City of Delusions (The Dying World Book 2)

by John Triptych

  Seeing the flying dagger coming straight for him, Zeren held out his left hand, diverting the blade’s trajectory and sent it whizzing past him. There were still two more guards hiding underneath the second wagon, but he figured that Ylira and the boy could probably handle them, or at least keep them distracted while he dealt with the Magus. Drawing his basket-hilted broadsword from its scabbard, Zeren used his mindforce to leap up into the air, closing the distance between him and his opponent in a matter of seconds.

  Myvo was momentarily surprised when Zeren used his own Vis to deflect his thrown dagger. So the brigand had the mindforce as well. Could he even be a Magus too? His eyes grew even wider when the bandit flew up twenty feet in the air and jumped straight at him. Myvo used his own mindforce to slide backwards, and Zeren’s strike narrowly missed him as the brigand’s blade slashed through the empty air where he had once been. Noticing a mausoleum to his right, Myvo used his Vis to leap backwards onto its flat stone rooftop.

  Zeren noticed a cracked tombstone beside him. With a flick of his left hand, his mindforce levitated a half-sized chunk of it and hurled it against the Magus, who stood on top of the burial vault. Myvo held up his own hand to stop the stone slab from hitting him as both men used their Vis in a mental tug of war while the piece of rock continued spinning in the air. For a long minute, the stone moved a few inches back and forth, neither opponent gaining the upper hand.

  One of the guards hiding behind the wagon noticed that Zeren had his back turned towards him. Clutching his bone sword, the man ran out from underneath the left side of the wagon and came up behind the man they called Grimgrin. The guard swung the bone sword on a downward arc, hoping to cleave through the notorious brigand’s exposed neck.

  Zeren sensed the man coming up from behind him and he weaved sideways, tilting his body away from the blow and diverting the mental current he had on the floating tombstone above him. In a split second, the slab reversed course and slammed down on top of the guard’s head, smashing his skull in before he went down. Zeren had felt the guard’s attack, and also raised his own sword to cover his exposed neck at the same time, and the glancing blow had chipped away most of the embedded obsidian shards from the edge of the guard’s bone sword when it connected.

  Myvo knew his side was losing, and he had to do something quickly. The Magus used his Vis to leap up into the air, hoping to come down on his opponent and strike before he could deal with it. Zeren was faster as he also leapt up in the air, and both men parried each other’s blows simultaneously before dropping back down to earth.

  The moment he landed, Zeren backed up a bit so that he had a little distance. As both men circled each other, he knew that the armor the Magus wore would pretty much shield him against any attacks on his chest and upper arms. Zeren needed to strike at the unarmored parts. He noticed that the Magus always had his sword arm thrust out in an aggressive posture, and he wasn’t wearing any protective gauntlets. That was one. Zeren could also see that the man’s breeches were unarmored and he wore simple leather shoes. That was two. His bare head was obviously the third vulnerability, but the Magus would be on guard against an obvious attack there. Zeren knew he needed to wait for the right instant.

  “I shall have the honor of taking your head as a trophy!” Myvo yelled as he thrust his sword forward, aiming the point of the blade at Zeren’s exposed throat.

  Now. Zeren quickly ducked down and used just enough mindforce to slide forward half a foot. He then thrust the point of his blade to strike at the Magus’s exposed sword hand. The steel tip of his blade tore through Myvo’s middle fingers and mangled it. The Magus screamed in pain as his sword came loose and fell onto the dusty ground. Just as Zeren swung his own sword for a killing blow, Myvo used his Vis to strike up a cloud of dust to momentarily blind him. Zeren cursed as he took a few steps back while rubbing the grime away from his irritated eyes.

  Grimacing in pain, Myvo hefted the fallen sword with his other hand. Zeren ran forward and their blades clashed. With the advantage now his, Zeren continued to rain multiple blows on his opponent, while all that Myvo could do was to stagger backwards as he parried each attack with his weaker arm, his defenses steadily declining as time went on. The Magus knew he was losing, but there wasn’t much he could do.

  With a courage he never knew he had, Thufur the freight-master leapt up from the top of the wagon and landed on Zeren’s back. He used his husky body to pin the brigand down onto the ground. Zeren was caught totally off balance, and now the fat, smelly slave-driver was on top of him, trying to pry away the sword from his hand. Myvo was hurting, but he tightened his grip on his sword as he ran up to them, before thrusting the point of the blade at the brigand’s legs.

  Zeren’s arms were pinned down underneath the freight-master's knees. He saw the Magus coming over to him and he pushed his legs up in the air at the last minute, the point of his opponent’s sword narrowly missing his right shin. Zeren locked his feet around Thufur’s broad neck and twisted, throwing the big man off of him before rolling away. Myvo wasn’t used to fighting with his other arm, so he merely kept thrusting at the wheeling brigand on the ground, hoping to skewer his torso. Zeren rolled closer to the standing Magus as Myvo swung the sword in a pendulum like motion with the aim of cutting across his arms, but Zeren used the metal vambraces on his forearms to parry the swing.

