by Quil Carter
Without blinking, Erick slashed the Jare’s Paw at the guard, aiming for the neck. Erick opened up his throat as the third one turned to flee. The Draken King turned as the third tried to run, but he wasn’t fast enough for the king. Erick advanced on him and punched him in the back of the neck with the Paw, sinking all four claws into the nape of his neck.
He fell to the ground, the Paw severing his spinal cord. He started his death seizure like the first had done.
Erick closed the door and ran to Sweeny. He dropped to his knees and let out a whimper when he saw just how bad his wounds were.
Sweeny’s neck was cut open on the side, the blood running steadily from it and pooling on the blue rug underneath. His face was red and black from being beaten and his wide-open eyes bloodshot. He was looking around the room in confusion as his open mouth took in sharp inhales.
Erick cried out feeling helpless. He was no healer, he didn’t know what to do. All he could do was rip the kerchief on Sweeny’s head and press it against the gaping wound in his neck.
“Baby?” Erick whimpered; he shook Sweeny gently. “I killed them, I killed all three.”
Sweeny didn’t answer, but his eyes found Erick’s. He looked scared.
Of course he’s scared, he’s dying and he knows it.
Erick pulled him into a corner of the room and pulled the squire onto his lap. He held his body against his, and pressed his hand against the kerchief.
Every time the squire started to close his eyes, Erick jerked his body, making him open them again. He knew he should talk to him, but he didn’t know what to say. What do you say to someone who is dying? Not just someone, someone who loved you and who you realized you loved also?
“Don’t close your eyes,” Erick whispered. “That’s – that’s an order.”
Sweeny’s eyes found his again, scared eyes – terrified eyes. Erick wanted to smile at him; he wanted to say he would be okay, but he didn’t know.
“It will be really hard to find someone else who will love me like you,” Erick whispered, his voice broke. “No one will put up with me. Especially since I’m not a king anymore, right? So… so you better live. You have to get me wine. Sweeny? Baby?”
Sweeny’s eyes started to glaze over. Erick shook him as he started to feel an overwhelming panic start to flood him. “NO! Don’t you dare!” he screamed hysterically. “I need you, you stupid hibrid. Don’t leave me alone in this fucked up world, please. Please, you stupid squire… please, Sweeny.”
Erick blinked away a single tear; he closed his eyes, his head still bowed over Sweeny’s stomach. He seemed so cold.
Suddenly the whole room became alive, there were Sentinel guards everywhere. Erick clutched Sweeny close to him, preparing for them to take him. He may be able to take down a few with his Jare’s Paw, but he wasn’t letting go of Sweeny.
They would die together.
“I found him!” a guard yelled. He turned around and yelled it again. Several others left the room.
“You’re safe, my king,” the guard said bowing.
“What?” Erick said surprised. He looked over as Xemeleous appeared in the doorway and beside him, Keleon.
A flood of relief washed over Erick, but it didn’t show on his face. He was too shell-shocked; the relief couldn’t penetrate through the fear.
“Are you okay, Your Grace?” Keleon asked. He bent down and outstretched his hands for Sweeny.
“Help him,” Erick choked, the kerchief slipped away from Sweeny’s pale neck.
Keleon looked at the hibrid; his eyes were grave when they fell to the slash on the side of his neck. The whole room went silent; everyone watched Keleon put his hand up to Sweeny’s neck.
The hibrid was still.
“King Erick… he’s gone.”
Erick looked down at Sweeny, his bloodshot eyes half-open and glassy. He wasn’t moving, his mouth no longer gasping for air – he was still, and lifeless.
“Sweeny?” Erick whimpered. He put a hand against his face and he gently patted it. “Sweeny?”
The room was quiet as Erick patted Sweeny’s cheek, then his finger traced down to the gaping wound on the side of his neck, still trickling blood.
Sweeny’s dead? He can’t be dead, I need him…
I love him…
Then there was blue light all around them, a cold, haunting glow that coated the entire room. The guards drew their blades and a flurry of confused shouting broke the heavy silence.
