by Rob J. Hayes
"Eska," Josef said, stepping into the room and lowering the lantern so I could see him.
I ignored the grave look on his face and the harsh tone to his voice. It simply didn't matter. I had no idea how he had found me. I had no idea how he had followed me. I was just so damned happy at seeing him again. I was finally reunited with the other half of my soul. I knew then whatever hurt we had visited upon each other no longer mattered. Even I couldn't hold onto that grudge any more. That wasn't strictly true of course. I know now just how easy it is to hold onto grudges. I still hold plenty of them, even towards people I buried decades ago. It's hard to let go of grudges; the longer you keep them the more they seem like a part of you, something so fundamental, releasing them would be like chopping off a toe.
I crossed the gap between us, limping quickly through the rubble, and hugged Josef, squeezing him tight and barely noticing that he wasn't holding me back. He smelled cleaner than I expected, and not just his skin. He was wearing some sort of uniform complete with oiled buckles, worked leather, and polished boots, though all were a bit dusty.
My memory fails me a little. I'm not certain if I pulled away or Josef pushed me away. One moment I was hugging him, trying to ignore the doubts prying their way into my mind, and revelling in the elation of our reunion. The next moment we were apart again, and I no longer recognised the man standing in front of me.
Chapter 34
Sometimes I look back at the moment Josef and I parted down in the ruined Djinn city. I look back and think I made a mistake. I still had my knife at my belt and we were close enough. I could have stabbed him there and then, saved us all the pain and trouble. The consequences of that mistake shaped so much of my life and of everyone's around me. But at the time I didn't see it as a mistake. At the time I refused to see what Josef had become.
"You followed me." I'll admit it was a fairly obvious thing to say. Shock and denial can make even the smartest of us sound like an idiot. "How?"
"The gems," Josef said. "All we had to do was turn out our lights and they told us which way you had gone. Things were more difficult after the hall, but we followed the carnage and the blood, and it led straight to you." It is telling how many times people have found me by following the death I leave in my wake.
"We?" I backed a couple of steps further into the room. The evidence was there in front of me, but I didn't want to believe it. Josef followed me in, placing the lantern on the ground. "What the fuck have you done, Josef?"
My best friend was clean-shaven and his hair was cut. His face was stony, so far from the smile I had etched in my memory. He was wearing a military uniform. Blue on black with red trim. I had seen the exact uniform before. I had fought people wearing that uniform before. Sometimes I feel like I've been fighting people in that uniform my whole life. It was a Terrelan Sourcerer uniform.
Josef drew in a deep breath and nodded. He didn't look like my friend anymore. Grief had etched new lines in his face, making him seem older. I think he struggled with the decisions he had made in my absence. Yet he made them all the same. "I'm here to take you back, Eska."
"Take me back?" I asked. "To the Pit?"
"Yes."
"Fuck you!" I shook my head and took another step backwards, tripping on small rock. "Why?"
"Because it's my way out." Josef said, sounding tired. A hard decision can do that to a person. It weighs heavily, dragging them down into pits of despair. "I bring..."
"We have a way out here, Josef," I said urgently. "A way up. To the surface. We can see the sky again. Nail the slug-fucking Terrelans! You're here now. Let's just go. Together..."
"And what?" There was a hard edge to his voice. A stubborn edge. "What would you have us do once we're free, Eska?"
"Fight back." I bit the words off.
"Against who?" Josef's voice hissed out between his teeth. He didn't shout but I could hear the frustration there. "You're such a stubborn idiot, Eska. You want to pick up a fight, a war we already lost. The Orran Empire is gone! The Terrelans won. It is over."
I shook my head. "So what? We just bend down and kiss the boots of our captors?" Josef might not have been shouting, but I was. I have never been able to reign in my emotions, and I was feeling quite emotional. I probably should have realised something was wrong then. We were not so far away that the others wouldn't be able to hear my shouting yet none of them came.
"Why do you love the Orrans so much anyway?" Josef asked. "All they ever did was kidnap a couple of scared children and turn us into weapons for a war they started."
