by Riker Kane
“Queen Cellica stood before the Herald as he breathed his last breaths. He cursed her and the rest of us. He told us that we would be destroyed—said that escaping Qashia would not save us.
“Queen Cellica did not take it so well. She did not let the Herald die. We used all of our Mana to keep him in stasis. And after that, we had this room constructed along with this containment cell.”
Rhiannon looked closer at the Herald. “For what purpose is there to keep a Herald alive? For pride?”
Mitar nodded softly. “That was how it was at first. But our scientists discovered that even though the Herald was dormant, there was still power resonating within him. We know how to harness Mana and we assumed we could harness what was within the Herald. Our scientists proved correct. We drained the Mana from the Herald and used it for Euphoria.”
“Then everything around here is not simply the resources from the mountain,” Zafina said. “You are using the Mana to power Cruxes and further fortify your city.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Lyra said. “Keep the Herald on ice while you reap the benefits from it.”
“Something tells me that’s not the safest thing in the world,” I said. “Otherwise, Mitar wouldn’t be telling us about it.”
Mitar swallowed like he didn’t want to tell us whatever was on his mind. He took a moment to gather himself before he continued.
“Several weeks ago, I began having visions. It was a strange feeling at first. I thought I was sick from some rotten meat I’d eaten. But even when the feeling went away, the images didn’t. I swore I could see the Herald in my dreams. I thought I was being foolish but I spoke to others who felt the same. Then there was the Queen herself.”
“She had visions, too?” I asked.
Mitar shook his head, a frown coming to his lips. “We call ourselves Nobles but even Queen Cellica is not so pompous. Lately she has changed… She has become… irritable and more easily annoyed.
“I am only a guard, so sometimes I am told to monitor the Herald. This display indicates the Herald’s life signs.” He pointed at the screen hanging on the tank. “When it reaches a certain level, the Herald’s Mana levels are most active. That is when we are told to draw as much of his power as we can to keep the levels down. But the levels have grown stronger than I’ve ever seen. It is taking more effort to draw Mana from him.”
“As if the Herald is slowly awakening,” Zafina said.
Mitar looked at me with those same pleading eyes the first time I saw him with. “I know I sound mad but I believe this Herald is not only awakening but growing stronger—so strong it is beginning to affect the villagers here. I am not the only one who has trouble sleeping at night. Queen Cellica herself is no longer as rational as she once was, throwing galas and demanding more resources to continue expanding Euphoria. Other villagers follow because they too are influenced. I… I feel it will not be long until I slip away.”
Mitar’s story would’ve been unbelievable if the Herald wasn’t sitting there right in front of me.
I put a hand on the young man’s shoulder to calm him down. “Don’t worry. You did the right thing by telling me.”
“I know it’s too much to ask of a stranger who only just arrived but is there anything you can do?”
I looked to the others for their opinions.
“What else can we do?” Rhiannon said. “We must remove this Herald and destroy him before he can cause any harm. Willingly keeping one of them alive is as dangerous as it is foolish.”
“I would disagree because we are strangers in another town,” Zafina said. “But the risk is too great. We must destroy this Herald, Virgil.”
“I’ve seen these Heralds before.” Lyra walked closer to the tank and glared through it. “Thousands of them descended on Qashia before they summoned great beasts to destroy our world. I will be the one to kill this Herald.”
I nodded to all of them. “I can’t imagine Queen Cellica will be too happy about this. The villagers will probably be pissed, too. But it’s for their own good.”
“I will likely be punished for treason,” Mitar said. The fear in his eyes appeared for a moment before he straightened up and puffed his chest out. “But I will do what must be done to protect my people.”
“No,” I said. “You did the right thing. Nobody should be punished for that.”
“I will accept my fate, whatever it may be.” Mitar walked over to the doors. “I will stand here to make sure there are no interruptions.”
