Reborn Raiders (The Weatherblight Saga Book 4)

by Edmund Hughes

  “Wow,” said Amber. “I have so many questions…”

  “I wish I had answers for you,” said Ari. “Feel free to wander around and explore up here as much as you want. Eva and I will need to head deeper into the spire. I’m not sure if it’ll be safe enough for you to follow outside of maybe the first level, which we’ve already cleared.”

  “Oh, that’s quite alright,” said Amber. “I think I’ll have more than enough to keep me busy up here.”

  She was already crouching next to a small bush and scrutinizing its maroon leaves with the type of intensity that only an alchemist could muster. Ari and Eva wandered a short distance away from her, drawing closer to the open hatch in the center of the roof.

  “This brings back memories, doesn’t it?” said Ari.

  Eva smiled at him. “It does. Quite a bit happened the last time we were here.”

  He watched Eva’s expression take on a pensive quality. The wind fluttered through her silver-blue hair, but as usual, she’d taken enough care in putting it up to keep most of it in place.

  “Speaking of memories,” said Ari. “Have you remembered anything else about your old life?”

  Eva took a moment before answering with a small shake of her head. “I have not, which suits me just fine. I’ve no desire to tap into the part of myself I’ve forgotten, not after the glimpses of it I’ve seen in the past.”

  Ari nodded slowly. He could still vividly picture what had happened when he’d socketed Eva with the fire rune during their trip south through the Crystalline Forest. She’d become someone else in personality for a time, the sinister Azurelight, a version of who she was with full access to her memories and a cruel, twisted outlook on existence.

  “I can understand that,” said Ari. “I do worry sometimes whether it’s healthy for you to just keep so much of yourself suppressed, though.”

  “Is that truly what I’m doing?” asked Eva. “Truly, it feels more to me like resisting the urge to remember a nightmare after waking. A nightmare that takes over my body and my spirit rather than just scaring me for a time. A nightmare that’s real.”

  Ari came over to her and pulled her into a hug. She let out a sigh as she rested her head on his shoulder. He kissed and ran his hand over her cheek.

  “In that case, we’ll have to fill you up with new memories,” he said. “Enough to force out the old ones.”

  She smiled at that, and they began walking hand in hand. He was satisfied with her answer, though he’d had a second reason for asking beyond his concern for her. He’d been remembering things, memories that didn’t belong to him. The life of Lord Mythril, Eva’s uncle and one-time bond master.

  The memories had been arriving in a slow trickle for the past month, without the depth or clarity of some of the previous visions he’d had. Glimpses of Mythril serving under Emperor Diya and the tension underlying the relationship between the two men later on in their lives.

  He’d seen Eva, or Evastria as she’d been more commonly known as back before she’d become a sword construct. He was seeing more and more of how close Mythril and Eva had become as adults, uncomfortably close for Ari’s liking. He could feel Mythril’s feelings for her, and the confusion that came with them.

  It was all blurred and jumbled, however, without the clarity Ari would have needed to come to any definitive conclusions. Much as Eva had compared her lost memories to an unwanted nightmare, his own remembrance of Mythril felt like a strange dream, full of holes and queer occurrences.

  “We should progress into the spire itself, milord,” said Eva. “Our time is a limited commodity.”

  “Right,” said Ari. “Of course. Let’s make sure that—”

  A scream came from the other end of the roof. Ari and Eva were instantly in motion. He summoned her to his hand as Azurelight and took off in the direction of the disturbance, silently cursing himself for not keeping closer watch on Amber.

  He slid to a stop as he approached the tower’s entrance, blinking as he slowly took in the strange scene. A disheveled woman with tangled red hair, a stained tunic, and torn trousers was attempting to force her way into the tower. Amber was holding her back at the waist and wrestling her to the ground.

  “Stop!” shouted Amber. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

  “I think I know who she is,” said Ari. “Lady Prestia. Do you remember me?”

