by Elise Kova
“The Knights of Jadar.” The mere words were poison to everything good in her life. “I should’ve known this all comes back to them.”
“They’re framing her for murder,” Taavin grumbled.
“Not framing,” Deneya said. She’d joined them. “Vhalla really did murder those people. But they didn’t look like they gave her much choice.”
Vi stared at the alleyway quickly flooding with people. Taavin was right. A manhunt was on and Vhalla would slip between all of their fingers once more.
As much as she wanted to rage and punch the wall at her side, she fought to keep a level head and refused to let her spark get the better of her. The Knights wanted Vhalla. The Knights knew she had a crystal weapon. They would no doubt try to unlock the Caverns to rebuild old Mhashan. That was all they ever wanted.
“By Yargen’s light,” Vi whispered. “That’s it.”
“What is?” Deneya took a step back as Vi spun to face her and Taavin. Vi’s arms wrapped around their shoulders, pulling them close; she kept her voice low.
“I know where they’re going. I know what’s going to happen.”
“How?” Taavin asked skeptically.
“I had a vision, when I touched the scythe.”
“And you didn’t tell us?” he balked.
“It didn’t seem relevant at the time. Listen—listen—it was Vhalla. She was tied to a horse and was in Mosant. There were men with her, Knights of Jadar.”
“How do you know it was the Knights?” Deneya asked.
“Let’s talk as we walk.” Vi’s mind was moving too fast for her feet to be still. She began heading back to their shop. “I know it was the Knights, because I saw one of them here, when Ophain arrived. He had a mustache and an armband with the Knights’ sigil. I didn’t make the connection until just now.”
“If you’re talking about the fellow with the magnificently ridiculous mustache, he left the restaurant with Vhalla tonight,” Deneya said eagerly.
“I know, I saw him too. He’s going to capture Vhalla. I don’t know how, but he will, and he’s going to bring her to the windmill on the mountainside of Mosant, no doubt on the way to the Crystal Caverns.”
“A mustached man… Knight of Jadar… Schnurr!” Taavin’s murmurings evolved into a single excited name.
“Yes!” Vi could see it now. Schnurr had been under Fiera’s command years ago during the fall of Norin. The man she’d seen in the square had been a much older Schnurr.
“His death is inevitable, in all worlds,” Taavin said. It was an echo of a conversation they’d had on the beach in Oparium, something she should’ve paid much closer attention to. “I wasn’t even thinking of tracking his movements because he usually meets his end during one of the battles in the North.”
“So he’s never captured Vhalla before?” Deneya asked.
“No,” Taavin said gravely. “Perhaps I was wrong about Schnurr, and his life is variable.”
Vi had no desire to see Schnurr’s life left to the hands of fate. Not when she wanted to wring the neck of every Knight of Jadar personally. But her focus was the axe, not the Knights or the man who seemed to be their current general in the gap Twintle left.
“We’ll go to Mosant.” They arrived at the shop and Vi hustled inside. “Taavin and I will.”
“What am I doing?” Deneya asked as Vi rummaged through her bags.
She pulled out a small box and opened it. A hoop earring was inside—her communication token with Adela. “I’m going to call the Stormfrost to Norin. You’re going to Risen.”
“Vi, you can’t mean—” Taavin started.
“This is it,” she interrupted firmly. “This is the moment, Taavin. This is what we’ve been working toward, what every Vi and Taavin has worked toward for the past ninety-three turns of the vortex. We’re not following Yargen’s red lines of fate anymore. We’re drawing them ourselves.”
“And what if we get it wrong?” he challenged, though his protest wasn’t as strong as Vi had once remembered.
“Then this ends. One way or another, this ends.” Vi looked to Deneya. The woman had been a steadfast and loyal companion. “What do you think?”
“I get a say?” Deneya arched her eyebrows.
“You’ve been with us through all of this… I think it’s only fair.”
