by Ivan Kal
“Ah, I didn’t tell you about him?” Ashara said lightly. “Vin is my friend. My best friend actually, as I’ve come to realize recently. Which is amazing for the amount of time I have known him.” She paused. “He’s from…far away. He doesn’t understand the social norms of our lands all that much. His culture is very different. A brooding, quiet type—like you, actually. Now that I think about it, the two of you to have much in common.”
Kyarra released a breath that she had been holding. She kept her hard face on as she chided herself. She had known Ashara for only a few days—she shouldn’t be feeling like this. One half of Ashara’s mouth quirked up in a half smile as she looked at Kyarra.
“What?” Kyarra asked.
“Oh, nothing. You’re just so cute when you think that you can hide your thoughts behind that serious face,” Ashara said as she giggled.
Kyarra stared at Ashara in both embarrassment and disbelief. She, a normal human, was giggling at her—the Eternal Soul. And she had even gone so far as to call Kyarra cute?
Then, before Kyarra could realize what was happening, Ashara’s lips were on her own. Kyarra froze in shock. And then, faster than she could process what had happened, it was over. Ashara leaned back and looked at Kyarra with a smile. Kyarra, on the other hand, was still in the process of figuring out exactly what had happened, and was motionless. And slowly the smile on Ashara’s face disappeared.
“I’m sorry,” Ashara said quickly. “I shouldn’t have done that. I promise—”
“No, it’s all right,” Kyarra said quickly. “I was just surprised, that’s all,” she said with a small smile of her own.
Ashara searched her face for a moment, and then her beautiful smile returned. And then she slowly leaned toward Kyarra, her lips finding Kyarra’s effortlessly—and this time, Kyarra didn’t freeze.
* * *
Later, the two of them sat with smiles on their faces back at their table. The main course was about to be served, and the two of them were waiting for their companions—Ovar, Master Jeressi, and Lady Havergrove and her husbands—to return to the table. Most of the others had done so already, and the King was getting ready to give a speech, as he did during every harvest feast.
“More wine, my lady?” one of the servants offered. Kyarra nodded, waiting for him to fill her cup, and then brought it her lips to take a sip.
The King stood up and the room quieted down, everyone turning to listen.
But then a burning sensation suddenly started in Kyarra’s body, and she frowned. The King started his speech, but she couldn’t focus on the words. She reached out to her magic, testing to see if anything was wrong. She glanced at the wine cup and fear seeped into her mind. The pain increased, but she still couldn’t understand how it was possible. The wards on her rings would’ve detected a poison in the wine the moment she picked up the cup—and yet she knew without a doubt that she had been poisoned. The pain was moving through her body as if it were looking for something, she realized with rising panic.
“Kyarra, are you all right?” Ashara whispered over the voice of the King who was still speaking.
Kyarra clutched at her stomach, bending over. “Kyarra?! Help!” she heard Ashara yell. And then someone screamed.
Kyarra fell to her knees, clutching a side of the table as noise and the clash of metal filled the hall around her. And then suddenly, as if it wasn’t ever there, the pain disappeared. She gasped, filling her lungs with air. She heard someone come into her vision and she raised her head to see a man dressed in the clothing of a servant look down at her—and then he rippled, his appearance shifting as if made of smoke, and a red-skinned darji in black armor with a black sword glowing with red glyphs stood above her. Someone grabbed her and pulled her back to her feet, dragging her away from the darji.
Ashara pulled her back, and then Kyarra saw the state of the hall. Guards wearing silver-and-green armor were filling into the room, fighting people in the gold-and-black armor of the Lashian Empire, and a few of the palace guards were even fighting their own. More darji stood at the back of the room, some throwing magic against the guards whose warded armor seemed to provide them with no protection.
In front of her, the darji stepped closer, raising his sword, and Kyarra reached for her magic—and hit a wall. She could feel her magic, but she realized with shock and confusion that she couldn’t reach it.
