Caeden hesitantly stooped down, touching a finger to one of the thick lines of blood nearby.
It was tacky. Drying, but far from old.
He shivered. It didn’t really change anything, but it certainly didn’t fill him with confidence, either.
He squared his shoulders and stepped over the last of the dar’gaithin corpses.
Pressed forward nervously into Deilannis.
The city was silent.
To Caeden’s surprise, once he had stepped off the bridge and started walking along the main road, his dread had actually begun to lessen. The feeling of familiarity that this place gave him was stronger than ever. In a way, it felt a little like coming home.
There was still fear, of course. Though the streets gave him a sense of instinctive memory that he’d not felt since the last time he was here, everything was still swathed in thick white, the fog rippling and curling around things as if alive. Occasionally he would think that he’d heard something and freeze on the spot, holding his breath. There was never anything there, though. In each instance, if there had been a sound, it had to have been the echo of his own footsteps.
Of the creature that had hunted them last time, or more dar’gaithin, there was no sign. He suspected—hoped—that there wouldn’t be, so long as he kept quiet and did not use Essence.
Within an hour he was entering the Inner City, passing through an archway tall and wide. No piked skull adorned this entrance, for which he was thankful. Despite everything he’d remembered since, for some reason that still sent a shiver through him whenever he thought about it.
The mists began to thin as Caeden pushed forward, gray light bathing everything in monochrome. He walked for a while in silence, then abruptly pulled up, staring at a house off to the side.
It was two stories tall, displaying none of the smashed windows, crumpled doors or scarring from fire that blemished some of the other buildings in the Inner City. He didn’t remember it from his last trip to Deilannis; he’d passed this entire area in a blind panic, barely seeing the road in front of him let alone what lay to the sides. Yet it felt … familiar.
He hesitated, then opened the door and slipped inside.
The passageway, the kitchen with its small table, the winding stairwell to the left … they were all unremarkable, and yet he felt strangely comfortable here.
This, he was sure, was what it must feel like to come home.
He moved slowly through the poorly lit house, checking cupboards, trailing his fingers along railings that were unsettlingly absent of dust as he climbed the stairs. It felt as though, if he could just find something—one single thing that was personal—then he would be able to trigger a memory of this place. Figure out why it was so familiar.
There was nothing, though. The house was perfectly clean, and perfectly empty.
When he went back downstairs, the creature was waiting for him.
He shouted in alarm as the black figure detached itself from the doorway, its eyeless face and gaping, sharp-toothed maw a horror even if there hadn’t been close to no illumination in the room. Its skin glistened in the dim light, and a hole where its nose should have been twitched as it sniffed at him.
Caeden braced himself, instinctively reaching for kan.
“Tal’kamar,” rasped the creature.
Caeden froze.
He stared at the being, muscles tensed to spring into action at the hint of a threat. But it didn’t move toward him.
Instead, it bowed subserviently.
Caeden gripped the back of a nearby chair, steadying himself.
“You know me?” he said softly.
“Ilian di Tal’kamar,” said the creature. “Orkoth sa elid.”
Caeden closed his eyes. Concentrated.
You are Tal’kamar. Orkoth knows you.
He took a deep breath. He understood, could translate. That was a start.
“You are Orkoth?”
“Yes.” The creature’s—Orkoth’s—voice sent shivers down Caeden’s spine. It reminded him of how the sha’teths sounded.
“How do you know me, Orkoth?” Caeden had to think, but he knew the words in the creature’s language. He compelled his muscles to relax, though he didn’t take his eyes from the monster.
There was silence for a moment, as if Orkoth was thinking.
“You brought me. To guard.”
Caeden frowned. “This house?”
“This city. Everything.”
Caeden swallowed. This creature … it had attacked them, attacked his friends. Killed countless people over the years, if Taeris was to be believed. “Why?”
“To delay. To stop tampering. To keep others safe.” A pause. “Another is in the Great Library. Waiting. She is not of here. She is of me.”
Caeden blinked. He needed time to focus, to process, but his fear—or at least unease—was keeping him from concentrating on anything else. “What do you mean? Who is waiting there?”
“Another,” was all Orkoth said.
Caeden grimaced. “Do you follow my orders?”
“Yes.”
“Then sit.” He gestured to a chair. “Don’t move until I tell you to.”
Orkoth sat, erect and perfectly still.
Caeden frowned, watching the creature for a few moments. Then he sighed.
He was immortal. It was about time he started acting like it.
He swallowed his fear, sitting opposite the creature, though unable to remain entirely relaxed across from its chilling, eyeless stare.
“What are you?”
Orkoth cocked its head to one side, as if confused by the question. “I am as you made me. I am …” It growled suddenly, and Caeden leaped to his feet instinctively, sure that it was about to attack.
After a moment, though, he realized that it was a sound of frustration. The creature wanted to explain something to him, but was unable to put together the words.
Caeden couldn’t restrain a shiver. He had made this thing? “What do you know of me?” he asked tentatively.
Orkoth shook its head, evidently becoming agitated with this line of questioning. “What is necessary. You pulled me from the Darklands. This form is not pain. That is all you gave. That is all that is needed.”
