Fortune Favors the Cruel

by Kel Carpenter

  The warrior was smart enough to let go, but not before he lost balance and control of the staff. She swept her other leg under him, and he went crashing onto the ground beside her. She rolled, bringing the staff back up as she straddled his prone form—and then widened her grip to bring it down on his throat—holding it there to block his airway.

  Vaughn rasped something between his lips that sounded suspiciously like, “mercy—my she-wolf.” Quinn smiled, sitting back and lifting the rod away. She laid it to one side of her and pulled the blindfold from her eyes. Those crystalline gems glimmered with amusement and the thrill of the fight.

  “You alright there, Laz?” Draeven asked lightly. Lazarus turned his eyes away from Quinn and towards his best friend who watched him with delight.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Mhmmm.” His second nodded, though from his tone it was obvious he didn’t believe it. Draeven looked him up and down, from the incline of his neck to the taut muscles of his arms, and finally the white-knuckled grip of his fists. “I hate to tell you this, but you brought this on yourself. Quinn isn’t like your little passing fancies. You brought her with you, intending to make her a weapon—and while she might be one—she’s different. You see her differently.”

  “Draeven, I am not in the mood for your—”

  “I’m well aware,” his second replied with an edge to his voice. “She woke up in a fragile state and you pushed her—right to him—so whatever you do, don’t kill the boy. Not only will Thorne be pissed, but even worse, she will be too.” Lazarus gritted his teeth, fighting to keep his mouth shut. Quinn hadn’t been the only one stewing in her thoughts as they traversed the expansive region of the Cisean mountains down into Ilvas—but Draeven, unlike her, had the control for when and where to choose his battles. “If you kill him, I am not cleaning up the mess. You get to deal with her if she loses her shit and sends the basilisk after someone.”

  Lazarus sighed. “I’m not going to kill him.”

  “Good,” Draeven said, “because I haven’t seen you like this before, and when you’re unpredictable, people tend to die.” They held eye contact for a stretch of a moment before Lazarus nodded and Draeven turned his head back to the session. The tension between them dissipated as Quinn climbed off Vaughn and reached for the blindfold that now dangled around her neck, pulling it back up.

  “Again,” she commanded the Cisean and the boy fell in line.

  He and Draeven stood there as the sun dipped low, disappearing under the horizon. When the sky turned from cerulean to gray, and to the midnight blue with only Leviathan’s eye for light, Quinn finally called an end to the training session and started back for camp. The boy— Vaughn—simply stood there and then turned, looking at both Draeven and Lazarus with knowing eyes. He strode forward, his halberd leisurely at his side as he stepped through the line of trees.

  “Remember what you told me,” Draeven muttered as he turned for camp. Vaughn watched him go, none of the playfulness or light in his face he held when dealing with Quinn.

  “You watch she-wolf Quinn—even when she doesn’t want you to,” the warrior said. His Norcastan was broken but improving slowly the longer he was with them.

  “I watch all of my vassals,” Lazarus replied.

  “Then you know she has changed,” the warrior said. His pale green eyes watched Lazarus with an intensity that few would. “The darkness in her grows.”

  Lazarus’ eyebrows drew together slightly as he pressed his lips together before saying, “What exactly does that mean?”

  The warrior looked away, swallowed, then stared down at the ground for a moment before swinging back to him. “I don’t know,” he answered. “But I am”—he paused, searching for the words. “I am worried about her.” Lazarus blinked, but Vaughn continued. “I think you are too.”

  And with that, the boy—the man—walked away, leaving Lazarus in the cool night air alone with his thoughts to try to make sense of what was going on with Quinn.

  But for the life of him, he didn’t know anymore than she did.

  Even if the whispers inside were telling him that something wasn’t right … something had changed.

  Depravity’s Spark

  “The painful past of a tortured soul can shape the future of a man with the desire to be good.”

  — Quinn Darkova, vassal of House Fierté, fear twister, Master of Neiss

  Darkness had fallen rather quickly. Quinn wiped away the worst of her sweat and took a seat by the fireside. Lorraine waited with bowls of stew filled with freshly caught rabbit, Quinn took one and turned her eyes back to the surrounding area. For the last week she’d been training every spare minute she had, ever since they left Cisea and she recovered her strength. Lazarus watched her, though he tried to stay far enough back so she wouldn’t see.