Ashara grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back hard enough that both of them fell to the floor. The darji stepped up and grinned at Kyarra, and then he moved the tip of his sword toward Ashara. Kyarra rolled over Ashara and closed her eyes, waiting for the pain. She heard Ashara gasp in horror and opened her eyes, turning then to see the sword impaled through Ovar’s stomach.
Before Kyarra could say a single word, Ovar gripped the darji’s sword with his left hand, keeping it in his stomach, and rammed a knife in his right into the darji’s throat. The darji’s surprised expression was the last thing Kyarra saw before he fell, pulling the sword from Ovar on his way to the floor. Stunned, Kyarra could only watch as Ovar tumbled to the floor as well.
Over his body, she saw two Lashian soldiers approach her quickly, with ropes in their hands. But then a wall of ice sprung in front of them, and Master Jeressi was running up, kneeling by Ovar, who was trying to speak.
“Kyarra!” Master Jeressi said. “We need you! We need the Eternal Soul!”
Kyarra shook her head numbly. “My magic… They did something, I can’t reach it!” she said quickly.
Master Jeressi’s face contorted in horror. He looked down at Ovar, who whispered Kyarra’s name.
“I’m here, Ovar! We need to get you out,” she said, trying to get him up.
“No… Listen to me,” he rasped out. His hand reached up to the amulet of the guardian around his neck. He ripped it from the chain and offered it to her. “Take this.” She nodded and took the medallion from him, then clutched it in her palm.
“You’ll be all right, Ovar,” she said as tears rolled down her cheeks.
Ovar’s eyes looked somewhere far ahead, and he didn’t seem to hear her. “A message, passed down…” He coughed up blood. “Kept… Until the time came…” he said, and his eyes glazed over. He took one more breath, and then he was gone.
“Kyarra, we need to go!” Ashara said urgently as she pulled on Kyarra’s shoulder.
Master Jeressi looked back as his ice wall crumbled under a bolt of fire from one of the darji mages. The mage saw them and raised his arm to throw another spell at them, but the Grand Marshal grabbed his arm and yelled something at him. Master Jeressi pointed his hands toward the ground, then drew three glyphs and whispered a word. The floor rippled outward, knocking down the few soldiers that had started running in their direction.
“The King!” Master Jeressi yelled, and Kyarra followed his gaze. The King was standing on the platform, holding Princess Jarna close as his guards kept the Lashian soldiers at bay on the steps. Several large plates had been placed on the floor, creating a portable spell-shield that kept the enemy mages from hitting them.
The King’s eyes connected with Kyarra’s. She wanted to help him, yet her magic was trapped inside of her. She kept trying to move through the block, but it was as unmovable as a mountain.
Then, the air behind the King quivered. One moment the King and the princess were alone, and in the next moment a woman with strange features and dressed in strange clothing, wielding two swords that were on fire, appeared behind them. The King didn’t even have a chance to see his death coming before the woman swiped with her swords, taking both the King’s and the princess’s heads off.
Kyarra couldn’t do anything but watch in shock, frozen by the horrifying events around her. As their heads hit the ground, she felt a pressure build inside of her, as if her own soul was twisting, and then something cracked, and she felt as if the chains had been removed from her very soul. For a single moment of hope, she thought that her magic was back—but the wall blocking her access was still th
ere.
Master Jeressi recovered first, grabbing Kyarra and pulling her back, toward the doors leading to the garden. Ashara and Master Jeressi held her as they hurried away, but soon she found she could walk on her own. They escaped the carnage in the hall and somehow managed to reach the other side of the gardens without encountering anyone. Then they entered the servants’ corridors, and Master Jeressi led them toward an exit.
“We need to escape,” he said shakily. “The wards on the palace are down… I don’t know how, but they all fell at the same time!”
“The King…” Kyarra said weakly.
“I know. Kyarra, we need to get your magic back.”
“They did something to me. Took my magic away. I…I think that the spells keeping me in the city broke when…” When the King and his daughter died, she finished in her mind. She had failed in her duty.
“We’ll make it right,” he said, then he winced and put his arm over his stomach.
“Are you all right?” Ashara asked.