Nyte in his wraith form appeared, his cold eyes found Erick’s.
“Where the hell were you!?” Erick screamed hysterically, tears springing to his eyes. “Where the fuck were you?”
The kessiik didn’t answer. He walked to Erick and put a hand on his head, then his other hand reached down and grabbed Sweeny’s shoulder.
Then there was another blinding flash of pale blue, this one so vivid it blinded everyone in the room.
“Get up,” Nyte’s voice said and Erick felt himself rise to his feet. He could see nothing but the icy-blue glow, and the shadows of the guards and Keleon looking around in confusion.
Then he realize something, he was no longer holding Sweeny. Erick looked around, his heart crumbling to nothing, then saw that Nyte was holding him.
And Sweeny’s eyes were open. Erick ran to Nyte and put a hand on Sweeny’s face. His squire looked up at him.
“You have to save him…” Erick pleaded, his words muffled and distorted like the blue glow was made out of more than just light.
“He will not die,” Nyte replied. “His life will be a favour that you will owe me and that I will one day request to be repaid.”
“Anything,” Erick cried. But before he could say more there was a flicker beside Nyte and someone stepped out of the blue light and into Erick’s line of sight.
It was… him.
Nikken was standing there with a smile on his face and in his arms was a dead guard.
“Well, I suppose it is my time to shine, hm?” Nikken said cheerfully. Then, with an incline of his head, he walked past Erick and sat down in the same spot Erick had been in. The same spot where Sweeny had supposedly died.
“Let’s go…” Nyte said, Sweeny still firmly in his grasp. “It is time for us to leave the Pyre.”
Erick took Sweeny’s hand into his own and squeezed it. He looked down at his former squire and nodded to him, then looked back to Nyte.
“I’m ready.”
54
The ember on the cigarette was just a small orange glow in the thick haze that separated human from elf. It brightened like a sun as he sucked the smoke into his lungs and dimmed when his lips broke their seal.
Anagin watched as the human blew the smoke out of the corner of his mouth. It disappeared almost immediately into the distorted surroundings. He did this, almost methodically, as his eyes watched the elf move towards him.
Anagin raised his arm and tried to clear the fog away with his maegic, but it would gather almost as quickly as he could clear it. The past several visits to Ben’s mind yielded the same surroundings: the cigarette smoking human, the mist… and the beast.
As if it could hear Anagin thinking about it, a scream broke the temperature-less air. Moments later a rattle, and a sound of tearing flesh that would make any ordinary elf run in the opposite direction, but the human didn’t even flinch. The black-haired man just chuckled and shook his head, before drawing the smoke from the cigarette again.
Eventually, Ben’s eyes found his. “Don’t go in there,” he warned with a smirk. “It’s a mess.”
Then there was a loud crash. Anagin looked behind the human, just in time to see a steel gate bulge as the beast on the other end threw its weight against the chained gate. The steel shrieked with strain but remained firm.
“Quite a mess indeed,” he soberly replied. He gave his maegic a push to try and make Ben’s mind clearer. As he did the steel gates got more vivid, and the haze began to thin. Today Ben’s mind looked like the Forest of Jare, though t
he grass underneath his feet was that of Lazarius.
He stepped forward, until he was beside the human and tried to look through the gates, but everything was shrouded in the thick fog that seemed to pulsate in the darkness.
The sunmage looked around, until his eyes found Ben’s again.
The boy looked different as a human, but not as much as Anagin had imagined in his head. His hair was shorter and his posture bad, but his facial features had remained the same. He looked similar to the nineteen-year-old hibrid he had seen in Malagant’s head. Put a pair of pointy ears on him and he would have passed for an Alcovian elf, albeit a lowborn one. One who had dabbled in the more shady alters Dashavia had to offer.
“Want a drag?” the human asked, blowing the smoke out of his nostrils like a dragon. Anagin reached out and grabbed the burning cigarette and smelled it. His nose curled.
“What did you humans do to this poor plant?” he said examining it.
Ben laughed and watched as Anagin took a drag from it. “A lot of shit to make it more addictive. You buy more that way.”