  He scratched his head, feeling a little daft for not having considered the possibility. There had been several mesmers within Deepwater Spire, lords and ladies of the Saidican Empire who had been overseeing the excavation of the ruin’s interior.

  Ari had encountered Lady Prestia, in the form of a pink mesmer at the time, and engaged with her in order to get information on the tower and one of the keys to unlock the door that led further down. She’d obviously been through quite a lot since then, if her disheveled appearance was anything to go by, on top of having been re-embodied by the Soul Engine in the last moments of its functioning.

  “I… don’t know you, do I?” asked Lady Prestia. “Were you one of the slaves working with us here?”

  “We’ve met before,” said Ari. “Kind of. It might take some explaining. We aren’t enemies, though. How much do you know about what’s happened to you?”

  Amber pulled back from Lady Prestia with a scowl. Lady Prestia slowly stood to her feet, fidgeting slightly, her gaze darting back and forth between Ari and Amber.

  Despite her dirtied appearance, she was an attractive woman. Tall and thin with a classical Sai physique, but with added plumpness in the chest and hips. She was probably in her mid-thirties, though it was hard for Ari to tell for sure.

  “I only know that some sort of tragedy befell this spire,” said Lady Prestia. “We were making slow but sure progress and sending regular reports by rune boat back to Emperor Diya, and then… it was as though everything changed overnight.”

  “More time than I think you realized has passed since the world you remember,” said Ari. “A few centuries, in fact.”

  He told her of the mesmers and the apparent sabotage of the Soul Engine. Lady Prestia’s face seemed to deflate as Ari described the current state of the world, though when he mentioned that the rest of the Sai, including Emperor Diya, had also been re-embodied, she instantly cut in.

  “You must take me to him!” she said. “Please!”

  “I can’t take you to Diya,” said Ari. “It would end badly for me, and possibly you too, by association. No big loss, though, he’s kind of a jerk.”

  “I can’t stay here!” shouted Lady Prestia. “This spire… it’s evil. It’s different from how it was before.”

  Amber shot a confused glance at Ari, but he could only offer a shrug in return.

  “How is it different?” he asked. “I’ve been here before, too, though you weren’t fully aware of me at that time. I’ve seen some of the traps installed.”

  “It isn’t just traps,” said Lady Prestia. “It’s the tower itself. It… spoke to us. It sent these things, after us.”

  “The Weatherblight?” asked Ari.

  “No,” said Lady Prestia. “Different. These were created through artifice rather than any sort of curse.”

  Ari’s hand drifted up to the hilt of Azurelight out of habit, gently running over the pommel stone.

  “It changes nothing, milord,” she said, through the bond. “We still must press on into the spire.”

  Ari licked his lips and gave her a small nod. “Lady Prestia, is there anything else we should know before heading down?”

  The disheveled noblewoman shook her head. “There were others here, Lords of other Saidican Holds who were also Soul Bonded. They refused to come up to the roof when I did, and I’ve not heard from them in days, perhaps even weeks.”

  “I’ll keep my eyes open for them,” said Ari. “Amber, can you watch her?”

  “I can do more than just watch,” said Amber. “Ah. I mean, I’d like to ask you some questions, if you don’t mind.”

&n
bsp; “You…” Lady Prestia seemed to come back to herself now that it was clear that she was no longer in imminent danger. “I have no real obligation to answer any questions put forth by a slave. But, perhaps as a reward for helping me clean myself up a little, I might deign to offer you my attention.”

  “Yes, yes, of course, milady,” said Amber, with a generous eye roll. “If only I should be so lucky.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Ari made his way over to the hatch leading into the spire and down the ladder. It led to a massive stone hallway that curved around the spire for one rotation before exiting out into what he’d come to consider as the main chamber on his last visit.

  It looked almost the same as he remembered. Ancient ward lights gave off a small amount of pale illumination from the high, curved roof overhead. The walls were stone, the floor was stone, and the doors a slightly different color of, well, stone.

