“The palace is just over there,” Raxxil said as he pointed at a lavish, tiered structure up the street. “Wait for the alarms, then infiltrate the palace once the guards leave their posts.” Without waiting for anyone to reply, Raxxil marched down the street—
Arwynn sped up and pulled his arm, and without thinking he gripped her in return and almost threw her against the side of the closest wall in cover.
“What are you doing?” he whispered as he looked around to see if they had been spotted.
“You’re going to attract the forces of an entire army to yourself,” Arwynn shot back with a baleful look. “Shouldn’t you at least say farewell?”
“This isn’t farewell,” Raxxil said with a wrinkled forehead. He let go, and she realized just how painful his grip was. “Go on.” This time, though, he waited for Arwynn.
She was glad that he did, and he knew it too. She stared at him for several long moments. She wanted as much time with him as she could get. Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, Arwynn reopened her eyes. She nodded to Raxxil, then turned away to rejoin the others.
Arwynn heard Raxxil’s plated boots strike the ground as he went off to do his part of the mission. When she could no longer hear him, she went down her own path.
The three of them scrambled up the street, passing by several structures on their way to the palace. Guards who had the misfortune of patrolling their way were struck down with ease, shock written all over their lifeless faces.
And each time Arwynn’s blade bit flesh, she felt no pang of remorse for these men and women. Even after seeing Liberty’s unjustified war, they still remained in the service of the Order of the Faith. To Arwynn, that was forfeiting mercy.
Raxxil was right. These were a people who followed their leader blindly, not stopping to question whether their path is right. The realization was a blade that cut Arwynn, too.
She had been a blind follower all the same. But now, she saw through the veil. She was free to choose between what was right and wrong. Whatever the Skyward Hands was after, it had led the ones who she loved astray. It had led her astray.
But no more.
The palace came into view as the street gave way to a vast square that was in the heart of Lenas. The three of them took cover behind the walls of a nearest building, careful not to alert the guards on duty.
But there were hardly any, as strange as it was. Only a few stood guarding the palace gates, and fewer patrolled the surrounding area. The three of them looked at each other in confusion.
“We’ve yet to hear a rallying cry or alarm of any fashion,” Samantha said, echoing Arwynn’s thoughts.
“No one could strike down Liberty,” Darius said as he scratched the stubble on his chin. “He’s an arrogant man, no doubt.”
“He’s less worried about himself than his walls,” Arwynn added. “What should we do?”
“Stick to the plan,” Darius said as he withdrew his crossbow and aimed at the patrolling guards. His bolts were true, a slew of bodies hitting the ground. This time, however, someone noticed.
A handful of armored men and women swarmed the square in search of the culprits, and finding the trio, charged after them. The three split into a battle formation, Arwynn and Samantha taking to the front while Darius remained back with range.
“Sting of the serpent, Cadence!” shouted Arwynn above the clamor of battle, her normal sword transforming into one that extended like a whip. She twirled the hilt as she danced across the battlefield, evading attacks and slicing her enemies.
Samantha blew a horn, signifying that she had also released her weapon, and Arwynn felt a surge of energy. Darius’s bolts of lightning echoed across the square, though were soon drowned out by a slew of elemental attacks fired at the trio in return.
The three proved far superior as both fighters and elementalists, and it wasn’t long until they were the only ones left standing. Only a couple dozen of guards had come their way, and with them gone, the palace was vulnerable.
Groaning caught Arwynn’s attention, and when she looked toward the source, she found a few of the guards still breathing on the ground without more than a superficial cut or bruise on their heads. She looked at Samantha with a disappointed look.
“They wouldn’t show you the same mercy,” Arwynn said.
Samantha wiped away the blood on her cut lip. “I don’t kill.”
“Then I suppose you are what they should be,” Arwynn replied, and the other woman sighed.
“Let’s go,” Samantha said as she led the charge past the gates of the palace toward an inner courtyard.
Lenas spared no expense in its pursuit to make the palace the seat of a god. Rows of carved structures adorned with jewelry and trimmed hedges accentuated vast gardens of many colors. Up ahead loomed a structure with terraces larger than some ballrooms.
Once they reached the center of the courtyard they were met by a large pond in the center of a crossroads. Up ahead was the large structure with the terraces, to the left was a path that led to a cathedral, and to the right was another path that led to a set of structures, one of which looked like a barracks. More men and women of the Order of the Faith were bearing down on them from all four paths.
“What should we do?” Arwynn asked.
“They could be distracting us to give Liberty the time to escape,” Darius said.
“That could be true,” Samantha added. “Or, they’re just defending against an attack. We don’t know what Liberty’s planning.”
“We should split up,” Arwynn said, raising her blade in preparation for another battle. She started making her way toward the large building with high terraces.
“I’ll take the church,” Darius announced as he went to the left.
“That leaves the barracks,” Samantha said as she lowered her head and slammed a knight of the Order of the Faith to the ground with her shoulder. “We should reconvene here once we have something to report.”
Arwynn was already bounding up the steps that led inside by the time she heard Samantha’s order, her whip-like sword extending and collapsing as she flung its hilt and sliced all those in her path.
