The Hidden Illusionist

by Deck Davis

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Ethan

  “Your brother is no more,” said the mage, her skin lit by the fire engulfing the town, ash drifting from the air and landing in her black curls.

  Ethan held Artifax tight in his grip, the weight of the sword pressing his muscles. He circled around her, watching for the flick of her wrist that would indicate a spell. Watch the man, not the sword, Reck had told him, but that applied to swordsmen, not mages.

  How had it come to this? Wolfpine in flames and fire acolytes spreading their flames of death everywhere, with families burning in their homes and others frozen in fear and staring at the sky above, which blazed orange despite that it was night.

  Glen, Zewn and Lillian were gone, and he didn’t know where. They’d taken a route through the Leech Mounds to get to Wolfpine. It was dangerous, but it was the only way to lose the guild recruits. When the gates of Wolfpine had loomed close, Fire acolytes had charged them, separating them.

  Flame arrows shot toward them, and Ethan dove behind a cart as they danced past, trails of fire spreading over anything they touched. One volley followed the next, seeming endless. Screams erupted beyond him, but he couldn’t tell who they came from.

  Finally, the arrows stopped. When he emerged, everyone was gone; Lillian, Zewn, Yart, Glen, the acolytes.

  “Find Zaemira,” Artifax told him, his hilt gem glowing for the first time in hours.

  Ethan battled his way through the terror-stricken streets. Recruits, separated into packs now, ambushed him, but fury raged hot in his veins, and Artifax yearned for blood.

  When he struck with the sword, his form was perfect, completely beyond what Reck’s training had taught him. The sword brought to him a talent that was not his own, one earned from every man who had held the blade before him, spanning back through generations of swordsmen.

  He cleaved through black chainmail, stabbed deep into ribcages, lopped arms off at their shoulders, destroyed legs, dismembered hands, ears, feet. Always the sword drew him on, forward, Ethan. Forward. She awaits.

  He caught sight of himself in the window of a blacksmith shop. Flames flickered in the glass, casting orange light on his reflection, and he saw what he was now; a killer, caked in blood and soot and chunks of flesh, wearing an insane expression that couldn’t have been his own.

  And then he saw her. In the street ahead, where the Wolfpine justice halls waited, she was standing on the uppermost roof. It was the mage, her black robe melding into the night, and sparks of purple mana fizzing and crashing around her.

  He sprinted into the justice halls and found his way up the stairs, passing the cells he and Dantis had once slept it. He climbed through the same window they had used in their escape attempt, crossed the same ledge, until he found her.

  Here, on this sloping roof, he faced her. The mage. The woman Artifax ached to kill. A gust of wind took her robe, flapping it open, and on the inside, he saw an eye with a blood tear in the corner.

  “Your brother is no more,” she repeated.

  “Stop saying that.”

  “Don’t fight, Ethan. You will understand soon.”

  “Did you hurt him? Where is he? Wait – are you an acolyte?”

  She laughed. “Oh, my child, if only you knew.”

  She had hurt Dantis. He was sure of it. He wouldn’t let her live if she’d touched him. He charged at her, Artifax raised, ash and smoke clogging his throat.

  A shape crashed into him, knocking him onto his back. He rolled down the roof, the slates jutting into his back with each turn, unable to stop himself heading to the edge. Just as he was about to plummet over the side, he hit the edge of hole where he’d once fallen through. He grabbed the sides, stopping himself.

  The shape was a man. No, not a man. It looked like one, but he crawled on all fours, and his skin was pale and covered in scratches. His eyes were white and endless, like a creature that had lived in darkness and wasn’t used to the glow of the flames in the town around them.

  “Turnling?” said Zaemira. She edged forward. “What are you doing here?”

  The turnling pointed at the sky, where a figure flew in the darkness of night, looping beneath the growing orange light. It was a spirit of some sort; shaped like a man, but thirty feet in length, tapered where his feet should be. Stars twinkled from him, and rings of light lashed around him; red, green, purple, yellow.

  “Ethan,” said Zaemira, worry edged in her voice. “Think carefully now. What I am going to say will sound strange.”

  He didn’t give her chance to speak. He charged at her, Artifax’s blade pointed out. The turning lurched at him but he leapt over it, running until he met with Zaemira.

  She held her hand out, casting a shield of mana in front of him. “Wait, Ethan. Do you see the sky? Do you know what comes? I am the only thing holding it back. If I die before your brother…”

  “Where’s Dantis?”

  He held Artifax in front of him, the blade pointed out. If needed to, just one lurch forward would kill her. But he couldn’t do that yet, not without knowing where Dantis was.

