back, dropping through the sky as fast as a stone, as fast as a hawk in mid-hunt. He felt the ice within his body as he shifted the angle of his flight, coming to face the worldfire from underneath.
It was moving faster than he’d realized. Its immense size masked the amount of distance it covered across each second. Damon had only thin wisps of an idea on how he might stop it, nothing resembling a true plan. Fire and ice were opposites, and he could channel ice.
The thought of creating enough to completely extinguish Lascivious’s worldfire was galling, borderline outrageous. No, he’d already accepted that fact. What Damon simply wished to do was shrink it enough to save who he could.
“Myr,” he said. “We’re going to need everything for this.”
She didn’t answer him. He hoped she was ready. What he was about to attempt would require his full attention, and he wouldn’t have a second to spare once it was underway.
He opened his arms as though welcoming the worldfire for a cozy hug. Damon created a wall of ice in front of him, extending it outward along either side of his body while simultaneously pushing it forward, making it thicker.
He could feel it melting almost as quickly as he formed it. The worldfire was nearly upon him, and it was simply too much. The heat, the power, the gargantuan size of it was more than Damon could hope to match.
He didn’t let his mounting doubts dissuade him. He had to stop it, and the only way he would know for certain that he couldn’t was if he tried and failed. He pushed out more ice, creating a floating, frozen island which he hoped to crash into the worldfire and stunt its destructive power. Steam hissed as the ambient heat surrounding the flames began to reach the ice and make its effects known.
Damon was shouting now, bellowing wordlessly at a mindless enemy the effort was wasted on. It felt good, regardless, as if all of his frustration and rage at the unfairness of the world needed to be vented then, or not ever. He could sense the encroachment of the heat. It was too much, not just for him to stop, but for him to escape.
“Myr,” he muttered, in between shouts. “It’s time. We both know it is.”
He flexed his will, making sure to keep his physical body supporting the ice even as his mind descended into Myr’s hidden realm.
She was on her knees, sobbing softly. Damon didn’t have time to treat the moment with the tact and softness it deserved. He rushed toward her, took her by the shoulders, and gently shook her to attention.
“I don’t have a choice,” he said. “Myr, I’m sorry, but there’s no other way. I need to break the last chain.”
She sniffled, reminding him of Vel when she was really, truly upset. She slowly nodded.
“I know,” she whispered. “You idiot. Why did you put yourself in this position? Haven’t you listened to anything I’ve said?”
He grinned at her and bucked his eyebrows. “Of course, I have. You have such a pretty voice. I wish you’d speak up more often.”
“If you break this chain, I’m not sure what will happen,” she said. “You might die, instantly. You might turn into a monster. You might destroy the world as efficiently as that fire.”
“If I don’t, thousands upon thousands of people will die,” he said. “You have a good heart, Myr. Would you tell me not to take the risk even knowing how much suffering my inaction would cause?”
“No!” she said, glaring at him. “That’s… why I’m crying. You have to do it. We have to do it.”
She arched her back, presenting the last chain to him with tears still streaming down her pale blue cheeks. Damon kept smiling at her, so glad she was his sword, his companion. He grabbed the chain and nodded.
“Come on, Myr. Let’s go save the world.”
He snapped the chain and returned to his body.
***
It wasn’t a pleasant experience to come back to the moment. The worldfire had inched forward enough in the split instant he’d been gone to overwhelm the greater portion of his ice. His skin felt as if it was already burning, blisters forming on his face and hands, eyes prickling with unfortunate sensations.
Damon let out a snarl, healing himself with ice and redoubling his efforts with the power of the seventh chain. He could feel the difference it made immediately. He drew from more than just the surrounding, ambient cold and the freezing enchantment of his own sword. It was as though he’d tapped into every inch of the air, both around him and far distant, and was channeling the cold toward him while dispersing the heat.
He could feel that it simply wasn’t enough. The worldfire was forcing him down, hissing through the ice as he resupplied it and putting him on the back foot. If he didn’t move with it, it would overwhelm him instantly, charring and curling his body like a flower tossed into a hearth. But if he kept moving with it, as he currently was, eventually it would touch down, regardless.
Damon gritted his teeth as he turned his entire body into something beyond ice. He could feel the power of the seventh chain and sense a deeper power within it. A different sort of power, a path toward not just freezing that which existed within the world, but that which lay beyond it.
He wasn’t going to freeze the fire. He was going to freeze the power behind it, the essence of Lascivious which she’d attached to her spell. It was akin to freezing time itself, taking the energy and trapping it outside of the flow of moments.
Unfortunately, he could only do it from within. He gave up on the ice entirely, along with trying to hold his position flying just out of reach of the blistering heat. The worldfire seared his body, rending his clothing and hair to bits of char and ash.
His skin was similarly scorched and ruined, and though he could regenerate it through his ice, he still felt the pain of it burning. He was screaming again, but this time it was drawn out of him, more horrific than cathartic. He could see the worldfire’s center, sense the core of its essence.
I’m going to do it, he thought to Myr, lacking enough
of a tongue to speak.
“I knew you could,” she whispered back. “I always believed in you, Damon.”
He smiled as he found the center of the spell’s essence. He couldn’t freeze it directly, not in a way that made sense to explain. It was the time it existed within which he could freeze, letting it thaw out later and disperse unattached from the fire, harmless and aimless.
To do it would take everything he had to give. Damon let his eyes draw closed as he made that final, ultimate commitment.
***
“It was just up ahead, wasn’t it?”
Damon led Malon, Vel, and Ria through the trees. He could hear the waterfall, and as he poked his head through the last barrier of foliage, he was close enough to feel the spray on his face, cold and refreshing against the midsummer heat.
“Yes, this is it,” said Malon. “What possessed you to plan a trip out here, solas?”
“I remembered coming here years ago, when Ria and Vel and I were young.”
“You’re still young,” said Malon, with a teasing smile.
“You know what I mean.” He brushed his shoulder playfully against hers.
“I, for one, think this was a brilliant idea.” Ria hugged Damon from behind and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Good thinking, young Damon. Is that not the spot up there from which we used to jump?”
“Check the water level, first,” said Vel. “It hasn’t rained much this season. If it’s too shallow, it might be dangerous.”
“I can see the depth from here.” Ria was already stripping off her tunic, heedless of Damon’s lingering eyes.
“Ria!” said Vel. “Do it behind a tree or something. Damon is here.”
“I think he does not mind.” Ria winked at him and stretched for his benefit, taut breasts bouncing as she dropped back onto the heels of her feet.
“I brought food for lunch,” said Malon. She was already spreading out a quilt on a flat patch of grass. “Why don’t I get it prepared while the three of you go for a quick swim?”
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