  What stood out about the chamber was not its construction, but its contents. A pile of centuries-old corpses lay in the center of the floor, with half as many more scattered against the walls. Ari had wondered about the lives of the dead back when he’d first seen them, but he now had a fair idea of who they were.

  “They were the slaves, weren’t they?” he asked. “Not exactly a pretty thought. After the Soul Engine was sabotaged, Lady Prestia and the other Sai lords here must have turned into mesmers, along with the rest of the Saidican Empire. The slaves here would have been left to fend for themselves, probably with no way to leave the spire.”

  “There would have been rune boats tethered to the spire,” said Eva. “Not to excuse the tragedy, but there must have been more to it than just that.”

  Ari shrugged, and then he felt his attention snap toward one of the bodies that didn’t fit with the rest. He should have noticed it earlier, given the distinctly unpleasant and ripe smell. It was the body of an older Sai man dressed in a blue doublet and tight black pants.

  His features were recognizable, though he’d been far more ghostly the last time Ari had seen him. It was the green mesmer they’d encountered in the spire on their original visit, the ghost of a man who’d already lost his mind ahead of his body.

  “I don’t like this,” muttered Ari. “How does this man end up dead? We didn’t encounter anything dangerous on this level of the spire other than the mesmers.”

  “It’s possible that the purple mesmer you struggled with was also disagreeable toward his own,” said Eva.

  “Possible, but unlikely,” said Ari. “Also, I’m not huge on the idea of the purple mesmer being re-embodied if it means having a rematch with that mud-damned bastard.”

  “You might not have a choice,” said Eva.

  Most of the hallways that split off from the top-level chamber led to dead ends, as Ari had already established through his previous exploration. He headed through the largest of the doors, the one that they’d barely had time to explore inside due to the threat of the oncoming storm.

  The chamber on the other side was small in comparison, with an open hatch in the center of the floor and an ornate chest on the far side of the room. Ari had already been through the chest, but they’d been limited to what they could carry.

  Had it not been for the pressing need for them to gather more essence for the return trip, the remaining contents of the chest might still have been enough of a score to celebrate. Expensive clothing, along with at least a dozen rings and amulets with exquisite jewels, still lay in the bottom of the chest. Ari thumbed through them, deciding he’d have a closer look on the way back.

  He made his way over to the open hatch and paused. “Here we go. This is new territory we’ll be exploring. If what Lady Prestia said is true, we might have to fight.”

  “I’m ready,” said Eva. “Remember that I can fight as a sword or by your side.”

  “Yes, because that’s such an easy thing for me to forget,” said Ari.

  Eva let out an exasperated sigh through the bond as Ari dropped through the hatch and climbed down the ladder. It was a longer drop than he’d been expecting, and the open hatch above him became a slowly shrinking disk of light as he continued down the rungs into pitch blackness.

  Steam hissed from either side of the shaft as he reached the midway point, dampening his clothing and mussing his hair. Ari took humid breaths as sweat began to bead on his forehead. He climbed downward at a faster speed and surprised himself when he tried to lower a foot and ended up kicking the floor instead.

  A slow survey of the space around the bottom of the ladder revealed another long, spacious hallway, with more alternating gouts of steam obscuring the far end. The body of a black-haired man in plate armor sat against the wall at the hallway’s start, leaning forward against a heavy, two-handed mace in death. Ari could have recognized him from any of those details.

  “The purple mesmer,” he muttered. “I can’t say that I’m all that disappointed that I won’t have to fight him again.”

  He crouched down next to the body and stared into its open, empty eyes.

  “He has not been dead for as long as the other man,” said Eva.

  Ari frowned. “You’re right. That doesn’t bode well.”

  “You should search his person,” said Eva. “He was obviously a warrior in life. He may have something of use on him.”

  “I’m not so big on stealing from the dead,” said Ari.

  “You took a tunic off a body the last time you were here,” said Eva.

  “I’m just borrowing that,” he said. “Thanks for reminding me, I should really see about giving it back.”

