by Allen Snell
Garen hated her for assuming the dilemma didn’t eat him up inside. He’d agonized over it far too long to shrug off a response. “I believe we have to learn our own boundaries.”
“Then you’re an idiot,” Aethis sneered. “And you support the monsters that are shoveling corpses into the forges of this city as we speak.”
“Still less than the corpses around us.”
Aethis tucked her chin and gave another infuriated snicker. “Good, defend the men who plucked me from the streets. It will make it easier to give up on you.”
Garen’s expression changed from cold fury to confusion. He didn’t have time to prod further. She pulled two daggers concealed against her thigh and ran toward him. The patches of scales along her neck spread. Before she reached him, every bit of gold skin along her face, arms, and chest was plated in it.
She continued to part the glass as she ran. Garen didn’t see any other magical advantages at work. He leaned into a stop thrust, extending his blade to keep her out of striking distance. She showed no caution. Just before she would have impaled herself, she rolled forward under his blade. The move was suicidal. Garen took the opening. He cleaved the katana down onto her back mid-tumble. The sword recoiled as though he’d struck a pole. The scales weren’t a tougher hide. They were solid as steel.
Garen staggered back, but not quickly enough. A dagger sliced into his calf. Garen howled in pain. He spun his blade down to parry. She gave him no rest. The exchange of blows carried on as blood poured from his leg. Garen was forced to step back and put weight on it, but no agony met him.
I’ll numb it. Don’t let her do that again. Kallista spoke over the clangs of steel.
Garen kept her at a better distance, but couldn’t commit to any attacks. If she could parry him with one hand, the other would be his death. Meanwhile, her strikes were nothing short of reckless, aided by Garen’s reluctance to try landing another cut on her. It was crippling enough that he couldn’t trust magic. Now, his sword was a liability as well.
He’d found one kind of magic she couldn’t outright reject. He would have to make use of his surroundings if natural elements were his only resource. The forum itself was comprised of a massive slab of stone. Since it was all one piece, he couldn’t shake it as simply as pulsing the dirt. But with enough depth, he could force ripples through the stone like dropping a rock onto calm water. The shifting ground took one of Aethis’ legs out from under her. The surprise brought her down hard, turning one of her ankles.
Garen didn’t try to seize the opportunity. He needed the breather. Between the speed of her attacks and the amount of blood he’d lost, he was panting. He knew that tricks like those wouldn’t actually stop her. He had to understand the metal scales. This was different than traditional armor, which had folds and uncovered areas. He wondered if she was truly invincible like this, the reason for her confident teasing all along.
She was back to her feet and just as aggressive. Garen kept her guessing with miniscule ripples in the ground. It still took exceptionally fast pivots to keep up with her blades. With this much effort going into defensive parries, there was no chance he’d get another testing glance in with his katana.
Thankfully, he had more than stone at his disposal. Shards of glass lay spread across the forum. Glass felt brittle and stubborn to shape, at least without heating it immensely. That wasn’t a trick he had time for. He could, however, fling it like anything else that came from the ground.
Garen chose a thick shard in view and brought it spinning toward them. He let Aethis lock blades with him just long enough to turn her stance. The glass shattered against her back. It was not the sound of impact he’d hoped for. She let out a shrill howl and released blades, stepping back slowly. Aethis touched a hand to the back of her head and pulled a small piece of glass covered in red from her hair of vines.
Garen realized she did have one weakness, a place the scales didn’t protect her. Vines fell to the ground from the outside in. More scales spread across her head. She had one weakness, and he missed it. Now, her shiny, bald head was plated, too.
The only other way he could think to stop her would be sheer, crushing force. A katana was far from ideal to bludgeon with, least of all while she was bouncing from one stab to the next. Garen took another survey of the forum. There were plenty of heavy columns and statues up the stairs around them, but he couldn’t exactly drop one on someone this fast. That was assuming he even had the depth for it. It was getting hard to tell how dry his well ran.