I looked the tank up and down. “I guess I can just smash this thing open or…”
“There is a lock to disengage it.” Lyra walked over to the panel. She tapped her fingers on it and the tubes slowly receded from the Herald within. Then the fluid began to drain, leaving the Herald slumped against the side of the tank. “And this should open it.” The tank doors opened up and down, letting the Herald fall onto its face in front of us.
“Okay, Lyra,” I said. “Do you want to do the honors?”
She immediately drew her bow and knocked an ice arrow on it. “Gladly—”
BOOM!
Before she could release it, a thundering shockwave sent me flying back. A bright light forced my eyes shut but I didn’t need my eyesight to feel the thudding pain against my back. Hitting a wall was bad enough. Hitting a cavern wall with all of its pointy ends hurt even worse.
I activated the Life Rune and became Ultima, though it wasn’t enough to stop the pain already reverberating through me.
As the light cleared and my senses returned to me, I looked up to see everybody else getting back to their feet. I quickly turned my head to where the Herald’s fallen body was but he was no longer fallen. Instead, he floated a few inches off the ground, his hood back over his face. Two glowing blue eyes resonated with energy. Even though I couldn’t see him clearly, I could’ve sworn he was smiling.
“Ah… Such a peaceful respite.” His voice was distorted, coming from another world. “These kind people have given me a chance to recharge and recover. And they have so willingly given me the Mana that resides within them to make me stronger. All in exchange for allowing them to build their home. How unfortunate I will have to destroy it. The irony.”
“I won’t let you do that.” I fired a Radiant Beam at the Herald but he raised a black barrier and blocked it.
Lyra immediately nocked a flaming arrow and fired. Zafina joined her and sent out a stream of flames.
“Ahhhhh!” Rhiannon let out her battle scream as she summoned her dagger and charged.
I fired again and joined the others’ assault. But the Herald threw up a blue barrier this time to block all of our attacks. Even Rhiannon bounced back like she had run into a wall.
“This power…” The Herald floated higher into the air. “Thank you for it. Now I must take my leave.”
“You’re not going anywhere—” I fired another Radiant Beam but the Herald disappeared in a flash without leaving a trace.
The iron doors of the room exploded and several Noble guards flooded in. Mitar jumped to the side as they raised their weapons. Queen Cellica followed in shortly after. Her brow furrowed in anger, her eyes widened as she saw the open tank with nothing inside of it.
“You…” Her anger grew more intense as she turned to me. “What have you done?”
“I—”
“Seize them!”
She didn’t even give me a chance to respond, immediately sicking her guards on me.
Lyra let loose with a stone arrow that knocked back a dozen of the guards. Seeing them fall brought my senses back to me.
“No!” I yelled. “Don’t attack!”
Rhiannon and Zafina lowered their hands. Lyra reluctantly put her bow down, allowing the rest of the guards to grab her.
Queen Cellica walked up to me, breathing so hard through her nose I could hear it. “I will have you locked up until you are nothing but a skeleton.”
“That’s going to be a long time,” I said. “You know no cell can hold me.”
“No? But I can hold your friends.”
Seeing the others get taken away in chains was bad enough but the disappointment on Mitar’s face was even worse.
“You have to let me explain,” I said to Cellica.
She clenched her jaw and shook her head. “You have betrayed me. What other explanation is there?”
“The Herald is gone but he’ll return—”
“We are prepared to defend ourselves. We will apprehend the Herald once again and then I will decide a suitable punishment for you.”
17: Euphoria Broken
I stood in front of Queen Cellica back in the main hall. The minstrels had been cleared along with the tables and all of the food. The guards lining the walls made the atmosphere tenser than usual. Then there was Vull, who stood by Cellica’s side with his arms crossed.
I wasn’t worried about being alone with only a cane to stand on. But knowing the others were locked away bothered me, of course. I couldn’t let my emotions get the best of me. If Cellica was being influenced like Mitar suggested, I would have to play this conversation perfectly to convince her.