“I never much liked the idea of being the ninety-third version of myself. I like the idea of the world being trapped in a futile loop even less.” Deneya grabbed her traveling pack from the corner of the room with determined movements. “I’d rather see the world end than be chained to the wheel of fate.”
Vi looked to Taavin.
His eyes were fraught with frantic hopelessness. Vi crossed to him, wrapping her arms around his waist. She held him in an effort to bring comfort to him, as he had brought it to her.
“It’s all right,” she whispered, placing her forehead on his and looking him in the eye. Deneya packed, giving them some privacy with her back to them. “We can do this.”
“If she goes to Risen, if she extinguishes the flame… that’s it.”
“I know.”
“There’s no more lingering essence of Yargen to restart the world. The last of her autonomous consciousness will be lost.”
“I know.” Vi sighed softly. “Everything ends eventually.”
He pressed his eyes closed and held his breath. Vi braced herself with him. They would take these final steps together, holding and helping each other along the way.
“All right.” Taavin opened his eyes and stepped away. “Deneya, when you go to Risen, you’ll need to get to the Voice…”
Their conversation faded away as Vi sprinted downstairs and began to saddle the horse Vhalla had given them. Deneya would extinguish the flame and bring its ashes to her. Vi would extract the magic from within them just as she would extract the magic from the axe, and the remaining power in the Crystal Caverns.
After that, the only piece of Yargen’s essence that was left was—
Her hands hovered midmotion, forgetting what she had just been doing. She let out a small whimper as if she’d been punched in the gut.
Taavin.
The only other remaining piece would be Taavin. Vi pressed her eyes closed and breathed for a moment, working to calm her swelling emotions.
Everything ends eventually.
Luckily, she wouldn’t be far behind him. She would rejoin with the goddess, too, in a way. Vi remembered her fading corporeal form from her other vision. After Taavin was gone, all that would remain was Yargen, and the dark god she was destined to battle.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Vi rode in front, Taavin tucked in close behind her, as they made their way through the Crossroads. He clung to her as she navigated the narrow roads to the Great Imperial Way that would take them south. Vi didn’t know when the Knights would capture Vhalla, but she suspected they hadn’t in the two hours it had taken to see Deneya off.
Even still, Vi rode hard. Hard enough that Taavin had to remind her to ease up. They would surely arrive in Mosant before the Knights so long as they didn’t kill the only horse they had.
They traveled by moonlight at night, and covered their heads during the day to keep safe from the oppressive sun. When the icy winds of the great Southern pines overtook the landscape, Vi knew they were close. The moment they entered the pine forest, Vi guided them down a hunter’s trail.
By dawn, they arrived, their breath turning into clouds that caught the morning’s first light.
“Look, there.” Vi raised a hand, pointing to a windmill high on an upper ridge of Mosant. “If they’re coming from the deep Waste rather than the main road, they should be able to navigate up the other side of that ridge without townsfolk ever seeing them.”
“Is it the same one from your vision?”
“I think so, but there’s one way to find out. Come, we’ll go through the forest and keep out of sight.”
Her plan made their pathway up the ridge much slower. At a certa
in point, Vi made the decision to tie off the horse in a circle of trees. There were ample shrubs holding on to their brilliantly colored leaves to conceal the mount. Continuing on foot, they scaled the mountainside, higher and higher until they could see the path that led to the windmill.
Vi stared at it, examining the door, the cracks in the worn stone; she took stock of every last detail and compared it to her memory of the vision. When she was satisfied, she finally said, “It’s the same,” and breathed a sigh of relief.
“So Vhalla will come here, then.”
“She’ll be taken here.”
“Assuming we’re not too late.”
“I don’t think we are.” Vi scanned the ground for signs of a struggle. “They killed a woman in my vision in front of the steps. Even if they removed the body, there would be blood.”
“And there hasn’t been rain to wash any bloodstains away.” Taavin ran a hand through his hair. He wore an uncertain expression. “So we’re either very late, or slightly early.”
