Air surged into his nostrils, the pain increased, and he realized he was drawing breath. Painful breath, true, but breath. He could feel his fingers, his toes somewhere down in his boots. He took another breath, felt the pain that encircled his ribs.
I’m alive.
He felt himself blink, the world resolving into focus around him. He was in a room, dim light filtering in from two torches high upon the wall.
I’m alive … and Alaric is not.
Vara.
Somehow that thought gave him the strength to move. He pushed himself to all fours. His back hurt, his ribs ached, but still he drew breath. He looked up, to the height of the chamber. Some sort of throne room? He glanced back and saw a wall caved in. Did I fly through that? Gods.
He blinked. Forget the gods.
Only one of them matters at the moment.
He could hear the rough scrape of blade against flesh somewhere in the darkness behind him, through the wall. He stared into the darkness, searching for any sign of his weapon. He could see Vara’s blade lit inside, moving in the inky black, floating as if wielded by a disembodied hand.
“Cy … rus … David … on …” The voice was a whisper behind him, and he turned to find the speaker. The room was dim, dark, but there was something in the shadows against a nearby wall. There was a throne not far from where he stood and the speaker was next to the wall beside it, a shadow huddled against it.
His eyes tried to penetrate the dark, and he saw a shock of wispy white hair, like straw in the torchlight. Wrinkled flesh was visible beneath it. “Cyrus … David … on …” the voice came again, weak and feeble. “Do mine eyes de … ceive me?”
“My name is Cyrus Davidon,” he spoke to the shadow, keeping an eye on Vara’s sword, moving in the dark. “Speak quickly; I’m rather in the middle of something.” He turned his gaze back to the dark and saw Vara evade, edging ever closer to the massive hole his body had made in the wall when he’d been smashed through it.
A face emerged from the shadows, aged and pale, lined so heavily it looked like something so bereft of life as to be found on an embalmed and half-rotted body. He could barely tell that it was female, the lines holding no hint that it had ever been anything other than a crone. She looked either human or elvish, something pale that did not belong in the depths of Saekaj, and her eyes were milky white, her blindness as obvious to him as the fact that she was aged beyond all counting of years. “Free me,” she whispered, and it was more than a plea.
“Vidara?” Cyrus asked, nearly astonished.
“Yesss,” she hissed and launched into a hacking cough. “Freee … mee …” her voice dissolved into the coughs of the aged, life seeming to drip out of her with each of them.
“I’ll get right on that,” Cyrus said and tried to put the thought of her out of his mind. Vara was in there, was in need of his help; she was holding off the God of Darkness by her lonesome, after all, and that was no small feat. His eyes gazed through the black, catching sight of something glowing faintly blue in the rubble—
He rushed forward and scrambled for it, brushing aside crushed stone and broken brick, finally laying his hand upon the hilt of Praelior, seizing it, taking it up again. All but the worst of the pain was washed aside, and what remained was dulled. This was not so terrible; not nearly so bad as the stabbing that Aisling had lain upon him. This was pain, certainly, but not insurmountable.
He saw the flash of a spell within the dark and then saw Vara’s blade shoot through the air toward him. She hit the ground next to him, coming out of a quick, graceful leap like those he had seen her make more times than he could count. She grunted as she shot past him, stumbling slightly as she made her landing. Whether she had been forced into this direction or chosen it, he was unsure, but the sight of her sailing toward him was enough to gladden his heart, bracing him against what he knew would follow within seconds.
The God of Darkness came barreling out at him, the torchlight catching him as he swept through the wall. Cyrus stood waiting, Yartraak only slightly taller than him now, and Cyrus braced as a hand swept toward him. He extended Praelior at the last second, sweeping it around exactly the way he had with Mortus, letting the blade catch the god’s swipe—
Cyrus felt himself launched from the force of the blow once more. His hands were anchored on the hilt of his blade this time, though, even as the pain shot through him from top to bottom. He flew in a high arc through the air and hit wooden doors at the front of the hall, knocking them open and tearing one from its hinges as he landed. He somehow rolled through the landing, tucking his blade against him as he tumbled over heavy red carpet.
