Trent stepped back, winded by the impossible enigma and absurd power her kind evinced. Even after all the time he’d spent meditating and pondering the possibility of a master returning to the world, he never gave serious thought to it happening in his lifetime—just the jaded musings of a brusque old bastard who didn’t care anyway. The Light over his hand wavered. His voice escaped him as hardly more than a whisper: “It can’t be true.”
She held her arms out from her body. “Behold, for we are. Do you recognize us now?”
Trent peered at her face, all his nightmares in union, and in that moment, the last twenty years felt like a dream. Regret blasted through him. “It’s not possible,” he said, blunt as bone. “We would have detected you. I would have detected you.”
“Forsook your duty,” she said. Her gaze scorched him. “And you think you still have the power you once did?”
“The Light always awaits those who call on it, for those who believe in it.” Trent tried to sound sure. “I am blessed and chosen by Karli herself.”
The master smirked. “We have risen again. Never left, remember? Already we gather and toil, and no one knew except for Him. Kind of you to never order an extermination. Your absence has only made our contention for the world easier to thread.” Her smirk stretched into a cool grin. “Wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Nothing anyone ever did mattered, did it?” She watched Trent and chuckled when he didn’t answer. “Especially you.”
The darkness rumbled around them. A boom rolled through the deep space and distorted Trent’s vision, caused the demon in front of him to ripple. A whisper came to him, telling him a sound he’d not heard before. Thrice it spoke, then left.
Confusion coated his face while he made sense of it. “D’niqa,” he tried saying, then he looked at her. “D’niqa. That’s your name?”
Her smile left her face, and she recoiled. “What magic?” She raised her voice. “You dare invoke a demon’s vanity?”
Her fury fueled his own, and Trent tapped authority into his speech. “You will not speak to me as that again. Where have you come from?”
She huffed. “Those are questions for another lifetime now.”
Trent pulled the Light to his other hand and joined it to his right. The darkness skewed as gravity contorted around his call. D’niqa looked above them, and in that moment, Trent caught her in the Light’s grasp. “I can arrange that right fucking now.”
D’niqa only glowered at him, then a dangerous grin spread slowly across her face. “You touch us.” She reached for the Light at her neck, cut a piece away with a claw, and splashed Trent’s magic onto her exposed breasts, where it smoldered against her flesh. Her breathing quickened. “Feel us, Russell.” Another chunk she peeled away and held in front of her, then she suffused it with her own magic. “I press against you with power unlimited.” The Light burned to char in her hand and ashed to the void beneath her.
What Trent still controlled flared for the abject disgust that raged through him.
D’niqa laughed as he beheld the power she wielded: the Light damaged her, but it didn’t obliterate her as it had demons of the past. “It’s just a game, dear. You either win or keep playing until you lose.”
If her armies had the same power—it couldn’t be right, couldn’t happen. One thing became clear: She constituted the only risk here. He couldn’t let her leave.
“No,” Trent said. “This is over.” He pulled his life’s energy into his call for the Light. The nether disintegrated at his feet. “You. Will. Die. With me.”
The air wound into a hurricane and whipped the master’s wiry hair around her face. A stupid half-smirk crossed her lips. “No,” she said, but Trent couldn’t hear her for the fiery wind. The nightmare quickly unraveled, but before she disappeared, Trent saw her say, “This world burns.”
The nether snapped away from him in a tornado of sound and space as the pocket closed, and Trent fell a few feet onto his back underneath a starry night sky.
“Gods damn it!” Grenn yelled behind him. A thunk beat into the dirt. “Fucking thing doesn’t fucking work.”
“Grenn,” Trent said, his voice half-knocked out of him. Sweat had covered his body. “What’re ya shoutin about?”
Heavy steps skidded over soft soil behind him, and a second later, Grenn stared down at him. His gaze flicked over Trent’s face. “I can’t get through to Karhaal.”
“Goddess.” Trent grunted and raised himself onto his elbows.
“Buddy, buddy, careful.” Grenn knelt and helped Trent sit up fully. The demon from the night before laid on the ground at Trent’s feet, disquietingly tranquil.