A moment later and she was past the grand pillars on the outside of the building, stepping into a large, rectangular room that the entrances to corridors on the left and right and a staircase on each of the far walls just next to the entrances. The stairs culminated onto an upper deck that branched out into a rectangular corridor leading elsewhere.
At the wall opposite Arwynn were large, jeweled double doors, and it was there that she began her search. She pushed one open, peering inside with blade at the ready. On the other side she found no enemies but a spacious, empty ballroom with balconies lining the walls above.
The vision of her and Raxxil dancing together in such a beautiful ballroom fluttered for a moment in her mind, but she growled in dissatisfaction and shut the door behind her.
Her eyes followed the stairs to the upper level and what lay beyond, but she decided to scour the bottom corridors first. She ran across the room to the entrance on the right, poking her head out the corner. Like the ballroom, only an empty corridor decorated with sculptures and paintings met her.
On the wall of the corridors were other doors, and she took the time to open each to peer within. Empty, empty, empty. The palace seemed more abandoned than anything, and she wondered if Liberty had already made his escape.
She came across one such door that did not lead into just another room but a staircase that went down, the first set that did so. She looked down the staircase and found a dark passage unlike the rest. Everything about the palace was ornate, while this passage was just cold stone and moss.
Arwynn descended down the passageway, her only source of illumination being torches burning on the walls. It reminded her of their descent every time they entered the Skyward Hands’ lair, and her heart sank.
She longed for her friends to be with her, back when she thought that she had a chance with Raxxil.
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br /> The sound of her footsteps scraping stone echoed down the long, eerie passageway. A foul smell assaulted Arwynn’s nostrils, and the only thing keeping her pressing on was the fact that something like this would be the perfect secret tunnel for an important figure like Liberty to escape.
At first it looked like a jail to her, with long hallways filled with spaces blocked by iron bars. But they were all empty, something that made the dungeon that much creepier. She passed by some doorways that led into other rooms, and when she leaned into one of them to look at what was inside she found wishing that she hadn’t done so. A corpse with half its skin on and the other half with muscle and guts exposed greeted her. It was apparent that multiple surgical incisions had been done to the poor soul, but the reason for doing so escaped Arwynn.
“Not even I would do something like that,” remarked Cadence in disgust.
She withdrew from the room and continued onward, this time a bit more wary of anything dangerous. She passed by some more rooms of questionable nature until the sound of clinking stopped her in her tracks.
Arwynn held her breath, straining her ears for any sound. The clinking came again followed by the faintest of mumbling from a room not too far ahead. She crept closer until she could peer inside, noticing a man with his back to her working diligently on another corpse lying flat on a table.
The room was much larger than the rest, and when she glanced around she saw hundreds of tables organized side-by-side with a half dozen feet in between each. Some had corpses on them, others did not.
Her eyes darted back to the man, who was too busy working on some sort of medical procedure to notice her. He was the source of mumbling, and he continued to do so even in the absence of anyone but himself.
And he sure wasn’t talking to the dead man on the table, either. Or… was he? Arwynn was too creeped out to want to find out what the man was doing or why this place even existed. She inspected the strange man and his stranger outfit. He had a bald head fitted with a monocle over one eye and wore a long, red trench coat. His gloves, boots, and buckle were all black, and so was the vest that he wore underneath the coat.
“Where is Liberty?” Arwynn asked, and the bald man was startled so much that he jumped over the corpse and crouched behind the table.
“What are you doing down here?” he asked, his eyes poking out from behind the table. A few moments later, and his brows furrowed. “Wait, you’re not anyone from the Order of the Faith. Who are you?”
“Tell me where Liberty is,” threatened Arwynn as she held up her blade, ready to pounce upon the weirdo.
The bald man rose from behind the table, his eyes examining Arwynn as if she were some tool. She shuddered, his peering eyes boring into her skin. From within his vest he procured a claw, slipping it onto his hand, and then pointing it at Arwynn.
“You’ll make a very, very wonderful specimen,” he said as he licked his lips in anticipation. “The hidden hand, Yurla.”
_ _ _
With a series of lightning bolts, Darius shot down the remaining soldiers of the Order of the Faith who had decided to chase after him once the three had split.
It was now just him, Truebolt, and the grand cathedral that beckoned him inside its doors. It was the first time that he had laid eyes upon such a large church. The largest one in the world, at that. It was designed as a hexagon, each side rising about fifty feet into the air and culminating into a spire that pierced the sky. Beautiful arches and statues decorated the tops of the cathedral, a monument built to honor God himself.
Each side also was adorned with stained glass depicting key moments from the scripture, as if to say that words alone were not enough of proof of their faith’s legitimacy.
Darius waited for any more soldiers who might have come his way, but the only ones around him were the fallen. He turned around, pushing open the two heavy doors of the cathedral and stepped inside. The light of dawn stepped in with him, the doors closing by themselves soon after.
Darius drank in the room in all of its glory. Hundreds of pews were lined perfectly down the cathedral. At the back was the altar, the book of the Faith proudly adorned along with all the holy items and adornments that went with it.
