“Did you win, my enemy?” Price’s voice was very quiet.
Hadjar nodded. Price smiled. Green blood trickled down the corners of his mouth. His body was becoming lighter, and seemed to be rotting from the inside.
“Then I think I’ll have to drink a whole mug of booze in one go.”
“Shut up, my enemy. Help is on the way. We’ll take you to a healer. We’ll cure you, and then we’ll fight from dawn to dusk, and drink for a full day after. Shut up...”
Price continued to smile.
“Promise me, my nemesis...”
Hadjar shook his head violently.
“I won’t promise you a thing! You’ll be fine!”
“...promise me that, in the next life, we’ll be friends.”
Price’s fist almost touched Hadjar’s shoulder, but then dropped like a stone at the last second.
Chapter 501
Hadjar watched the starlight penetrate the crumbling dome. Like a light, silken shroud, it covered Price’s body, creating the illusion of a silver glow engulfing him.
When the beautiful full moon peeked out from behind the low clouds, black dots in the sky began to rapidly grow larger. Something extremely powerful and oppressive descended upon the ruined garden of the once beautiful ‘Heaven’s Pond’.
Instantly, everyone who’d been lucky enough to survive the attack fell into a deep sleep. Hadjar, who had trained with the Dream Grass, was able to resist it for a little while, but then he also plunged into endless darkness. It scared him because there was somebody in the darkness, and it was always so frustrating when someone was waiting for you in the depths of your own soul.
***
“Forest Dream.” Enora said.
She took a small piece of cloth out of a spatial amulet. The symbols embroidered on it glittered with a measured, greenish glow. The runes and hieroglyphs flew out of the silk like leaves and went in through a hole in the inky dome. They gradually grew and became more defined, pulsing with power. The multicolored pollen spreading across the territory of the ‘Heaven’s Pond’ could’ve put even a Lord at the middle stage to sleep. So, after waiting for ten seconds, Enora gave the command to her warriors:
“Secure the area!”
Leaping onto the back of her faithful gryphon, Enora spurred it on and pulled on the reins. Its powerful wings slapped against the crumbling dome and brought her to the ground. While still in the air, the leader of House Marnil’s guards had had time to examine the battlefield carefully. There was no trace left of the once popular restaurant: it was just upturned earth, pits, cracks in the ground (especially that huge one that was behind the body of a dead Spirit Knight), and fires that were a testament to how fierce the battle had been. A battle between at least two Spirit Knights... However, there were only a few survivors, and all of them were wounded Heaven Soldier level nobles.
“Sister!” Enora jumped down from her gryphon and hugged her beloved younger sister. “Thank the Great Forest you weren’t injured!”
Enora continued to survey the battlefield. Her sister, the eldest heiress of the Marnil clan, was clutching a dying commoner. Although a fully-fledged disciple of ‘The Holy Sky’ School, which was equivalent to having the title of baronet, he was still a commoner.
“Help him, sister.” The pale Dora whispered. “Please help him.”
Then she went limp in her sister’s arms. The ‘Forest Dream’ Technique did nothing to elves, so she must’ve fainted for some other reason. What had happened? Why had Dora not even used her hammer? She’d only been holding this half-dead islander tightly.
“Sleep, sister, sleep.” Enora stroked her sister’s white hair. “All your troubles are gone now. I’m here. Everything will be fine.”
A few more bodies lay in the distance, one of them still breathing. Enora, frowning, recognized the swordsman and the islander. When, about a week ago, she’d rescued her sister from a skirmish involving rival Schools, she’d seen these two. Dora had declared them her friends, but the commoners had quickly declined that honor. Enora had been grateful when they’d done so. An eldest heiress shouldn’t make friends with barefoot mongrels.
Opposite the unarmed, wounded boy lay a dead Spirit Knight. Outwardly, she looked like an ordinary corpse after a battle. However, Enora, who had three centuries of experience under her belt, had become the leader of her clan’s guard fair and square, not because she had beautiful eyes. She’d never trusted her eyes anyway.
