Embers of a Broken Throne

by Terry C. Simpson

  Ryne Shimmered to Rosival, reappearing ahead of the fleeing man. Rosival’s mouth gaped open, slits on the side of his neck beating rapidly, his eyes wide with terror. Ryne whipped out his sword, lopped off the Astocan’s head, and sheathed the weapon all in one motion. He spun from the man’s corpse before it thudded to the flagstones.

  With the death came a thrill he hadn’t realized he missed. Training and protecting Ancel had required him to hold back his nature. He let his lips curve into a morbid smile.

  “Now,” he shouted, voice carrying over yelled commands and the frantic commotion of the Astocans preparing to attack, “which one of you is next?”

  In the same instant, Ancel’s link disappeared. Ryne focused to be certain his ward was gone. A sense of relief and pride eased through him when he failed to sense Ancel’s presence.

  One by one, he regarded the Matii and the uniformed men. “I see you’re not as stupid as your leader was.” He nodded at Rosival’s corpse. “I gave this city back to you, but he threw it all away. You will cease your attacks on the army outside and open your gates to them. Only by becoming one people again can you survive what is to come.” Without waiting for a reply he opened a portal to the Sang Reaches and its Entosis.

  Chapter 20

  Ancel’s arms and shoulders burned from exertion. Weariness gnawed at him. He shifted his hands for a better grip on his swords, at the same time stretching fingers slick with sweat and blood. His blood. Bits of his clothing hung in tatters. The exposed areas throbbed with pain he fought to ignore. At least the wounds weren’t deep enough to be life threatening. Or so he hoped.

  His chest heaved as he inhaled long and slow and then let the breath out. The air was rancid with decay, his blood, and the stench of the animals clamoring to get at him and Irmina, but he could let none of that distract him. His one goal was to protect her. Taking a step back to the tree she rested against, he waited for the next attack.

  Well over a score of daggerpaws, wolves, and lapras loped back and forth at the edge of the clearing. More waited farther behind them. Their shadowy forms flitted among the surrounding forest’s dappled shadows. Ancel estimated there to be over a thousand animals, all in this one hollow. Growls, barking grunts, and yips abounded, almost as if each creature was anxious for a chance to prove itself better than the ones that had already slunk away in defeat.

  “How much longer,” Ancel said under his breath.

  “I’m trying,” Irmina answered, voice strained.

  He was tempted to glance back at her, but the last time he did so, six beasts leaped at the opportunity. It had been a close thing, resulting in most of his current wounds.

  “Can’t Charra offer more help?” Ancel squeezed the sword hilts tighter.

  The daggerpaw was still standing where they found him, bone hackles raised, and growling from time to time. Not once had he tried to intervene.

  “No. If he does, I’ll be rejected.”

  “Tell him I don’t know how long I can keep this up.”

  A pause followed before Irmina answered. “He says you must or else we die.”

  Ordinarily he would have swept the creatures away, destroyed them with a Forge, or sliced through them. However, either option would be considered a failure in whatever pact Charra made with the king of the Netherwood’s beasts. He was relegated to using his feet, fists, the butt of his sword, or the flat of the blade.

  Ancel gritted his teeth. He wished he could have spoken to Charra. Irmina described her communication as a series of images or impressions she could interpret to go along with the whines and grunts the daggerpaw made.

  “Then you need to hurry.” From the corner of his eye, Ancel took in the daggerpaw Irmina was attempting to tame. The beast was at least a head taller than Charra, fur glistening black. It stared at the woman, fangs bared, bone hackles standing on end.

  “Shut up and I will.”

  He made to reply, but the daggerpaw king growled. A bevy of animals attacked, all fur, and claw, and fang. He danced among them, taking no more than a few steps in any direction. The rule had been that he could use no Mater or draw blood, but it didn’t account for his manipulation of the various Styles and Stances.