His ribs screamed their displeasure, but they were still with him to scream. His left arm felt curiously painful, but he attempted to bend it and it moved with all of its usual utility. He stood, though it took him a moment. The taste of blood was thick in his mouth, he could feel the warm liquid running out of his nose, and he knew he’d been in a battle. He wiped his face with his left hand, prompting a cry of pain from his arm at the movement. No matter, he thought. I’m not dead yet.
There was a flash of powerful spell energy from within the throne room and something hit the door to the chamber in an explosion of force. Grey flesh smashed the doors in half, ripping the remaining one free of its hinges as Yartraak tumbled to the ground before Cyrus. His horned head was smaller now, the God of Darkness driven to his knees by the landing. The ground shook as he rumbled, a snort of fury that Cyrus ignored as he reversed his grip on Praelior and drove it into Yartraak’s back, burying it to the hilt—
The reprisal was instantaneous; a blast of force sent Cyrus rocketing backward as though a barrel of Dragon’s Breath had gone off under his feet, his armor splitting another set of doors as he was propelled through. He slammed to the ground and found himself in a roll once more, flopping near-uselessly as a world of caves and hard rock tumbled around him. He rolled over a bridge at high speed. Before him appeared a wall with an open gate, guards in armor swarming over it. He hit the ground and rolled under the gate, bowling over three dark elves in armor as he passed through like a projectile hurled from an angry fist.
Cyrus rolled to a stop in the middle of a street, walled estates visible on either side of him. He felt the drunkenness that followed a hard punch, the wooziness that told him he’d been struck hard upon his head. He tried to lift his neck, tried to stand, but failed. He realized dimly that he lay upon a bed of dark elven guards, their bodies broken by his landing upon them. He wondered at that, but his cognition was slow from the battering. His ribs screamed endlessly, and there were other pains attacking him now, more than he could count. He made another effort to move and failed as the agony dragged him down. Even breathing was a chore, the darkness closed in around him, each breath coming heavier than the last.
There was a crunch as something landed nearby. He could see the gate through which he’d rolled, and the grey-fleshed, red-eyed, horned fury that was Yartraak, God of Darkness, stood at his feet, staring down at him. The faint hint of a glowing, blue blade’s tip poked from his breast, protruding from between ribs that showed beneath his flesh.
“Cyrus Davidon,” Yartraak rasped. “You are in my city. You have broken through my palace, despoiled my walls and humiliated me in front of my people.” His breath carried an oily stink even from this distance. “You have failed in your foolish quest, and now I will destroy you before I go forth and finish your elven wench and all the other fools of your ilk—”
One of the long, three-fingered hands snaked down and grasped Cyrus around the neck, ripping him from the hard ground’s embrace. It hurt, and he rattled within the bounds of his armor. “You will pay for this affront,” Yartraak whispered. “Your friends will pay for you, in pain and blood.”
Cyrus spat in his face, blood oozing in a wad across the grey flesh. “You first.” He swiped at the God of Darkness with a weak hand, landing a gauntlet on a horn, grasping at it with weak fingers.
“You should
have been my servant,” Yartraak said, the red eyes glaring out at him. “But instead, you die a fool’s death.” He raised Cyrus high in the air above him, and the air was cut from his throat as the grip tightened. “You will be the first to feel the end of your peoples’ day … it is coming, and soon … to all the corners of Arkaria …”
Cyrus fought it, fought the pain, fought the struggle to draw a breath, but he could not seem to grasp it, as though it were the hilt of Praelior—so near, yet so very far from his reach …
Cyrus fought the darkness, but it came to claim him, screaming, crying, and finally dragging his eyes shut as it took him into its foul and empty depths.
Chapter 77
“You are not alone,” the voice whispered to Cyrus in the dark.
The pain was strangely absent, and Cyrus could feel his fingers. They scraped against something, against stone or steel, producing a low, scratching noise that perked up his ears. The scent of blood was gone from his nose, the taste missing from his tongue, and he could see a faint glow of white light around him.