One glance at the World River was enough for her to see that the body hadn’t just been struck by normal attacks. Its energy channels hadn’t just been severed, either, but... gnawed on. It looked as if some unknown creature had penetrated the cultivator’s soul and devoured most of her meridians and nodes.
However, even that disturbing sight hadn’t made the experienced Enora Marnil shudder. Far more unnerving and frightening was the fact that the core of the dead Spirit Knight had been drained... Drained to the point that even a mortal might’ve had more energy.
“What happened here?” Enora whispered.
She tightened her grip on Dora and reached for her spear with her free hand.
“My Lady.” One of the elves saluted. “We’ve searched the area, but we haven’t found any living or dead Lords.”
“What do the watchers in the sky say?”
“No one attempted to get past them.”
“Damn it.” Enora swore.
Even if this Lord specialized in Stealth Techniques, they couldn’t have evaded their tracking artifacts. That meant that either they were still here, which was very unlikely, because it was impossible to hide from a hundred Spirit Knights, or they didn’t exist at all. Enora looked at the boy and the cultivator lying beside him once again.
No. It would be foolish to think that a sixteen-year-old nobody had managed to get his hands on an artifact that contained such incredible power.
“By the Great Forest!” Enora gripped her spear tightly and rose to her feet.
Still holding Dora, she put the assassin’s corpse into her spatial artifact.
“Are there any witnesses?” She asked, still looking at her gryphon in indecision.
“They say that before the dome covered the area, they saw the Dinos siblings running out of the ‘Heaven’s Pond’.”
“The Dinos siblings?” Enora’s eyes flashed with rage.
“Yes, my Lady.” The guard nodded. His oval, golden helmet reflected the glow of the fire. “It was the young heir, Tom Dinos, and his servant, Anise.”
The fire in Enora’s eyes was instantly extinguished.
“A servant.” She repeated with a sickly smile. “If that servant had fought the enemy, there would’ve been a mountain of these Lascanians’ corpses waiting for us inside, and their leader would’ve been cut into a thousand small pieces.”
A servant… Hah. Enora was grimly amused to hear Anise being called a servant. If it hadn’t been for the events of two years ago that had rocked Dahanatan, Anise would still have been the eldest heir of the Predatory Blades clan, as well as the second most powerful warrior of the Dinos family’s younger generation.
Enora strongly doubted that even she, using all her hidden trump cards and artifacts, could win or even survive a battle against Anise Dinos. What did it all mean? That damned Tom, the eternal crybaby hiding behind his sister’s skirt, must’ve ordered her to flee the battlefield.
“Let’s go.” Enora ordered curtly.
A hundred warriors saluted and leapt onto the backs of their gryphons. Enora, stroking the scarred beak of her faithful friend that had fought alongside her in a thousand battles, suddenly felt her sister grab her.
“By the demons!” She cried. “Take those two with us as well!”
“Yes, my Lady!”
The two warriors closest to Enora leapt down and carefully lifted the wounded commoners into their saddles.
“Let’s go home.” Enora repeated.
Their mighty mounts took off. They easily soared into the night sky and,
turning around, flew toward home. Behind them, the remains of the ‘Heaven’s Pond’ garden still burned. The wounded and dying groaned. However, Enora Marnil didn’t care about the problems of the common folk. She’d done her duty — she had rescued her sister. Everything else was the responsibility of the city authorities or the Emperor himself. The city guard was already mobilizing to help everyone they could. Enora was quite annoyed at the fact that she would have to deal with two short-ears.
***
Where am I? Flashed through Hadjar’s mind.
He was floating in the darkness. Sometimes, murky scenes from someone else’s past appeared around him. It sometimes felt like they were scenes from his own life, but he soon realized that it was someone else’s. Hadjar couldn’t make out his surroundings, or any details for that matter, only shadows and echoes of muffled, distant voices, which were as blurry as everything else.
