Dross (Sphereworld: Joined at the Hilt Book 2)

by Caleb Wachter

  It is as before, the Grey Blade seethed, I have foreseen your every move—you cannot possibly defeat me.

  I was there when Ser Cavulus defeated you, Dan’Moread cried as she lunged at her opponent, aiming for the Grey Blade’s insufferably smug eye.

  Indeed…but at what cost? the Grey Blade cackled with glee as her wielder effectively parried Dan’Moread’s attack with a graceful, quick pirouette which belied his muscular frame. It is true that you defeated the Storm Lord with the White Blade’s help…but where is your ally now I wonder?

  He is no ally of mine! Dan’Moread bellowed as she slammed her peerless edge into the Grey Blade’s foible, but her foe was simply too massive for even such a well-placed strike to have much effect.

  Foolish girl, her adversary said as her predatory eye narrow, if you truly came here unwitting and without your ally then that is how you will die—alone in the dark!

  Dan’Moread parried a series of precise strikes which were so rapid that it seemed impossible such a large weapon could make them—even with a wielder as capable as the pale monster of a man who deftly swung the Grey Blade as though it were no heavier than a dagger.

  “Dani…” Randall wheezed worriedly as they continued to backpedal.

  Not now, Randall! she snapped.

  “But…“ he gasped, “I can’t…breathe!”

  Something in the pale warrior’s expression caught Dan’Moread’s attention as she continued to retreat, offering only blocks and parries as her adversary seemed to know her every thought even before it came to her—just as it had been the previous time she had faced the Grey Blade.

  Something had to give—soon—or her wielder’s body would falter and they would lose their footing.

  “I can’t…breathe!” Randall gasped, but Dan’Moread seemed to ignore him as she executed block after parry, and parry after dodge. All the while, the monstrous-looking warrior gained with every step he took.

  Randall tried to keep his left hand on Dan’Moread’s hilt, but it was difficult since he could not anticipate all of her movements. Then he remembered the moments of prescience he had experienced during the fight with the beast man in Greystone.

  His vision began to narrow as his body expended energy faster than it could produce it, and he focused every part of his mind still under his command in a last-ditch effort to reproduce that brief, decisive effect.

  The Flylrylioulen around his neck flared to life with its pale, orange light as his mind sharpened for a brief moment of clarity…

  The fight had proceeded precisely as Rada’s visions had predicted it would. They drew steadily nearer to the obstruction in the tunnel which he knew would grant him victory.

  Once his quarry was unable to escape, Rada would disarm him—literally and figuratively—before binding his body and returning it to the Rotting God as a proper sacrifice.

  He stabbed Ahsaytsan toward the Blooded manling’s torso, then pivoted when that attack was blocked. The overhand blow he brought down sent the whelp back two full steps as Rada continued to drive his prey to his doom. A series of wide, sweeping attacks saw the pitifully-built Blooded nearly falter—just as the vision had foreseen—and Rada felt the exhilaration of triumph suffuse his every pore as the vision’s final moment became reality.

  Then, without warning, the whelp’s amulet flared to life—just as it had done at the battle’s outset—and he heard the Grey Blade scream in agony.

  Rada’s foresight was torn from him in that instant, and for a costly few seconds he was utterly disoriented by the loss of the Grey Blade’s gift of foresight.

  Dan’Moread leapt forward, launching a series of short, brutal attacks at her foe’s lower half. He clumsily blocked her attacks, but she pressed forward after seizing the initiative with the full knowledge that she would likely never regain it if she somehow lost it.

  She was so focused on the fight that she barely noticed the blinding flash from Randall’s Flylrylioulen…

  Randall’s moment of clarity quickly became an eternity of pain. He was still vaguely aware of the battle taking place—a battle in which his body played a pivotal role—but his senses were merely fractions of their usual selves after he had caused his flyl to flare with power.

  He tried to regain his vision but was unable to do so as Dan’Moread rained blow after blow down on their foe with Randall’s increasingly numb arms.