Cellica sat up straight in her seat, not taking her eyes off me. “I should have known. Who put you up to this? Was it the raiders? Or the ‘warriors’ to the south? Or perhaps Joris himself?”
“Nobody put me up to this. I did it myself. After what Mitar told me, it was the only thing to do.”
“Ah, yes. Mitar. The foolish boy. He appears to be enamored by your arrival.”
“He’s not enamored. He’s trying to do what’s right for Euphoria.” I looked at the guards. “For all of you.”
“I am the only one who knows what’s best for my people.”
“Do you?” My emotions started to get the best of me. “You kept a Herald captive just to draw Mana from him when you should have killed him.”
Cellica got up from her seat. As she took a step forward, Vull moved close to her. “It’s all right,” she said as she put a hand up to him. “I want to make this point clear to my guest.”
She moved in front of me, not taking her eyes off me as she paced back and forth. “Do you know what it’s like to witness what I have? To see the world you know ravaged by darkness? For the entire history of your people to be gone…” She snapped her fingers. “…before you could finish blinking? This Herald you speak of and others like them are responsible for the destruction of everything I’ve ever known. It is only right that I use them to rebuild a new home for myself… and to make them suffer as I have suffered.”
“I hate to break it to you but I’m only saying this because nobody else will. You might have been able to use the Mana to fortify your homes but also gave the Herald a chance to recover. Now he’s stronger than ever. And he’ll come back to destroy the very home you just built.”
“We are prepared to defend ourselves and I will take him back into captivity.”
“He’s influenced you. You’re not thinking straight—”
“How dare you question me!” Her voice cut through the air and echoed through the silence in the hall. Despite all of the guards being intimidated, I didn’t back down. I couldn’t now.
I took a step toward her and Vull did the same to me. “Just tell me this,” I said. “Have you always been thinking straight? Tell me you haven’t had visions of the Herald in your dreams?”
The blond’s throat bobbed up and down with a hard swallow. Her jaw clenched as she stared a hole through me. Just a second of hesitation was all I needed to see.
“Then it’s true,” I said. “You thought you were in control of the Herald when it’s only been growing stronger this whole time. And now it’s free.”
“Free because of your interference—”
The room suddenly shook violently. Everybody put their hands up to steady themselves. The glass chandelier flickered as it swayed back and forth. The rumbling didn’t stop, sending shards of the light down crashing onto the floor.
Vull immediately moved in front Cellica to shield her from the glass. But I knew a falling chandelier was the least of our worries.
I activated the Life Rune and rushed out of the room along with the guards. I heard the screams and shouts of the villagers through the doors of the castle as they pushed open. And when they opened fully, I saw why they were screaming.
Dark swirls of energy had opened in the sky above. Four-legged black beasts fell from the rifts and attacked the unprepared townsfolk.
“Take them down!” one of the guards yelled.
Dozens of them lined up and launched a volley of flaming arrows into the air as I’d seen Lyra do many times before. They pierced through the beasts and turned them into Mana before they could land. But there were so many portals opening, they couldn’t get them all.
It was only a second later when there was fighting everywhere through Euphoria. I charged forward among the guards and summoned my Stone Golem to bowl over a pack of the beasts coming for me. Then I turned around to shoot a blast of ice at another lunging pack. There was so much Mana on the ground from the beasts I killed but still more rained down over and over.
If that wasn’t enough, a dark cloud of energy larger than the others billowed together, big enough it blocked out the moon.
“This can’t be good.” I watched as the Herald I saw only moments earlier descended. I knew it was him because he locked his glowing blue eyes on me as he floated fifty yards in the air before me.
“The one who saved me from my captors,” he said. “I will grant you the honor of dying by my hand.”
“Not a chance!” I zoomed into the air and summoned a Rock Burst right at him. He put up a yellow barrier that blocked my attack, vaporizing it completely.
“You’ll have to do better than that.”
