Jalcina watched without joining. There was no need.
If her companion faltered, she would aid him. For now, he had it all under control.
More guards poured into the hall seeking to cut off their route of escape. Except they had no desire to escape. They would destroy any who stood in their way.
"Bring us the tainted one," he cried as he stabbed the Captain through his shoulder leaving him still very alive. "If you bring them to us, we will let you live."
His offer brought little result. They threw themselves at his blade with abandon, as if what they welcomed in death was far better than what they faced in life.
He slaughtered those who came.
The walls splattered with their blood and he stood among the corpses, blade still raised. At his feet lay the Captain doing what he could to keep from bleeding to death.
"Where is the tainted one?"
Kendrick stepped out of the shadows at the end of the hall.
"Do you seek me?"
"We seek you." Warden leveled his sword at Kendrick. "Those of yours have much to answer for."
"They will not answer to you."
Lightning arced down the hall to run off Warden's blade where he held it before his face. It lit the planes of his cheeks with violent light. Jalcina sprinted across the distance to Kendrick, bringing her own blade around in a spin to take his head. He avoided her easily before throwing a bolt at her. It missed, but the air smelled of its passing.
"Even together, you cannot stand." Kendrick's bravado did not push them back, but his lightning did keep them at a distance. Dropping back, Jalcina looked to Warden.
His eyes calculated.
"We need to be stronger," he said. She nodded. Beneath her skin, she felt her essence seeking an exit. It searched for Kendrick, seeking his demise. It would not be denied and she didn't want it to be. This was one of the moments she survived for, the reason she kept going after centuries.
To bring low those who caused her torment and destroyed the faith of her father.
With a breath, Jalcina relaxed into the seeking essence, letting it course out from her skin. A wreath of blue light coalesced around her, culminating in a halo around her hands. The hallway wall disappeared under her force. Kendrick took a step back, hands up to shield his face.
Warden nodded, the ghost of a smile on his face before he brought to bear a blast of fire forcing Kendrick back even further.
Their opponent had no choice but to give way one step at a time, but they weren't hurting him. Each step took him further from them, but gave them nothing more. He showed no signs of damage.
Finally, his back to a wall, Kendrick threw arcs of lightning at them in an effort to stop their advance. He had nowhere left to go.
A Duel of Monsters
"We're getting nowhere," Warden grunted.
The battle with Kendrick was taking far longer than either of them expected. The warlock kept them at bay with his lightning blasts, but other than that, neither side gave or gained any ground. It frustrated him. They should have been able to take him.
"What's different?" Jalcina asked. Leviana's awareness of Kendrick made him seem like an exotic animal now that he threw lightning as easily as one might throw a pastry to a babe. "Something has changed."
"Yes, something has!" Kendrick's voice rang out over the sound and sizzle of the air. "I have power you can only dream of."
At that, he began to expand, first from his hands. They became so large as to be comical before converting into claws. Claws not until those of the great falcon Jalcina called her own. Wings burst from his back with gouts of blood dripping to the floor from the broken skin which turned colors until it was coal and ash colored.
They did not have to decide what was happening. He changed before them into something monstrous. His once comely face contorting with a mixture of pain and adulation.
"I have become perfect," he shouted.
"Perfectly ugly," Warden said before rushing him again. Kendrick swept him aside and into the wall which cracked and then began to tumble under the force. His head pressed against the ceiling before it split the rock and still he grew. Kendrick became a scaled and winged creature, a grotesque apparition in response to the power captured under his skin.
"What is he?" Jalcina asked.
Warden recovered and crawled from beneath the stones, shaking off the dust covering him.
"Does it matter? He needs to die." A slim blade appeared in Warden's fists, a blade much more befitting someone who slipped a knife between your ribs and danced away in the dark. "So let's help him."
Warden launched himself at their assailant, who tried again to brush him away, but this time Warden moved fluidly around the swiping hand and slashed it across the back as he went. The blood springing from the wound was no longer red, but a viscous purple.
Jalcina, instead of throwing herself at the monster as it grew and the stones of the castle tumbled around it, summoned her strength to become once more the falcon and let it wing free. In that instant, she flashed between forms, a sense of lightning suffusing her bones.
Warden avoided another blow, his feet staccato tapping under him as he stayed one step ahead of the creature trying to flatten him with its palm.
"What are you doing?"
When Jalcina opened her wings, the walls cracked and the floor above began to collapse. She shimmied through the hole and upward, destruction in her wake.
"You're going to bring the castle down," Warden said. "The both of you."
She didn't seem to hear as she kept going upward until she burst out into the sunshine above only to be met by the creature Kendrick had become grappling for purchase to drag itself from its own hole.
Jalcina set upon the monster with her claws extended. It hurled a bolt of lightning at her with its deformed hands and she slid around it, the energy touching but not scorching her feathers.
She wanted to kill him. She needed to kill him. He had caused her so much suffering and humiliation. He needed to die upon a pyre. Leviana's feelings were not ambiguous at all. Kendrick deserved to suffer and die.