Caeden swallowed. “The Darklands?”
“Where He rules. His attempt at … this.” Orkoth gestured vaguely around itself, though Caeden wasn’t sure to exactly what it was referring. Its voice was rising now, sounding panicked. “It is black and pain and blood and fear and death and—”
Orkoth screamed.
Caeden sprang to his feet, knocking over his chair in his haste to get away from the hideous, soul-piercing noise. He covered his ears with his hands but it didn’t seem to matter; tears started streaming down his face, as if the sound itself carried more misery than he could bear.
It seemed to last forever, but as suddenly as it had started, it stopped.
Caeden gasped on the floor with his back to the wall, where he had crawled. He was shaking. Sobbing. That scream had shown him images, flashes of things that were all too like the memory that Asar had shown him back in the Wells. He knew that his mind was reacting, hiding what he had seen from himself, protecting him against the incomprehensible horror so that he would still be able to function. But just the aftershock was enough to turn his blood to ice and his legs to water.
Finally, slowly, he dragged himself to his feet. Orkoth still sat silently at the table, looking at him as though nothing had happened.
“Go,” whispered Caeden hoarsely. He must have shouted at some point, though he didn’t remember it. “Go and do not show yourself to me again unless I need you. I will call for you if …”
He trailed off, but he’d said enough. Orkoth rose and without another word, left the room.
Caeden stood there for a minute. Two. Five. Just breathing, trying to escape the crippling feeling of dread that had enveloped him.
Eventually though, finally, he managed to compel himself to stand. So
meone was waiting for him in the Great Library? Nethgalla, then. It had to be Nethgalla. He would get the Siphon, and then he would leave this place as quickly as he possibly could.
He gritted his teeth, facing the door.
The memory hit without warning.
Caeden strode through the halls of the Arbiterium, ignoring the screams of the dying that echoed through the building.
Outside, the streets of Deilannis burned with a fire that needed no fuel, a fire that flickered green then purple then black in a ghastly mockery of what the flames should be. It was the fire of the Darklands, the fire these fools had allowed into their most powerful place.
All because he had come here.
He shut out the cries, ignored the desperate eyes, pushed away hands as they grasped pleadingly at the hem of his cloak. A hard bubble of kan protected him against the cleansing the Darecians had begun, prevented the weaponized city from draining the Essence from his very being. The High Darecians had been foolish to try this. Their Cyrarium—he knew that they had to have one, to power the Jha’vett—must not have stored enough. They were sacrificing their people, all of them, for fear of the man who wanted to save them. To save everyone.
He saw the kan traps in his path long before he reached them. He still didn’t quite understand how the Darecians had managed to manipulate kan, though it made him wonder if what Andrael had believed was true. He hoped not. El only knew that men were not meant to have power such as he and the others wielded.
He drew Licanius, slicing through the kan barriers as if they were not there. The threads split and dissolved at the sword’s touch.
When he smashed down the enormous iron doors and walked calmly into the hall beyond, a thousand pairs of eyes turned to him.
“Who is in charge here?” he thundered, his voice cutting through the fear of hundreds of voices. Silence fell like a blanket, until it seemed that everyone in the enormous room was holding their breath.
“I am.” A man stepped forward, head high, blue eyes proud. “My name is Garadis ru Dagen. You may have murdered my ancestors, Aarkein Devaed, but this time you are too late. You are too late, Destroyer. We have won.”
Caeden laughed bitterly despite himself. The sound echoed around the chamber, and he could feel the fear slithering into the hearts of every person present. They knew him. They knew him from the stories of their grandparents, who had passed down those stories from their grandparents before them. How he had crushed the Darecian Empire. How he had turned their people—all but the brightest, all but the High—to dust and ashes. How he had brought the Darklands to their door, and never let it leave.
And so now, because of panic and fear and ignorance, they were destroying themselves.
“I did not come here to fight, Garadis ru Dagen. I wish no one here any harm. But even if I did—even if I were truly your enemy—this could never be a victory for you,” he said in frustration. “Listen!” He flicked his wrists, amplifying the screams from outside, funnelling them and distorting them further to emphasize his point. “Do you hear what you are doing to your own people?”
Garadis grimaced, though his gaze remained hard. “It is a necessary sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice?” Caeden’s voice grew louder now, angrier, thundering around the room. People cowered before it as if it were a physical assault. “Do not talk to me of sacrifice, you foolish, arrogant man. Nine hundred years ago, I sacrificed millions of your people so that we could stand here today. I sacrificed my soul for this moment.” His voice cracked a little. “You use the word and yet you never needed to do this. You think to stop me with this? You think that I do not understand your plan? I made your plan. I whispered in the ears of your best and brightest. I sent them on their journey south with Ironsails laden with food. I timed my attack so that they would not be there when the rest of your people died. My goal—my only goal—was to get you to build this place.” He took a breath. “I lit the fire that burns in you, Garadis.”
Others in the hall were moaning now, and Caeden knew they saw the truth in his words, could hear it in his fierce tone. Garadis though, strangely, did not cower. He stood straight and tall, meeting Caeden’s gaze with a steely one of his own.
