“Are you really going to fight Sankesh?” Einen asked.
“I have no other choice, my friend,” Hadjar shrugged. “It has nothing to do with the List or little Serra anymore.”
“Why, then?”
“The accursed elixir of the gods is stored here, by the High Heavens!”
The others exchanged wary glances. They had believed in the existence of the library and had even managed to find it. But a potion that turned a mortal into a god... They didn’t believe in gods! Of course, they prayed, built monuments to them, and sometimes named their children after them, but they treated the gods more like heroes from legends and myths.
“Does it exist?” Shakh gasped. “Does it really exist?”
“Yes,” Hadjar nodded. “And while we’re sitting here talking, Sankesh is getting closer to it.”
“Then let’s just leave.” Einen said the words in a way that made it clear he meant all of them. “If he finds it, if he becomes a god, he won’t be able to do anything to us. The gods can’t interfere in the affairs of mortals.”
“And what if the legends lie?” Hadjar couldn’t put it into words, but his entire being told him that if Sankesh got to the elixir, something irreparably horrible would happen. Einen and Hadjar, nor any of the others, would even get to see it — they would be dead.
Apparently, the islander understood what was bothering his friend. He handed the bag to Shakh and said:
“Then I’ll go with you. We came here together, my friend, and we’ll leave together.”
At that moment, Hadjar saw his brother’s shadow behind Einen. Just like with Nero, he and Einen had ended up in a lot of situations where they would’ve died if not for their friend’s help. But now…
“Look at Shakh, Einen. Even with the elixirs, he couldn’t get them out of-”
“By the Great Turtle, I don’t care,” Einen said, completely indifferent. “I came here with you, my friend, not with them. And I’ll leave with you.”
“Could you live with the fact that you left so many people to die?”
Without even hearing Einen’s response, Hadjar suddenly realized that the islander could. He’d grown up in a very unique environment and had talked to many very unusual people, which had certainly affected his outlook.
“All right,” Hadjar sighed.
Einen relaxed. Just for a moment. But that was all Hadjar needed to blur into the shadow of the Seven Ravens and hit his friend in the temple with a well-aimed blow. The islander went limp in his arms.
Hadjar laid Einen’s body down on the floor and turned to Shakh.
“Give him some elixirs, and when he wakes up, get out of here.”
Shakh nodded and pulled the bag closer to him.
Hadjar took one last look at his friend’s serene face. If they survived, the bald islander would grumble at him for about a month. However, it was better to listen to his friend’s complaints than to have to bury a second br-
Hadjar shook his head. This wasn’t the time for such thoughts.
“And what about you?” Tilis’ soft voice roused him from his stupor.
“And I,” Hadjar straightened up and started down the intricate corridors, “have gotten addicted to fighting Spirit Knights. I’m going to go kill another one.”
Chapter 413
About two hundred yards away, hidden among the shelves and corridors, Hadjar leaned against a pillar and closed his eyes, breathing heavily. Two thin streams of blood ran down from the corners of his mouth.
Wearing only ragged trousers, Hadjar took off the remnants of his caftan. He cut two strips from it. With the wider one, he bandaged his right side, which had been wounded by Ragar.
The wounds he’d received from just a glancing blow weren’t fatal, but it had still contained so much power that his Technique for Strengthening the Body couldn’t cope with it. The Technique had saved Hadjar’s life, but it couldn’t fully heal such damage, not even with the help of Einen’s elixir.
Hadjar tied the hilt of his sword to his arm with the second, smaller strip. Tightening the knot with his teeth, he leaned against the wall and resumed walking forward. He left a thin, scarlet trail behind him.
His behavior might’ve seemed like a bunch of stupid heroics, but it wasn’t. Hadjar had always followed only one principle — his honor was absolute. Of course, he sometimes wavered, but he generally sought to do the right thing.