Again, I shook my head. "They took us in and gave us more than we would have ever had otherwise," I said. "What do you think would have happened to you out there if not for the Orrans taking you? You would have died, Josef. A young boy out on a battlefield as the Terrelan army advanced? They would have squashed you and moved on. Forgotten and dead to decay in the mud. Me? I'd still be in Keshin, weaving baskets and dreaming of a better life.
"The Orrans took us, but they gave us food, beds, an education. They taught us to use a power we were born to use." I took a deep shuddering breath. Josef didn't take the chance to argue, so I forged on. "We weren't meant to be forgotten, Josef. We were meant to be powerful. The Orrans gave us that chance."
"They started a war that killed my family." Josef sounded cold and hard. "They kidnapped us. Tortured us. Maybe you've forgotten just how many times the training they put us through almost killed you, Eska. Maybe you've forgotten how many times I sat by your sick bed. It wasn't just because I didn't want to leave you." There were unshed tears in his eyes. "I spent all those times speeding your recovery with Biomancy. The physicians would have left you to die. The Orrans would have left you to die. They didn't care about you. They didn't care about us. The Terrelans..."
"PUT US IN THE FUCKING PIT!" There are few times in my life I can say I have truly screamed at someone but this was one of them. "Look at me, Josef." I took a step forwards into the light. "I have been beaten. Bones broken. Look at my face. You know how I got the scar." I ran a finger across the tender, ragged flesh on my left cheek. "This is what the Terrelans have done. This is how much they care."
In the silence that followed I heard the sounds of steel on steel. Blades clashing together in a chaotic song. I glanced towards the second doorway, hoping my friends were faring well against whoever Josef had brought with him.
"You brought soldiers?" I asked quietly.
Josef nodded. "The others don't matter."
"They matter to me!"
Josef sighed. "I only need to bring you back."
"And then what?" I said. "I spend the rest of my life in the Pit and you get to go free." I wiped tears from my eyes. It was an unfair accusation. I had been willing to condemn Josef to just that.
"They're still willing to accept us both, Eska. Swear fealty..."
"Obedience," I said bitterly.
Josef let out a sigh, deflating. He looked exhausted. "The war is bloody well over, Eska. We won't need to fight anyone anymore. Swear fealty and we can leave together. We can be together again, Eska. Just you and me."
I decided to counter his offer. "Take off that uniform and we can leave together right now," I said. "We don't need the Terrelans and their offer, Josef. We'll run."
"They'd chase us." Josef shook his head and I could see he was beaten. Not by me. The Terrelans had beaten him into submission, and he no longer had the strength to fight them, or the lies they told. "If I don't come back, they'll send others. I don't want to fight or run. The Terrelans have their own academy. We could teach others. A life of peace."
We stood there, staring at each other for a while. We both knew the truth, though neither of us was willing to admit it. We wanted different things. Josef wanted a quiet life away from fighting and war. I wanted revenge on everyone who had put me in the Pit, everyone who had kept me in the Pit. I wanted revenge on everyone who had taken my life from me and destroyed everything I knew. The academy was gone. Orran was gone. And now
Josef was gone. All I had left was my anger, my hatred. I didn't want peace, I wanted to watch the world burn.
I saw it then. The Josef I knew, the young boy who had shared so much of my life, the young man I trusted and loved more than even myself... was gone. I don't think he realised how much he had changed. I still wonder if the Pit did that, or if it was me. I think it was probably me. I've always been a danger to those I love.
"Eska!" I turned to see Isen standing in the second doorway, my little sword in his hand, the blade dripping red. "Josef?"
"Is it because of him?" Josef asked.
Before I could answer, Josef flicked out a hand. Isen was picked up by an invisible force and crushed against the roof. Josef flicked his hand down and Isen's body hit the floor with a squelch. Even in the dim light of the lantern I could see a pool of red spreading out beneath the body.