  “Your brother is-”

  A figure leapt onto Zaemira’s back, sending her sprawling forward, where she impaled herself on Artifax. The sword’s hilt gem glowed red as it stabbed through her chest, crunching her bones and severing her flesh.

  Her eyes widened. She stared beyond Ethan now, blood trickling from her lips. She made no move to hurt him; no spells were cast, no powers summoned. She fell on her back, blood leaking from her neck and her stomach, and she choked out her last breath.

  The figure behind her stood up. It was Dullzewn, his blue tribal marks meeting with bloodstains on his face.

  “Are you okay?” he said.

  Ethan couldn’t answer. The Turnling eyed him warily, but he didn’t pay attention. Instead, the sky drew his stare.

  “Gods. This is the end.”

  Artifax clattered from his grip and clanged onto the roof. Ethan watched the sky, and he sank to his knees.

  A face emerged in the sky, a giant in the orange clouds. A snarling face, more monstrous than he thought possible. A rage-filled sky beast that sent waves of fear and dread flooding down like water from a storm. He’d never believed in gods, but now that he saw one, he knew it signaled the end.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Dantis

  He knew that face; the orange leviathan in the sky, the cauldron of ancient power rumbling through the clouds. Tula had shown it to him. Reaching deep inside himself, he plucked the memory from his soul and lived it, letting the images drench him. This was Tula’s memory, but it was also his now.

  It lashed through his mind; a burning orange face pressing through the cloud centuries ago, looking over the vibrant city of Yutula-na. Tula, beloved lord of his settlement, facing their nemesis, doing the only thing he could to turn it away.

  He shook the memory free, feeling it drift into the spectral stream that coursed through him. Time and knowledge and histories and secrets bubbled in him, running into rivulets of mana. His own power scared him, but at the same time, it was his, it always had been, it always would be. As Tula he’d turned back one cataclysm, as Dantis he would face another.

  His brother kneeled on the roof, staring into the burning abyss of the sky. Blood covered his skin, and flesh and skin stuck in his hair. A feeling burned inside Dantis, the overwhelming urge to hug his brother.

  He held himself back. Parent killer. Tula. Vupyr. He’s not your brother.

  Then, he saw the body next to him, and celestial blood pounded inside him. It was Zaemira. Blood gushed from her stomach and dripped onto the roof tiles, cutting a channel down the slates and into the hole where once, in his old body, he’d fallen into the auction house, where this had begun.

  No. She can’t be dead.

  Once, he would have danced at the sight of her bloodied corpse; back when she captured him, and before he knew why she had done it. Now, it brought him sorrow. It sent galaxies of anguish throug
h him, the anguish of all of the long-gone people of Yutula-na who had seen this happen before, and through him, would see it yet again.

  The sky rumbled. The orange face pressed further toward the Fire isles, until its ghostly shoulders tore through the clouds. Not long now.

  Oh Zaemira. If only you’d told me.

  But no. Tula forbade her. Dantis could remember himself telling her why it must be so. It was Tula’s command, but it was his as well.

  “Ethan,” he said. He tried to make his voice human, but it was impossible. It sounded like words spoken through water.

  Ethan turned. When he looked at him, Dantis saw a wreck of a man. A warrior coated in blood, his sanity rapidly leaving at the onset of the beast in the sky, something he could never comprehend.

  “Ethan,” repeated Dantis. How would he have phrased this in his old body? What words would convince Ethan of who he was? “It’s me, you dope.” Did that sound right?

  Ethan eyed his sword on the roof but didn’t move to get it. Dantis swirled toward him, careful not to get too close.

  “It’s me,” he repeated.

  “Dantis? But wha-”

  The sky rumbled again. Now, the Nevergod’s back emerged through the plume of a cloud, with long, orange arms at his sides, his hands still hidden.

  It wouldn’t take long for his form to arrive now. He couldn’t wait for Ethan to understand. He breathed out on him, casting his cosmic mist until it coated Ethan and snaked deep inside him, breathing understanding into a brain that had already seen too much, one that otherwise couldn’t have comprehended what it saw.

  Dantis could hear the turnings of Ethan’s brain now. He could hear everything; the beating of his brother’s heart, the stirrings of his gut. Casting his senses further, he heard children scream as fire tore through their homes, recruits and acolytes shouting orders to each other as hunted townsfolk.

  They’re the victims; these well-meaning people caught up in the games of gods.

  He heard the cosmic mist hiss as it took hold in Ethan’s brain. His brother’s brain cells multiplied with the new information stored in them. Now, Ethan knew what Dantis was.

  But he had held something back. Something he couldn’t tell him.

  Parent killer. Tula. Vupyr.