Einen had gotten involved in this adventure only because of his friend. If Hadjar had refused Paris’ offer, they would’ve waited out their term of service and gone to the Empire. But…
That’s why, if Hadjar had allowed Einen to go with him, his blood would have been on Hadjar’s hands. Hadjar had no doubt that blood would be shed. He just didn’t know whose blood. When he pressed his hand to his side and felt the growing, wet stain there, he guessed that it would be his.
Hadjar knew where to go. This knowledge — where to turn, what turns to avoid, what hidden mechanisms he should use — had appeared in his mind by itself. And there were plenty of mechanisms around here: moving shelves, sliding columns, even racks folding into ladders.
Hadjar felt no fear as he walked through the narrow corridors that led far beneath the library. He was afraid, of course, as only a fool feared nothing, but he felt none of that overpowering terror that could make a person freeze up and a warrior drop their weapon and run away.
In his dream where he’d bidden farewell to his brother and sister-in-law, Hadjar had declared war on the gods. He couldn’t retreat now that another maniac was going to become one of them.
The ceiling and floor were covered in ancient bas-reliefs and paintings. They depicted historical events unknown to Hadjar. He saw someone praying to the Heavens. Wrapped in a gray cloak, he prayed to the Heavens for days, years, centuries, but it was all in vain. Then something happened. Hadjar couldn’t make out what exactly — too much time had passed and the paint had faded. After that, the praying figure disappeared from the canvas, and the elixir appeared in Mage City. It was depicted as an amber liquid emitting a bright yellow light.
Looking at the figure wrapped in the cloak, Hadjar felt like it was familiar to him. Of course, it wasn’t the Black General, as the elixir had appeared long before the Enemy had come to the territory of the ancient civilization.
It seemed like the civilization had formed around the gods’ gift and the cloaked figure was its progenitor. Hadjar didn’t understand why he knew the story of such an ancient being. It was older than Mage City …
Hadjar’s train of thought was interrupted by the light at the end of the corridor. Bright and eye-catching, it contrasted sharply with the dimness of the library and the subterranean corridors. Shielding his eyes, Hadjar stepped out onto a wide balcony. A light breeze caressed his body. A hum, and some sort of noise filled his ears. After the recent silence, they were as refreshing as the breeze.
As his eyes adjusted to the light, Hadjar once again realized that this world still had plenty of things left to impress him with. Below the balcony was a mountain plateau. Or so Hadjar presumed at first. However, the grass and moss weren’t growing on stones, but on ancient bridges, columns, and platforms.
The area looked like... Hadjar couldn’t find the words to describe it. In the center, on a huge column, was a square platform. Covered in various prints, patterns, and runes, it gathered energy using a huge crystal hovering above the columns standing on the perimeter. All of this energy accumulated and formed a blue ‘bush’. Ephemeral, created from pure energy, it, in turn, poured the energy into special crystal troughs that ran beneath Hadjar’s feet.
Apparently, this was what had kept the library running. However, it wasn’t this gigantic ‘altar’ and the buildings around it, whose huge parts were floating in the air, that made Hadjar gape in awe.
He stared at a huge tree that grew on the other side of the blue energy ‘bush’ and the stone platform. Although, ‘grow’ was the wrong word for it.
The base of the tree enc
ircled a floating island big enough to build six houses on. Its great roots entangled the island and, intertwining with it, went somewhere down a wide pipe. The lilac tree crowns radiating blue light would’ve been able to cover half of Kurkhadan. The tree had no trunk. Instead, an orange crystal swirled in its center, emanating bright yellow light. Sankesh was standing on the pipe into which the mighty roots descended, and Serra and Erra were lying at his feet.
Hadjar didn’t know which of them the elixir was — the crystal, the tree, or the blue bush — but he didn’t care at the moment. Blurring into the shadow of the Seven Ravens, he covered the distance between himself and the giant of a man in less than a minute.
“You’ve come at last.” Sankesh didn’t even turn around. He stared at the huge crystal spinning inside the tree. “You can take them away. They’ve fulfilled their purpose.”
With two careless kicks, he sent the little girls flying away from him. Hadjar barely managed to catch them and gently put them back down.
