“Daren, wait—” I start to say, but he cuts me off.
“I’m sorry, Barry, but now that it’s come to this, I can’t just let it slide,” Daren says. “She’s too dangerous to be left alone. I’m going to purify her.”
Kate wipes the tears from her face and regains her cold look, as she turns to Daren and starts to speak.
“Don’t sound so disappointed, Daren,” she says. “We both know that you’ve been waiting for this moment ever since you first laid eyes on me. And we both know that surrendering is just not in my nature.”
“As you wish,” Daren says, curtly, and he rushes towards Kate, with his sword in hand.
Kate conjures a platform of ice beneath her, and she uses it to raise herself into the air, and out of Daren’s reach.
“Come back here and fight fair, damn it!” Daren shouts after Kate as she goes further up.
Once she reaches a sufficiently high point of altitude, she starts raining down swords of ice upon Daren, while he defends himself with his shield. His defensive barrier seems to be holding up a lot better than it usually does against normal weapons. None of Kate’s ice swords are getting through it, even though she’s attacking him from all directions.
Daren is now raising his sword into the air, and moving it in a steady, circular motion. As his sword moves, I can see the air starting to spin around it at great speed. Once he stops rotating his sword, he slashes powerfully towards Kate, generating a strong gust of wind that blows her off her ice platform.
She manages to quickly conjure an improvised slide of ice below her and immediately after she lands on the ground, she turns towards Daren with her palms pointing at him. A beam of ice shoots from her hands and heads straight for Daren, who is now holding his sword in front of him. The beam hits his sword head on, but instead of getting frozen, the weapon absorbs the energy from the attack and starts radiating a cold magical aura.
Daren then slashes his sword at Kate, which sends the ice beam right back at her. She manages to get out of its way in the nick of time and attempts to retaliate, but Daren, who had already reached her, slashes his sword at her left ankle, making her drop to one knee. She tries to attack him with a beam again, but all she manages to do is point her palms at him, while the ice refuses to come out of her hands. The block of ice she trapped me in is also starting to slowly melt away.
“No…” she says, in disbelief.
“I’m afraid that won’t work anymore, Kate,” Daren says. “You won’t be able to cast any kind of magic for the next thirty minutes. I already told you, I specialize in dealing with elementalists. My shield protects me against most magical attacks, my weapon can absorb the elements, and I have a sword technique that can temporarily sever your link with the magical plane. You never stood a chance to begin with.”
Kate tries to get up, but she realizes she can’t hope to outrun Daren with her wounded leg. Defeated, she does not say another word and she bows her head, looking at the ground as would a convicted murderer while awaiting their execution.
“Come, now, Kate,” Daren says. “Don’t be like that. You should know better than anyone that the purification ritual has almost no chance of failure. Once we deal with the banshee within you, we’ll be able to keep travelling together, just like before.”
Daren says an incantation and he readies his sword, which starts glowing with a bright white light.
“Daren, no!” I shout at him. “You promised!”
Daren stops his sword upon hearing my words.
“You promised that you wouldn’t try to purify her until you saw her turn into a banshee!” I say.
Kate raises her head and looks at me, with a mixture of sadness and regret visible in her eyes.
“I can’t believe you, Barry,” Daren says to me. “She almost killed you back there, and you’re still saying things like this?”
“She wasn’t going to kill me,” I say. “But if I’m right about her not being a banshee, then you were the one that was about to kill her just now. Please, give me a few more minutes with her. I’m sure if we talk things through we can still fix this.”
“Have you gone mad?” Daren asks me.
“Why’s that?” I say. “You said it yourself. She can’t cast magic for the next half of an hour, and she’s not running anywhere with that leg wound you gave her. I won’t be in any danger.”
Daren lowers his sword and grumbles, but he doesn’t find a good reason to not grant me my request.
“Fine, you can have her,” he says. “But she’d better have a damn good reason for all of this.”
He gestures at Kate.
“Well, you heard Barry,” Daren says. “Go with him.”
Kate gets up and tries to walk all the way to me, but she trips due to her leg injury. I rush over to her in order to grab her before falling, and then we both start to head deeper into the forest. As we walk, Kate is holding my left arm with both her hands, in order to keep herself from falling again. She does not say a word to me while we distance ourselves from Daren, but she is holding my arm very tightly, even though she hasn’t tripped once since we started walking.
Once we’ve put enough distance between ourselves and Daren, I help Kate lay down with her back against an oak tree, and she simply stares at the ground, still not saying anything. I take off my backpack and reach inside of it with my right hand. It looks completely empty from the outside, but once I focus on the image of the pack of biscuits I’m looking for, I can immediately feel it materialize in the palm of my hand. As I take it out, I grab one of the biscuits and hand it to Kate.
“Here you go,” I tell her. “You must be hungry after all that fighting.”
She looks at me confused for a second and then decides to accept my offering.
“…Thank you,” she says as she takes a bite and starts eating quietly.