  What he required most was speed and a deft touch. Waterweave and the bond with his longsword provided the latter at first. He dipped and flowed, absorbing attacks with circular motions of both arm and weapon in imitation of the essences after which the Stance was named. Time and again his sword snaked out, its blunt edge rapping on paw or leg before they touched him. Jaws that made their way past his defense received harder blows from the flat of his shortsword’s blade. Wolves, daggerpaws, and lapras fell with a yowl or a whimper to slink away into the forest.

  His speed increased as he added Voidwalk and Lightweave into the defense. Cushioned by air, he glided between blows, using the force given off by incoming swipes to tell him where to move. Sound played an integral part. A scuff here, a snarl there, the drip of an animal’s saliva, jaws snapping. They all sang a song he lost himself within.

  Time grew nonexistent. Sweat slicked his face, soaked his clothes, and what should have been the breath of cool, early spring air became cloying. The number of wounds mounted, for as fast as he was, he couldn’t prevent every gouge, swipe, or bite. The best he managed at times was to divert jaws before fangs locked onto him. Inexorably, his strength ebbed.

  However, instead of slowing to give his tired limbs a rest, he increased his speed, telling himself any fatigue he experienced was a figment of his imagination. Nothing could be allowed to interfere with Irmina’s task. Combining both all three Stances, he allowed himself to drift into the Eye, pain, exhaustion, and the heaviness of his limbs vanishing.

  The force from the sheer rapidity of his blows became such that his attackers were cast aside within an inch of touching him. To his own eyes, his arms and legs were blurs.

  Possessed by battle energy, he fought on, praying the animals continued to rush him. He knew the moment he paused would be the end. His body would refuse to respond. Sheer momentum was keeping him standing like a man clutching to a horse’s reins as it galloped.

  And then, the attacks stopped.

  His arms and legs kept moving of their own volition.

  A mournful howl echoed, drawing bumps across his skin.

  “It is done,” Irmina gasped.

  When his hands stopped, Ancel collapsed. Blue sky sprawled above him. The sun was dipping past its zenith.

  A shadow loomed, followed by a face. It took more than a few moments before it resolved into Irmina. Something wet and rough touched his cheek. A barking grunt followed. His mind registered Charra’s distinctive sound.

  “Charra says you need to mend.” Irmina’s voice was distant. “He says if you can focus just a little, the place is here, but only you can help us to enter it. He claims you have been to it before.”

  Ancel latched onto her words. One place came to mind. But how could he open it?

  “Let the Etchings guide you, Charra says.” Irmina was cradling his head in her lap.

  Summoning the last of his waning strength, Ancel allowed his mind to rove over the drawings on his flesh. When he found the correct one, he simply knew. He invoked its power. The world spun, and then grew black.

  Chapter 21

  The sun’s position in the sky, the forest around them, the smells, the flowers, the lake, and the mountain in the distance were all wrong. Irmina had no idea where Ancel had brought them. Even the air felt different. She eased Ancel onto the ground and stood.

  They were in a clearing, but trees this big never grew in any of Denestia’s forests. Not the ones she knew. The surrounding canopy was so thick it left much of the woods shrouded in darkness except for the occasional golden lance. Birds sang, and animals called. Creatures small and large rustled in the undergrowth.

  Without trying, she sensed power. It weighed on her, thick and heavy, cloying like heat on an especially arid day. She opened her Matersense and ga
ped.

  Essences flowed around her, into her, and throughout the woods in bands and swaths she hardly recognized. Familiar yet different from those she normally Forged. The power brought a torrent of memory. The night she stabbed Sakari repeated: Mater coiling around her, the strength of a thousand Forges, people from temples all across the world in one enormous working, Ancel wielding it all. It coursed through her in such copious amounts that she couldn’t help but to attempt a Forge.

  Nothing happened. In fact, she noticed that the voices inhabiting Mater did not clamor for her attention. It was as if they no longer existed.

  She glanced down at Ancel. The same forces flowed into him. Some caressed him, slipped within his Etchings. The tattoos glowed until she had to shy away. When the luminance subsided, and she looked once more, the numerous cuts, bruises, slices, and gouges were all gone. Numbed, she could only stare.