“Are you all right?” He asked the girls, but instantly realized they weren’t.
Serra was still breathing, albeit with a lot of difficult. Erra’s body gradually grew transparent. Her heart was no longer beating, and her eyes were empty.
“The library is dying, Hadjar,” Serra whispered very softly. “My sister is gone. It will be my turn soon.”
Hadjar suddenly realized why Rahaim had been searching for the library so desperately. What did death mean for a golem? Nothingness. Absolute, all-consuming nothingness. Soulless creatures didn’t get an afterlife. The only thing that would be able to give Serra a soul, a short period of mortal life, and, most importantly, a new life after that, was the elixir of the gods.
“Get to cover.” Hadjar tucked a stray strand of hair behind the girl’s ear. “It’ll be all right. Don’t be afraid. Everything will be fine.”
The girl nodded and, summoning the last of her strength, limped over to the columns with the blue crystals.
Hadjar rose and took a step toward Sankesh.
“Stop-”
Hadjar didn’t manage to say a word more. Sunshine Sankesh whirled and swung his halberd. If Ragar’s energy had been like an avalanche, Sankesh’s was more like a fiery inferno. He was much stronger than the northerner had been.
His slash generated a wave of light. Cutting through the stone, it rushed toward Hadjar. Thirty feet high and three feet wide, it could’ve cut through an entire fortress with ease.
Hadjar always used every opportunity he could. Despite his pain and wounds, he summoned the sleeping little dragon and visualized using the black sword and the ‘Calm Wind’ Technique within his soul. In the physical world, he performed the ‘Rustle in the Treetops’ Technique.
The strong defense couldn’t even slow the desert ruler’s strike. The wave of light that held the Halberd Spirit within it cut through the wind and tore it into small fragments.
The dragon, which had a sword for its body, got in the way of the light, but could only withstand it for a fraction of a second. The light swallowed it up, losing about a twentieth of its strength. All of its titanic might struck Hadjar, who had raised his sword to block it. Energy surged out of Hadjar’s body. The wisps of black mist on his blade widened. They connected with the black cloak around his shoulders, forming a sphere of darkness, but compared to the wave of light, this sphere looked like a speck.
Sankesh ignored him. Realizing that Hadjar didn’t have enough power to block his attack, he turned away and continued studying the crystal.
Hadjar held on with all his might. Large patches of his skin and muscle tissue were torn from his arms and shoulders. Blood drenched the moss-covered stones.
With a roar, Hadjar put all his strength and willpower into blocking the attack. In his eyes, a dragon raged. Darkness oozed from the depths of his soul. The wave of light gradually faded. Hadjar was able to take half a step forward, pushing back the halberd’s strike... Sankesh was about to turn around, when…
Crack!
A shard of Mountain Wind pierced Hadjar’s chest. A moment later, the sword snapped and split in half. Hadjar felt no terror, no icy fingers of death on his throat. He was only mildly saddened by the fact that his sword was too weak to endure such a battle.
The wave of light struck Hadjar. It dragged him at least twenty yards across the ground. His lifeless body, sporting a hideous wound that had almost cut him in half and had exposed his entrails, lay unmoving on the edge of an abyss.
“Weakling,” Sankesh snorted.
“Hadjar!” Serra exclaimed.
***
“...Hadjar... Hadjar...”
Silence ruled. It was dark and cold here.
So this is what death looks like! Hadjar thought.
He’d seen darkness in his life. Tangible darkness, the kind that was so scary that even the color black looked white compared to it, but this... it wasn’t darkness. It wasn’t light. This was nothing. It was just death.
His last flashes of consciousness stretched out for eternity. During these last gasps, mortals saw the Heavens or Hells, but practitioners... Their will was too strong to be lost amidst the chaos of their own fading soul.
It had been foolish to think that he could fight a monstrously powerful Spirit Knight on his own. He and two others had defeated Ragar by using the exploding artifacts, and even then, they’d only managed to do so because the northerner had been struggling with his soul wounds at the beginning of the fight, and those wounds were sometimes much more damaging than any bodily ones could ever be.