“I see…” Anagin handed it back. “How long have you been locked out, Ben?”
“There is no time here.” The human laughed again. “You know that.”
Anagin was surprised. “I didn’t suspect you would know.” This was strange; the boy had more awareness than he thought he would. Anagin watched as the human took another inhale, studying his face as he did.
He had seen him during his other visits, but this was the first time he’d had the chance to speak with him, save a few words here and there. The last time he had been too busy erecting the steel gate to keep the beast from tearing him apart. The monster seemed determined to eject Anagin from Ben’s mind, and somehow he had the control to be able to do it.
Human Ben had helped him last time, and hopefully when the boy’s brain was more stable and Anagin more capable of staying in it, he would be able to help him destroy the creature.
The mage had done this before. During the Black War the croagh mages would creep inside your brain like a parasitic worm and sift through whatever information they wanted. Much like the priests had done to the Alcovian knights, his son’s former comrades; and the court in the Pyre that had more use alive than dead.
The gates swelled again as the beast threw itself against it; the howl and low growling almost desperate as it tried to escape from its enclosure.
How long the gates stretched in Ben’s mind was only a guess. The black pulsing haze though…
Anagin walked towards the steel bars again, trying to take a closer look. Ben’s breathing behind him and the blackened mass was all he could hear in the former human’s mind. The forest was silent, an eerie silence that didn’t sit well with him. He could not hear the beast at all anymore.
Anagin’s hand touched the bars. As he pushed his maegic into Ben’s brain, they became cold to the touch. He could also hear the thrumming start to become a long baritone buzz.
His eyes narrowed. He put his hands through the bars and pushed more maegic into the haze. The blackness became a swirl, before it started to take on a life of its own. As it twisted and contorted in a living mass, Anagin realized he was looking into a swarm of blister flies.
Before he had a chance to react, the beast was there. But it had no defined shape, it was covered in thousands of flies, buzzing angrily around it, crawling and flying as he lunged towards the gates like a rabid animal.
Anagin jumped back in surprise
Ben laughed behind him; he didn’t sound fazed at all. “Keep trying!”
Anagin regained himself from the shock and walked back up to the beast as it snarled and growled. He looked at it with curiosity. It had no face, no discernible shape. It was literally a mass of flies.
Suddenly the beast screamed. Before Anagin could react, it thrusted two black arms through the gate and grabbed Anagin’s shoulders.
The moment it touched his skin, Anagin felt a lightning-like current shoot through his body. He let out a scream as the force of the energy threw him backwards.
Josiah caught Anagin as he fell backwards and helped him back onto his knees.
“How long was I?” Anagin asked, picking up a stained towel beside him to stem the blood flowing out of his nose.
The glow disappeared from Malagant’s hands. He looked exhausted, but that wasn’t a bad thing. The boy had to learn, and it was better he be exhausted at home than on the unforgiving road.
“About fifteen minutes, twice as long as last time,” Malagant said. Behind him Teal appeared holding Anagin’s mug. Anagin had taught him how to make smoke tea. He was horrible at it, of course, but he was a fast learner. Each cup tasted better than the one before; Anagin no longer had to dump it out when the boy wasn’t looking.
Anagin took the cup and gave Teal a nod. He took a drink, hoping to wash out the aroma of cigarette smoke he was still tasting in his mouth.
“It’s something,” Anagin grumbled. “The gate I put up is holding the beast in, but he still manages to find a way to thrust me out of Ben’s subconscious.”
Josiah helped him stand and he made his way to one of the wooden chairs. He sat in it with a grunt, his face straining as his hip gave him a warning twinge.
He put a flame under his tea. The flickering fire giving twice as much light as the old dimming luma lamp they had brought into the room. Oil lamps had been kept far away from Ben, for obvious reasons.
They had brought the boy into the small storage room on the second floor of the house. It had originally been full of their old junk, but that had since been moved into various closets and hidden behind the couch and bookshelves. Now a small bedroll was tucked into a corner, with several chairs against the windowless walls. A single table was set beside Ben, with multiple tonics and decanters on top.