  Stupid man, Quinn thought to herself. Of course, I see you. She always did, because she kept her field of vision up as a constant companion. For days there had been something on the periphery of it that left her edgy, but as she took a bite of her stew and turned to where Vaughn and Draeven stepped through the trees, she noticed that Lazarus hung back from them this time and motioned for Dominicus to join him.

  Neither of them flicked a glance at the fire or the people surrounding it as they disappeared beyond the trees once more. Quinn wondered if it was their immediate absence that made her feel off—as though there were eyes on them—or if it were simply her paranoia. Before she could think too hard on it, Vaughn crouched down at her side.

  “You did good, she-wolf Quinn. Good training. You are getting used to staff,” he said, taking his seat.

  “Thanks,” Quinn replied, nodding his way as Lorraine shoved a bowl and spoon into his hands.

  “I agree,” Draeven commented as he sat down. “You seem to have mastered your field of vision, that’s for sure.”

  “Yeah. I think the training is helping,” Quinn said vaguely as she lifted the spoon to her lips. That wasn’t the only thing she had gotten the hang of. Despite how hard she had pushed herself, Quinn hardly felt the day’s exertion. Before Cisea, she had felt strained and bone-deep exhaustion by the time she had called it quits. Today, she had pushed herself far beyond what she ever had before and still it felt as though she could stand up and go again. Her nerves and muscles and bones were alive with energy, and ever since she came out of the strange sickness, she felt better than she ever had.

  The only thing still bothering her was the sore spot on her abdomen. Even as Quinn sat and ate her dinner, she recalled checking it just that morning. Something dark had started to form there. It wasn’t a brand—she knew that much—but she also wasn’t quite sure what else it could be.

  There was a dark outline of a circle with blotches of that same darkness creeping towards the larger one, but it wasn’t complete.

  The group ate in relative quiet—a few thanks to Lorraine and comments about the day as they all consumed their meal. And as they ate, Quinn eyed Draeven. Unlike the others, he would probably be more aware of what her body was going through if what she suspected was true. But how could she ask him without ringing any warning bells? Quinn chewed on her lower lip as she observed him quietly.

  With a sigh, Draeven finished his stew and set his bowl down, lifting his head to stare at her. He had obviously been aware of her keen glances and Quinn wasn’t the kind of person to hide what she was doing without good reason. At the moment, she didn’t have a good reason to hide her interest, so she simply stared back, waiting for one of them—likely him—to break the silence.

  “What?” he finally caved.

  Quinn continued to watch him. “I’m just wondering something,” she admitted.

  “And that is?”

  Lorraine and Vaughn’s eyes bounced between the two of them.

  “You’re a Maji, right?”

  Draeven stiffened but nodded in answer. “I am,” he said.

  “What kind?” she asked.

  “Does it matter?”

  Quin
n shifted and leaned back on the log she was perched on. “No, I guess not,” she said. “But I’m just wondering what your ascension was like—you’ve had it already, yes?”

  His eyes widened and then narrowed in confusion, as though he couldn’t quite understand why she was asking about that. “Yes, I had my ascension several years ago,” he replied.

  Quinn fiddled with the spoon in her bowl before moving it to the side and handing it off to Vaughn, who passed it to Lorraine—before returning his rapt attention to the two of them. “When I lived in N’skara,” Quinn started, “I was taught a little bit about it, but most Maji that live in N’skara are light Maji. I’m wondering if it’s any different. That’s why I asked what kind of Maji you are.”

  Draeven shifted again, looking decidedly uncomfortable as he answered her. “Gray,” he said sharply, as if the word itself was dragged from between his lips.

  “And what was the ascension like for you?” Quinn asked, keeping her face neutral—void of any hints or signs.

  Draeven looked away, saving Quinn the task of keeping up her impartial facade as she turned completely towards him and away from Lorraine and Vaughn. “The ascension is … difficult on any Maji,” Draeven started. “There are many who do not live through it. Your body is either strong enough to withstand the full potential of your magic, or it is not.”

  Quinn nodded. While she had never witnessed an ascension in N’skara, she had heard that some had failed to survive—those that hadn’t lived had been weak to begin with, their bodies frail or even sickly.

  “The ascension acts as kindle to a flame, it ignites the truth of a soul.” Draeven turned his face back to Quinn and he stared somewhere beyond her, at a place she couldn’t see. “It is a painful process,” he said. “Some people believe that it is a test of the Gods to see if we are worthy of such power.” Draeven sighed and leaned back, craning his neck so that he was looking at the night sky through the treetops. “That’s why there are physical changes to a Maji’s ascension.”