  Charra was sitting on his haunches to one side regarding his master. Her connection to the daggerpaw hadn’t been severed when they crossed into this place.

  “Where are we,” she asked, trying for a semblance of calm.

  The answer arrived in a series of images and impressions. They showed the creation of havens between the Planes of Existence and outside of time, each one located at different places around the world, but all leading here to the Entosis.

  “What is it?”

  A place created by the gods for the advent of the end. Sanctuary.

  A longer series of images followed. It replayed a long history of battles between Eztezians, gods, and netherlings. One of the Entosis’ entrances had been ruptured in the process. Some undefined time later, she saw Ryne as he called on the shade to influence a forest, thereby building the Netherwood. A combination of his power and that leaking from the doorway led to the abnormal creatures inhabiting the woods. Ryne set them to protect the opening.

  “How is it that Ancel was able to bring us here?”

  It is in his power to cross into this realm through one of the few entrances.

  She frowned. “How did you know it was there?”

  Feelings.

  “Whose feelings?”

  A picture bloomed of the animals Ancel fought.

  “So I’m guessing we can’t return until he’s able to bring us back. Do you know how long before he’s strong enough or before he awakes?”

  “I’m awake now,” Ancel muttered, voice etched with pain.

  Irmina started, but when she saw his face, pressure eased from her. His cheeks had regained some color.

  “I still need time to replenish my power.” Ancel sat up. After a moment, he cocked his head to one side, expression clouded. He twisted around until he was staring at Charra, eyes narrowed. “You have an aura … and how is it you’re speaking to me now?” A pause, and then, “Ah, I see. The link.”

  “What is it,” she asked.

  “Since we’re cut off from the outside world, the ones like him who could hear us are similarly separated.”

  “Like him?”

  “Tell her.”

  Charra growled, and Irmina got a sense of hesitancy.

  “If you don’t, I will. It’s past time that she knows.”

  This time, Charra’s growl was an earthquake in the daggerpaw’s chest. The usual words she could decipher from animal calls were lost within it. He rose to his full height, eyes shifting from Ancel to her. When their gazes locked, Irmina had a sense of something deep, bottomless. She swallowed. The sensation increased until she felt as she was being dragged underwater into fathomless depths. It conjured images of another time, of Sakari. Her fear increased.

  Images blossomed. Unlike the impressions from before, these were vivid. They lived.

  She floated in black nothingness. It stretched in every direction, an umbra that encompassed everything around her. Within it she could make out no form or features. Then came a rustle of sound. A clink. Metal of some sort. Her vision adjusted, and the movement grew visible. Within this deep, dank shadow, she could see plainly as if she were in sunlight.

  Nightmare creatures surrounded her by the thousands. Oily smoke wreathed them. Tentacles flickered out from each as they set about some task. Chitinous armor covered their chest and four arms. They had feet to match, all of the same substance. Tiny wriggling creatures darted around them.

  As she watched, a slit appeared in the umbra, exposing light beyond. Black strands and swirls swept in from the openings. Somehow, she knew each hole to be a portal, and the strands to be essences. Sela essences.

  The netherlings harvested the sela, directing the essence into bulbous, black, pear-shaped things hanging above them. It took a moment to realize it was some type of roof, and she was in a vast storage chamber. The hanging black pears dwarfed the netherlings in number, spanning beyond her vision.

  A clink of armor sounded next to her. Lips and chin trembling, fists clenched tight, she turned.

  Eyes flecked with silver took her in. They shifted and changed through a rainbow’s worth of color. They focused abruptly. When she gazed into their depths, she knew the creature before her.

  Charra.

  He nodded toward a group of netherlings. They crowded around one in particular, guiding a stream of shade thicker, stronger, and purer than any she could recall.

  The connection broke. Once again they were within the strange forest.