The obvious thought finally came to him. He could run. Not easily. She could stop him from light-shifting. But he was fairly confident in his own athleticism.
You don’t want me to remind you how ugly that could get.
He looked down at his pant leg. The grey fabric was coated in a dark red that clung to his skin. He remembered that small, gentle steps were his friend. Before any other ideas surfaced, Aethis charged back at him. She didn’t even pretend to care about the threat of his sword this time. She was desperate to slip past his guard.
Garen had little recourse. Her daggers came within inches of his arms as he shifted his stance backward between blocks. The forward momentum let her lean more into the blows, all while weakening his. She finally met his katana at the guard, holding the blade in place. She switched grip on the other dagger and plunged it downward into Garen’s locked forearm.
He instinctively light-shifted backward. Aethis stopped him short, but he traveled a few feet, luckily without the dagger still in him. The blood and pain took its place. He felt Kallista’s touch again, numbing the sting. The light-headedness remained. “I don’t think it’ll matter,” Garen whispered to her. In absence of pain, hopelessness set in.
Stay on your feet. You still have the tools to defeat her.
Far overhead, Morgan continued to chase Drake. Another tower fell in the distance. Garen breathed heavily, grateful that Aethis was distracted by them, too.
White lines sparked into existence in front of Garen. They formed a pentagon etched into the air. Each element took its place along the points. It was an old, familiar lesson. Garen didn’t care. Armor-plated-maniac-with-daggers wasn’t one of the elements. She didn’t have an opposite.
She does, Kallista responded. Because she shields herself with the Gate of Choice. The symbols at the corners flickered from shapes into words, the names of the elements. Those elemental names flickered until Garen saw the true nature of the gates spelled out.
He knew about one of Choice’s opposites already. Just like fire and water, Compulsion was the obvious counter to Choice. But he wasn’t Morgan. He didn’t have the practice with the Gate of Compulsion or the depth to force Aethis to be something she wasn’t. The diagram reminded him that each element had two opposites. He felt idiotic for not realizing it sooner. He didn’t need Compulsion. The inflexible Truth could stand against all manner of personal choice.
And you can make her exactly what she is, Kallista said, not what she wants to be.
The image vanished. Garen saw Morgan’s flames sputter overhead. She fell farther behind Drake. Aethis stopped watching their pursuit and stepped toward Garen. Her gait was calmer now. She knew she had the upper hand, yet the disgust stayed evident in her eyes. Garen’s katana trembled from his weak grip now that she’d punctured his forearm. He could barely keep it steady. He let his right arm hang to his side and held the sword more confidently, albeit less skillfully, with his left.
Aethis lunged, once again baiting the parry by using both blades. It was Garen’s only defensive step that didn’t leave him impaled. She pushed against the middle of his blade until forcing it from his hand. The weapon clattered against the ground. She kicked it away.
Garen’s right arm had too little strength to grip a sword, but it wasn’t as helpless as Aethis assumed. The spell he wove was a gamble. He’d never tried to apply the Gate of Truth like this. He imagined her jaw as it should be. He swung his fist up into it. He felt skin, not scales, as her t
eeth knocked together.
She reeled back, inspecting Garen with wide eyes. Her skin was still covered in gold, and she ran the back of her hand along the scaly surface to confirm for herself. Garen smiled.
Aethis’ disgust boiled over. “Why? Why would you take joy in defending a city this broken?”
“Broken.” Garen let out an involuntary laugh. A memory surfaced in his mind. The faint plucking of strings accompanied it. “It was a beautiful lute. I thought it was my job to fix it. Then she said the dumbest thing. ‘Some things are meant to stay broken.’ And she started making a new one. Don’t tell her, but I finally get it.”
“You clearly don’t,” Aethis shouted back. “I’m the one making this city new.”
Garen shook his head. The motion was slow, but as lightheaded as he felt, it still dizzied him. “Cities don’t break, Aethis. People do. And we have to accept that brokenness in order to make it better.”