Jalcina wanted that as well. He imprisoned her. Threatened to execute her. Once again took away what little life she had forcing her to be on the run from those who would kill her.
Their third had a less aggressive feeling, but it certainly could not be said to be less bloodthirsty. She wanted Kendrick to show her where to find the ones who had made him. They were to blame. They were to suffer. She would see to that.
They lost sight of Warden down in the now ruins of the castle. He would find his way out soon enough. Resourceful and strong, their feelings toward their companion triumvirate colored their world with beauty.
The presence of the monster filled them with rage.
Diving at its face, if it could be called that, they offered it their talons.
A splash of blood sliced the air and splattered with toxic burn across the stones. It smashed long arms into her and she landed hard with part of the castle sliding away beneath her with a landslide rumble.
Below rocks rained down pelting and crushing those who stood in their way. Citizens fled, seeking whatever shelter they could as homes were flattened and spilled cooking fires ran rampant. Screams rose.
"They suffer and it feeds me." Kendrick continued to grow, losing more and more of his humanity as he went. Jalcina, her falcon form still strong, went for him again and a moment later Warden joined her, the dragon clawing its way out of the ground to breath fire at their opponent.
Kendrick stood his ground against the flames, deflecting it onto the stones and down into Leviana's former garden near her palace.
"You will never be able to stop me. I will crush you."
With a wing beat, Jalcina brought forth a hurricane wind driving the flames into a spiral around Kendrick whose voice turned from confidence to terror.
Together, they could take him.
Warden added heat to the flames with a whistling breath and Ja
lcina kept the wind blowing so it wouldn't go out.
Kendrick screamed his suffering, drowning out those of the citizens. Neither of the pair cared.
Suddenly Kendrick lunged forward, grabbing Warden's head and smashing it to the ground before attempting to run away. Jalcina snatched her talons across him before he could fully escape, but she couldn't catch him. He crashed into the mountain and more of the castle collapsed beneath him before he disappeared.
Their forms dissolved and returned to humanity, once more clothed, but this time in new garb. Jalcina wore royal blue interlaced with silver to give her to look of a thunderhead about to release a rainstorm. Warden wore black, much like he had before, but the scarlet thread gave the lie to the idea he wore it before. Standing in the ruins of the burning garden, they stared at the smoke, then looked at what had become of the castle. It was a ruin, holes in its ceiling and great swathes of the walls gone.
It's once regal standing reduced to rubble. Stones still stood together, but mostly from past association. Warden looked upon it with sadness Jalcina mirrored.
"This was once my home."
"And mine," she agreed. "But no longer. There are those that need us." She slid one hand across his shoulder before pressing it to the underside of his chin to raise his eyes. "We are still the hope of our people."
They descended the mountain together, jumping from stone to stone and walking the paths at times. The streets ruptured where stones struck. Homes gaped with holes, and people hid where they could in hopes they would not be killed.
Arathum, the royal city, burned slowly but burn it did. They found themselves standing in the square of executions with its stone columns. A few huddled there, hands clasped in prayer for Ancel to save them. Jalcina approached with caution.
They gathered around another lying in the street, his body half-crushed by a falling boulder which had taken out a building nearby.
Her heart ached at the sound of his pain.
Her people suffered and for what? For someone else's lust for power.
"We have wronged them," she said.
"We have done nothing but defend them."
"No, we wronged them long before now. With our wars. With our choices. Our hatreds."
He did not dispute her, though he did not agree either. Instead, he pushed through the crowd to stand before the broken man who lay breathing his last.
"If we are gods, why can we not fix this?" He asked.
"Who said you were gods?"
Together they looked toward the voice, elation coloring their faces.
"Father."
Warden reached him first and swept him into a bear hug that Ancel returned with the same enthusiasm.
"I have waited so long to see that light in your eyes."
Jalcina moved slower, but Ancel cupped her head bringing her forehead to his lips.
"My children. My son. My daughter. My loves."
His words brought visions of a man Jalcina had never known along with her own father. She could only guess the gray bearded man was Leviana's father, the one who had died years before she would become Queen. The confluence of their memories made things somewhat difficult to decipher, but the love was there. In the end, that was what mattered. The presence of love.
The three stood together, hands clasped.
"We need to finish this," Warden said.
"We do," Ancel agreed. "But to do so, we must defeat more than Kendrick, we must defeat his father, your killer, Nalcet."
"What of Backaran?"
"He will bear his share of the blame, but he is not my first target. Once Nalcet is gone, the others will be simple."
"How do you mean?"
"Backaran is a coward as is Sinda."
The mention of the third city came with a smear of distaste.
Jalcina knew why.
They had been lovers, father and Sinda. Once upon a time, the two planned a life together. A life including the two of them as his children. Once upon a time, in a mythical life in which they were not sacrificed to an unfeeling magic for power none could control.