He was a believer, Caeden realized. A zealot. He truly thought that he had El on his side.
If only he knew.
“Perhaps you are right,” said Garadis quietly. A new hush fell over the hall, a thousand people hanging on their leader’s every word. “But you are still too late.”
He held up something in his hand.
Caeden frowned. It was a torc, like those worn by princes in the north. Like the old Princes of Dareci, the Elect. But the metal was … odd. Blacker than it should have been. It glinted wetly in the dim light.
“We are no longer the people whom you destroyed, Devaed. We are willing to do all that is necessary, this time. We will go back. We will teach our ancestors. And when you come? We will be ready.”
Before Caeden could react, Garadis slipped the torc around his neck.
There was uniform movement behind him, a thousand pairs of hands echoing the motion. Caeden stared in puzzlement as every Darecian in the room placed identical torcs to their necks.
For a few seconds, everything seemed suspended. Garadis watched Caeden with a smirk of self-satisfaction.
Then the first of the screams echoed around the hall.
Garadis spun, searching for the source of the sound, but immediately more shrill voices began to join the first. The wails were worse than those Caeden had heard outside, worse than the sounds of the dying. These were … changing. The screams modulated in tone and intensity, but more and more and more voices joined until the entire room became one elongated shriek.
He backed away in horror as he watched Garadis’s face twist. The torc was growing, expanding, melding to the skin of his throat and disappearing down his shirt to his chest. The man dropped to his knees, as had all in the room behind him. A thousand bodies, writhing in agony, all screaming that disturbing, unending scream.
Garadis began to burn.
It wasn’t an external fire, though, Caeden quickly realized. This was something erupting from inside of Garadis. It burned hot and red, not the fires of the Darklands like outside, not the cleansing fires of kan meant to strip away all Essence. If anything, this was the opposite. This was Essence in its purest form, extracted and made physical, glowing like the sun itself.
It burned Garadis. It burned his face, his forehead, crept along his hair. It spread beneath his clothing to his limbs, skin and muscle and bone all disintegrating beneath its touch.
And yet, Garadis did not vanish. He lay there, writhing. A body made Essence. A man made fire.
And behind him, his people—the last of the Darecians—were the same.
Caeden watched on in utter horror, his anger vanished now. He hadn’t wanted this. He still didn’t know how the Darecians had known he was coming, but he’d hoped to steal in like a thief in the night, use the Jha’vett and finish this war before any more blood had been shed. He was already responsible for so much pain—these people’s pain. No matter how little time this reality had left, he couldn’t be responsible for the end of their kind.
Whatever their kind even was now.
He rushed over and knelt by Garadis, bending down to touch him on the shoulder, not sure if it would hurt. It caused Caeden no physical pain, however the light contact caused Garadis to scream and buck wildly. Caeden snatched his hand away, but Garadis was already … dimmer.
Garadis looked up at him with still-blue eyes full of pain and rage and fear and hatred.
“Help us,” he whispered.
Caeden closed his eyes, breathing deeply. It would be so much easier to just let these people die, then undo it all later. He would undo it all anyway.
But this time, something held him back.
“How?” he asked.
“We need Essence.” Garadis’s voice was little more than a gasp. “Kan is draining us, Dev
aed. I feel it. We must get away. This place is tearing us apart.”
Caeden thought for a moment. He’d always been able to touch kan; if that was the cause of Garadis’s pain …
His eyes widened.
“Hang on,” he whispered.
He spent the next thirty minutes preparing. Weaving strands of kan together, melding and hardening and guiding the scaffolding, just as Andrael had taught him. It was among the most difficult of all kan devices, and as far as he was aware, he was the only one left who knew how to construct one.
He worked, and he did everything he could to shut out the writhing bodies and the unearthly, stomach-churning screams. Every second felt like an hour, and as he labored he could hear more and more voices die out. Could see less and less light filling the room.
When he was done, he turned to see less than a third of the Darecians remaining.
Those who had died were just … gone. Dissolved.
There was no time to lose, no time to explain. He forced kan down through the bowels of the earth, doing his best to avoid the complex machinery that the Darecians had somehow figured out how to build. Tapped into the shockingly large Cyrarium.
Essence pumped like blood along the line of kan and into the scaffolding.
The Gate opened.
Beyond the portal he could see the lava pits of Res Kartha glowing fiercely, though within moments the abrupt proximity to Deilannis began to drain their energy. He grabbed Garadis, closest to him and almost extinguished. The man tried to fend him off, to direct him to the others, but Caeden knew more than anyone the importance of leaders.
There was no time to be gentle. He tossed Garadis through the portal onto the hard rock beyond, wincing a little as the burning man rolled before lying still.
Caeden tore his eyes away, moving on to the next body. And the next. And the next. Even with all his Essence, his arms began to ache and his feet drag as he carried each body across the threshold. Some made it. Some dissolved at his touch, and others in his arms. There were tears running down his face, but Caeden barely noticed. The ones who made it through the portal appeared to be surviving. That was all that mattered. He could not have a single more Darecian life weighing on him, no matter the cause.
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