by Jon Sprunk
The scorpion's remaining pincher, however, snatched Jirom around the waist. It lifted him close, and a thousand voices filled the stadium with their horror. Jirom wasn't struggling. No, no! You can't die this way. Not now!
The axe came up again in an arc of bright steel and crashed down on the monster's head. Pieces of chitin flew as the blade bit deep. The scorpion trembled from antennae to tail. Horace lifted his fist, ready to proclaim victory. Then the monster bucked like an unbroken stallion, and the stinger jabbed out. Horace's cry was lost in the clamor.
Jirom stood rigid in the scorpion's grasp. Then he flopped to the floor of the pit. He thrashed for a few seconds before he lay still.
Horace stared down in disbelief. Jirom lay dead in the sand as a dozen wranglers armed with ropes and polearms herded the limping scorpion back toward the gate. Second by second, his disbelief turned to anger, and the anger burned white-hot. Torches flickered as the wind picked up.
For some reason, Lord Astaptah's last words to him came rushing through his brain.
Every so often, Horace, we come to a moment when the decisions we make will impact the rest of our lives. When such a time comes, the most important thing is to be true to yourself. Or else you will be lost forever.
The stone railing twisted in his grip like wet clay. With a start, Horace realized he was filled with zoana. It seethed inside him, formless and wild. Thunder boomed overhead, a long slow rumble that grew louder by the second, building until it shook the stadium. The dark presence appeared, so close it felt like it was looking out through his eyes. He didn't care. The power felt different. More personal. He could feel it flowing through his body with new clarity, as if his anger was a focusing lens. His head swam with euphoria, and yet he remained perfectly clear.
He turned around to see Byleth staring at him. Lord Xantu stood at the queen's right hand, Lady Anshara on her left. Both bodyguards watched him. He thought about admonishing the queen but kept his mouth closed. There was nothing to say.
Pins and needles raced down the back of Horace's neck as a shimmering globe of solid air formed around the throne. At the same instant, an ice-cold knot formed around his throat, choking off his breath. He felt the thread of power leading back not to the queen, as he'd expected, but Lady Anshara. The icy noose around his neck tightened, restraining him in place. He pushed back against it, but she was too strong to be dismissed, her zoana shining around her like a brilliant white cloak. Hoarfrost spread across the floor, ceiling, and bannister of the royal box.
Lord Xantu lifted a hand toward Horace as if to touch his face. Flames moved along the lord's fingers, hopping from one digit to the next.
With a grunt, Horace struck back. Just as Lord Astaptah had taught him, he drew more power through his qa directly from the Shinar dominion in its raw state and sent it at Xantu. The eruption was like a release. The bodyguard doubled over as if he'd been shot in the chest with a crossbow bolt. Then he dropped to his knees.
Horace formed the Shinar into a sword and sliced through the thread connecting him to Lady Anshara. The knot cutting off his breath evaporated. A kernel of pain blossomed in his chest as he sucked down a gulp of fresh air. Shaking it off, Horace called upon the Girru dominion to surround himself in a wreath of fire. He split the flow of zoana to create a large bubble of solid air around the entire box so no one else could interfere. Then he split it again and made that strand as thin and sharp as a stiletto's blade. He put the tip of that invisible blade against the shield protecting the queen and pushed.
You dare to toy with people's lives as if they existed solely for your amusement. I'm going to show you what that feels like, Your Excellence.
Byleth stood up, a sharp frown creasing her features. “That's enough, Horace. Release your connection to the zoana or I shall be forced to—”
He shoved harder, and the shield burst in an explosion of twisting winds that battered everyone inside the box. Before Horace could take advantage, Lady Anshara stepped between them with both hands extended. Knife-like fans of ice flew at Horace, one after another. He batted the first few aside with puffs of hardened wind, but the icy blades spun faster and faster. A couple slipped past his guard to encounter the fiery nimbus he had formed around himself. They melted on contact, but with each touch he felt his defenses weaken. The pain was growing inside him like acid eating through his innards.
