“Now, at the last, you finally see it my way,” Bellarum said, hurrying backward without looking, his retreat obvious and ill-guarded. “Do you know how much effort I’ve spent these last years getting you to come back to war after turning your back on it for his way?”
“I never turned my back on war,” Cyrus said, advancing, his fury seeking to spend itself. “I never stopped fighting, I just did it in causes you disliked.” He slashed with Praelior and knocked Vara’s blade aside as Bellarum’s eyes widened. “I didn’t fight for my own aggrandizement anymore, or simply for the hell of battle—I did it for a reason, to protect people—and you, you idiot, you decided to attack those people. As though turning me into a pure instrument of violence was an intelligent move. As though my skill at picking apart superior enemies could be manipulated toward your own, obvious aims.” Cyrus swiped hard at the blade Bellarum blocked with, and caught the God of War at the wrist, his chain mail below the plate jangling and the red eyes showing the pain. A new trail of black ichor seeped down his bracer like a slow line of liquid darkness, and Cyrus knew he’d struck true again.
“I wanted you to claim the mantle awaiting you,” Bellarum said. “To become a Lord of War at my side, to carve out an empire for your own sake and mine—”
“Mostly yours, I think,” Cyrus said.
“—because this land of yours,” Bellarum went on, “needed order. These gods needed to be usurped, to be overthrown.” He laughed weakly. “You have no idea what they’ve done—”
“And I don’t care, because they’re all dead now,” Cyrus said.
“—done to me,” Bellarum said, a hollow look in his eyes. “Done to others. You think I don’t know the cost of war?” He clanked a thumb against his breastplate. “You think I’ve forgotten? I know it well, child. Better than you. I offered you dominion over those who needed the guidance. I tried to make you a legend, and you chose to be a nothing. It’s how you started, it’s what you are, and it’s what you’ll leave behind—nothing.” He stood tall and held Vara’s blade before him. “The legend of the gods ruled over Arkaria for millennia, even when they were out of sight. The two of us, we upended that—and now you want to quibble about the price it took to end their corrupt reign.” Bellarum snorted. “I made you more than you ever would have been if you’d chosen Alaric’s path alone and walked it—ignoring Mortus, ignoring Yartraak, turning a blind eye to their monstrous injustices. You would fade into obscurity, like he has,” the God of War said spitting with disgust. “No one even remembers it was him, remembers his name.” He hammered at his breastplate again. “Well, no one will forget mine. And perhaps no one will forget yours, either, but if so, it’s only because of me.”
“I am not yours,” Cyrus said, that sick feeling overwhelming him as he stared at the God of War before him, shriveled and pathetic. Cyrus dwarfed him now, his reach so much longer, his skill with a blade beyond anything Bellarum could have mustered.
“You chose Alaric over me,” Bellarum said with a tinge of bitterness. “I offered you Vara, as he did, and still you choose his path.” A hint of mirth broke through his voice. “Well, I suppose I’ll have the last laugh, then—”
Cyrus struck before he finished speaking, aiming his first slash at the weak point of the chain mail exposed at the God of War’s shoulder blade. He hit with a hard, hacking strike, and Bellarum cried out in pain as the edge of Praelior slammed home into the quartal chainmail with all Cyrus’s strength. He raised the sword and struck again before the mail had finished ringing against his blow, and was rewarded as Bellarum’s arm sagged at the site of the hit, the chainmail bludgeoning the flesh beneath with godly force. A third attempt produced the desired result, and the God of War’s left arm came free, slipping out of the chain and clattering to the floor, a gout of black ichor spurting out behind it.
Bellarum fell to a knee, staring down at his lost arm, blinking beneath the protection of his helm. “You … how did … you …?”
“I guess I’m stronger than you thought,” Cyrus said, and brought Ferocis down, this time driving the tip into the lip of the God of War’s right gauntlet. He dragged it down as hard as he could, and was rewarded with the sound of flesh tearing as he ripped the armor from Bellarum’s hand, dragging Vara’s sword with it.