“Fine,” Master Jeressi said. “Keep moving.”
And they did. “Where are we going?” Kyarra asked finally.
“If your bindings are gone, we need to get outside the city, fast. They planned this too well. And those darji mages… I’ve never seen anything like them. They were powerful, too powerful.”
“We need to go to my home. My friend can help,” Ashara said.
“I don’t know who you are, girl, but you better run away now. Staying with us will only place you in danger,” Master Jeressi told her.
“You don’t understand, I know who they are—”
“It won’t matter who they are unless we survive this,” Jeressi interrupted sharply.
Ashara looked like she was about to argue, but Kyarra stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Master Jeressi is right. We need to get away from the palace first. I need my magic back if I am to fight them.”
Ashara still looked like she wanted to argue, but she remained quiet.
Master Jeressi stopped at an empty wall. “Here.” He whispered a word, and the wall collapsed inward, letting them in.
CHAPTER TWENTY
ASHARA
Ashara tried to force her hands to stop shaking as she followed the two mages. They had left the palace without being detected using the secret passageways, and were now skulking around the city’s streets, trying to get to the gate and leave.
But things weren’t looking good for them. The city itself was under attack. Ashara didn’t know how the Lashian Empire had gotten their soldiers into the city, but the fighting could be heard in the distance, and large fires reddened the sky from the direction of the harbor. Ashara didn’t know what to do. She wanted to scream at Kyarra and the royal mage, to tell them about the Arashan and the threat that they posed. But she was too scared—her voice wouldn’t come out. At least she wanted to get them to go with her and find Vin. She was certain that he would know what to do, that he could protect them. Yet she could do nothing but follow, too frightened to even try and go on her own.
“Stop!” the royal mage hissed, and then gestured for them to hide against the wall of an alleyway. A group of soldiers wearing black and gold were marching in front of them. They waited, hidden, until the soldiers passed.
“Go!”
They stepped out and ran across the street. Ashara followed along clumsily; she was barely keeping up. Once they crossed into the next dark alley, the royal mage turned to Ashara.
“You should run now, girl, while you still have a choice.”
Kyarra looked at her as well, nodding her head with a haunted look in her eyes. “He’s right. You don’t have anything to do with this. They have no reason to harm you.”
Even before she finished speaking, Ashara was shaking her head. “You need me. You need to know who they are! There is even more danger to this than you think.”
“You said something about this before, in the palace,” the royal mage said suspiciously.
“It’s hard to explain,” Ashara said weakly.
“Try, or I will make you say it. Tonight I’ve seen friends die, girl—and you are a stranger who claims to know those who killed our King.”
“Jeressi, calm,” Kyarra interjected, but she, too, looked at Ashara expectantly.
“I have nothing to do with them! I’ve never seen them before. I know of them from my friend’s descriptions. They call themselves the Arashan. They are from…a land far away.”
“And this friend of yours knows them how?” Kyarra asked.
“He fought them before. They conquered his home. They are very dangerous, Kyarra. You have no idea what they are capable of,” Ashara said, the stories Vin had told her of his war coming to the forefront of her mind. “Things that you can’t imagine.”
The royal mage’s distrustful look lessened and he turned to look at Kyarra. “They were certainly different. I’ve never seen darji mages like them, and none of such power and skill. They could’ve killed everyone in that room…and I don’t know why they didn’t.”
“I saw them taking orders from the Grand Marshal,” Kyarra said. “And they… I think that he wanted me captured. If they could’ve poisoned me to take my power, they could’ve just as easily killed me.”
“Your fragment,” Jeressi said. “They must want it. If they had killed you, they would’ve needed to take time to search for your reincarnation. Capturing you when you have no access to magic would allow them to try to break the bond you have with the fragment at their leisure.” The royal mage paused—and then his eyes widened, and he grabbed Kyarra by the shoulders. “The fragment! Can you summon it?”
Kyarra’s eyes widened as well, and then she quickly closed them, her face scrunching up in concentration. But, just as quickly, she opened her eyes and then shook her head. “I can feel it, but I can’t touch it. I can’t touch any of my anima-wells either.”