  Gasping for breath, Irmina blurted, “You, you’re a netherling?”

  “Indeed.” The voice was deep but lacked emotion.

  She frowned and rubbed at her eyes, trying to make sense of what she’d seen and heard.

  “So you have an actual voice now,” Ancel said.

  “Now? I always had a voice. Barks, grunts, howls, roars … they’re simply beyond your capacity to comprehend.” Charra glanced toward Irmina. “She understands when she chooses to listen.”

  It took Irmina a moment more before her brain registered that Charra was talking. His jaws weren’t moving, but words came forth regardless.

  “That could have saved us a lot of trouble long ago,” Ancel said dryly. “Why talk now? Why not continue using your mind? In fact why is it that you never spoke in my head as you did today?”

  “Because communication through our minds had proven to be problematic. You humans lack the ability to fully comprehend every nuance, to capture what I’m saying in every detail. These,” Charra paused, “words, though simplistic, appear to be the best form for your understanding. As for why I did not directly speak to you? It would have given you away to the enemy. Us netherlings are separated by caste, but each caste is interconnected by our minds. The others were too close. They would have known what passed between us if I communicated with you. In the same fashion that they can see much of what the original Eztezians do or think, at least those who have not trained themselves to avoid such thoughts. The Entosis exists outside of that link.”

  “You said the original Eztezians.” Ancel’s forehead wrinkled. “Does that mean the newer ones like myself aren’t affected by this netherling ability”

  “You are safe unless you are in contact with another netherling’s mind,” Charra confirmed.

  Irmina’s thoughts were still racing. “Didn’t Ryne seal off Ostania against your kind and the shade?” she finally managed.

  “Yes, but he allowed a passage for those among the refugees.”

  “Why let any of you pass? We might be safer today if he’d done that.”

  “Not true,” Ancel said. “First, I need Charra. Second, it would have alerted the others that we have a way to tell some of them apart from others.”

  “But not all,” Irmina countered.

  “No, not all, and neither Ryne nor I can tell friend from foe.”

  Irmina grimaced, the potential issues souring her stomach. She turned to Charra. “That place you showed us … what was it?”

  “The Nether.”

  “Why show us now?” Ancel sat cross-legged with his back to a tree. “And what exactly was happening? It loo
ked as if you were collecting sela, like Amuni’s daemons.”

  “Yes,” Charra replied, “we were collecting nethersela in the same fashion as they do.”

  Ancel leaned forward, expression stony. His eyes flashed with anger as his Etchings lit up. “As much as I’m grateful for your protection over the years, I think you need to explain yourself.”

  “Collecting sela is our job.” Charra settled down on his stomach, appearing relaxed, but his eyes never left Ancel. “Sela is much more than you might think or have learned, much more than simply life and death essences combined. If the soul makes a person what they are, consider nethersela to be the imprint of that soul. It holds a sense of the person, their abilities, their power or lack of. When a person dies, that part of their sela returns to the Nether. We see to it that each imprint is placed into a container until it is ready to be used again.”

  “The things hanging from the ceiling,” Irmina said.

  “Yes. Every time a person is born, a random container opens to deliver sela, an imprint of what that person will be, what power they might hold. The reason I showed you this is because that randomness has been upset.”

  “How?” Ancel’s Etchings no longer glowed.

  “By one of the gods.”

  “Amuni?”

  “That is a possibility,” Charra answered.

  “Wait,” Irmina sat in the grass, trying to understand the issue. “How do you know the randomness has been upset, and shouldn’t something like that be ordered anyway?”

  “As with Mater itself, and the world, balance is important. Think about if you knew who would be born where and when, and what strength they had. What if you could decide each person’s fate? It would disrupt everything, give you insurmountable power. That cannot be. Without balance, this world is doomed.”

  “Since gaining Prima, I understand somewhat,” Ancel said, “but that doesn’t explain how you know sela has been manipulated.”

  “I am looking at the last of such manipulations,” Charra declared, eyes focused on Ancel.