Chainmail dangled over deep blue, nearly black, flesh, and Cyrus quickly dug the edge of Ferocis into the exposed wrist and hacked the hand clean off, leaving bone exposed and more black blood dripping onto the pure white floor. Cyrus kicked away the sword, and heard a gasp from behind him, but did not bother to see whose surprise he had wrung free with the viciousness of his attack.
Cyrus stared down at the beaten deity, handless, weaponless, and saw the red eyes blinking up at him through the slits of the helm, no hint of the glow that had always been there when he’d looked his deity in the face. “Let’s speak, Bellarum—face to face.” Inserting Praelior’s tip under the chin, he flicked off Bellarum’s helmet, sending it rattling to the ground behind the God of War.
“Yes, let’s,” Bellarum said, looking up at Cyrus without the protection of his helm for once. He looked a bit like a dark elf to Cyrus, but shades darker than even the darkest dark elf Cyrus had ever seen. He had a wide chin, and long, dark hair, his red eyes looking up without any malice at all, lip quivering as he appeared to try to hold in the pain of his limbs being severed. “I have looked upon you your whole life … you might as well see me now.”
“You were going to be the god,” Cyrus said, an icy edge of taunting in his words. “You were going to rule all Arkaria, with me as your warlord while you sat and supped upon the feast of magic out there waiting for you.”
Bellarum blanched, looking down at the ground. “Yes … that was the plan,” he said, a little lightly, between the grunts of pain. “Clearly … I miscalculated somewhere along the line.”
“Would you like to know exactly when that miscalculation happened?” Cyrus asked, taking the tip of Ferocis and placing it upon Bellarum’s jaw, guiding his gaze back up to meet Cyrus’s own.
Bellarum looked him in the eye, pain writ all over his blue face and said, “When I killed Vara.”
“That’s right,” Cyrus said, and waited. He waited a long minute, and looked around the room. His small army was still behind him, hanging on to every word of their exchange in absolute silence. Even Vaste looked struck dumb with surprise, his lips slightly parted as he watched and listened. “Is there anything … you want to tell me?” Cyrus asked, eyes darting about as he waited for the inevitable ambush.
“I won’t plead for my life,” Bellarum said, looking up at him, one eye nearly pinched shut from pain, “if that’s what you’re waiting for, strike and be done.”
Cyrus swallowed heavily, his mouth suddenly dry. Finally, he broke the absolute complete silence with his question. “Where is she?” His scalp tingled, and within his gauntlets, he could feel the perspiration on his hands. “What have you done with her?”
Bellarum looked up at him, and raised an eyebrow. “Oh. Well. This is, ahh …an uncomfortable moment, I suppose. I’d hoped you’d have given me what I wanted before we came to this point, but … since you haven’t …” His wide chin moved as he opened his mouth to laugh weakly. “I didn’t bring her back.”
Cyrus heard the words, but they passed as though he’d been struck deaf. “Where is she?”
“I didn’t bring her back,” Bellarum said, staring at Cyrus through dull eyes, the pain glazing them over. Black blood ran from his severed limbs in streams across the floor, staining it dark.
“You told me,” Cyrus said, rage rising like embers of a fire stirred back to life, kindling being thrown upon it, “that you went—into the chamber and brought her back …” He reached down, grabbing the front of Bellarum’s gorget and lifting him forward. “Where the hell is she?” he said into the face of the God of War, spittle flying free and dotting Bellarum’s forehead.
“I went to the chamber,” Bellarum said, slightly choked by th
e strength of Cyrus’s grasp around his gorget, “but … I only killed the God of Evil there and drank his power … I didn’t … I couldn’t … bring her back …” He grimaced with discomfort at the way Cyrus held him. “Now … Cyrus … there is another thing I could … offer … you …”
But Cyrus did not hear him, his words passing again, his red eyes looking even redder as Cyrus stared into them, the fury burning him through and through, the wildfire of anger spreading. Cyrus pulled tighter his hold of the gorget, and clutched Ferocis tight, swinging it around in a great arc before him.
