Then after drawing one last shaky breath and righting herself, Tiffany cracked her neck and turned to Trav. “I’m going to head back now,” she said. “As a gesture of trust, I’m going to leave you here, just please don’t destroy my stronghold.” She smiled nervously. “When you want to head back, you can just step on the area outside where we arrived.”
Trav nodded, and just like that, the goddess disappeared. Where she’d been standing, only little motes of light swirled until they settled to the ground. “Well, that was a little sudden,” he muttered.
The events he’d just witnessed were still weighing heavily on him. It had been easy to forget the scope of his new problems while he rode around Asgard on Narnaste’s back, but Tiffany—no—Zorya’s domain was really driving it home with a hammer.
He wandered for a while, just thinking. Despite having a plan now after having met the Oracle, somewhere deep inside he still felt lost, like he was waiting for something to happen. The feeling was like leaving a hotel room while being sure that something got left behind.
Trav wandered around to the different pools and peered in each of them, but still didn’t see anything with any meaning to him. Finally he sighed and spoke out loud in English. “When it rains, it pours.” He shook his head and walked toward his exit. He vowed to delegate more, and bounce some ideas off of his valkyries as soon as he got back. Keeping his own counsel might drive him nuts if he kept bottling everything up.
The moment he stepped in the area that Tiffany had told him to use, the world shifted.
***
Trav took a moment to understand where he was. He was completely disoriented and almost immediately started coughing.
“My Lord!” croaked a voice. “Thank the heavens!”
Eyes watering, Trav peered through the gloom, using his emberstone eye to augment his vision. Through a doorway, he could see the lizardman that had been working for Tiffany. Suddenly, he understood he was in her house, in the room he’d been in when he’d gotten married. In fact, he could see some of the rune markings on the ground.
The house was on fire.
Trav coughed again, then crouched low. He summoned Hex and pointed around himself, croaking, “Air.” A fresh, breathable bubble formed around his head for a few seconds, allowing him to gasp his way into clarity before it dispersed.
“My Lord, we are under attack,” shouted the lizardman. “Most everyone has fled. I remained behind but I couldn’t stay much longer.”
“What?” shouted Trav.
“We must flee! Faith is under attack!” The lizardman darted forward and took hold of Trav’s sleeve, dragging him forward. “You are in great danger! Please, follow me!”
Trav glanced around at the burning building, processed the situation, and realized he didn’t have his spear in hand. “Wonderful.”
Chapter 6
Trav pulled away from the lizardman and the creature’s eyes nictated, clearly surprised. “My Lord, you must leave! The building may collapse at any time! I was only here because I was compelled by my queen!”
“So Tiffany is not out to get me, huh?” coughed Trav.
“No!” Even while choking the words out, the outrage in the lizardman’s voice was clear. “It’s the Church! Mistress Erben refused to leave this place without leaving one of us behind just in case you came back!”
Trav nodded, vaguely understanding what might have happened. The knowledge from his mantle might have been helping him put the pieces together. He remembered how Tiffany had said there was a time difference between her domain and Asgard, and this could be why she seemed to have returned before he did. Taking slow breaths to stay calm, he quickly thought through his options. Panic was an enemy, and he had learned his lesson about being unarmed in the witch cave before. He pointed his shiv and clearly, coldly said, “Searching Smoke. Spear.”
A section of smoke solidified, forming a tendril that snaked through the air. As the lizardman watched on in shock, Trav felt tired. He was glad he’d had the foresight to load four different kinds of searching spells into Hex, but he was getting tired of being blindsided.
In only seconds, his spear floated to him through the suffocating grey smoke. Like he’d thought, he’d set it down to work on the binding rune equations before going to Tiffany’s realm. He turned to the lizardman and said, “Alright, let’s go. I’ll generate some air for us to breathe, but go slow and tell me what happened. Give me a twenty-second short version.”
