The Marechal Chronicles: Volume VI, The Crucible: A Dark Fantasy Tale

by Aimelie Aames

  It was a morass of death, a maelstrom that reached outward in great waves, snuffing out life without regard for worth, judgement, or value.

  All of it was disappearing before her very eyes in a seething explosion that would doom the realm, if not the world.

  Tears threatened as she backed away further from the devastation, for she knew it could only mean one thing as she remembered the words of the Alchemist.

  Somewhere, for some reason, my son does himself terrible harm.

  Melisse knew the source of the desolation growing with violent swells that ravaged everything in its path.

  Oh, Marechal. What has befallen you?

  She could not imagine what horror was devouring the man from afar, but she could see the terrifying result.

  “I cannot allow this,” she said, though there was no one to hear her.

  Melisse drew her hands into fists, then reached inside her mind, ready to draw forth the flaming beast imprisoned there.

  She would unleash it, at last, and give it free rein even if it meant breaking the mantle of all creation.

  Soon enough, it would happen whether she interceded or not.

  She closed her eyes, drawing her focus tight. Her body trembled as if it had divined what she did not. Ruin was at hand. Doom was about to claim them all.

  HOLD.

  The word slammed into Melisse, knocking her off balance to the point of almost falling to her knees.

  Then her mind’s eye opened wide to be filled with the sight of lush greenery dripping in myriad cascades like jeweled threads in every direction.

  The sight was familiar to her, yet it was a far more eldritch in form and color than when the lizard demon had first shown her his history and his world.

  We travel the corridors of my fallen god’s realm.

  Unlike the voice that had shaken her only a moment earlier, what spoke then was clearly the mental voice of the lizard.

  Thick leaves rustled, then the beast came into view.

  Melisse remembered how when it ran upon its six legs, it moved lightning quick with a grace bordering on elegance.

  This time, however, its flowing run was a broken one for it ran on only four legs, one of which was an odd mottled pink in color causing an obvious limp on that side.

  Its head was raised up, in the manner of a man, and in its first pair of limbs, it held a man clasped to its chest.

  A man Melisse recognized at once.

  She also saw a man writhing in the throes of apparent agony.

  The paths that lie between our worlds shall bring us to the Tower far sooner than otherwise. It is necessary, for I know not what assails him, but he suffers greatly.

  Melisse nodded with no idea if the lizard understood her or not.

  Her eyes stung, as if with acrid smoke, but when she looked down at her hands, she saw no flames, her fury cooled by the startling image of the Marechal.

  Her tears continued to gather before drifting down her cheeks, then she was forced to turn back to deathly abomination.

  She felt it reaching for her, invisible tendrils snaking outward, seeking to crush the life from all that it found.

  Instead of allowing her fire to wreak havoc, Melisse forced herself to turn away, using the beastly force within herself to put distance between herself and the cursed ground growing like pestilence with each passing second.

  Then, deep in the forest behind her, she heard a rustling sound.

  A warm, humid breeze blew past her and the scent of a different kind of forest, a place that had nothing to do with the one before her now, rolled around her to disappear just as quickly as it had come.

  The demon carrying the Marechal came into view. When it saw Melisse, it stopped, then set its burden down, gently, before backing away.

  Release him from this agony, I beg you.

  Then the demon turned and disappeared into the dark of night.

  She understood. If she could, she, too, would flee.

  Instead, she ran to the swordsman.

  “Melisse,” he said through gritted teeth. “Help me up.”

  She bent low and hooked her arm around one of his and heaved upward as he struggled to his feet.

  Almost as soon as he stood, his knees buckled. She leaned in tightly to him, giving him all the strength she had to give, until he steadied enough to look down at her.

  “What has happened to you?” she asked, her voice small and quiet.

  He chuckled without humor, then coughed.

  “I might ask the same of you.”

  Suddenly, his body shook violently and Melisse thought he would topple over despite all that she did.

  The spasm passed and he said, “Poison. I’ve been poisoned.”

  He shook his head, shock and disbelief plain in his eyes.

  “And, I do not heal. Do you understand? I do not heal!”

  She heard his words, then a realization rocked her where she stood and it was not the kind of understanding that the Marechal had intended.

  The sudden, virulent growth of the wasteland.

  It’s trying to heal him, but for some reason it can’t, she thought and on the heels of this, she understood just how real, irrevocable doom would befall the world if she failed.

  Melisse closed her mouth on the words she was about to speak, then carefully, she said, “We must go onward, Marechal. It is the only way.”

  The swordsman’s head drooped, his chin fell to his chest, then he convulsed.

  Melisse saw how his jaw clenched around the scream that he bit back until his suffering abated enough to speak again.

  “Where?” he asked. “Why did the demon …?”

  Then it was she who choked back the bitter tears threatening at her eyes. It was she who was racked with sadness over the pain and confusion besetting the man who had been her hero.

  “Your forgotten past, Marechal,” she said, “I have found it. It is here — waiting for you.”