The blade swung true, and cut through the air and then the neck of the God of War, whose lips were still moving even though the words were choked off by the tight hold of the gorget’s bite upon his flesh. Bellarum’s head tipped, then fell to the ground, followed by the body, and the red eyes stared up at Cyrus, finding him as the head came to rest. The lips moved, slowly, one last time.
“Now you’ll … never see … Alaric … again …” Bellarum said slowly, and then his face twitched to a stop, going slack in the manner of death that Cyrus had seen—and inflicted—times beyond numbering. And Cyrus stared down at him, here in the halls of the Realm of War, looking into the face of his last living enemy, and felt … nothing.
Nothing at all.
102.
Alaric
“Jena!” I said, coming to her side in an instant. All thought of the shield around the Citadel vanished the moment I realized she was dying, her life’s energy drained with her casting of the protective spell.
The air was thick in the tower room, the first light of dawn starting to break upon us through the eastern balcony. I glanced at it briefly, wondering what the new day would bring for us, then I stared into the aged face of my lover.
She looked back at me wearily, and her hand found mine. Her fingers and palm slipped against my armored gauntlet, and I removed it in order to better take her hand in mine, looking into her faded blue eyes. They looked so lifeless, all the vitality gone out of them. “I’m sorry, Alaric,” she said, her voice faded and distant, weak as if she’d grown old in the span of minutes. “I couldn’t … hold it anymore …”
“It’s all right,” I breathed, my heart frozen in my chest. It seemed like icy fingers had clawed through my ribcage and were fingering their way around my lungs. “You did well.”
Curatio bobbed down as he took a knee. “I’m sorry,” he said under his breath, to me, “I held the line against her bleeding out her own life as much as I could, but …” He shook his head. “You saw her magic. It’s considerably stronger than anything I’ve ever cast, and my ability to transfer life was … inadequate to her need.”
Rin edged into view, attention torn between Jena’s fall and what was going on outside. “We are about to be in great danger if we can’t establish that barrier.”
“I cannot do it myself,” Curatio said, and I saw the veil of exhaustion upon him, like a heavy blanket. “It is beyond my skill.”
“This is so far beyond anything I have ever even attempted,” Rin said, and he sounded ghostly. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“Alaric,” Jena said, pulling my hand. Her strength was faded, but she tugged me gently. “Alaric … I need you to … to …” She swallowed, her lips cracked as though a drink of water hadn’t passed them in days.
“What … what do you need?” I asked, the fear of that scourging spell lingering in the back of my mind. It could come at any time, and I saw Rin off to the side, eyes closed, hands extended, faintest tendrils of a spell spreading from him like wispy smoke, far weaker than what Jena had produced.
“I need you …” Jena said, and she brought my hand down, against her thick robes, against her belly—
Her swollen belly.
“Jena,” I whispered, aghast. I pushed against her, and felt it hard, like a melon. I searched my memory, trying to think about how long I’d been in Saekajaren Sovaren with her, how long it had been since I had seen her naked in the light. It had been months, plainly, and I had not even noticed.
“Alaric,” she said, and brushed aside her robes as she writhed in pain. Her breathing was hard and heavy, and even I could not fail to notice the meaning, though Curatio said it first.
“She goes into childbirth,” the elf said, sliding down to her feet. “There is little time.”
I held her hand as Curatio worked, guiding her through a process I had never before seen save for once, long ago, as a horse birthed a foal. I stared into her weary, lined face as the man I had once known as the Butcher told her to push, and she did, her breaths coming raggedly and quickly. She did it only thrice, and then she sagged, and I heard a faint whimper.
I turned, and saw a baby in Curatio’s arms. He held it, cradling it gently, as it started to cry. “It’s a boy,” he pronounced, doing something with the long cord of flesh extending out of the belly that I didn’t see. I blinked my eyes over and over, and turned to say something Jena—anything—
I could see in that moment, there in the tower, an infinity stretched before us. I lived a lifetime in that place of possibility, and saw the two of us raise a babe, with all the quiet, murmured affirmations between us, the whispers of lovers, knowing each other in the night, the sight of our light blue child growing taller and stronger day by day—
I saw it all in that moment, that one perfect moment in the tower, and it settled in my mind before I fully turned my head to share what was in my mind with her. It was a like a flash of a life ahead, of the things that could be if I merely stayed here, with her, with the child, and lived in this moment and place. I opened my mouth to speak—
And no words came out, for I saw, and the moment ended.