“Yes my Lord. My name is…”
“I don’t care about your name. Get to the point,” growled Trav. “I just appeared in the middle of a burning house, and none of my friends, nor my new wife is here.” He’d stumbled a bit over the word, “wife.” He continued, “How do I know that you or Tiffany weren’t responsible for this?”
The lizardman blinked at him in astonishment before coughing explosively. Trav gave him a bubble of breathable air, and after recovering, the Kin got out, “Why would we burn down our own house? Plus, I’m trying to help you, not kill you!” The creature’s eyes flashed. “Are you stupid? I thought Restless were supposed to be wise, or at least clever. I don’t know what my mistress ever even saw in you to marry you! You should be thanking the heavens for your good fortune, not keeping us trapped in a burning building while enemies kill our brethren outside!” The lizardman had showed his teeth and hissed his s’s. He seemed to realize what he’d said, but didn’t back down. “This is a crisis! The entire village that has sheltered us is probably already destroyed.”
As the lizardman turned away with a huff, Trav made a face. This really wasn’t a good place to be having an argument with the Kin. He shook his head and thought, No, he likely isn’t even from this world, so not Kin, right? What is this lizardman then, an alien? Out loud he said, “Alright, so the Church is attacking, everyone is running away, and there aren’t many left in town.” He spoke his guesses out loud. “I’ve been gone for a while, maybe days, and Tiffany got back before me.”
The lizardman turned back and showed his teeth before grating out, “Yes.”
“And how long have I been gone, total?”
“About ten days.”
“When did Tiffany get back, before me?” he asked.
“Yes. Two days ago.”
“Fine, then I understand, let’s go.” Trav took a step to move forward again. Now that he understood and believed that the greatest current danger wasn’t the burning house he was standing in, he was beginning to feel more nervous. Sounds of fighting outside the house that suddenly wafted through a window seemed to underscore this.
The lizardman stared, and his body language seemed to say, “See?”
Trav waved. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. I’m leaving now, I promise.”
“I never thought I would need to convince another being to leave a burning building,” growled the lizardman, but he moved forward at a slow crouch, leading the way. The path to the door was fairly straightforward except for one dogleg. Damage to the house meant they needed to take a brief side route through a room and back into the hallway. Visibility was horrible, and Trav kept using magic to give them both breathable air. Luckily, this didn’t take much of his power, just a second of concentration each time.
Finally, they reached the door, which looked like it’d been smashed. Thankfully, this wall of the house was not on fire, but there was some sort of rubbish right outside, maybe a destroyed cart. The lizardman hissed and moved forward, trying to look outside as best he could. Then he began pushing the debris outside. “This is new,” he grunted. “I’ve been in here for hours, though.”
“Hours?” Trav moved forward to help with the blockage.
“Yes. My queen wanted to travel to her domain to find you, but she was needed here, and the time differential was a problem. The compromise she came up with was to leave me here. Your valkyries wanted to stay instead, but my queen forbade it. She said she had sworn an oath to consider their safety.” With one last heave, the lizardman pushed the pile of wood out of the way.
“She forbade it?” asked Trav. “How could Tiffany stop them from doing—”
“My Lord, watch out!” shouted the lizardman. He suddenly leapt at Trav, pushing him to one side and pinning him to the door frame. Trav grunted and managed to move to the side. As he did, the lizardman fell, and Trav could see three arrows in his back.
A glance up showed him four tabard-wearing, smiling Dacith, already reloading their atlatls. So the lizardman had been killed by darts, not arrows. A glance down showed that that lizardman was mortally wounded, but still conscious. “Kill me,” he whispered. “Allow me to protect my queen one final time. You must find her.” The alien’s eyes were completely inhuman, but Trav could understand the emotion there.
He nodded, but pointed Hex at the Dacith first. “Chain lightning,” he said. A brilliant blue flash of electricity erupted from the dagger, hitting one Dacith then arcing through the rest. They were all knocked to the ground, but still moved, so Trav hit them again. This time, they all just smoked and lay still. “I hate those things,” he said. Now that he was out in the street, he could clearly hear the sounds of fighting in the distance. Half of Faith seemed to be on fire. The magic he’d just used hadn’t been silent, so he might not be alone in the street for much longer.