"Will we see her?" Her memories of Sinda were still unfinished, as if they were hidden behind a veil. They must have still be different enough to hide memories from one another.
"Let us not worry about that now. We have business to attend to."
Jalcina cast a glance back at those who wailed for the man now dead. They couldn't even save their own. Their power meant nothing if it could not save those who looked to them for safety and peace.
She had failed them.
They had failed them.
Perhaps her father's vengeance was not so righteous.
Sinda in Sartol
As they reached the mountains around Sartol, Jalcina found herself dropping lower and lower to see her old haunts. Warden circled above her as she landed near the entrance to the caves from within the valley she once lived in.
"We need to continue on," he said.
She waved him off.
"This was once my home."
The words didn't penetrate and he reached for her. Jalcina brushed him aside and looked to their father who landed a few feet away.
"I want to see where I once lived."
"Go, but be quick." His blessing was all she needed to go running through the waist-high grass. Leviana's memories told her this should have still been a thriving area of the kingdom. Yet no one came to greet them. The valley appeared untended. No livestock roamed. No horses. No dogs. No people. Nothing. She kept running, hoping for a yelled hello anything to tell her someone still lived within the valley.
She reached the cave entrance. The door stood ajar. It had not been knocked off, but simply left open by the careless. They knew heat was precious, best kept in the tunnels with the capriciousness of the weather. The air smelled of sickness as she stepped inside.
With quick steps, Jalcina moved through the tunnels, certainty growing inside her like a lump in her belly. She would find no one alive here.
Arathum had gone to ruin.
Sartol was a memory.
She reached Mordaen's study where once she learned to read at her Father's knee. Inside the books were different, the binding newer, but it still had the smell of paper and thoughts. Slumped over the desk now the centerpiece was an old man, his beard dragging on the desktop before him. His eyes were rolled away in his head.
Touching him, his skin felt thin as paper and his blood drained away.
"What happened to you?"
Withdrawing, she sought her chambers. Rock was good for remembering. It did not change much without great force and few decided to use the force necessary to change the layout of Sartol's inner workings.
She found the rooms she once shared with her father and her siblings. Soren came to mind with his constant mischief.
Lecern, he had come to her chambers so many times during their courting with every intent to steal her away for a momentary word and perhaps a kiss if she were so inclined.
Gone, both of them. Murdered. Leviana remembered killing Lecern. She'd stabbed him in the belly in Arathum the night of Vadian's death thinking him a danger to her. Sorrow colored the memory but the sadness which followed came from realizing even if he had lived, he would have died without her. Lecern never desired a world without her in it.
Neither had her Father.
Mordaen returned to Sartol without her to do his duty and he died defending a kingdom destined for destruction.
She fled those halls and the specters they housed. There was no thing further she could learn or remember which would aid her in what must be done.
This world was shut to her and had been for three centuries.
Exiting from the tunnels, she found the others waiting in the fields. They had settled, clearing away some of the land to make a fire.
"Daylight dies quickly in the mountains," Ancel said. "Arathum stood alone; it was not the same. We shall wait here for morning."
Jalcina and Warden nodded.
; "What did you find?" Warden asked.
"Death. Something has killed this place."
He nodded without words as if sensing her dis-ease and choosing not to involve himself. Instead, he drew closer to the fire where their Father waited.
"What happens now?"
"What do you mean?"
"Our battle with Nalcet will change the shape of the world."
"So it will."
"What will happen to the people?"
"Beyond the ones he has already killed?" Ancel asked. "They will go on, just as they always have. They have no need of gods or even paternal spirits to guide them. They only think they do. Nalcet thought they did and he set himself as a god for that reason."
"Then they will suffer because of our battle and you don't care?"
"Where we go to do battle, there is no one to harm who has not already taken an oath to defend your murderer. Will you spare their lives?"
Warden watched the words shift back and forth between them like a cattail in a stiff breeze before saying,
"She means if we are not gods, then what good are we to anyone. Why do we still exist?"
"You exist for vengeance. To exact revenge on those who have brought grief to our family."
"What if I don't want to?" Jalcina asked. "What if that is not the destiny I see for myself?"
"Then perhaps you should go now before you are dragged into a battle you may not win."
The new voice brought them all to their feet, but she put out a hand to stay them.
"I came to talk," Sinda said.
"You came to bring a message from him," said Ancel. "You do his dirty work now, just as you always did."
"Lies, but I suppose now is not the time to debate the truth." Sinda flipped her braided hair off her shoulders and stared them all down. "I came to tell you that this is foolishness and Nalcet would like to negotiate."
"There is nothing to negotiate, he deserves punishment for what he has done."
"He offers you his first born son," she said. "In recompense. An eye for an eye."
"And for the life of my daughter?"
"He has no daughters."
"Then it is not a fair trade." Ancel advanced on her and Sinda threw up her hands to ward off what might have been a blow. He kept his hands down. She stepped back and looked at the others arrayed against her.
Ruins of Fate Page 24