“I’m confident in the latter. We had a head start on them.”
Vi sat down in the brush, situating herself against a tree where she could see the front door through the leaves. Taavin crouched down next to her. After the first hour, he shifted to lean against the tree as well. By the time night fell, he was sitting with his side flush against hers.
“They might not be coming tonight,” he murmured. The first spoken words in hours startled her.
“You’re likely right.”
“Want me to make camp down the hill, with the horse?”
“You can, if you want. I’d like to stay here and keep an eye out. It was night in my vision, so who knows when they might arrive.”
“All right.” Taavin stood, brushing himself off.
Vi listened to him go. She tipped her head back against the tree. The night was still and the evening birds were singing. Even when the world was nearing its possible end, the birds still sang as if nothing was wrong. Footsteps approached, and Vi turned to see Taavin there, holding their blankets.
“I thought you were going to make camp?”
“I am making camp.” Taavin sat right next to her and threw the blanket over both their legs. He leaned forward, tucking it in on the sides. “You didn’t really think I was going to leave you here alone in the cold, did you?”
“Maybe I did.” Vi gave him a tired grin. After riding through the night, she was exhausted.
“I should be offended by that.”
She laughed airily and rested her temple on his shoulder. Taavin gave her a light kiss on the crown of her head. He stretched an arm behind her with the corner of the second blanket in hand. Soon enough, she was bundled against him.
“Do you want to rest?” Vi murmured, already feeling sleep overtake her.
“No, I’ll take first watch.”
“All right.” She yawned. “Wake me if you see the Knights.”
“I will,” he promised.
Vi slept surprisingly well that night. The next morning, she and Taavin watched the windmill’s sole occupant—an elderly woman—make her way into town. She did not so much as glance in their direction as she passed the thick brush concealing them.
The woman being alive meant for certain they’d made it before the Knights, which helped Vi sleep even sounder the second night. It was still possible that things had changed so much between her vision and now that they wouldn’t bring Vhalla here. Vi mentally gave them two more days before they would split up; he would wait here and she would head off to the Crystal Caverns.
Even if the world had changed since her vision and Knights didn’t come to the windmill, she knew they would end up there. They always did. In every world, the crystal weapons sought to be returned to the Caverns.
Vi was dozing when the thunder of hooves startled her. She straightened and listened carefully.
“I hear it too,” Taavin whispered as he hastily folded their blankets.
Sure enough, a group rode up. Vi recognized Schnurr at its head. Vhalla was tied to a horse in the center, looking even worse than she had in Vi’s vision with heavy shackles, inlaid with crystals, around her wrists. Vi balled her hands into a fist and gritted her teeth. She wasn’t sure which made her angrier: the fact that the Knights of Jadar were a perpetual thorn in her side, or what they had done to Vhalla.
She and Taavin remained crouched low, holding their breath, and watched what unfolded through breaks in the brush.
The elderly woman they’d seen before came out to greet the travelers on her doorstep. She couldn’t get out a word before Schnurr skewered her through the eye with his sword. Vi didn’t even wince as he cast the woman aside. Her corpse landed in an identical position to the vision Vi had seen.
“It’s the same,” she whispered as quietly as possible into Taavin’s ear.
“Good.”
She didn’t know if she’d call this “good” but it was at least playing out just as Yargen had showed her. The Knights of Jadar untied Vhalla from the saddle and carried her in. Vi watched for a second time as the woman was thrown unceremoniously onto bags of grain. The group followed her inside and the door closed behind them.
“What now?” Taavin whispered.
“I… don’t know,” Vi admitted. “This is everything I saw.”
Taavin pursed his lips, clearly thinking over their options. “Well, we know they’re going to take her to the Crystal Caverns.”
“Yes, and we can’t let them do that.”
“Do you want to free her, then?” he asked. “We’re not playing by the rules anymore, right? We don’t care if we change fate. This is it.”