Thunder reverberated throughout the arena. The stands were emptying as the crowd fled. The wind howled and brought down a deluge of rain that sluiced between the rows of seats and spattered against the shield he had erected.
The dark presence in his head stirred a heartbeat before invisible bands clamped around his wrists and ankles. Byleth gestured, and the bindings yanked Horace's arms and legs in four directions. At the same time, Lady Anshara had stopped her ice knives attack to gather a ball of spinning white frost between her hands. She breathed into the sphere, and with every breath it grew in size. Horace started to reach out with his zoana to sever the bonds holding him when the sphere shot from the lady's hands. A wintry gust blasted his face, shredding his aura of heat and numbing him from head to waist.
Horace strained against the pain to free himself, but the zoana was bundled inside him, refusing to obey. The presence thrashed with frustration inside his head.
A streak of green lightning blinded him as a crash like shattering stone rocked the royal box.
Consciousness flickered. He felt himself fall, the bindings suddenly gone from his arms and legs, but he couldn't control his limbs. The sour reek of blood and burning flesh clogged the air.
After a few seconds, feeling returned to his body. Horace lifted his head. The royal box looked like a typhoon had passed through it. The roof was ripped away. Rain drenched the scorched carpet. The queen's throne was destroyed, charred to burnt sticks and ashes.
Byleth lay beside the wreckage, her gown torn and water-stained, her beautiful coiffure unraveling. Lady Anshara sprawled beside the queen. Horace thought the women might still be alive, but Lord Xantu was clearly dead. Most of the skin on his left side had peeled away in blackened strips, exposing layers of seared muscle and tissue. His face was melted like candle wax around two bloody holes where his eyes had ruptured.
Horace pushed himself upright. His legs were shaky, but the zoana still coursed inside him. The presence nestled close, opening all his senses. He could feel the storm overhead and the winds as they cut through the city. Through all of it ran a common thread of unpredictability, of lovely chaos. The entire universe rotated on a wobbling axis, spinning through the limitless darkness of the void.
He looked down at Byleth. Her chest rose and fell in a jagged rhythm. He had only to reach out with his power and end the threat she represented forever. Strike. Strike her down. Do it now. You will never be free as long as she lives. You know this is true.
Was it the truth? The queen was powerful and sometimes difficult. She had sought to use him, even seduce him, but she had never compelled him against his will. Until Sekhatun. His anger returned in force. She had forced him to choose between his loyalty and his conscience, and people had died because of it. Now he could add Jirom's name to the list of friends who had been lost. Their blood stained his soul. The zoana grew inside him, seeking a target. He focused on the queen, defenseless at his feet.
With a sigh, he let go of the power, forcing it back through his qa into the great beyond from whence it came. At once, the rage drained out of him and took the dark presence with it. A tidal wave of pain rushed in to fill the void of their leaving, tearing through his chest and dropping him back to his knees. A horrible stench like dead things moldering in the dark filled his head and made him want to retch.
He reached out his hand but stumbled sideways as a massive surge of wind collided with him. His shielding collapsed as thunder crashed again, directly above him. The power closed around his chest and squeezed, forcing the air from his lungs. With a rasping wheeze, he fell senseless to the floor.
The tunnel stretched out before her, a long passage of darkness with no end. A red glow wavered on the ceiling, its malevolent face watching as she floated beneath it. She had the sense of being carried—feeling the hands under her legs, hips, and shoulders as distant things, devoid of warmth or tenderness. Tall shapes hovered over her, their outlines amorphous in the darkness. There was something familiar about her whereabouts, but her thoughts were slow to form.
She was alive. Somehow. She recalled a battle. Horace's face, distorted with a rage like she had never seen before. Had he truly tried to kill her? She couldn't believe it. Of all her court, he was the one she'd least suspected of betrayal. I pushed him too far.