  He slumped against her, and she knew that this time there was more than pain that stole his strength.

  “My past,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. “Even if what you say is true, I doubt that I merit it anymore.”

  Melisse shook her head.

  “No, it is the poison that speaks. I know you, Marechal. You deserve to have it back.”

  What he said next was laced with bitterness.

  “I deserve nothing. Not anymore. My honor, if ever it was mine to begin with, is gone.”

  “I don’t understand you,” Melisse said.

  The Marechal answered her as if he had not heard her.

  “I found him, you know. The villain. The arch enemy for whom I had imagined a thousand different faces over hundreds of years. The one and the same who brought misfortune into your life, forcing you from your home and all that you knew with one insidious act.

  “At the last, he told me he did it for amusement. Nothing more to it than a means of alleviating his own boredom.”

  Melisse struggled to find her next words as she thought back to the creature who had seduced her, then poisoned her life in its own way.

  “Did you — did you see justice done, Marechal?”

  He smiled a wan smile.

  “Yes. No.”

  He shook his head weakly.

  “I do not know. All that is certain is he is now so far beyond my reach that I suppose one can call the affair at an end.”

  As he continued to speak, it was only the use of her name that kept her from thinking she listened to the ravings of a man gone mad.

  “I played a game of thieves, Melisse. I put people in danger and then allowed them to die. I cast my own honor aside in the name of the hunt and I played my role so fully that it covers me now like a well-worn cloak. Poison is a just punishment for the fool I have become.”

  “Stop it. Stop!” Melisse said. “You can’t say such things. These are words of a defeated man. Not those of a man who stood to defend me against demons when there was no hope of succeeding.”<
br />
  A sob escaped her.

  “When I left you, Marechal, it was to spare you. My hero. I left you because you were in danger from me.”

  Neither of them said anything for a moment until the swordsman broke the silence.

  “What shall we do, Melisse?”

  She stood up straighter.

  “The only way I know out of this is forward. It is time to take you home, Marechal.”

  “What do you mean? Where are we?” he asked.

  “Our path leads to the Tower of the Alchemist, Marechal.”

  Like a drunken man, he looked about himself, his head lolling from side to side such that Melisse doubted he truly saw his surroundings.

  “It’s too late. Too late for Lady Keld, too late for everything,” he murmured, then hissed with an intake of breath as his body went rigid again.

  Melisse could no longer afford to doubt what must be done.

  For some reason, this time he could not heal and the blight on the land would grow and grow.

  Unless she stopped it.

  Despite all her misgivings, it seemed her course was clear.

  “Lean on me, Marechal,” she said, even though he had been since the moment he managed to stand.

  She lurched forward with him as resolutely as she could.

  He deserves this much. His past should be his own, before —

  Melisse trembled at the thought.

  — before I kill him.

  ***

  Together, they staggered forward, one of them filled with dread determination, the other went with blind trust while burning in his own personal hell.

  The distance to the wasteland was shorter than Melisse remembered it to be. Death continued to wring ever more life out of its surroundings, and she wondered with a fleeting thought if it coincided with the sudden spasms of violent suffering that seized the swordsman from one moment to the next.

  Melisse drew upon her power while carefully holding it at bay from harming the Marechal further.

  She made of it a buckler that protected them both as they penetrated the wasteland.

  It seemed to take hours, but Melisse had no real idea of how much time had passed.

  The horror rained down onto them endlessly, skittering and flailing against her magic, its lust for swallowing life redoubled.

  If the Marechal understood what was happening, he gave no sign. He simply stumbled along with her, only coming to a standstill when the pain rose so greatly that the strength in his legs was lost to him.

  Without the fire burning in me, I could not uphold him for long.

  But, just as it aided her when she wanted to travel great distances quickly, her power lent her strength enough as they made their way forward and the first stones of the broken tower came into view.

  Melisse stopped as did the Marechal with her.

  She hesitated.

  The force scratched and scrabbled like thousands of claws against the power protecting them both.

  “Where are we?” the swordsman said, his voice rasping in his throat.

  Melisse did not know how to answer him.

  “I think,” she said, “that we have gone far enough.”

  And then because she did not know what else to say she continued.

  “Now I must leave you.”

  She felt his body stiffen, but she saw in his eyes that it was not the poison but rather raw emotion that held him in its grip then.

  “No,” he said, “You mustn’t. Not now. Not like this.”

  Melisse saw but refused to believe what was plain upon his face then.

  “I won’t go far, I promise you. But you must do this part without me, Marechal.”

  Before he could respond, Melisse heard the great voice from earlier intone some few words in her mind.

  Now. Release him to his fate or you may never again find the strength required.

  She could not deny the truth of what was said. Even then, her resolve was eroding quickly.

  “Please, Marechal. I have to let you go now.”

  She saw him clench his jaw as she had seen him do countless times before. He said nothing more as she disengaged her arm from his own, then eased him down to the ground where he rested upon his knees while his eyes never left her.