The dying lizardman at his feet made him pause. Trav might be dead right now, or at the very least would be injured if the lizardman hadn’t protected him. “What is your name,” asked Trav.
“Risscith.”
“Risscith, I’m sorry for being a dick earlier. You were very brave. I was just disoriented and I forgot you weren’t Kin.”
After baring bloody teeth, Risscith said, “But I am Kin, my Lord. I have brethren on this world.” The lizardman deeply coughed. “Please make this quick. I do not wish to be interrogated by the Church, and I cannot go with you. Please tell my queen that I served her until the end.” The Kin was hiding his fear well, but he looked away and closed his eyes.
Trav nodded, even as he felt discomfort in his heart. For his friends, it’d been ten days, but for him, a hell of a lot had happened within only one day. He was having a tough time staying focused, but he didn’t have time to sit around, thinking about his shortcomings in the street. Trav cocked an arm back and put his spear right through Risscith’s heart, almost instantly killing the lizardman.
As he delivered the blow, something echoed in Trav’s mantle, and he felt an option he never had before. Narrowing his eyes, he held out his hand with his ring, the symbol of his mantle. “Bravery,” he said.
The air changed, and he felt heavier, then lighter. Something of mystical significance had just happened, something important, but Trav couldn’t figure out what it was. He frowned in frustration before taking off in one direction at a jog. It would be great if one day he could actually use his memories instead of being used by them.
“Listen,” he said, touching his temple with Hex. As soon as he did, his sense of hearing improved, helping him dodge the enemy Kin rampaging around Faith. From what he could see, they all wore identical yellow tabards emblazoned with a blue book. “This must be The Church of Self,” he whispered.
There were bodies everywhere in the street, both human and Kin, mostly human. The Faithful had killed a few of the Church members, but not many it seemed. Trav grimly dodged through narrow alleys to avoid detection. Most of the Church Kin he could see now were Dacith, going through houses, stealing, and dragging out screaming Faithful. Trav focused on sneaking through town, and even used magic to help him climb walls, finally taking to a rooftop near the center of town. As soon as he had the high vantage point, he had a better idea of what was happening and breathed, “Shit.”
To one side of the valley, coming from the direction of the road Narnaste had mentioned before but Trav had never seen, was an army clad in yellow tabards. There was at least a couple thousand of them, and they were marching directly toward Faith. Since Faith was already full of Church soldiers, Trav could only figure that he was looking at the real fighting force, or reinforcement, and the scouts or shock troops had already taken the town.
The opposite direction from the army was actually where Trav had walked out of the forest when he’d come to this place. Now the field in that direction was littered with the bodies of the Faithful, even children. A small group of Kin in yellow tabards stood in the center of the open area, hurling magic and weapons at any terrified Faithful they saw.
Trav began to despair, doubting his friends had escaped, but he remembered his connection with the valkyries. With a thought, he chose to sense where they all were, and realized they’d all escaped in the direction that the small group of Church fighters were slaughtering fleeing Kin. They were at least a few miles away now.
Now Trav knew where he ultimately needed to go, but he wondered if he should head in a different direction first. The problem was that the area all around the village had been cleared, and running through an open field would leave him exposed. It was ironic that the efforts the Faithful had made to make Faith more defensible had also made it much more dangerous to escape from.
Trav was still weighing his options as he studied the direction his valkyries had gone. He focused on the group of Church Kin killing noncombatants, and while the violence didn’t sit right with him, it was just Kin killing Kin. He touched his temple with Hex and whispered, “Sight,” to get a better look, and his breath caught.
The Kin in the middle of the group was Rakshasa. It wasn’t Kraachias, the monster that had killed Beth, but it was the same race, Rakshasa, the ruling class of the country of Kyvendi.
Hatred began to rise in Trav’s heart, and memories danced through his mind, feeding on his rage.