  While he had not achieved a moment of foresight as he had hoped, he had managed to make some sort of meaningful contribution to the fight—which was all he could hope to do in such a dire situation.

  Now I have you, Dan’Moread declared triumphantly as she methodically worked her way into the pale warrior’s guard. The Grey Blade’s eye had closed in the same instant that Dan’Moread had seized the initiative, which she was confident played no small part in why she had managed to score a dozen relatively minor hits to the pale warrior’s flesh—hits which should have, by all rights, already crippled him beyond the ability to fight.

  But while his movements were nowhere near the practiced, fluid and chillingly precise as they had been at the battle’s outset, his raw strength and durability proved to be enough to mount a reasonable defense against her onslaught.

  Like with the Storm Lord, Dan’Moread soon realized that she could not defeat the Grey Blade’s wielder—she needed to attack the Grey Blade itself if she was to gain victory.

  But the memory of Kanjin’s death was as fresh in her mind as it had been on the day it happened. She could not—she would not—sacrifice Randall just to win this fight!

  As the Grey Blade’s eye fluttered open, and Randall’s muscles began to falter, Dan’Moread knew she had but one option.

  “Dani…” Randall wheezed as he managed to focus on the slowly-opening eye set into the base of the Grey Blade.

  Close our eyes, Randall, Dan’Moread commanded, and with a trust he had rarely—if ever—given to another person, he did as she commanded without so much as a thought.

  A sound like a thunderbolt exploding near his hands was followed by the strangest dream he had ever experienced.

  Chapter VI: Dreams and Knights

  Randall was a bird, with feathers which covered his sleek, aerodynamic body and a sharp, hooked beak which was best suited to rending flesh from bone. He sat perched on a wall of stone—a wall that even his dreaming mind recognized as belonging to the main house structure which Phinjo had sent him to investigate. He had been in a similar dream once before, but this time it was far more vivid than it had been previously.

  He looked down—or rather his head moved down of its own accord, which demonstrated that he was nothing more than a passenger in this dream body—and he saw a curious array of objects scattered on the stone parapet on which he was perched.

  First was a branch which was larger than anything his avian body should have been capable of lifting to such a height. It had several leaves sprouting from its body, but they seemed frail and deformed—almost as if the tree which had sprouted them was ill and unfit to cast its seeds to the wind. The branch twisted and bent as it spontaneously caught fire, and that fire quickly spread from one end of the branch to the other as a gust of wind graced the dream-wall. It continued to writhe, as though in agony, as the fire blackened its outer bark and turned its green leaves to ash which scattered on the wind.

  Second was a blackened bone, but its color did not come from char—it was blackened with disease and stained with blood. Where its marrow should have been he saw nothing but festering maggots squirming and writhing within. The maggots consumed each other and somehow still managed to multiply before him. The bone began to stir as bits of pale, mutant gristle and meat began to sprout from its diseased surface as another gust of wind arrived.

  Third was a fist-sized stone with a pair of identical, horn-like growths which somehow appeared to have been added onto it rather than being naturally whittled down by the march of time and elemental law. The stone seemed to vibrate just enough to move it a few inches a
s Randall watched with fascination before his gaze shifted to the final item.

  This last item was a spiral, conch-like shell which was larger than any of the other objects arrayed before it, but somehow this item alone seemed to bear no unnatural stain or corruption. It was as though this item was as it should have been, and as though to bear testament to its purity a dribble of crystal clear water began to flow from the shell’s opening where children often placed their ears to hear the sounds of the ocean. The dribble slowly gained in volume and ferocity until it swept away the bone and twig, casting them over the edge of the wall. Only the stone remained in place in spite of the rushing torrent issuing forth from the shell.

  He tried to cry out in protest as his winged body took to the air and began to fly along the riverbank. The sensation of the wind wrapped around his body, like a cool yet comforting blanket, would have stolen his breath with its splendor if not for the impossible speed which his dream body soared through the air.