I think I was in shock. I didn't move. Couldn't move. I just stood there staring at the body of crushed flesh that had, only a moment ago, been Isen. Hardt shouted, a noise with no words only pain, and a moment later the older brother was there beside the corpse of the younger. He was distraught, babbling with tears streaking down his face.
"Or him?" Josef asked.
The threat to Hardt is what moved me. I had always known Josef could be brutal. He never hesitated to kill when we fought against the Terrelans. He understood, long before I did, that war is harsh, and the winners are often those who strike first. But I had never seen him kill someone we knew. I had never imagined he could so casually murder someone we both called a friend.
I stepped forward, hands up. "Stop it, Josef."
Being hit by a psychokinetic blast of energy is never pleasant. It feels like a wall slamming into every bit of your body all at once. I suppose I should be grateful that he was gentle. One moment I was moving forward, and the next I hit the far wall and crumpled. I might have screamed from the pain but the breath was driven from my lungs by the impact.
"You did this?" Hardt stood from the corpse of his brother. His body blocked the doorway behind him, and the light from the lantern made the grief on his face so plain. I struggled against tears of my own.
But I had no time for tears. I had no time to grieve; I wasn't even certain I would for Isen. I knew Josef. With a Kinemancy Source in his stomach he would kill everyone and drag me back to the Pit, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop him. Well, there was nothing anyone but I could do to stop him.
While Josef was watching Hardt, I snatched the pouch from my belt, took the Source from inside and popped it into my mouth, swallowing hard. It took only moments for me to discover I had just killed myself.
Chapter 35
My vision sharpened, as though everything I had ever seen before had been blurred without me knowing it. My heart began to race so fast I thought it would burst inside my chest. I felt power flooding through me from the Source in my stomach. Josef started to turn his head towards me, but he was moving so slowly, a determined look etched onto the lines of his face.
I knew then I had about a minute to live.
Every Source affects a person differently. Most take about five minutes to kill the unattuned. Chronomancy speeds up the body, makes everything faster. It makes the Sourcerer faster. It also kills them faster. Even someone attuned to Chronomancy can only hold a Source for a few hours before it starts to age them unnaturally.
I felt the cramps hit even as I rose to my feet. Pain blossomed in my limbs and in my stomach. I fought it, swallowed down the agony and lurched forward.
"Look at me, Josef," I said. My voice sounded strange as the Chronomancy slowed down the world around me.
"Eska," Josef said, his voice a lethargic drawl. "What have you done?"
There was a lesson Josef tried to teach me early on in our incarceration. A lesson Hardt and Isen tried to teach me also. Even the overseer and Deko knew it long before I did. When the odds are stacked against you, when you look down at your cards and realise you have been dealt a shitty hand and have no way to win, you have two options. You can give up, but if you've learned one thing from my story so far it should be that I never fucking give up! Your other option is to damn the cards, and damn the odds, and damn the game. Play the player. Beat the player. Do that, and it doesn't matter what the rules of the game are, nor how unlikely you are to win.
I couldn't use this magic I had attained to beat Josef in a fight. I had no idea how to use Chronomancy and the pain was so intense it was taking everything I had not to curl into a ball and cry myself to death. I screamed in pain and coughed up blood. The effects of the Source were taking hold so quick. Something inside of me was bleeding. The cramps were agonizing, and I could feel blood leaking from my eyes, ears, and nose. All Josef had to do was nothing, and I would die before him. If he wanted it, he had already beaten me. But I wasn't playing that game. I was betting on him, my best friend, my brother, my soul bonded. I was betting my life on the love we shared. Just like every time he had betrayed me, I knew he wouldn't let me die. I knew it! Even if I no longer knew who he was.
"I can't survive this, Josef," I said through chattering teeth. My whole body was trembling uncontrollably, blood oozed from my eyes, running as crimson tears down my cheeks. "You can stop it. You have Spiceweed." He must. He had to. He wouldn't have swallowed a Source without the guarantee that he could bring it back up. The overseer wouldn't have given him a Source without Spiceweed to stop it from killing him. Or so I hoped.