She was dead, her lips a loose line, all the tension gone out of her body. Her eyes were open, staring into the distance.
“She held onto life until she birthed the child,” Rin said quietly as he eased in to sit next to me. “She was a woman of indomitable will.”
“It appears not,” I said, staring blankly at her body. Curatio reached over and closed her eyes, a sign of quiet respect as he cooed to the child in his arms. He’d wrapped the baby in a blanket that he’d stolen from Chavoron’s bed, and offered the baby to me.
I stared at the little bundle, mouth open and a mewling sound coming out that I barely heard as I took him up. I cradled him against my armor, unsure what to do, unsure what to say. I stood, and my gaze fell out the window, where the ruins of an empire waited beyond the glass. I stared around the tower, remembering the moment I’d lived before I realized Jena was dead, and a dull ache seeped into my heart, dampening the joy at holding the child in my arms, tempering it with a smothering fear. “I have never had such a creature in my hands,” I said quietly, a sense of panic starting to overtake me. “What am I to do?”
“Try singing, perhaps?” Curatio asked. “Something to soothe the—”
But no soothing sound came, and the crying was the least of the noise that filled the air. A cracking, splintering thunderclap echoed through the tower room, and the three of us wheeled at its fury.
Someone was coming, trying to crash through the doors at the southern balcony. And as I held the baby tight against my armor, with one hand, I clutched in the other the gift his mother had given me—Aterum—and swallowed my fear as I prepared to defend the last living vestige of Jena from the harm I sensed was coming.
103.
Cyrus
“Cyrus,” came the calm voice from behind him as Cyrus stood, looking out the edge of the pavilion at the top of the tower onto the army below. The victory was complete, the legions of Bellarum vanquished. Cyrus could see the dragons of the south swooping around above the battlefield, watching with their keen eye for some sign of enemy survivors—or perhaps for betrayal by us, Cyrus thought—as his assembled armies milled below on the field of victory.
Cyrus turned at the call of his name. He knew Isabelle’s voice when he heard it, and was not surprised when he found her there, staring
at him with her blue, glittering eyes. She held Vara’s sword cradled in her hands, smudges of mud on her white robes. Larning trailed a few steps behind her, lingering in the elf’s shadow. “Yes?” Cyrus asked.
“Our armies have searched this keep,” Isabelle said, looking at him with a worry in her eye that he would have considered uniquely hers until he’d gotten to know her sister better, “from top to bottom … there’s no sign of Alaric or …” she swallowed heavily, “Vara.”
“When did you lie and when did you tell the truth, Bellarum?” Cyrus asked, looking back to his sweeping view of the field of battle. The pavilion was so wide, so immense, such a distorted impossibility to be perched on top of the small tower. Cyrus felt like he could see the hints of the magic that lurked at the seams, knitting this place carefully into the tower’s cap. He leaned against a pillar as he looked out over the distance below. “You told the truth at the last, didn’t you?” he finally decided, though the question still lingered. Vara is gone, then. He kept the thought to himself. Forever.
And I’ll never go home, now.
“It was a fine victory you pulled off, lad,” Larning said, creeping up from behind Isabelle. “Killing the God of War at the apex of his powers, crushing his armies before his own keep.” Cyrus could feel him sliding closer, could sense a hint of a purpose in the dwarf’s tone. “What are you going to do now?”
Cyrus blinked, staring out at the carnage he’d wrought. “What are you going to do?” He glanced down at Larning, who looked up at him curiously, and then he transferred his gaze to Isabelle. “Both of you. You run guilds that pride yourselves on impossible conquests—loot pilfered from the realms of the gods.” Cyrus waved a hand around them. “The gods are dead. Their spoils aren’t going to regenerate anymore, which means you—”
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