  “Die already!” Myvo screamed as his boot came down and held the side of Zeren’s head on the ground. Zeren bent his right knee and reached down, pulling out the bone dagger from the side of his boot. Just before the Magus brought his sword down onto his face, Zeren’s dagger plunged into the side of his knee. Myvo cried out as he fell over to his side. Thufur had grabbed hold of Zeren’s sword and walked slowly towards him.

  Wiping away the grit from the side of his face, Zeren stood up and stared blankly at the freight-master who was coming at him with his own blade. “You smell worse than the sewer, o fat one,” he said.

  Thufur roared as he swung the sword. Zeren sidestepped the other man’s amateurish attack, turned, and kicked him in the buttocks as the freight-master lurched past him. Thufur fell forward, face down onto the ground, the sword clattering beside him.

  The pain of his injuries was pure agony, but Myvo wasn’t giving up. He got to his knees and gathered up his remaining Vis, hurling an invisible wave of force towards the brigand, with the aim of crushing his enemy against the side of the wagon. Zeren held his hand up and redirected the power away from him, sending the cascading mental vortex into a set of nearby tombs, cracking their stone foundations. Myvo had used up the last of his Vis, and now he was vulnerable.

  “It seems you will have to find another profession in the afterlife, Magus,” Zeren said softly as he gestured with his right hand, creating an unseen vise around Myvo’s head. The Magus screamed in pain as the sides of his skull caved in. The body fell back onto the ground, convulsing for a few seconds before it became still.

  By this time Thufur had gotten up once more, and picked up the sword again. The freight-master was about to advance at Zeren for another try when his eyes bulged. A split second later, the point of a spear came out from the back of his mouth before he fell again for a second instance, never to get up anymore. Standing behind the freight-master's still warm remains was a woman with swarthy skin and braided hair. She wore a hard leather breastplate, metal bracers and knee-high boots.

  “It is about time you finally revealed yourself, Ylira,” Zeren said as he walked over to where she was.

  Ylira took his sword from the ground and gave it back to him. “Apologies, but my hands were full with all those people running about the necropolis. I needed to make sure all the guards had joined their gods.”

  Zeren sheathed his sword and looked behind her. The body of the third guard was beside the wagon. “Did you kill the slaves as well?”

  She flashed him an angry look. “You know I would never do that.”

  Zeren coughed. He realized he had inadvertently insulted her
. “Apologies. Where is Inchel?”

  Ylira turned towards him in surprise. “I thought he was with you?”

  After a few minutes of frantic searching, they found him. Inchel’s body lay slumped by an ornate tombstone, the handle of a bone dagger sticking out from his back. The guard that he had killed was lying by his feet. Zeren looked away and shook his head in disappointment. The boy had been reckless, but he had high hopes for him. Inchel was one of the many orphans who begged on the streets and was desperate to live a better life by any means possible. Zeren hoped that the youth would at least find a semblance of peace now.

  Ylira arranged the boy’s body in a more peaceful position on the slab and retrieved the dagger. “What a pity. He should have made sure that his opponents were dead before turning his back on them. I told him this many times.”

  Zeren was disappointed, but he had lost others before. “Come, let us see what are in those wagons.”

  The night became still again. Ylira had assured him that the slaves would not raise any alarms since their tongues had been cut off. They were also fed on a steady diet of spikeshrooms which warped their minds and made them docile and forgetful. Zeren had always wondered why his partner took great pains to kill any slave-master they encountered, but he knew enough about her never to probe any deeper about her past. Ylira was dependable and a good thief, and that was what mattered to him. Their partnership would sometimes veer off into lovemaking when there weren’t other worthy partners to be had, but in the end it was all just professional, never personal.

  It was Ylira who got to the rear of the second wagon first. The lanterns hanging on the sides of the carts had begun to dim, but there was still enough light to make out the details when she pulled the leather tarp off and froze.

  “What is it?” Zeren asked while coming up behind her. When he looked over her shoulder, he couldn’t help but let out a surprised gasp.

  Chapter 2

  Every time he was asleep the dreams would come. He could see the shifting sands of the wastes all around him. The relentless sun burned his skin and he could feel the grains of sand in between his bare toes. The boy continued to dream about the long trek across the dunes, hues of orange and vermilion dust all around him. The visions would sometimes segue into a black corridor of darkened glass, every inch of the walls contained carved glyphs, telling of stories dating back to the beginning of time. It was when he tried to make out the faces of his companions that everything became opaque and unknowing, as if the gods were trying to prevent him from recognizing whom he could trust. The most prominent form that stood out was a woman with fiery red hair who would beckon out to him, as if trying to tell him something. But when he would gaze into her face all he could see was a dark emptiness, as if the gods had scratched out her familiar visage with an etching stick made of night. The voices he heard all around him were like whispers of something that he could not hear because of the howling winds. The chimeras would go on without interruption until his mind returned to the land of the living.