“All right, I will.” I switched to a Radiant Beam and fired but he summoned a black barrier this time, absorbing the energy completely. Whatever it is Cellica did, he was as strong as any Herald I’d ever heard about.
“And now… I will show you the true meaning of power.” The Herald hovered in the air and held his arms out. Before I could react, he summoned purple bolts of lightning that came crashing down. They fired with so much energy, they ignited the grass and burned through the stone homes like they were made of tinder. “You cannot stop me! I will destroy the one who had the gall to make me her captive!”
“No!” I zoomed forward without thinking, just trying to level him with a punch. But just before my fist collided, he vanished completely. “Dammit…” I hovered in the air before flying back down and racing into the castle.
With the guards fighting the Shadows, I had a clear path to the cells below. Rhiannon, Zafina, and Lyra had already blown the bars open when I arrived.
“What’s going on?” Mitar grabbed the bars of his cell opposite from us.
“The Herald’s back.” I broke his lock and pulled the door open.
“I’m sorry, Virgil. I didn’t mean for you to get caught up in all of this—”
“It’s okay. This was going to happen eventually. Better to do it now than before it gets worse. Find somewhere safe to hide before this is all over.”
He nodded quickly then raced back into the castle.
Lyra grabbed her bow from the hook hanging on the wall then readied it. “What are we waiting for?”
“The Herald is going for Cellica,” I said. “But…”
“What is it?” Rhiannon said.
“The Herald… He’s blocking all of our attacks. I’m not anywhere close to breaking through his barriers.”
“There must be a way to defeat him,” Zafina said. “We must exhaust every possibility.”
I shook away the doubts in my head, realizing it was pointless to have them.
We raced back into the castle and toward the hall. I heard the sounds of explosions and screaming inside the main hall. Guards were scattered on the floor, seemingly defeated. At the center of the room, Vull wielded a giant flaming red Mana axe he tried to cleave through the Herald i
n front of him.
“Pitiful.” The Herald raised a blue barrier that blocked the axe and sent the big man stumbling back.
Off to the side of the room, Cellica stood alone, channeling fireballs in both palms. The Herald raised his hands as the flames came shooting forward, absorbing them like I’d seen before.
“Truly pitiful,” he sighed.
“Try this on for size!” Lyra fired an ice arrow but the Herald quickly spun around and summoned a red barrier to make the arrow dissipate.
“Attack!” I yelled. “Go!” I called an Ice Owl by my side and sent it darting forward straight for the Herald as Rhiannon charged.
The Herald kept his hands up, absorbing my familiar completely with a red barrier then blasting Rhiannon with a beam of black energy before she could get anywhere near him.
“Keep attacking!” I fired a Radiant Beam and the Herald switched to a black barrier that absorbed it completely.
“Vull!” Cellica yelled. “Capture this Herald! For your queen!”
“Ahhhhh!” Vull roared as he brought his axe back over his head. He brought the flaming axe down with a massive swing but the Herald was too fast, bringing up a blue barrier that knocked the big man back.
But the Herald wasn’t so fast he could see Rhiannon coming from behind. The Mana Dancer seized the opening and pounced, sinking her dagger right into his back.
“Agh!” The Herald gasped in pain as he fell to his knees.
“You got him!” I summoned a Black Viper to sneak up on the Herald and snatch him by an ankle. Lyra and Zafina fired more flames to come down on the Herald as Rhiannon reared back with another hard stab. Cellica charged her flames again as Vull readied another attack.
“Enough!” The Herald pounded his fists into the ground and covered himself in a dome of bright energy that sent Rhiannon flying back. The energy kept going, hitting me and forcing me back against the wall. The impact put me in a daze, making me lose my vision and hearing for a moment.
It took a few seconds for me to crawl onto my hands and knees. When I regained my senses, I saw that the others were struggling the same as me. Only the Herald was standing at the center of the room. He hunched over from the stab Rhiannon had given him but he still held his arms out, ready for another attack.