Vi struggled to find words. “Who are you, and what have you done with my Taavin?”
“I will always be your Taavin.” He gripped her hand.
“Let’s wait and observe,” Vi declared. “We’ll move when an opening presents itself.”
“You’ve always been good at seeing opportunities.”
She gave him a weary smile and brought her attention back to the windmill.
Night fell. The movement in the windmill settled and Vi assumed everyone had lain down to rest. She wondered how much closer she’d let them get to the Crystal Caverns. She’d killed Knights there before; she could gladly do it again. Perhaps she’d ambush them when they left. The creative and delicious possibilities for destroying them were endless.
“What was that?” Taavin whispered in the still night.
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“Listen,” he hissed and cupped his hand around his ear, leaning toward the windmill.
Vi did the same motion and closed her eyes, focusing. Sure enough, there were dull thuds coming from within the windmill.
“Wind scum!” someone shouted.
“Durroe watt radia,” Vi said as she bolted from the brush, dashing over to one of the windows. She was barely tall enough to see inside, even if she jumped. But she bounced like a fool to get glimpses of the fight raging within.
Vhalla, still cuffed, was managing to hold her own against the Knights. She was fumbling with a key, trying desperately to remove the cuffs.
Vi jumped again.
The tides of the skirmish had changed. The Knights were advancing. One held the crystal weapon. Vi’s heart raced even faster.
“Kill the wind bitch!” a man shouted. The other raised the axe.
She could let Vhalla die. If they weren’t working toward the birth of a new Champion any longer, Vhalla wasn’t technically needed. She could let them fight it out, kill whoever was left, and take the axe. No one would know what happened to it. If she let Vhalla and the Knights die here and now, everyone who knew about the axe’s whereabouts would be dead. In one fell swoop, every loose end would be tied. It’d be clean. No one would come hunting for Vi and she’d finally, finally have the axe.
Vi pushed the thoughts away in horror.
No, that wasn’t clean in the slightest. That wasn’t right, or just. There was still no mag
ic from Vhalla. The woman wasn’t fighting back with the ferocity Vi knew she possessed.
Vi had to intervene.
She threw out her hand and cast a ball of flame toward the door. The wood caught instantly and the flames darted within, as if her magic was seeking out the axe itself.
“Vi, that’s enough!” Taavin hissed from their hiding place. Her eyes were on the dancing flames eagerly consuming her magic and growing in size. She imagined those sacks of wheat they’d thrown Vhalla onto; it would burn just like the wheat Vi had thrown into the fire in the curiosity shop. “Stop, or you’ll kill Vhalla too!”
She withdrew, both in person and in magic. Vi retreated into the bushes, lowering the flames just as Vhalla emerged, sprinting down the front steps of the windmill.
The young woman looked around frantically. “Aldrik?” she called.
Your prince didn’t come for you. But from a world away, Vi had. She didn’t know if she’d saved Vhalla, or risked killing her with her improvisation. Yargen only knew the truth.
Vhalla wasted no time mounting a horse. She still had the axe, stashed away now in a saddlebag. Vi continued to stare, eyes glinting in the firelight, wondering if saving her and burning the Knights had been the right decision… or if it had somehow cost them their world for a final time.
As if sensing her piercing gaze, Vhalla glanced over her shoulder in their direction as Taavin gripped her ankle and whispered, “Durroe watt radia.” Vi hadn’t even realized her glyph had fallen when she’d started the fire.
If Vhalla saw anything, it was only for a moment, before Vi vanished from existence and remained the unseen hand of the Solaris Empire.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Vhalla rode into Mosant. Vi emerged from the brush, watching her descend the ridge. Men and women, up at this late hour, greeted her.
“What now?” Taavin asked. She hadn’t even heard him come up to her side.
“She’ll be too well-attended for us to take the axe here.”
“Why not just grab it?”