  “Efrin, wake up,” a soft, soothing voice said to him.

  It was clearly a woman’s voice. A welcome respite from the disturbing visions of his dreamstate. “Come on, Efrin. You must awaken.”

  The young boy blinked a few times and rubbed his eyes open. His room was spacious, with white stone walls and ornate furniture of bone and leather. The stone bed that he was lying in was comfortable due to the smooth, furred bedding. The yellow rays of the morning sun slanted through the narrow windows. Standing over him was a smiling woman wearing a peplos, a flowing, sleeveless dress. Her face was smooth and still showed the faint traces of youth, her lengthy brown hair reaching down past her shoulders.

  The woman placed a warm hand on his cheek. “You must get up now, Efrin, the teller has arrived and awaits your presence in the courtyard. You mother will be cross if she sees you still sleeping about like this.”

  Efrin sighed as he sat up. He remembered just how important it was to obey his elders. “I am sorry, it is hard to remember.”

  She sat down beside him and rubbed his bare shoulder. “You still remember me, I hope.”

  The boy made a faint smile. “You are Kardra, that I still remember.”

  Kardra stood up and bowed slightly. She was quite youthful looking, still in her late teens. “Yes, I am but your humble servant girl, tasked to awaken you and prepare you for today’s lessons.” She turned and pointed to a nearby stone table that contained a ceramic washbowl. “Now, you must cleanse yourself and have your breakfast. Time is of the essence.”

  Efrin grunted as he cast the blanket aside and stood up. Groggily he went over to the water basin and splashed some of the liquid onto his face, chest and underarms before slowly making his way towards the table in the center of the room.

  Kardra grabbed the grey tunic that had been draped on a nearby clothes stand and walked over to him. “Here, let me help you put this on. You cannot go around the manse naked, you know.”

  Efrin placed his hands up as the servant girl donned the garment over his body. He was still somewhat sleepy, the constant dreams about an endless land of dust still weighing heavily on his mind. The boy sat down on the stone chair and drank a few sips of water from a cup. His memories were hazy and he was finding it constantly hard to remember anything.

  Kardra set out a bowl of salad in front of him, the dark green leaves of the otus plant had been chopped thoroughly so he didn’t need a knife. “Are you having bad dreams again?”

  The boy nodded as he placed a few bits of the salad into his mouth and started chewing. The soft crunch of the leaves, combined with the sweet fruit dressing made it somewhat tasty. “I keep dreaming about being on a journey. We would be traveling across endless dunes made of sand.”

  Kardra sat on the empty chair beside him. “You were not alone?”

  Efrin shook his head. “No, there were a few others with me. In one instance I remembered a man carrying me while crossing a desert at eventide, for I was too exhausted to walk. Then another time I traveled as part of a small group. There was a woman with me and she had red hair.”

  Kardra leaned closer to him. She seemed genuinely interested in hearing his stories, unlike the others in this place. He therefore asked his mother if Kardra could be his personal servant, and the matriarch agreed. “Could you make out their faces at all?”

  Efrin looked down. “No. Every time I would stare into their faces all I could see was a gaping black void, it was as if they did not want to reveal their true forms to prevent me from recognizing them, or perhaps…”

  “Perhaps what?”

  The boy looked up at her. There was disappointment in his eyes. “Perhaps someone else does not want me to remember them? Maybe it is my mother’s doing.”

  Kardra placed a reassuring hand on his skinny forearm. “Your mother would not do that. Matriarch Cirine is a kind woman, and she loves you very much.”

  “But she is a Striga, is she not? I do know that Strigas can enter your mind,” Efrin said. A Striga was a female user of Vis, and could affect the mind of others.

  Kardra smiled and shook her head. “Why would your own mother do that? She only wants the best for you, that is why she hired the renowned teller Isryk to help you with your lessons. Isryk is the most expensive in the city, and your mother has lavished you with everything that you could ever want. Your recent widdendreams are but jumbled phantasms that your mind created due to the horrible experience of being lost. You still recall how we found you, yes?”

  Efrin nodded. “The Watchers said they found me outside of the city walls, out in the wastes.”

  “Yes,” Kardra said. “A few moons ago you were kidnapped by a group of marauders. Your mother, your uncle, and his men searched frantically for you. We were all so worried. I remember your mother would wail with grief for many nights. Your mother’s pleadings for your safe return even got the attention of the Grand Magus, and a war party of Magi set out to find you. Your current nightmares are from
that experience. Lock it away in your mind, for all those bad memories shall come to pass.”

  “But I do not remember being forcibly taken by anyone,” the boy said. “The ones in my dreams were not my enemies. I actually felt like they cared for me.”

  Kardra sighed. “As I have said, your mind has been confused and created its own tale in order to overcome what had happened to you. It is best you try not to remember the past any more. You are safe now, and you shall have a glorious life ahead of you, for you are the heir to this house. When your mother gets too old, she will hand the reins of power to you, and you must be ready.”