  He was headed due north, along the False River, and as he sped faster than any living creature had a right to do he noticed a curious path carved through the forest to the east.

  The path was curious because not only did it lack a road of any kind, but because it twisted and meandered hither and thither without an apparent purpose—except, he realized, that it slowly made its way to the northern mountain range just as a slow-moving river slowly makes its way to the sea.

  His eyes turned to focus on a distant point in those mountains—a nearly vertical pass between two of the mightiest peaks in the local range—but before he could make out any details his dream was interrupted by a hollow, metallic, and almost mechanical voice—but it was a voice with which he had become familiar, and that familiarity broke him from his dream.

  14-1-6-659

  “Rest easy,” Randall heard the strangely familiar voice cut through the void of unconsciousness as his mind slowly stirred, “thou art safe.”

  He groaned as he rolled over, his mind awash in confused fragments of the bird dream and his final moments of consciousness. It took him several seconds to realize what had happened, and his first thought gave rise to the panicked words, “Dani—where are you?!”

  “Thy blade is well,” the voice assured him, and he shook his head to clear the cobwebs while attempting to regain some measure of focus. “Rest easy, valiant one; thou hast rendered a service of unrivaled import this day. Thou art to be congratulated.”

  Randall’s addled mind slowly realized who that voice—and odd form of speech—belonged to, and again he unthinkingly said, “Ser Cavulus?”

  His vision slowly cleared, and he realized he was no longer in the tunnel. He was in the main house under which the tunnel had been located. “Forsooth,” the White Knight agreed, and Randall focused hard on the brightly-polished armor which concealed the White Knight’s dark secret: that the White Knight was not a man, not a human, and not even truly ‘Ser Cavulus.’ “It seems thou hast the better of me, good sir; thou know my name but I fear I cannot honestly claim to know thine. Have we met previously?”

  Randall blinked his eyes in confusion, “It’s me, Ser Cavulus…Randall.”

  Ser Cavulus’ helmet shook side to side warily before pausing and cocking to the left. “Ah,” the White Knight said after a pregnant pause, and only then did Randall notice Rimidalv’s long, majestic hilt protruding above her left shoulder, “thou hast perhaps met one of mine fellow White Knights in the past and confused me with him. Our armor and heraldry is indeed similar in many respects and would be difficult to distinguish.”

  “Where’s Da…umm,” he cut himself short, “where’s my sword?”

  “Thy weapon is yon,” Ser Cavulus extended a gauntleted hand toward the near corner of the room, where Dan’Moread was propped up. Randall’s eyes immediately tracked to the five godstone shards in her blade where his breath caught upon realizing that now, instead of three unspent godstone shards she had just two, while the other three were all identically opaque and murky-looking.

  “Dani…” he whispered as he crawled toward her. He took her in his hands and, for the first time since he had gripped her in the alley at Three Rivers, she felt as cold and inanimate as any other weapon. His heart clenched as he realized that she must have shielded him from whatever event had robbed him of his consciousness—an event which he had no doubt would have left him dead.

  “Thy blade will recover,” Ser Cavulus assured him. “Rimidalv the Incorruptible assures me thus. Indeed, it would seem that Rimidalv is most impressed with both thy blade and thyself.”

  Randall’s eyes narrowed as he recalled his last exchanges with Yaerilys—the woman who wore the White Knight’s armor, and with whom Randall had shared many intimate nights during their last engagement—where she had spoken of Rimidalv not granting her ‘permission’ to speak of certain things. Dan’Moread had similarly warned of Rimidalv’s severe and authoritarian nature, and had vowed that she would never be like the White Blade.

  After his time with Dan’Moread, he had come to believe her in all things—even those things that she said which he found offensive or even hurtful. Dani was many things to him—even though she had asked him not to use that nickname for her—and chief among those was a true friend.