“I got these from a shop near my house,” I say. “They always had the best biscuits. It’s too bad I didn’t know Daren back then, though. If I had a backpack like this I would have stacked it with hundreds of these delicious—”
“Barry…” Kate interrupts me as she lifts her head and looks me straight in the eye. “Why did you save me?”
“What do you mean?” I say. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because I almost murdered you in cold blood a few minutes ago,” Kate says.
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” I say. “You can act all tough now, but when it came right down to it you didn’t have the guts to follow through, remember?”
“You…” Kate starts to say as she grabs me by the shirt.
When she sees me smiling, she calms down and lets go of me, subsequently leaning her back against the tree behind her.
“I understand, now…” she says, looking away from me. “I understand that you’re the one that’s been keeping me safe ever since we met, yesterday. It all came to me in that one moment when I tried to kill you. Why did Daren never look at me as if I were human if he was the one that came to the conclusion that I wasn’t a banshee? Why did you and Daren have a secret way to communicate in case I turned against you if he trusted me so much? There was only one way it could have all made sense. I just didn’t want to believe it.”
She turns her gaze back to me.
“Barry,” she says, “if you hadn’t been there to stop Daren from killing me yesterday, when we first met, I would have paid dearly for my foolishness. And yet, I have repaid your kindness by putting a knife to your throat. Can you ever forgive me?”
“Hey, now, you’re making this sound a lot worse than it actually was!” I say. “All’s well when it ends well, right? What’s important is that no lasting harm was done, and once Daren heals your leg and your ice powers come back, everything can go back to normal.”
I pause.
“So…” I tell Kate as I hold out my hand to her. “Are we still friends, then?”
“Friends?…” she asks me, shocked.
She looks at me, trying to figure out if I’m being serious or n
ot.
“Are you completely out of your mind?” she says.
“Of course I am!” I say. “Surely, you must have realized this when you found out about the true reason I joined the tournament.”
“How could you even still consider travelling with me after what has happened?” Kate says. “Don’t you understand that you’re putting yourself in danger by just being around me?”
“So what?” I say. “How would travelling with you be any more dangerous than having to fight a stillwater and a dragon in the same day? At least if you’re coming with us, I’ll feel safer, knowing that you’re watching my back.”
Kate pauses, and looks at me hesitantly.
“Are you sure about this?” she asks.
“Yes, yes, I’m sure!” I say. “Now, come on. Shake my hand, already! My arm is going numb.”
Kate smiles faintly, as she grabs my hand and squeezes it firmly.
“You’re an idiot,” she says.
“I know,” I tell her as we finish our handshake. “Now, come on, we should get going. If we keep standing around here, Daren will surely start to think that you found a way to attack me again or something. I’m sure I can find a way to smooth things over with him somehow.”
“No, wait…” Kate says. “We can’t go on like this. I owe you an explanation for everything that’s happened. It’s the least I can do.”
“Well, in that case,” I say, “could you begin by telling me who these lessathi are, exactly? Weren’t they supposed to be just some ancient race from this continent that went extinct a long time ago?”
“Yes and no,” Kate says. “They are indeed the oldest race on this continent, which is why most people refer to them as simply ‘the ancients’. However, even though their civilization fell hundreds of years ago, there are still small groups of lessathi here and there, staying hidden and trying to influence events from the shadows. As far as I know, there are no records explaining the exact reason of their civilization’s fall, but it is commonly believed that their own arrogance was somehow the source of their undoing. Their banner is after all a hawk holding the sun in its talons, where the hawk represents the lessathi, and the sun represents the gods.”
“Wait a minute,” I say. “I recognize that banner description. You’re telling me that Eiden wants me to transmit his message to the remnants of some long forgotten race?”
“Yes, this is what I’m saying,” Kate says. “I have no idea where he knows these people from or what the meaning of his message is, however. I was under the impression that most people do not know that the lessathi even exist anymore. They are very secretive, and also very isolated from all other races. They have their own villages, hidden from the rest of the world, and they are only allowed to marry other lessathi. This is why I’m very surprised you are unaware of your own heritage.”
“So, if the ancients are hidden from most of the world,” I say, “how come you know so much about them?”
Kate pauses.
“Do you remember how Eiden said I was a survivor from the Beacon of Hope?” she says.
“Yeah,” I say. “You never did tell me what it was.”
“The Beacon was… an orphanage, of sorts,” Kate says. “They took in children from all over the continent and offered them shelter and free meals. I was born in Varathia, and abandoned as a child, so I was sent there at a very young age. The institution was run by a handful of very influential lessathi at the time, who had deep ties with the Varathian royalty. Unfortunately, the true purpose of that orphanage was not to shelter children who had no home, but to exploit them because they had no family members left to ask about them. Through repeated experimentation, the lessathi were trying to find a way to turn regular humans into mages.”
“So, what you’re saying is that you got your powers as a result of these experiments?” I say.
“I did…” Kate says. “Although, the methods they used had an extremely low chance of success. Forcefully injecting magical circuits into a human body is not only a very risky procedure, but also… particularly painful. Of the thousands of orphans that were detained in that institution, only a handful of us survived. Due to the lack of results on their part, the lessathi eventually stopped receiving funds for their project from the royalty, and they were forced to shut down the Beacon.”