“I don’t know what this is, Kyarra. I’ve never heard of anyone being able to take away a mage’s ability to reach their magic.”
“First we need to find safety,” Kyarra said, looking determined.
“Let’s go,” the mage said, leading them forward.
They started toward the gate again, Ashara following behind quickly. They moved through the streets until the mage stumbled and caught himself on the wall.
“Jeressi!” Kyarra said, and moved close to him. She saw him holding his stomach, Ashara pulled his robe away and in the dim light saw blood soaking his undershirt.
“He’s hurt,” Ashara whispered.
“Damn stupid,” he panted. “Didn’t raise a shield in time.”
“Can you keep going?” Kyarra asked.
He nodded resolutely and pushed himself off the wall. Kyarra and Ashara helped him walk. They walked for half an hour, stopping from time to time to evade people, and backtracking and going around when they encountered fighting. The Tourran guard seemed to still be fighting all across the city.
They finally reached the gate, only to find dead guardsmen lying in front of the closed portcullis and Lashian soldiers standing there behind an improvised set of fortifications made of crates and carts.
“We can’t get out,” Kyarra hissed.
“Damn it,” Jeressi said tiredly. “We will need to hide in the city, then, and see if we can get a chance to leave later.”
“They’ll find us! They must be looking for me already.”
“We can go to my home. Vin can help us, I know it,” Ashara interjected.
“I know of no better place, and if this friend of yours can help as you claim… Then we must try,” Jeressi said. “Where is your home?”
“In an inn, close to the harbor district,” Ashara answered.
“That is too far. We’ll never make it,” Kyarra said.
“We must at least try, unless you would rather surrender to the Lashians,” Jeressi said.
“No,” Kyarra whispered.
They agreed, silently, and started on their way, keeping to the back
alleys. From time to time, they would see people, other citizens of the city, but they avoided them. Everyone was in a hurry to get inside—only idiots stayed outside while there was fighting in the city, after all. They slowly crossed through the empty streets, hearing the sounds of battle dwindle away in the distance. The fighting had either stopped or they had moved too far away from it. The mage got worse as they walked—the man was pale in the face and was having a harder and harder time walking.
They reached a large, open area and they stopped, waiting to see if they could pass unnoticed. Once they made sure, that there was no one around, they walked out, keeping close to the wall and moving quickly. Just then, a group of Lashian soldiers rounded a corner, and saw them. Immediately, they headed their way, and Ashara saw the moment when they recognized them. They must’ve been searching for Kyarra, because once they saw her, they started yelling and running toward them. Jeressi stepped away and leaned against the wall. “Go. Leave me behind,” he said, his voice preternaturally calm. Kyarra looked at him and at the soldiers, unable to decide whether to leave him.
A vision of the cabin on Norvus flashed in Ashara’s mind, of young Narima lying in the pool of his own blood and she froze.
Jeressi gestured with his hand, writing a glyph in the air and whispering a stream of words. A ball of fire exploded toward the soldiers, making them halt in their tracks. The fire broke against a shield their mage raised.
“I’m sorry you got wrapped into this, Ashara,” Kyarra told her, defeated.
Ashara took hold of Kyarra’s hand, squeezing it, and then she waited for the soldiers to reach them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
VIN
Vin sat on the floor, cycling the aura he was drawing in from his surroundings, converting it into ki as he waited for Ashara to return home. He used a cycling technique called the Endless Sea, one that had been rarely used—and for a good reason. It did nothing to compress or strengthen his ki. Instead, it focused solely on increasing his core’s capacity to hold ki. And that was what he needed now. He had an endless amount of aura available to him, more than his core could hold, so he needed to increase the amount he could hold. He was also trying to think up on ideas about techniques he could start developing for his new way, although he was not yet certain of what exactly he could do with his new ki affinity. He could do basic Surge techniques, increasing his strength and speed for short bursts; he did not need an affinity for that. But other mastery schools were more specialized, with techniques that used affinities as their base, and he would need to develop new ones for his affinity.