Cyrus sat up, the darkness fading. He was in a place shrouded in white, something strangely familiar about it. The light began to fade, and lace curtains flapped in the wind. He heard the crackle of a fire behind him.
The tower of the Guildmaster, he realized at last.
Sanctuary.
Cyrus sat upon the floor, his armor pressing against the hard stone. It felt immovable, strong, and his fingers idly traced the line of the irregularities in the surface, like waves upon the surface of the water. It stared back at him, grey, and he could see a bright, sunlit day outside each balcony.
“You are not alone,” the voice came again, and he realized that someone stood before him, a silhouette against the background of the open windows, the skies so clear that he could see the outline of the Heia mountains far to the south.
Cyrus stared at the shadowy figure as it resolved, sharp lines of the armor taking shape before his eyes, the dark splotch over one of the eyes becoming a black patch as he watched.
The other eye, grey as a stormy sky, stared out at him, the edges of the skin around it crinkled from a very slight smile that had stretched from the lips all the way up to it. Sincere and true, and something Cyrus had not even realized he missed.
“Alaric,” Cyrus whispered. “You’re …” he felt his balance tip, his head swim as though he were bobbing in the water, “… you’re dead.”
Alaric’s smile faded, but the piercing eye never left him. “Assuming it is as you say … does that mean that mean that I am no longer able to help you?”
“You’re dead,” Cyrus said finally. “I’m imagining this.”
Alaric nodded his head once as the lace curtain fluttered in the breeze behind him. “A lovely place. Not a terrible one to imagine in time of strife.”
“Better than where I was,” Cyrus said, and his tongue felt thick with the memory—the blood, the pain.
“Where were you?” Alaric asked.
Cyrus smiled at him, faintly. “Shouldn’t you know? You’re in my head, after all.”
“I imagined it would be a grimmer place,” Alaric said, looking around, “it being inside your head, after all.”
“Was that a joke?” Cyrus asked.
Alaric grinned. “It did have the ring of one, did it not?”
“I was in Saekaj,” Cyrus said, all thought of mirth passed in an instant. “I led Sanctuary into Saekaj to fight Yartraak. To kill him.” He let his head bow. “I failed you, Alaric.”
“You failed me?” Alaric asked, and Cyrus watched the Ghost’s boots scrape across the floor as he took slow steps forward. “Me, a figment of your imagination? Is such a thing even possible?”
“I failed the real Alaric,” Cyrus said, not looking up, as though even the judgment of this vision he saw would be enough to break his mind the way Yartraak had broken his body. “I failed the guild. All Arkaria. I … failed. There is nothing more to it.”
Alaric’s armor made a slight protest as the old knight knelt, knee clanking against the stone floor. “I have failed, you know.”
Cyrus looked up and saw that grey eye. “You saved Arkaria. From the scourge.”
“But I have failed before, you know this, yes?” Alaric’s voice was soft. “I failed the night your friend Narstron died. I failed the day that Niamh was killed.” He lowered his voice. “I failed you in the Realm of Death, and after. Many times in my life, I failed. Some were more painful than others.”
Cyrus stared at him. “How did you fail me?” He almost laughed, so absurd was the statement.
“I have hidden so much, for so very long,” Alaric said, and his voice carried a scratch of weariness, of troubles that weighed it down, obvious to Cyrus’s ear now that he was practiced in the feeling. “At some point after the death of Raifa, I tried to carry everything all by myself. It’s a powerful loneliness that can set in, here in this place.” Alaric encompassed the whole tower with a wave of his hand. “Curatio could not always help, no matter how he tried. Nor could … another.” He smiled. “Keeping secrets exacts a price. Especially when you keep them from those dearest to you.”
“I failed you, Alaric,” Cyrus said again. “I failed the guild. Led them into death.”
“And I failed you,” Alaric said, and now his face was grim. “Failed to trust you, failed to believe in you enough to trust you. There are things going on in this world that I thought were beyond you, and I made my every effort to keep you out of them rather than helping you step into them with your wits about you. I shackled you to my fears, made you slave to my previous experience, kept you in the dark when I should have helped you into the light.” His face was impassive. “I did this to you … and to so many others.”