  “So it’s you, but something else?” said Ethan, stumbling under the weight of what Dantis had shown him.

  Parent killer. Tula. Vupyr.

  I have to tell him. That night, years ago, had plagued their lives; it had wrenched them from their home, it had forced them onto the streets. Everything that had happened, everything that would happen, all found its root on that night when Dantis’s true nature overtook him.

  He couldn’t deny his brother the truth. He couldn’t take back what had happened, but he could at least show him the truth of it.

  “It was me,” he said. “I killed our parents.”

  Centuries of knowledge and countless beings of Yutula-na inside him, and that was the only way he could phrase it.

  “What? Don’t talk stupid. Whatever this is, we can get you out of it. There must be a mage or a…”

  No good. He still doesn’t understand. Knowing what this would mean, and feeling his heart, which still beat somewhere inside his spectral form, wrench free, he cast another cosmic mist toward his brother. This one was dark, oil-black, cut with the crimson of blood.

  Ethan breathed it in. His eyed widened. His hands clenched, and then shook, and he staggered back, narrowly stopping himself falling into the hole in the roof.

  “No. No way. You can’t have, Dantis, you can’t…”

  Below the roof, Brotherhood of Fire acolytes surrounded the justice halls. Some held bows nocked with flame arrows, others gripped staffs with fire drifting from the scepters. Acolytes was one name for them, but Dantis knew another. One used eons ago, after Tula’s sacrifice, after man came to the Fire Isles and settled in a land ravaged by Cataclysm. They were Heralds. Heralds of Infirna, the fire nevergod, here to welcome their master.

  Their master, crawling from his heavenly crypt, was almost wholly through the clouds now. Dozens of crater-sized suns exploded on his sky, and thunder brewed around his torso. His eyes searched the isles, his mouth opened, and boiling drops of saliva fell from his lips, scorching the ground.

  “I’m sorry, Ethan,” Dantis said.

  He waited for the bile to spew from his brother’s lips, for the fury that was sure to erupt. He opened himself to the hate, knowing he deserved it.

  But it didn’t come.

  Ethan approached him. Wary steps at first, then with more confidence, until Dantis had to back away. Ethan spread his arms out, as if for a hug.

  “I can’t touch you,” said Dantis. “You’ll die.”

  “What I saw…that…that wasn’t you. Not the real you. This thing, whatever it is, isn’t Dantis Ashwood.”

  “It’s what I was supposed to become. I destroyed everything, Ethan. Our parents – your parents…I”

  “Don’t blame yourself. That wasn’t you.”

  The nevergod roared now. Quickly, Dantis wrapped his spectral form around Ethan, without touching him. As the roar thudded into the town, buildings crumbled, and people put their hands to their heads. Some people’s skulls burst, while others merely cracked.

  He unwrapped from his brother. “The sword,” he said. “Get it.”

  Ethan picked up Artifax. “I forgive you,” he said. “I forgive the you that’s still…you. Because whatever killed our parents, it wasn’t the brother I know.”

  “The sword,” said Dantis. He couldn’t acknowledge his brother’s forgiveness; it was all he could do to shut it out. Even now, with all this knowledge and this power, his brother’s words would puncture him.

  Dantis showed him Artifax. “What do you need?”

  “You have to kill me with it.”

  He backed away. “What?”

  “It’s wrought from the metals underneath Yutula-na. You have to use it on me.”

  Infirna roared again. A tavern blew up. Walls rushed down, gunpowder barrels boomed. Chaos reigned on the streets. Even the acolytes fell, the skulls squashed by the terrible shouts of their master.

  “I can’t kill you.”

  “There’s no time, Ethan. It’s the only way to stop this. Kill me with it, and you’ll release a time void. Nothing else will turn them away.”

  “I won’t do it. There has to be another way.”

  “There is,” said Dantis, knowing deep inside that Ethan couldn’t do it. After all, who could? Could anyone kill their own brother?

  But there was another way.

  Dantis rushed forward, impaling himself on the outstretched sword. It punctured deep into him, the ancient metal cutting through soul, galaxy, stars. A chasm spread over his body, burning, shining light that tore him apart.

  His soul leaked out of him. Not just his soul; Dantis’s, Tula’s, every ancient inhabitant of the forgotten stone city. Together, they blended into twisting tendrils and spread over the sky, becoming shadows, transforming into a time void that covered the Fire Isles.

  As his consciousness melded into the collective, he wrenched a tiny part of his old one free. As Dantis, he looked down on his brother. He wept as the void thickened and the last of his consciousness left him.

  Infirna rushed down from the heavens, crashing into the void, before dissolving into mist.

  End of Volume 1