“Who is this, my Lord?” A distant echo sounded.
“This is Belle.” A second voice responded. “She will be living with us from now on.”
“Let me go, you dirty bastard!”
“Did you just call our God a bastard?” Laughter that could only be compared to spring thunder rang out.
Then came other scenes. Hadjar could hear voices, sometimes distinguish some vague outlines, but no more. And then it stopped.
He was standing in a familiar field. Only now he felt none of the joy or anticipation he’d felt before. This vast meadow didn’t feel as welcoming anymore. The only stone, standing atop a hill in the middle of a vast plain covered with grass, looked terribly lonely now.
“Master?” Hadjar sighed sadly.
“Look at you, all grown up.”
Drawing his sword, Hadjar turned around. He saw an old, gray tree. A large raven was sitting on one of its branches.
“Hello there, my descendant.”
The words had been spoken by the eerie bird.
Chapter 502
“Enora?”
“Faster! Faster! They’ll both go to their forefathers if you don’t hurry up!”
The elf warriors carried the two men into a spacious room with a stylized ceiling that looked like the top of a tree despite being made of the rarest and most durable stone. Many jewelers would’ve considered it an honor to work with such a rare material and would’ve seethed with envy if they could see how the Marnils had constructed their homes from it.
“What’s the matter, Enora?”
In the middle of the room stood a tall, golden-haired woman clad in white. Her pink skin seemed to radiate light, and her long hair fell like a waterfall across her shoulders. To call her merely beautiful would’ve been rude.
“Hurry up, aunt Hera, they’re dying!”
The sister of the Head of the clan, despite her outward appearance, was quite old. She was so old, in fact, that sometimes, while looking up at the sky, she couldn’t understand where she was. Different stars had used to decorate the sky back in her youth.
Apart from the nervous Enora and her warriors, there was no one else in the medical wing. For the past several years, the Marnil clan, obeying the orders of its Head, hadn’t participated in any of the bloody infighting so common to the Empire. They hadn’t needed to treat anyone in a long time.
“That’s strange.” The ancient healer murmured.
“Yes, I know, aunt Hera. They’re human commoners. You’ll have to ask your other niece why I brought them here.”
The older elf smiled and gently ran her hand through Enora’s hair, calming her down. Her face reddened, her breathing steadied, and her fatigue disappeared. With one touch, the ancient creature had been able to fully restore her niece’s power.
“There’s nothing strange about praying to other gods and having short ears, my love,” her aunt’s smile always made Enora a little nervous. In those smiles, she saw the light of the thousands of years Hera had lived. “Something else is strange here.”
She approached the islander. Closing her eyes, she touched his chest. Enora had no idea what was going on, but after a moment, Hera began to slowly raise her hand, making him twitch and convulse. Mumbling and screaming, he tried to reach for his chest with his hands, but couldn’t move them. With a nasty squelch, Hera pulled a blob of green goo out of his body. She looked at it with an expression of disgust and burned it in the flame of her energy. The islander relaxed and fell into a deep sleep. Hera ran her hand over his forehead twice, then rose from the edge of the bed he was lying on.
“He’ll sleep for three days and wake up feeling better than ever. I’ve widened his channels and strengthened his nodes, and I’ve also extracted all the filth from his body. He would’ve been a strong cultivator regardless, but now he’ll become even stronger.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Enora asked hoarsely.
Many clans would’ve paid huge sums of money for Hera’s services. And they had. Long ago, the Dinos family had wanted to expand and purge the channels of their youngest and had given the Marnils a lot of Imperial artifacts in exchange. They could’ve bought an entire city block in Dahanatan for the sum they’d paid.
“Because he saved your sister’s life.”
“She saved his life.”
Hera smiled. Her niece was still a child and knew little about the world.
“However... He is definitely strange,” the healer’s face hardened.
She approached the pale swordsman. She went to touch his face, then pulled her hand away.