***
On what was one of the worst days of his life, Trav had witnessed Beth’s murder. It happened during an inspection of the slums by the local Kin lords, something that usually occurred twice a year or so after the creatures decided that production should go up. It was obvious they came through to sow fear, to make the slaves work harder, a pattern that likely wouldn’t have even been noticed without a few slaves like Trav who managed to live for a while.
This time had been different, though. The delegation of Kin had been larger and even more danger had been in the air. Surrounding guards had been on edge, nastier and even more brutal than usual.
Splitting up married or paired couples during inspections had actually been Trav’s idea a year earlier. He’d noticed that the monstrous Kin seemed to enjoy breaking apart families, or torturing loved ones in front of the slaves. To prevent this, now no families stood together whenever any Kin were around.
On top of this, the slaves had insisted that Trav hide just like the infirm or sick did during inspections. The Kin had to know the slaves did this, but they also knew it was only the ones that would die soon anyway. It seemed the monsters couldn’t believe that any slaves would willingly help others hide unless they were unhealthy. In general, this actually held true except for Trav. Whether out of gratitude or self-interest, none of the slaves had wanted Trav out in the open where some passing Kin noble could kill him on a whim.
Trav had watched the procession through the wooden slats of his hiding place beneath a shack. Two older slaves had joined him. Both men had run afoul of the guards before and the decent majority of the slave community that Trav had led were trying to protect them.
When Trav had seen the center of the procession, he’d spotted the biggest, meanest-looking Rakshasa he’d ever seen. This one looked sort of like a mix between a man and a tiger, but over seven feet tall, clad in armor, with spiked elbows. The Rakshasa had sported big wings too, much larger than any Trav had seen before, and most Rakshasa didn’t have wings to begin with.
Casual, random cruelty was on display again that day, like every other time there’d been a procession, but this time it had been even worse. The Rakshasa was giving some of the other Kin permission to kill, and even eat the slaves. All the slaves had been ordered out into the open before th
e procession made its way there, so the monsters had plenty of choices.
When Trav had seen this, he’d been eternally thankful that Beth had been hiding, too. The way she was positioned actually wasn’t entirely hiding like Trav was, she was standing in a hard-to-see spot. She hadn’t exactly been breaking the rules to be out in the open, but she’d likely be unseen.
But then everything had gone to hell, seemingly by random chance. One of the Kin in the procession, a larger Dacith than the others, had pointed at a child and asked its master something. Trav had felt a chill up his spine when he realized that he knew the boy. The child’s name had been Vekko, a young teen that Beth had been teaching basic first aid. He’d been a good kid, and the panic on his face at that moment had been obvious.
And then Beth, good-hearted, brave, impulsive Beth had jumped out, putting her arms around the boy, and paused for a heartbeat before yelling something at the Kin. The moment this had happened, Trav’s heart fell. He’d barely even registered the hands being placed on him as the two old men he was hiding with pushed him down.
When his wife had first moved, Trav had felt a flash of anger that she’d gone to help the boy, made even more intense by fear, but he’d quickly let it go. If the child in danger had been any other slave, or if Beth hadn’t been standing so close, he was sure she would have stayed still. But Vekko had been right in front of her, and obviously sentenced to death. She’d likely moved without thinking and then known she’d sealed her fate. Maybe she was still trying to save the boy, because she must have known she’d already doomed herself.
Beth had just showed defiance. Any evidence of spirit in the slaves was usually dealt with harshly, but while a Kin noble was visiting, much less a Rakshasa, the guards were even more brutal.
What happened next would live on in Trav’s nightmares forever. One of the guards, a toad-thing, moved forward with a hiss, but the Rakshasa had put a hand on its shoulder, then stepped forward himself.
The beast had grinned, and casually used a claw to cut off Beth’s clothing. As the rags had fallen to the ground, she’d just stood there, not trying to cover herself. All the slaves learned early not to show any modesty, or they might be abused even worse by the Kin. The Kin seemed to enjoy shaming them.
Asgard Awakening 2 Page 5