“I should have stayed at the pub.” Blue runes glowed faintly across Trent’s body.
“Yeah. Then you couldn’t have saved my ass.”
Trent chuckled, then laughed full-on for a few breaths—he couldn’t do much else for how ridiculous it all seemed. “Well where’s your hammer? Just hit the damned thing over the head.”
Grenn’s mouth hung open against the apparent confusion on his face. His armor gleamed in the starlight. “Nice clothes.”
Trent huffed as he stood. “Answer the question.”
“What happened in there?” Grenn asked. “Who the hell are you, man?”
“Nothin good. And no one.” Trent became insistent. “Where’s your hammer?”
A defensive cover morphed Grenn’s voice. “Goddess, it’s at home. What—what”—he sputtered, unable to form a question. His face pinched. “I was on my way to Cups.”
“Yeah, I was waitin for ya.” Trent picked up his coat and pulled at his terminal. He ripped the cloth when it caught inside its pocket, then let the jacket fall to the ground. “You’re gonna need to keep it with ya from now on.”
“I’ll remember that next time,” Grenn said, sarcastic. “Are you gonna answer me?”
“What haven’t I answered yet?”
“Everything I’ve asked.”
“To your satisfaction, you mean.”
“Right,” Grenn said. He chewed on his lower lip. “But you’re obviously—someone.”
“Right now, I’m not.”
“Then—Goddess, man—come on.”
Trent activated a photography application and framed up the knocked-out demon. The terminal flashed and clicked. He checked the picture, then turned down the flash power. “Listen, the world’s gonna get fucked real quick here in—probably not long.” The next picture developed well, and he zoomed in on a mark on its lower back. “It’s the same gods-damned one,” he added to himself, then hooked the accessory onto his belt.
“Then I need to get word back to Karhaal of a—a mastered demon in Keep,” said Grenn. His eyes bugged. “In Keep. Goddess, what?”
Trent walked around the body, inspecting it. He knelt to run his hand over the demon’s hide. The scales across its back threatened to part his mortal flesh. Tacky soot covered his hands. He rubbed his fingers together, smelled them—acrid talc—then cracked his neck against the repugnance that caused his mind to race places he didn’t want it to go. “It’s not just a mastered demon.”
“So what? Warlocks again?”
Trent shook his head. “Nothing so lucky.”
The young Karlian’s mouth hung open. “Fuck.” He nudged the demon’s chest with his foot. “What do we do about this?”
“What we should have done with them from the start. I’ve been sayin that since I first joined the Order.” Trent pointed at the splotch of red on the demon’s back. “You see that mark?”
Grenn nodded.
“I was too distracted by what it reminded me of last night to think anything of it. But now it’s clear. Lesser demons would have gotten this from being mastered during the War. When a group of them gathered, these pieces of hide would form the semblance of a M’kethian symbol.”
“I’ve only seen those in books,” said Grenn, uncertain fear edging into his voice. “Does that mean this is M’keth?”
“I don’t know,” Trent said,
honest. “But this is an old demon, definitely from the last War. And someone should have done this a long time ago.”
He aimed his hand at the cur’s head. The beast glowed when the Light hit its hide, and it howled in its slumber, kicked its hind-legs as it resisted the searing luminance. Trent pushed harder, and for the heightened effort, the creature opened its eyes, its flesh a scrabble of burning flesh and Fel. It scrambled and roared before it disappeared suddenly in a cloud of ink.
Trent caught his breath, momentarily evicted of his strength. What game the gods must play to give the demons such power.
“That was—easy.” Grenn said.
“Sure,” said Trent, his chest heaving. “Nothin to it.”
“Good. ‘Cause so long as, ya know”—
“No,” Trent said, speaking between breaths. “There’s a new capability within them.”
The young man frowned. “That was a lot of Light, and it was to kill that.” Vestiges of the demon still hung in the air, ashen and heavy. “Is this the escalation?”