It had been done for his own protection and theirs, though Teal’s protests were still ringing in his ears. Once Anagin had awoken Ben from his induced slumber several days previous he had continued on with his spouts of violence. The fly-covered beast breaking through the steel gates perhaps. It had been draining to calm Ben’s mind down each and every time.
Josiah had wanted to make it appear like a bedroom and less like a cell, more for Teal’s sake than Ben’s, but Anagin had put a stop to that quickly. Tapestries could catch on fire, as could flags and other wall hangings. It was disconcerting enough to have a bedroll in the room and the wooden chairs. The boy was a maddened firebug, and Anagin was rather attached to his Birch home, too attached to let the insane demi-elf burn it to cinders.
Not every awakening was bad though. Sometimes he would waken as himself. A very polite and grateful boy, confused but with a grasp of reality and sanity. But other times the hibrid-human awoke wrought with madness. Ranting of flies, pale humans, dryder beasts, and burnt corpses, dangerous to all in striking distance of his maegic.
The silvermagic… now that was curious indeed. It was well-developed, however the numbers of spells Ben knew seemed to be limited to runeflame and runelightning. When he awoken in his fit of insanity he attacked the first person he saw, usually Cruz’s boy, who never left his side.
When Ben had almost burned Teal’s face the previous morning, it had been the last straw. That day they reluctantly cleared out the storage room and, in Teal’s opinion, made it into a dungeon. Anagin erected a barrier of protection, and Malagant made a mit of chains and hard leather. One that bound Ben’s hands together so they couldn’t hurt himself or them. It was a horrible, but necessary thing to do. It was impossible to cut off a maegic store indefinitely and after two hours at the most, Ben had his maegic back.
“The human just leans up against that tree smoking his… cigarettes,” Anagin said that evening. They had just finished dinner and were sitting in the living room with their appointed drinks: Anagin with his smoke tea, Malagant and Josiah with their wine, and Teal with his silverwine, though he also had tea cooling beside him.
“They smell awful don’t they?�
�� Teal said as he took a sip of his tea. “I hated it when Ben’s friends smoked them in his apartment. He usually didn’t smoke but when they were over he would.”
“Yes, I can see why he is such a sickly thing, even in health,” Anagin murmured. He was tapping a finger against his chin as he scowled into his teacup. “There is a riddle inside that boy’s brain, one that I cannot put my finger on. I wish I could stay inside of his head longer to unravel it.”
“You’re able to go inside for longer though, Dad,” Josiah said encouragingly. “You’ll figure it out. If you were able to work through the prophecies for so many years – you can crack Ben’s brain.”
“I don’t have a choice,” Anagin said and at this he shook his head. “There are so many things that make me uneasy about these prophecies right now. I don’t know which one to worry about more.”
“Ben’s back though…” Teal said in a small voice.
Anagin nodded. “Yes, Ben is back… but he’s brought on his heals more questions than I can count. Something horrible happened to him on those plains and something equally horrible is still out there.”
Everyone’s eyes shifted to the stairs as Ben gave a whimper. Teal shot to his feet to comfort him but Anagin shook his head and raised a hand. “He’s having a nightmare. Stay down here, Teal.”
“But…”
“If you wake him he might use his runeflame, it’s better he work through it.”
Teal sighed and sat back down, his hands kneading and tensing into one another. “Nothing from Kelakheva?”
Anagin looked to the folded up black cloth on the bookshelf beside him, the cloth that had once been used to cover the brilliant orb of light that was Luna’s Tear. The shining beacon was now resting on a pedestal in Anagin’s attic, its light so bright that Teal and Malagant could see the glow leaking through the ceiling at night.
“Nothing…” Anagin said, a hint of bitterness in his voice. “It’s a rare occasion that I light that beacon and I would think he’d know it was important.” Then his eyes looked to Malagant. “I have a feeling that Ben returning to you two is only the start of your problems, not the end to them. Something is wrong, Malagant.”