“So, uh… did they just let you all go after that?” I say.
“No, they didn’t,” Kate says. “I was part of the rejects. Their prolonged experiments had somehow failed to kill me, but my magic was so weak at the time that I could barely conjure a snowflake. They had no need for rejects, so they just dumped us on other continents. They used their teleportation magic to transport each of us in various remote jungles across the world, with nothing to our names other than the clothes on our backs, and some knives they gave us to fend for ourselves. I was twelve at the time.”
Kate’s eyes shift to the left as she talks and her gaze becomes more distant. She must be reliving those moments from long ago as she is recounting them to me.
“I spent weeks in that jungle,” she says, “hunting small animals and avoiding predators in order to survive. When I finally managed to reach civilization, I was greeted with terrified screams, and people running away at the sight of me. It didn’t take me long to find out about banshees, and to understand that there was no longer a place for me in society. As time passed, I began encountering banshee hunters and white mages that wanted to have me purified. Luckily, by the time I started meeting them, my magical powers had increased considerably, and I became able to defend myself.”
“What happened to the other rejects?” I ask her.
“The others… didn’t make it,” Kate says. “They were all much younger than I was when they were thrown into the jungle, so they couldn’t survive on their own, even with the daggers provided by the lessathi. I spent the first few years of my new life trying to track down the other orphans that were set free, hoping that at least some of them survived, but in the end, the only thing that I could do for them was to give them a decent burial.”
“And Diane?” I say.
Kate was somewhat taken aback by my question. I guess she forgot that she had already told me her friend’s name.
“Diane was… my best friend,” Kate says, “and the only reason why I decided to return to this hellhole. She was one of the very few persons that reacted favorably to their experiments. She and her brother were by far the most talented of all the mages that had been created in that facility. Due to her talents, she was assigned to the lessathi’s elite task force, and often served as a personal bodyguard to the highest ranked members of their group.”
“Wait, if they became so strong, how come they didn’t fight back?” I say.
“The lessathi had some collars that they used to prevent the mages from using their magic against them,” Kate says. “The effects were somewhat similar to those of the spells preventing us from attacking locals in this tournament. I’m pretty sure that the artifacts used to cast these spells on us were also made by the lessathi, a few thousand years ago.”
“Hey, Barry, can you hear me?” I hear Daren’s voice coming from the transceiver.
Kate takes a short glance towards my pocket to see where the noise is coming from, but she doesn’t ask me any questions. She must have realized that this was how I managed to secretly communicate with Daren earlier. I tap the device once and answer him.
“Yes, Daren,” I say. “I can hear you loud and clear. What is it?”
“I really hate to interrupt you and all,” Daren says, “but if we want to get to any kind of shelter before the sun sets, we should get going right now.”
Kate and I exchange a look.
“Alright,” I say. “We’ll be right there.”
I tap the transceiver again, in order to deactivate it, and we start heading towards Daren.
“What are you going to tell Daren?” Kate asks me as we make our way back.
“I’m going to tell him the t
ruth,” I say.
“He isn’t going to believe what I said to you,” Kate says. “I have no proof to back up my claims.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll figure something out!” I say.
Kate doesn’t look like she shares my optimism on the matter, but she decides to drop the subject for now.
“I meant to ask,” Kate says. “How were you able to tell that I wasn’t a banshee yesterday, when we first met? Have you seen a real banshee before?”
Her question makes me stop in my tracks for a few seconds. Kate, who was leaning on me for support, stops walking as well, and she looks towards me, with a worried expression in her eyes.
“If it’s something that you’d rather not talk about, then—” Kate starts to say, but I interrupt her.
“It’s alright,” I say, as I start walking again, making sure that Kate can keep up with me, while holding my arm. “Yes, I’ve seen a real banshee before. It was my sister.”
“Your sister?” Kate asks, in a low voice.
“Yes…” I say. “It happened fifteen years ago. My family and I were living in a rather isolated village, where people didn’t really know much about banshees and mages in general. When my sister started gaining magical powers, we were all overjoyed, because we thought we had a mage in the family. Then one night…”
I start getting flashbacks of the night when my sister turned into a banshee. It feels as if her sinister laughter is still ringing in my ears.
“One night,” I continue, “I came home to find the bodies of my parents lying in pools of blood, with my sister standing above them. Only it wasn’t my sister anymore. Everything was different about her, even her magical aura. She was just about to kill my younger brother, when I picked a pitchfork from the ground and impaled her with it. I was lucky. The banshee had just awakened, which made her vulnerable. If I had arrived even a few minutes later, I don’t think anyone would have been able to stop her anymore.”
“I’m sorry…” Kate says.
“Don’t be,” I tell her. “From what you’ve told me, you’ve been through much worse than I have. Incomparably worse. At least now I can say that my sister’s death was not completely in vain, given that my knowledge of banshees was what helped me to prevent another tragedy from happening today.”
Magium: The Mage Tournament: Book 1 Page 12