“Goddess, I hope not,” Trent said, but he knew his hope would fail him. He stood. Nothing sang across his land, everything either silent or absent with the evening’s circumstance. To the north, beyond the hills past the capitol, a darkness hailed from the burnt cliffs thousands of miles from them, still a speck against the invisible bluff of horizon.
Grenn picked up his tablet. “So what do we do if we can’t get through to leadership?”
Against the quiet backdrop of the night, Trent asked himself a more basic question: whether he even wanted to get involved as the world approached its next apocalypse. He remembered the height of the last War, how much they’d sacrificed—they might not have enough blood for the next. Another War had given him hope at points through his exile, when during his darkest years he’d stopped calling upon Karli for guidance or wisdom or whatever She kept from him, and he’d turned to the hope of destruction—for all.
Now his conscience shamed him and implored him to look for answers where he always had. She’d be waiting for him. And if She’s listening, let Her decide for you.
Trent started for his house. “Who’s the guy running the place now?” He poked at menus on his terminal and navigated to an old database within the Karhaalian infrastructure, then input his credentials. They didn’t work. “Would it be too much to ask that it’s still the Warden? Or Verrusen?”
“Karhaal? No. No, it’s Manifeld now.”
“Karles?”
“Crafted a new title for himself and everything.” Grenn waited for Trent to look at him before he added, “How long have you been away? Pender left a couple years before my trials. And you haven’t heard of the Chamberlain?”
Trent watched the ground pass underfoot. “How’s he been?”
“He’s—I mean, what in the hells were we supposed to do, right? The Chamberlain’s done what he can. And there’s the Undertaker, of course. Kingy put her in when he pushed for the union.”
“Brech pushed for that?” More puzzle pieces—though to a different puzzle. “Fuck. I’ll need to know everything you do. Karhaal—I’ll be—well, you at least—Goddess, what a fucking mess.”
“Do we need to leave, like, right now?”
“I can’t.” Dread ebbed into Trent. Not caring over the years now caused his mind trouble and filled the world with as many intangibles as he had unanswered questions.
“Why?”
Trent didn’t answer as he walked up side-steps to his porch. A single lamp cast a glow over the sparse and plain furnishings when he walked inside his house. “Sieku.”
The urlan hung his head from the first room past the living area. “Sir.”
“Deep-dive about Karhaal and its sister-states.” Trent unbuttoned his shirt. “And check about the scepter meddling with the Order. Use what back-channels you can.”
“I will,” said Sieku. “And sir.”
Trent looked toward the hall.
“It’s sterling you’re still alive.”
Trent nodded, then spoke to Grenn as he entered his kitchen. “If you want something”—he opened and closed a drawer—“help yourself. I don’t know how long a communal will ever take.”
“You’re going to meditate?” Grenn asked. “Now?”
“Yeah.” Trent tried to sound casual, like the answer should have been obvious. He opened a third drawer, found partially burned sticks of incense, and raised one to his nose, sniffing for a mint or one close to it. They all smelled off, but he attributed that to the Fel that clouded his head.
A dull glow crept onto the carpet from Sieku’s monitors. Trent walked past his room, heading for a door at the hall’s end.
“Are you undercover or something?” Grenn said. “Will Karhaal know who you are?”
Trent stopped at the back door. “I’ll answer all the questions you have, Grenn. But I’m already ahead of myself, and I don’t want to get more so.” He looked back at the young man and nodded. “In time.”
“Just include me in this. I can help.” He at least seemed earnest.
Trent rested his hand on the door. “You will.”
Grenn set his jaw. He looked like he almost spoke before he sighed and turned. His hands found their places on his hips as he paced away.
Trent turned fully toward the back door and closed his eyes. He held his right hand in front of his face and drew it down his body and away from himself, invoking the holy check. The door opened.
8
The room he entered held a miraculous silence, one so distinct that his footsteps pealed like hail. A metal bowl waited on a table, silhouetted by a lone window at the room’s far end. Pale light from the moon painted the desk and a square-cut of floor around it, scoring a stage on which the night’s mentor could tutor its student. Trent lit the stick of incense, held it on its end, and waited for it to balance in the shallow basin.