  I cannot bear this.

  However, her choice had been made and she knew that if he held himself silent, it was because it was the last act of a dying man who wished to be remembered not for his weakness at the end, but for some semblance of the strength that had guided his life until then.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, then stepped backward and ripped her power back with her, exposing the Marechal to the horror of that place.

  There was a moment, a single moment, when all hung suspended, a raindrop’s fall interrupted in flight by hoarfrost and ice.

  Then the Marechal’s arms flung outward, his head whipped back, and his body jackknifed up off the ground.

  A great shuddering wind blew like a tempest sent by the gods, except that this wind blew inward in one powerful gust, the swordsman at its center.

  He stood on his feet, but his spine was bowed so far backward Melisse was sure it would break.

  His eyelids fluttered and his mouth worked as if he saw all his memories rushing by and through him; as if he spoke once more all that he had ever said some three centuries earlier.

  The strange wind that was no wind shifted away from the Marechal and the power haunting the lands of the fallen tower contracted, drawing itself together into a sphere just beyond both her and the swordsman.

  Melisse knew it for what it was.

  Death had not left that place. It only had drawn itself back, waiting and ready to pounce.

  She ran to him.

  “Marechal … Marechal!”

  The force animating him appeared to dissolve and his body sagged, yet somehow he managed to remain standing as he looked around himself.

  “I live still,” he said it so low, she knew his words were not meant for her. “And yet, I must not. Not anymore.”

  So it was that she knew he had remembered what had been lost. He had seen as she had seen when she had found the alchemist still among the ruins.

  Except that the memories were his and far more intimate to him than anything she had experienced. His spoken conclusion told her that with his past finally in his grasp, his future had become all too apparent.

  He looked to her, his eyes focused and clear.

  “You spoke with my father here, Melisse.”

  She nodded.

  “I did. He was very worried about you.”

  In his turn, he nodded.

  “I saw it. As I did all the rest.”

  Melisse felt her heart go cold. If he had seen that much, then he had seen what followed.

  Her words came in a tumbling rush.

  “He asked me, Marechal. I did not want to do it. But he convinced me there was no other way.”

  She searched his eyes, looking for some hint of accusation, of laying blame.

  His mouth was thin lipped as he considered what he had seen and what she said.

  Then his cool grey eyes softened and a sad smile colored his words.

  “Of the two of us, my father was ever the wiser man. Of course he was right. For that you must not blame yourself, Melisse.”

  Her vision of him blurred as tears came to her, but even then they could not wash away the guilt she felt.

  “Hush now,” he said. “No tears, not for him, nor for me. You know as well as I do that my time here is done.”

  He scanned his surroundings before drawing a deep breath.

  “It is enough. You must act quickly before the poison saps what will remains to me.”

  Through her tears, Melisse could see how he trembled. Even then, he fought a desperate battle with an unseen enemy, denying the poison mastery over him for just a bit longer.

  “No, wait,” she said, “That thing over there — “

  She pointed to the swirling colored
sphere of deadly power.

  “Can you control it?”

  He shook his head, his expression grim.

  “I cannot. There is no doubt. For the moment the poison’s power has ebbed, but even now I feel it readying itself for its next onslaught and when it does, the lifestealer will begin its foul work anew.”

  He sighed as he raised a trembling hand to beckon to Melisse.

  “It is a savage beast, just as much as the magic you have within you. Come to me now and finish this before it is too late.”

  Melisse knew he had not meant to hurt her, but his words stung like a salt-soaked lash.

  A power like mine — a savage beast that makes its possessor into a monster.

  And on the tail of that thought her mind added its inevitable conclusion.

  He doesn’t want to become someone like me.

  She knew she should not have been surprised. He had always been a noble man, his every action speaking more loudly than his words.

  Despite regaining his past, he had not been changed and would do what was necessary in order to spare the innocent.

  Even when that meant going to his own death without delay.

  Without realizing that she had come to a decision, Melisse reached within herself, then seized her power with all her strength only to throw it outward in an arc of bestial heat.

  She gritted her teeth.

  She could feel how it wanted to run amok, to freely burn all that it encountered until there was nothing left but cold ashes and bitter regret.

  However, Melisse did not allow it the freedom it so desperately desired.

  Instead, she forced the flames into a wall that separated the Marechal and the thing he had named lifestealer.

  She knew it would be an attempt in vain, but if the Marechal refused what she was about to ask him, then she would try to contain the virulent horror … perhaps, even, to bring it to heel.

  “You cannot succeed, Melisse,” the Marechal said, raising his voice over the crackling sound of the wall of flames before him.

  “It will only return to its amorphous state, spread wide, and continue to destroy all that it touches.”

  He paused, then added, “Even you, eventually.”

  Melisse shook her head violently.

  “No. That’s not true. I might be able to burn it away, Marechal.”

  She did not continue to say what she thought — that she would rather die in the attempt than to destroy the swordsman himself.