And yet, Hadjar hadn’t run away. He was now plunging into darkness, disappearing from this world, but he still didn’t regret his decision. He couldn’t stop Sankesh from becoming a god, but trying had been his choice to make. He couldn’t have done anything else. If he had turned around, if he had taken even a single step back, he would no longer have been Hadjar Darkhan. He wouldn’t have been himself, and that was like committing suicide... or even worse than suicide. It was bad when a body died, but it was far worse when a soul died.
Suddenly, something nudged Hadjar’s shoulder. Something, or someone, familiar and strong. In that darkness, he saw a white flash for a moment. It was as if a shadow had passed before him. He could see white hair…
Nero... Serra…
Only now could Hadjar understand their feelings.
They too hadn’t been able to do anything else, to take a step back, or turn back. Because they’d chosen their path. It had been their way. It was easy to walk the crooked path of fear, dishonor, cruelty, uncertainty, cowardice, and weakness. It had a lot of twists, and many opportunities to do what was easier or ‘better’.
Only fools followed the way of honor because the sacrifices required to stay on this path were so immense that it seemed idiotic to even try. Hadjar, without realizing it, had been trying to turn away from this straight, hard path in recent years. He’d begun to forget what honor was. Even in his fight against Brom, he had almost stumbled, and if it hadn’t been for Azrea... Not to mention the other times...
No matter how fast Hadjar fled the capital of Lidus, he couldn’t escape the shadows of his past. It wasn’t his pain that burned in the desert sun, but his memory of it. He wasn’t suffering from wounds in his soul... He was suffering because his soul was withering. Or had already withered. And he realized it only now. In the last moments before his death.
What reasons had he had for going to the library? Helping Serra? Opposing Sankesh? All of these reasons had just been excuses. The truth was that Hadjar’s dying heart had commanded him to do so. His honor had demanded it.
Why had he refused Einen’s help and gone off to face a notoriously strong opponent on his own? Gods? Demons? Elixirs? Fuck all of that! Hadjar didn’t need any reasons to fight when he was called to battle by his honor.
Even the word ‘honor’... Who had invented it? What had it meant to the previous generations? What would it mean to the generations after his? Fuck that shit as well!
There were no causes, no consequences, no honor, and no rules. There was only a path. Ant it wasn’t the path of cultivation. It was the path of Life. The path Hadjar had chosen to take. It wasn’t crooked. It had no turns, no ups or downs. There were no stops or breaks. It was a straightforward journey. It led somewhere beyond the horizon, to a place where no man had gone before.
His own way. That was all that mattered in this life. Hadjar didn’t have to justify himself if he followed it. The fact that he’d almost strayed off it only confirmed what he already knew, deep down.
Hadjar had always done what he’d had to do. When everyone said it was impossible, he did it. When no one believed he would get back up, he rose. When everyone thought he was going to die, Hadjar survived. Because that was his path.
Because somewhere out there, a little girl was crying, watching as Hadjar died. Because somewhere out there, hundreds of children were crying, oppressed by Darnassus and other Empires. Because Hadjar hadn’t bowed to the stele of his master, the Immortal swordsman, yet. Because he hadn’t repaid Traves for his sacrifice yet. Because somewhere in the Seventh Heaven, the Magistrate of the gods still stood, and the Jasper Emperor still ruled! Because Hadjar’s journey would be long, longer than even the wildest dreamer could ever imagine. And incredibly difficult.
But had that ever stopped him before? No!
Because his name was Hadjar Darkhan. All he had to do was follow the call of his dragon heart. No shadows from his past, no wounds, no pain, no sorrow, no Sankesh, not even death itself would stop him!
Because for the first time in a long time, he saw the way forward clearly. Straight but broad, his path cut like a sword through everything, giving him real, true freedom. The freedom to follow his heart.
***
“So that’s how you open up,” Sankesh smiled smugly. He grabbed his halberd, and was about to shatter the crystal, when energy exploded behind him.
Dragon Heart Page 39