“What’s wrong, aunt Hera?”
Enora was next to her in an instant. Her unsheathed spear shone with a golden light. The guards drew their weapons as well and pointed their blades at the unconscious man lying on the floor. Hera licked her fingers curiously and looked at the ornaments woven into the young man’s hair.
“That’s the work of a desert shaman,” she said in surprise.
“Did that trinket really hurt you?”
Enora stared at the black burns on her aunt’s fingers as they slowly disappeared.
“It’s all so strange, my beloved Enora.” Hera sighed and sat beside the dying man. “It’s not even an artifact, just symbols carved into old bone. There isn’t a drop of energy in them.”
“What is it, then?”
“I don’t know what powers these trinkets.”
“Should I cut them off?”
Enora had already raised her spear, but was stopped by Hera’s imperious wave. When she had to be, the healer was rather authoritative. Despite being a mediocre Lord, Hera was talented in the healing arts, which was why she was so valued and respected.
“Stop.” Hera said calmly. “I fear that will only make things worse.”
Without touching his body, Hera began to move her hands over Hadjar.
Enora had seen her aunt revive people at the brink of death with a serene smile on her face. Where the best healers of the Empire had failed, she could succeed in half an hour. Even the Imperial family begged her for help when they had to. For the first time in her life, Enora watched Hera bite her lip until it bled, trying to remain focused. Her hands were trembling, and her healthy, youthful skin turned gray and wrinkled.
The young man on the floor convulsed and shook as well, just like his friend, and an inhuman growl escaped his throat. Deep and low, it reverberated through the room and made even the experienced warriors, all of them Spirit Knights, take a step back.
“I have to stop.” Hera, who’d aged in a matter of seconds and lost her beauty, moved away and sat down on the stone floor.
The numerous wounds on the swordsman’s body had healed. However, her aunt hadn’t been able to fully heal him. Enora stared in surprise at the man’s hideous scars. Hera gradually recovered: her skin grew taut again, the wrinkles disappeared from her face, and her gray hair turned golden once more. She recovered her youthful appearance as quickly as she had lost it.
“Is he-”
Enora didn’t finish speaking. She was interrupted by the young man wheezing. Though his wound
s had healed, he was still breathing heavily. He was slowly dying. Even Enora, who was by no means proficient in the healing arts, understood that much.
“No. He isn’t all right.” Hera shook her head. Lifting the hem of her dress, she sat down next to the young man. “I cured his body. Both his physical and energy one.”
“Why is he dying, then?”
“Because his soul is wounded.”
Enora looked closer.
“But I don’t see any wounds. He isn’t running out of energy.”
Hera smiled. She tried to stroke the boy’s hair, but pulled her hand away just in time. The ornaments in his black hair had rattled dangerously as soon as she’d put her hand close to them.
“There are many varieties of flesh wounds and there are many varieties of soul wounds.” Hera recalled the old lectures of her Teacher — a creature that had come from a distant land. The Land of Immortals. “I’ve never encountered anything like this, but my Teacher told me that…”
Hera looked at her niece.
“It doesn’t matter. The knowledge wouldn’t help you in any way, and it could possibly even harm you. If you really want to know, I’ll show you a copy of the text I got from an old friend.”
“That old man who lives in the desert?”
Hera didn’t tell her that Rahaim, when they’d first met, had been a beardless, naïve youth, and that she was now near the end of her own life. Soon, like her brother, she would go back to the Great Forest, and her only concern would be how to prepare the younger generations for their own departure.
“Let me try something.”
Hera closed her eyes and began to use a Technique that she’d only ever practiced because she’d been curious about it. Never before in her life had she used it on anyone other than guinea pigs.
After separating a part of her soul from its main body, a skill that had taken her three thousand years to perfect, she sent it on a journey through the young man’s soul. The world of souls was somewhat similar to the river that flowed through all of reality, and at the same time, it was strikingly different. Hera had never found the right words to describe it.
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