“You’re wrong. There is nothing about this city I can accept.” She spat red to the ground. She clutched her daggers tightly and ran at him again. Garen tapped into his dwindling depth and broke a rod of stone from the forum slab. The choice of weapon was well suited to defend against her, but he didn’t have much experience using it.
Garen tried to keep her at pole’s length. She easily sidestepped his forward strike. Her daggers came in fast. He blocked the first with the back half of his staff. He tried to lunge away from the second, but she cut a shallow slice into his hip. He felt every fiber of it.
Aethis pursued unguarded, still pretending she was invincible. Garen extended the rod into her stomach, knowing that beneath her disguise, she had the same softness as anyone. Belief took the form of a spell. Truth transformed that part of her. Her eyes bulged as she took the hit. She dropped both daggers. Aethis gripped the pole and ripped it from Garen’s hands, tossing it away. One of his legs didn’t handle the shifting weight like he needed. He lost his balance in the struggle.
Garen fell back onto a thin layer of glass. It cut through his trousers. Aethis retrieved a dagger and ran toward him. Garen’s bloody hands scraped against the ground to scramble away. The movement took him to the edge of the forum where the pieces of glass were largest. He raised a pane of it to stop her dagger from slicing into his shoulder. It succeeded, until she kicked straight through it and covered Garen in the shards.
He was out of options. He was bleeding to death against a stronger foe in every way. She was broken, her and everyone else. And while the revelation seemed important, he couldn’t exactly fix her. Not with the Gate of Persistence, at least. Garen grunted in frustration, a breath he knew could be his last. What was the point of learning how to restore things if they needed to stay broken?
Oh.
Aethis stood above him and stabbed down for his chest. Garen rolled out of the way through the piercing shards. Each tiny fragment stabbed into his forearms. He grabbed the first sliver of glass large enough to hold. Garen pictured what Aethis’ leg should look like and stabbed it into the slit of her dress. She bled.
Despite her wound, she swung her dagger down at Garen. The blade sunk into his shoulder. She pinned him to the ground with it, ignoring her own wound and the glass protruding from it. Aethis sunk her knee into his stomach to make sure he stayed put.
The bloodthirsty rage was all Garen could see in her eyes. There was no other trace of humanity. She didn’t even seem human, her bald head of golden scales backlit by the late afternoon sun. Garen struggled to breathe as Aethis’ knee pressed the air out of him.
“Don’t go silent on me now,” she shouted. “You’ve thrown away every attempt I gave you to see wisdom and help the people truly in need. Now, I want to hear the foolishness you’re dying for. Say it with your last breath.”
Garen tried coughing, but his lungs felt like they had a building pressed on them.
“I believe…some things are meant to stay broken,” Garen choked out. He looked to the scattered fragments of glass around them and back to the shard protruding from her thigh. “This window isn’t one of them.”
Aethis saw the swarm of shimmering pieces crawling toward her. The first floated gently through the air and attached to the shard in her leg. Another joined, this time passing through the golden scales and embedding deeper into her leg. She screamed as more slivers dug inward to resume their piece in the puzzle. She brought her fist down to smash the expanding pane, but Garen’s grip on the Gate of Persistence was stronger. He felt the broken purpose of every shard coming together. He answered the window’s desire to be whole again.
She screamed and rolled away from him. The pieces followed. The pane of glass now extended through both sides of her leg at an angle. She tried to stand, but the pain left her trembling. She fell to the increasing weight. The glass did not shatter. She cried out louder, and Garen turned away in guilt. He shouldn’t feel this way for someone who just tried to kill him. She was screaming like he’d never heard. It was obvious she was too broken to fix. And yet, it felt wrong to break her any further.
Karna always understood the other gates more than she understood me. Truth can heal many things that persistence cannot.
Garen saw Aethis smashing her palms against the sheet of glass that cut straight through her leg. It kept growing. She couldn’t stop it.