She was drained and battered. It was no exaggeration to say she'd never experienced such a defeat before. Even during the most vigorous periods of her early training, when her instructors pushed her the hardest, she'd never been the victim of violence, physical or otherwise. All her life she'd been assured of her own potency. Had it all been a convenient lie, meant to pacify her? Or was Horace truly that strong? It was a question for another day. Right now she was going to return to the palace and gather her court. Before daybreak, she intended to have him in chains. And this time she would never be so foolish as to let him out of her grasp. Perhaps it would be better if he didn't survive capture. The lords of the stars know I felt something for him, but he's too dangerous to let live.
A faint moan came from beside her. With great effort Byleth managed to turn her head. Through the spaces between her bearers she saw Lady Anshara, likewise being carried. The lady's eyes were closed, and her face was marred by purple bruising.
As her vision sharpened, Byleth saw the rough walls of the tunnel, the piercing red runes spaced along the ceiling. The catacombs under the palace. A sigh escaped her lips. She was almost home. She looked around for Lord Xantu, thinking he must be the one who had saved her, but the robed figures carrying her wore cowls over their heads, so long she wondered how they could see where they were going. She was about to command them to stop and put her down when a sepulchral voice reached from the darkness.
“Good evening, Majesty.”
A chill ran down Byleth's spine as Lord Astaptah appeared, impossibly tall in the ambient light. “Astaptah,” she said. “You saved me?”
The vizier stepped closer. His robes swished softly across the stone floor. “I suppose that is the case, although not by intention. I assumed you would be dead when I sent my underlings to collect you and the lady.”
“Collect us?” Byleth tried to sit up, but she didn't have the strength. Gasping, she collapsed back into the grasp of her gray-shrouded bearers. “Take us up to the palace at once. The First…Horace must be apprehended.”
Her vision began to spin. She could barely make out Lord Astaptah as he reached down and placed his hand over her face. Harsh words filled the tunnel, piercing her skull like red-hot irons. Byleth thrashed, her stomach arching toward the ceiling until she thought her spine would snap. She tried to fight back, but the zoana remained out of reach.
“This gives me no pleasure,” Lord Astaptah said close to her ear. Softly, almost like a lover's whisper. “Yet it was always inevitable. A pity I cannot add you to my test subjects. However you are more valuable to me as a martyr.”
Byleth shivered within the cocoon of agony encasing her as something sliced through her bowels, up through her stomach, burrowing toward her heart. “But the machine is…destroyed! I saw it…”
“I must apologize for that deception, Byleth. The storm engine remains functional, as I shall soon prove. Farewell.”
Lord Astaptah turned to leave, and Byleth struggled to call after him. A curse formed on her lips, but only a strangled groan emerged, rising into a scream. She feared it would never end, even as the veil of darkness fell over her.
Voices drifted down from the black sky, calling to him in deafening rumbles. Ancient beings born in the hearts of stars and flung across the endless gulfs of space and void. Destroyers of a thousand worlds, cast down eons ago by their upstart children. But the forces that had bound them for eons were eroding, and now their baleful eyes were turned once more to this realm.
The old gods were returning….
Horace's eyes shot open. He lay in darkness, a darkness so quiet he thought he had awoken inside a tomb. His tomb, for he had died. Hadn't he?
But this place was stifling hot. He was lying on a hard surface, probably a stone floor. His shoulder ached like a spike had been driven through the joint. He tried to sit up and was stopped by bindings. They were unyielding, holding down his ankles, wrists, waist, and around his neck. He swallowed against the metal pressed there.
Fighting to keep calm, he focused for a moment to create a light. The zoana slipped through his mental grasp. He tried again, this time concentrating harder. He felt the power coursing beyond the gateway of his qa, but it refused to come at his command. Then an awful suspicion twisted inside his mind like a rusty blade. The bindings might be made of zoahadin. If that was the case, then he was well and truly fucked.
A door opened beyond his feet, and light poured in. Fierce and ruddy, carrying with it a gust of hot air. The walls and ceiling of a small stone room surrounded him. He appeared to be on a table, not the floor. Some kind of metallic apparatus with handles and silver hoses dangled above his head.
Horace tensed as a familiar figure entered the room. “What am I doing here?”