  It seemed that ‘friendship’ was a far cast from whatever bond had joined Ser Cavulus and the White Blade.

  “How did you find us?” Randall asked as he noticed motion out in the courtyard.

  “Do not fret,” the White Knight held up a gauntleted hand, “my Squire hath set up shelter within these walls. I can assure thee that it is safe,” she assured him in her metallic, mechanical voice. “To answer thy question: whilst in communion with the White three days past, that communion was interrupted by a severe disturbance which cut the communion short. The disturbance’s cause was unknown to both mine self and to Rimidalv, so we sped here as fast as our steed could carry us since this was where we believed the disturbance had occurred.”

  “Three days ago?” Randall repeated, his concern for Dan’Moread growing as he realized that she had been out for that long.

  “Indeed,” the White Knight nodded, her resplendent armor seeming somehow more worn than the last time Randall had seen it. “It was with great reticence that we followed thee into the Underworld, where we found thyself, thy sword, and this,” she produced a shattered fragment of what looked like red crystal.

  He stared dimly at it for a moment before realizing what it was: it was part of the Grey Blade’s sinister eye!

  “You mean…we won?” he said dumbly as Ser Cavulus gestured to a pile of metallic fragments.

  “Thy victory was complete,” Cavulus-slash-Yaerilys said approvingly, “Rimidalv recognized these fragments as belonging to the Grey Blade, Ahsaytsan. He tells of a battle he once waged against Ahsaytsan alongside thine own weapon, and he is convinced that the job they began three years past at Mount Gamour is now finished—Ahsaytsan is dead, and her madness is dead with her.”

  Randall examined the pile of metallic fragments and nodded as his mind formed a virtual jigsaw of the bits and pieces. He could find no substantial quantity of material missing from the pile, which meant that the Grey Blade was indeed dead.

  But that was cold comfort to him; he cared only for Dan’Moread’s well-being, and her repeated warnings about the danger of entering the Underworld rang as clear as the midday bell in his mind’s ear.

  “I can assure thee, stranger,” Ser Cavulus knelt beside him, gently placing a gauntleted hand on his shoulder, “that thy blade is on the mend. Rimidalv is certain that within a few days it will awaken.” The White Knight stood his her feet, and Randall did likewise as she said, “I cannot remain, however, and must away at once. There is a task put before us by the White, and since our communion remains interrupted I must pursue that task with all due haste. I will ride out ahead of my Squire, across the bridge and toward the west end of the Binding Chain mountains.”

  “What is this task of yours…Ser Cav
ulus?” he asked, hesitating as he briefly considered calling her by her real name, Yaerilys.

  “There is a foul corruption which hath taken root in these lands, stranger,” Ser Cavulus said grimly. “It is a corruption caused by the so-called Fleshmongers—and it must fester no more. By the by,” she said almost as an afterthought, “what is thy name and place from which thou hails? I would know before our company hath parted.”

  Randall couldn’t believe that she didn’t remember him. Those few nights they had spent together in her tent had easily been the most passionate of his entire life—and for a professional gigolo that was saying something!

  But swallowed the knot in his throat and said, “My name is Randall, Ser Cavulus, and I…I was originally from Three Rivers, but now I hail from nowhere.”

  “Randall…?” she trailed off as though lost in thought for a moment. But whatever hope he had that she recalled their former engagement was dashed on the rocks of reality as she nodded curtly, “I will spread word of thy heroic effort here, Randall. Thou hast done a great service to this world by ridding it of such an evil agent.”

  Clasping her hand over her breastplate, Yaerilys-slash-Ser Cavulus bowed respectfully before making her way out of the building, mounting her horse, and setting off across the bridge as fast as was safe for a shod warhorse traveling over stone.

  Randall sat there, utterly dumbfounded by what had just happened. Then he heard another familiar voice outside and when he looked up he saw Ravilich, the White Blade’s Squire, packing their belongings into the same wagon which they had used when Randall had last seen the White Knight’s cadre.