When it did, he backed away and left the essence to stand by itself. So often before, he’d prayed to whomever listened to form the fume into an answer for his mind’s query. Now, as smoke floated against the night, he knelt in the room’s center, closed his eyes, and calmed his mind. Mint permeated the air and penetrated the Fel that hung in his throat. His heartbeat slowed in his ears, and time passed while he breathed.
“The incense,” Jeom had said to him a few days after he joined the Order, “balances you as you balance it. If your surety of its composure wavers, then so has your surety in yourself.” His own stick had stayed upright, even while he taught. “Meditative practices test our resolve—not whether we can focus well enough, but whether we believe we can undertake our work when so much is unknown.”
During drinks years later, just before M’keth raided his first city in Rutanbia far to the south, Jeom told Trent, “It’s like trying to see the backside of a one-sided strip,” when Trent had insinuated doubt that his practice had yielded any results. “Impossible to reach but always worth chasing—an ideal I want students to strive for. To think you fail is the only result worth achieving, for success is the only true end to any endeavor. Even if success is but an illusion”—
Trent had hated the idea. There existed an idealized version of the practice that allowed the practitioner to receive wisdom from outside themselves, but the start of the War had curtailed his pursuit of the method.
“The best answers come from within ourselves,” Jeom had said. “Glance into the looking glass all you want, until you do so to find and see only yourself, you can never see anything else.”
That felt so long ago.
“Russell,” a voice said.
Trent held his pense. “Events must be truly dire for Her to send you.” He opened his eyes. Smoke caressed the ghostly form of his old Master, who leaned against the desk, garbed in ornamental robes.
“I thought you’d be more impressed,” said Jeom. He looked the same as when Trent last saw him—during a quiet conversation the night of his Long Walk. Dark wiry hair slicked backward on his head, and his beard lo
oked as closely shorn as it always had.
Trent kept his voice even. “All this time, after all my prayer, you show up now.”
“You know why. I had no say in how and when.” Jeom’s face clouded and resolved, then he sat on a chair made of fume. “As always, I will grant you one question.”
Trent gave an apprentice’s token response: “I have none.”
“Good. Then listen.” Jeom rubbed his chin and thought for a dozen seconds, then cleared his throat. “I’m not sure I ever told you the story of soloing my way across the Corlane Channel. It didn’t happen the way many told it.
“Karhaal had just started hard-training recruits a generation before mine. They assured us we wouldn’t need it, but time was time to start preparing for the next invasion. Only something like seven percent of Karlians ever get trained the way we did, and those us who do get rather a head our shoulders—as you know.” He stared off and sighed. “Goddess, we thought we were unstoppable. ‘Made of Karhaalian steel,’ my lot often said.
“We ended up on Aisilmapua after we’d passed our trials. There’s a desolate city about eight-hundred miles south of Zri Lidn, pressed right up against the mountains. Karhaal commissioned it after the War before Towers, I think, as a place to stage war games. We stayed there for months, practicing contingencies and trying to keep the damn buildings from falling over on us in between. Your class never made it there, of course. The timing put you about five months out when the War began. Consider yourselves lucky: outside of War, it’s the closest you can get to hell on Coroth. But after we finished, Karhaal gave us time for relaxation.” He bumped his eyebrows at Trent. “You know.
“So I’m a week deep in the first freedom I’ve had in years. I should have felt fantastic, and I did for a few days. But this nagging feeling that I’d never get to use any of my training consumed me, bit after bit, until I got the idea in my head, looking out my window one night in the leeward city of Panalinda, to swim across that channel. Prayer had told me the Goddess put me here for a divine reason, but I got a burr under my ass, couldn’t wait for that, wanted to prove who I was now. And, you know, nothing simple: I couldn’t just swim across the narrowest part and end up in Alvilmedo. No, I had to head out from the island’s southern tip, keep south of Niiauwa, and eventually end up in the Karhaadin Badlands. That’s the deal I made.
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