“We made our choices,” Cyrus said, watching him carefully. “I made my choices … and they were poor.”
Alaric’s blank expression wavered, just for a moment, and Cyrus felt the knight’s hand come to rest on his shoulder. It felt warm through the armor, the squeeze of affirmation that he could scarcely even feel. “There is blame enough to go around, but you do not condemn the child for the failures of the parent.”
Cyrus felt a weak laugh leave him. “You’re not my father, Alaric. Much as I occasionally wish you were.”
“No,” Alaric said, with a slow nod. “I am not, much as I also have wished that I could have been; you grew to the man you are without a father, shaped by the horrors of war and arms. You did it alone, carved yourself into a fighter in a place that had broken all others.”
“I didn’t … do it alone.” Cyrus felt his voice fall to a whisper. He looked into Alaric’s eye. “But I’m alone now.”
“Are you?” Alaric said, and he stood, slowly. Cyrus looked up, the eyes of a child upon an adult, and he saw nothing but light and benevolence shining down upon him. “Are you, truly?”
“Yes,” Cyrus said, and his voice sounded small.
“Though you are not my son, you are my legacy, Cyrus Davidon,” Alaric said, and he seemed somehow distant, even though he stood right there. A trickle of blood ran from his lips, and Cyrus caught a glimpse of a horrible pallor upon his face, which had seemed so healthy and ruddy only a moment before. “That which I left behind to guide Sanctuary.” His head straightened atop his shoulders, and he seemed to look beyond Cyrus, hovering above him.
Cyrus felt himself rise opposite Alaric, felt himself lift into the air above the knight. Alaric flickered, just for a moment, reality intruding, dark cave walls, a grip around his neck, a grey-skinned beast with red eyes—
“You are my legacy, Cyrus Davidon,” Alaric said, but his voice was distant, and he was gone, replaced by the red-eyed fury of a god who wanted him dead, “but you are not the only one I left behind—”
Chapter 78
“Turn and face me, you dead-skinned, rat-eyed, fecking arsehole.”
Cyrus snapped back to waking, dangling in the grasp of Yartraak. He saw what lurked over the beast’s shoulder; a b
lond-haired fury, cheeks lit crimson, mouth a thin line of vengeful anger, her armor shining silver in the bare torchlight and the furious flame crackling up and down her sword.
Cyrus could feel the blood coursing down his upper lip, could taste it as he opened his mouth and it dribbled in, even as he heard more of it rushing in his ears. His flesh was cold, the aches and pains settled about him. He saw a glow upon her hand and the agony faded more than a bit.
“Shelas’akur,” Yartraak whispered. Cyrus noted the presence of soldiers here, dark elves ringing them with others closing from behind him. These wore the clothing of civilians—some fat, some thin, all dressed like they had the finest of finery available to them.
“Fitting you would call me that,” Vara said, looking like pure, mauling death, ready to turn itself loose, “since I am about to drive the last hope out of you.”
“You talk entirely too big for a mortal your size,” Yartraak said, rasping.
“You’re not so big yourself anymore,” Vara shot right back. Cyrus felt his feet dangling and adjusted them; his toes barely touched the ground, but they did touch.
“You are surrounded by my forces,” Yartraak said. “My armies. You are in the heart of my darkness.”
Cyrus reached for his blade, still jutting from the God of Darkness’s back. He tried not to be obvious about it, but it mattered little; it was beyond his grasp, and the Lord of the Dark still had him firmly by the neck. One good twist and I’m dead … but maybe if he’s forgotten about me … he felt the fingers grip his throat. Nope. He hasn’t forgotten.
Cyrus’s eyes found Vara’s, saw the hint of panic from her, only visible because he knew her well enough to see the subtle flicker of her eyes.
Dammit … the bastard is using me to keep her at bay.
“Is she worth dying for?” Yartraak asked, and Cyrus felt his feet leave the ground again. He turned his horned head just enough to look at Cyrus. “Well?” He loosened his grip, ever so slightly, and Cyrus felt himself cough. “Is she?”
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