Scribbled on the wall above the altar was a saying in an ancient tongue, of which Darius had no knowledge of. The stained glass on the walls impeded the sun’s light, and thus candles were lit across the edges of the room in aid of illuminating God’s goodness.
No priest stood upon the altar, and no one was praying. Raxxil’s grand entrance had certainly made sure of that. Lenas no doubt was in the midst of evacuating its citizens, for the Volcano was back to finish the job.
Darius made his way down the cathedral over to the altar, the echoing of his steps the only sound that reached God’s ears that morning. When he made it to the end he stepped atop the altar and gazed at the open book of the Faith placed on a pedestal and flipped to a random page.
Like the saying above, the words in the book were of an ancient tongue. According to the many priests and believers of the Faith, it was the language of God, and part of why evil festered on Ashkar was because the people had forgotten the language.
His soul never belonged to the Faith, but Darius knew that there was something beyond. Maybe his tragedy was the result of his family forgetting the language. Maybe the Faith itself was not on the right path, either.
Crusading against other nations wasn’t something that Darius would imagine to be in a holy book, but what did he know? His hands were stained by the lives of many. His soul might have already been lost, and the ironic part was that he would only know when it departed his body.
But there was one thing that he did know. Those who made no effort to seek the light were sure to descend into dark.
“Have you come to seek forgiveness before the end?” spoke an aging voice from behind, and Darius wheeled around with crossbow at the ready to meet the face of an elderly priest.
“Why have ya not evacuated like the other priests?” Darius asked.
“Evacuated?” scoffed the priest as he peered at Darius from below the altar, a strange reversal of positioning for the two to be in. “God’s house is my sanctuary.”
Darius sighed. “Old man, this ain’t the safest spot to be in right now. Get on yer way before ya get caught in the crossfire.”
“Ah, I see,” said the priest as he looked upon Darius with condescending eyes. He withdrew a rod from within his robes. “You think the Knights of the Order of the Faith the only fighters, but such is the foolishness of a heathen who doesn’t follow God. As High Priest of the Church of the Faith, it is my duty to deliver you to God.”
“W-what?” Darius stammered as he shook both hands at the High Priest. “I can’t strike down a priest! That’s bad juju. Just run, you crazy, old geezer!”
But the High Priest’s face darkened. “Hollow spirit, Togabil!”
_ _ _
Samantha crashed through the door of the barracks, rolled forward, and then jumped just as a conjured rock aimed to crush her crushed the bed next to her instead.
With a gust of wind she picked up the unhinged door and flung it at her assailant, knocking the soldier unconscious. Panting, she gripped onto one of the bed frames to keep herself from collapsing onto the floor.
“You can’t afford to keep punishing your body,” Kavem warned. “It’s placing too much of a strain on you.”
“I don’t have a choice, Kavem,” she replied.
Samantha waited at the open entrance for anyone who dared follow her in.
But no one did, even though she knew that there had been more than a dozen men and women after her. When her pounding heart steadied herself, she slid just next to the door and stretched her neck out just enough for her to take a look outside.
Her eyes narrowed when she saw General Von Doley barking orders at the soldiers who had just been following her. With an angry swing of his arm, they marched off toward the palace, leaving the general on his own.
“Samantha Kell, the punishment for both deserting and betraying the Order of the Faith is one and the same,” he called out to her. “For deserting, I will send you to the afterlife, and for betraying the Faith, God will ensure that the most searing of flames scorch your damned soul.”
If he’s redirecting forces somewhere else, it means that soldiers are sorely needed on another front.
“My guess is Raxxil,” Kavem said just as Samantha heard an explosion and the subsequent rumbling that was signature to Raxxil’s abilities.
That meant two things: the Order of the Faith was starting to crumble, and Raxxil was still alive. With its main general out of the way, the military’s leadership would collapse into disarray.
When she got her bearings, Samantha took a deep breath, then walked outside the barracks toward the general. He stood in the middle of the courtyard with another set of barracks behind him. As Samantha approached, he brandished his blade.
“In what desperation did you think that you could take on the Order of the Faith with but a few elementalists?” asked General Von Doley, his rough face contorting and wrinkling as he spoke. “Not even an army would have been able to break through these walls, and even if any could, Liberty is blessed by God’s touch. Nothing will ever be able to reach him.”
Samantha smiled. “Desperation? The Volcano is on your doorstep, General. He is the army. As for Liberty, we all know that he is afraid of Raxxil.”
General Von Doley gritted his teeth.
“So it’s true?” Samantha pressed. “You’re all afraid of him, aren’t you? Just a man, and yet you fear him like you would God.”
“Silence, traitor!” spat the general as he charged at her. “Matching omen, Wirsval!”
Chapter 29
323rd Dawn of the 5010th Age of Lion
Raxxil swung his hammer in a wide arc, crushing to bits a host of men and women who blindly followed a belief that only led to manipulation and ruin. As such, their lives were no more valuable than those of ants.
Silent Requiem (Tales of Ashkar Book 3) Page 36