"Here," Josef shouted. He pulled a small pouch from an inside jacket pocket and pinched a bit of weed between thumb and forefinger. With a flick of his wrist he floated it over to me with Kinemancy. That was how far our relationship had fallen, how damaged our friendship had become. Even weak and dying, wracked by pain I couldn't describe, and being ripped apart by wild magic, he wouldn't come to me. He wouldn't risk himself by getting close to me.
I grabbed hold of the floating Spiceweed and crushed it in a fist, still staring at Josef through bleeding eyes. I had to lock my knees to stop myself from collapsing. "You first," I said, fighting the oncoming seizures.
Josef took a single step forward, pain and fear mixing into a hideous mask on his face. "Eska, that magic is killing you! Take the Spiceweed. Please. I know what Lesray did to you, and I know you still suffer, but please don't kill yourself." There were tears in my best friend's eyes. The grief of watching someone you love take their own life. Not quietly. Not easily. But in agony and blood. "Please!"
He still thought I was bluffing. He thought I was doing this because of Lesray's Empamantic command, that even six years and hundreds of miles removed, the bitch-whore was still whispering in my ear, trying to make me kill myself. Josef didn't understand. "You. First." The words were stilted things, but I was dealing with a mouthful of blood at the time.
Josef stared at me for a few moments, disbelief plain. I saw that change to defeat, and then to acceptance. Josef was many things, a Sourcerer, a murderer, a best friend. A young boy still struggling with the adult world he had been thrust into. A young man taken by enemies and thrown into a prison designed to break people's spirits. He had a ruthless side to him that scared me, and more compassion and love than I was deserving of. But one thing he never had that I always have, was an unbreakable defiance, commitment to a cause, the willingness to bet everything, everything to win.
Without a word, Josef took another pinch of Spiceweed and placed it in his mouth. I was shaking, convulsing, bleeding from everywhere and I could feel my body consuming itself as the Chronomancy Source began to age me. Still, I waited until Josef collapsed, bent over, the uncontrollable retching taking hold. Only then did I shove the Spiceweed into my own mouth.
It took only moments, yet for me it felt like hours of agony before the Spiceweed took effect. I retched up everything. I looked down at half-digested shrooms and blood dripping onto the ground. So much blood. I was shaking, trembling so much I was amazed I could see anything. My stomach convulsed and pushed the Chronomancy Source up
and out, coated in blood and bile. I wanted to collapse, to roll away and let the cold oblivion of unconsciousness take me. But I wouldn't. Instead I crawled towards Josef. I needed to be close to him. I needed to see him. I needed to know he was all right, and that he didn't hate me.
Josef was on his knees, coughing and retching. I saw him bring up the Kinemancy Source. He snatched it from the ground quickly. Spiceweed always affected me more severely than him. It wouldn't matter though, it would be a while before he could force the Source back down. His uniform wasn't pristine anymore. A strange thing to notice, but I did. It was covered in dust, bile. He met my eyes for just a moment as I reached out for him. I don't know what I saw there; hatred, anger, love, happiness? I'll never know.
I tried to rise. Tried to stop it. But I was too late. Even my own fear feeding Ssserakis, lending me strength, wasn't enough. I could only watch as Yorin stepped up behind Josef and drew a knife across his throat.
Chapter 36
It takes a while for a person to bleed to death, even with a wound as severe as a cut throat. Josef gagged on his own blood and convulsed as he collapsed. I watched him claw at the wound on his neck. I could see the fear in his eyes. I could feel the fear pulsing off him in waves. It was so strange to watch my friend die, knowing there was nothing I could do about it, and growing stronger even as he faded.
I reached out and took his hand, squeezing it. I think he tried to squeeze back, but he had no strength. In that brief moment we were truly reunited, regardless of our differences and betrayals. I sometimes wonder if it was peaceful for Josef after the fear was gone. Those final few moments as he drifted off. I could barely see him by then, my vision was so blurred with tears.