  Azurelight flashed with light, and Eva appeared next to him with her arms crossed and an unamused expression on her face. Ari sighed and leaned over to help her as she shifted the man’s arms so they could pull his plate mail off.

  The found a small amount of Saidican Empire coinage, a folded piece of parchment with no writing on it, and crucially, a single enchanted scroll. Ari whistled as he examined the rune markings on the front of it.

  “What do you think it does?” he asked. “You and Kerys were becoming somewhat proficient at guessing the magic of scrolls from looking at the runes, if I recall.”

  Eva pursed her lips and slid a finger through her silver-blue hair. “It’s related to shock magic, but this ward here is closer to a shield spell. Perhaps shock dome, or shock shield?”

  “Sounds useful enough,” said Ari. “We can always drain it for essence if we don’t end up—”

  A shrill, accelerating hiss came from the other end of the steam-filled hallway, cutting off Ari’s sentence. He reached his hand to the side and summoned Azurelight, dropping into a defensive sword stance as a figure became visible in the shadows ahead.

  At a glance, Ari took it to be an Escion, the strange, sentient race capable of innate control of the Weatherblight. Its head was a similar oblong shape, and each of its long arms had three segments instead of two.

  The way it moved wasn’t right, though. It took slow, nearly symmetrical steps, each one coupled with another high-pitched hiss. Steam also jetted out of the figure at the shoulders, knees, and chest, adding to the pale screen of humid air that kept Ari from seeing deeper into the hallway.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m not really sure what to make of this. Your thoughts, Eva?”

  “It looks like an enchanted golem, except… powered by steam in place of magic?”

  “That’s as good of a guess as I could come up with,” he said. “A steam golem. Interesting.”

  The golem wielded a mid-sized flail, the chain attached directly to its hand and the spike ball swaying with each of its movements. Ari kept a close eye on it as he approached, wondering if it was even aware of him, given how aloof its movements seemed.

  His question was answered almost immediately. The steam golem lifted its arm into the air, and the end of the flail began to spin. Ari was close enough to see it in detail now. Its entire body was made of polished copper, and even its face was a mask of metal, lacking any eyes or
openings that he could see.

  The steam golem let out a hiss as it swung its arm and the flail within it forward at Ari’s head. He ducked under the attack, but he didn’t account for the way the flexible style of the golem’s arm allowed it to twist and follow up.

  Ari was left with no other option but to block with Azurelight. The sword caught against the chain of the flail, which wrapped once around it before sliding downward and banging into the crossguard.

  He managed to get the blade loose but took a grazing blow from the flailhead to the back of his hand in the process. The steam golem was slow in its response, pulling its arm backward for another, obvious blow. Ari slashed forward with Azurelight during the opening.

  The sword bounced off the copper chest of the golem, leaving only a small scratch in its wake. The golem swung the flail forward again, and it was all Ari could do to throw himself backward out of reach.

  “Maybe if we attack it from behind?” asked Ari. “It must have a weak spot.”

  He stood back up and took hold of Azurelight’s hilt with both hands. With all the care he could muster, he pulled the sword back and tossed it into an arc over the steam golem’s head. As it passed beyond the apex of its arc, Ari reached his hand out, trying to arrest its movement with the tether of will he and Eva had begun training the previous night.

  Azurelight hung in the air for a moment before slipping from Ari’s ethereal grasp and clattering to the stone. The ability wasn’t ready yet, not at the strength he needed it to be. The steam golem seemed to sense that Ari had just disarmed himself, and it lurched forward with surprising speed.

  Light flashed as Eva shifted forms. She slammed a kick into the steam golem’s back, but it did little more than cause it to ebb slightly on its feet. The flail attached to its hand was spinning fast enough to be visible only as a circular blur. Ari got the feeling that it would inflict a fight-ending blow regardless of which part of his body it connected against.

  “Milord!” Eva dropped down to her hands and knees behind one of the golem’s legs. Ari stared at her dumbly for a split second before realizing what she intended.