Lord Astaptah walked to the head of the table. “Forgive me not being present when you awoke. Other matters were pressing. This…” He gestured around the cell. “Is the first part of my grand design. You're here because the queen is dead. The people of Erugash mourn her passing. Were you to walk onto the streets above, you would find the air filled with their lamentations. Byleth the Blessed, struck down by the foreign devil she had protected.”
Horace couldn't believe it. “I didn't…the lightning, the storm…I didn't do it. I mean, I was just trying to make her understand. I didn't mean to hurt anyone.”
“I know, Horace. That was my doing.”
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. At first he thought it was just a mirage, but as his vision cleared he saw it, a field of energy surrounding the vizier. The power radiated from him in crackling, black waves. Horace tried to swallow, but his mouth had gone dry. “You're a sorcerer.”
“Of course. We share a connection, you and I. Akeshia hasn't known a master of the void dominion in centuries. Now there are two. Quite the coincidence, no? Unfortunately, that is one too many.”
A sinking feeling filled Horace's chest, as if all his internal organs were collapsing in dismay. Of course Astaptah had blamed him for the queen's death. A thousand witnesses had seen him battling her at the stadium. “So now you kill me and get rid of the last obstacle, you fucking bastard.”
“There is no need for such vulgarity, Horace. After all, we've become quite close of late, haven't we? Yes, I believe I've come to know you as well as you know yourself.”
Lord Astaptah reached up to the apparatus on the ceiling and pulled a handle downward. One of the silver hoses was attached to the top, but on the bottom end—the end coming much closer to Horace's face than he was comfortable—jutted three sharp prongs like tiny claws. The round end of the handle was serrated. The vizier leaned over him and peered into each eye. “Perhaps better.”
“You don't know me at all, and you sure as Hell aren't the man I thought you were. Mulcibar was right about you.”
“Ai, it's unfortunate that he warned you. It forced me to move sooner than I intended.”
“You…you killed him.” Horace looked at the handle swinging over his forehead and knew why it had looked so familiar. He'd seen the wounds on Mulcibar's body and didn't want the thing anywhere near him. “You killed him here with this contraption.”
Lord Astaptah held the handle with both hands. “In this very cell. This device drains the subject of the vital essence that feeds our bodies, our brains, and especially our powe
r. It is, in essence, a pump. Your energy will fuel my ascension. I wish I had time to show you the engine. I think you, above all others, might appreciate its elegance.”
“Then you don't know me at all! I'm nothing like you. I don't care about—”
“Power? Don't be foolish. Of course you do. Ever since you had your first taste of the zoana in the desert, you've craved more of it. Power is freedom, and everything must submit to its inexorable tides. Pain is the key. I tried to teach you that, but you stubbornly refused to learn the lesson.” He leaned down closer and placed a hand on Horace's head. “Pain is what sustains us and drives us to excel. You must embrace it or perish.”
Astaptah pulled the metal handle lower.
Horace turned his face as far away as possible as the pronged end descended toward him. “The other kings will never let you keep the throne! You're just as much an outsider as I am!”
“Perhaps. However, I told you these Akeshians revere only one thing. Strength. And with my device operating at peak capacity—thanks to your contribution—I now control the strongest power in the empire.”
Astaptah grabbed his chin and held him tight. The sharp claws bit into his forehead. Horace fought against his bindings, even knowing it was futile. The ache in his shoulder redoubled, but he continued to struggle. The handle had latched on tight.
The vizier reached out to the wall. “I wish events could have been different, Horace.”
He flipped a switch, and a high-pitched whine started within the handle. Horace braced himself, but nothing could have prepared him for the bolt of electric agony that shot through his body. It centered around the spot where the device was attached to his brow, waves of pain like he'd never known washing over him in a river of torment that wiped his brain free of all other concerns. He could feel the warmth of his body being pulled out, and with it his life, like grains of sand falling through an hourglass. He gritted his teeth, fervently intending not to give his torturer the satisfaction, but his resolve vanished in a matter of heartbeats, and a ragged, guttural shout was ripped from his throat.