Garen rolled to his stomach and crawled to her, the pain and dizziness unavoidable no matter how he moved. She saw him approaching and tried to get away. Her legs could no longer touch the ground. She tried sliding herself away with her hands and failed.
Aethis screamed and tried snapping the sheet of glass by twisting her weight against it. It bowed but would not break. Tears ran down her face. The fusion of glass with her skin and bones was worse than he could have guessed. The howls of her agony dwarfed any pain he felt. He touched a hand to her shoulder. His blood smeared along her golden scales. She was human, and he could hear it in her pain more than ever before. She had chosen to be something else, but Truth would have the final word.
The scales he touched smoothed from a metallic plate to soft flesh. The gold receded behind it, leaving tanned skin in its place. The Gate of Truth revealed an Aethis unchanged by magic. The transformation spread down her leg, rejecting the unnatural melding of glass and restoring muscle and bone to their proper form. It swept across her face, removing the last trace of gold and scales from her. She was still bald, though an obvious tan-line ran along the crown of her head the where the vines had covered.
A new feature took Garen by surprise. She had a birthmark along her face. The skin was purple surrounding her left eye and over half her nose, lip, and cheek. It didn’t look diseased or unhealthy. Truth had restored the birthmark as part of her.
Her hands still bled. She wasn’t anything new. The pane of glass was no longer attached to her leg and came crashing down. She flinched as it shattered once more. She stared at him silently. Face tense, expressionless. Waiting.
Garen fell to his side and continued to catch his breath. She didn’t look away. Finally, he found the words. “I know what it’s like to stare at yourself and see a monster. But you don’t fix it by changing how they see you. You find people who can look past your brokenness.”
Her stare softened. She seemed vulnerable for the first time since they’d met. The words she formed felt real instead of rehearsed. “And you see…?” She left the word unspoken, waiting once more on him.
“No, I don’t know you. You made certain of that. But go find someone who does. They’re out there. Maybe let me die in peace.” Garen coughed again. “If you get far enough from me, you might not inherit this tired voice haunting your mind when I bleed out.”
Aethis slowly pulled herself to her feet.
A poor way to treat the person keeping you alive, Kallista said. Or should I stop accelerating the rate your body makes blood?
“Change of plans. Apparently not going to die,” Garen laughed with great discomfort. Aethis glared down at him in bewilderment.
“
But please,” Garen said, “leave this city. He’s not Therov. He’s Drake, and he’s my friend. Now, I need to go save him.” Garen tried to push up on his hands. Neither side, the one stabbed through the forearm nor the one bleeding from his shoulder, was able to support him.
He heard Aethis sigh. “None of this will matter. Your ‘friend’ is going to put a hole through your chest if you face him like this. But I don’t care to be in anyone’s debt, dead or alive. And…” she hesitated, “You have a knack for giving me reasons not to give up on you.”
Garen felt his skin crawl in a deeply terrifying way. The feeling lasted a matter of seconds. His wounds were red and swollen, but the skin had sealed shut. Best of all, she didn’t have to burn him senseless to do it.
“I hate using Compulsion to change someone else. But as you probably guessed, manipulating the body is something of an affinity for me. The Sanstric will forgive me this once.”
Garen struggled to stand, but once he was half way up, the process became manageable. He walked over to retrieve his katana. Even the pain seemed to be fading.
Don’t give her credit for that, too. Not having to keep up with your hemorrhaging frees me to help elsewhere.
Aethis hobbled away from him. Another building crashed in the distance. Garen called after her. “This won’t be easy. We could really use your help.”
She stepped up the stairs away from the forum without a glance back.
Chapter 35
Garen trudged his way toward the screams and collapsing towers. Each step pained him, probably half as much as it should thanks to Kallista’s help. It didn’t matter that he could barely raise his arms or put weight on his right leg. He wasn’t walking to a fight. He was bringing truth to a friend.
A four-story workshop ahead shook and began to crumble. A stone wall on the bottom floor exploded outward. Men and women ran out of the breach as fast as they could. A female voice shouted for them to get clear.