  “Physical changes?” Quinn asked, hunching forward intently. “What kind of physical changes?”

  Draeven dragged his gaze away from the sky and looked at her curiously. “Why do you want to know?” he asked, his eyes narrowing as suspicion finally edged into his expression.

  Keeping her own face impassive, Quinn shrugged. “I’m past the age of normal ascension; I’m just curious. I expect I’ll hit it soon.”

  Draeven eyed her for a moment more before he huffed and went back to staring up at the trees and stars. “Before I ascended,” he said, his voice low, “I wasn’t very big.” Quinn raised a brow, looking him over. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Lorraine looked just as befuddled.

  “I was actually a pretty small kid. Scrawny, some might say,” Draeven continued, ignoring the rest of his audience. “One night in my late teens, the ascension hit me like a wild boar. I thought I was dying. The pain ripped me apart and rebuilt me into a new man. After that, my body put on muscle like nothing I—or anyone in my village—had ever seen. One day, I was small as an undergrown, half-starved kid, and within the following month I could run and keep up with men who’d done nothing but hard labor their entire lives. Within the following six months, my height shot up. I felt invincible.” His tone might have been wistful if there wasn’t a sharp bite of animosity Quinn couldn’t understand the reason for. “The only difference with me was that my magic didn’t really start to form until the year before my ascension.”

  Quinn frowned. She wanted to say that wasn’t normal, but judging by his expression he already knew it. “Was your ascension difficult because of that?”

  She was also a late bloomer. While her magic had shown up before either of her sisters and she’d been toying with it for years … she was also years past the age Maji entered their ascension. Would that cause it to be more painful? Perhaps even…

  Draeven’s shoulders stiffened, drawing her back. “During it? No. My family suspected what I was because they both were—though magic runs in the blood, magic doesn’t always choose the children of Maji. Sometimes it may choose the grandchildren or great-grandchildren. My mother was a potion master, my father a light whisperer. They knew what to expect, and when I finally did start showing signs—though we couldn’t tell what I was yet—” he paused, grinding his teeth for a moment as he inhaled through his nose. A sharp spike of heat filtered through the camp and Quinn was sure it didn’t come from the slowly dying fire.

  “The ascension itself, while painful, I knew how it would affect me,” he finally continued after a brief, but tense moment. “It was what happened afterwards that I didn’t expect.” Draeven dragged his eyes away from the sky and looked directly at Quinn. “Unlike you, I didn’t receive my magic until that previous year. I was in no way prepared to control it. That’s why you need to learn to control yours sooner rather than later.”

  Quinn opened her mouth to reply, but it was Vaughn that leaned forward and spoke next. “Did you not yet know your master?” he asked.

  Draeven twisted his head, blinking as if he had just realized that Lorraine and the Cisean were still there with them. “No. Lazarus didn’t find me until a year or two later.”

  Vaughn’s brows furrowed. “A year or two? Do you not know?”

  A dark shadow fell over Draeven as he stood up and moved away from the fire, finding his pallet on the far side of the clearing. “The years between my ascension and the beginning of my employment with Lazarus are eclipsed in my mind,” he said, his voice dripping with darkness. “Don’t ask again.”

  The conversation died there as Lorraine went back to cleaning up the mess of dinner. Vaughn stared at Draeven’s unmoving back with a pinched look of regret. Quinn sighed and stretched her limbs. If nothing else, Draeven’s story had given her another hint.

  She leaned back on her palms and closed her eyes. The darkness of the night called to her, and she let the tendrils slip from her skin and slither free. It was almost too easy for her to bring up the field of vision. She didn’t expect to find anything, but she was curious—Dominicus and Lazarus had yet to return.

  What she saw in her mind’s eye, however, had her stiffening. Without wanting to alert Vaughn or Lorraine, she slowly got to her feet and stretched again. When Quinn began to make her way to the edge of the clearing, Lorraine called out to her, wanting to know where she was going, and Quinn surprised even herself when she lied without thinking. She said something quickly about relieving herself before bed and then ducked under a low hanging branch as she strode away.

  She needed to relieve herself, alright. She needed to relieve the slowly building malevolence in her system and she suspected Lazarus had just the thing she needed.

  Unlikely Tormentor

  “It’s not the words of a dying man that speak volumes, but the eyes of one as they stare out into oblivion.”

  — Lazarus Fierté, dark Maji, heir to Norcasta, soul eater

  Watching. Waiting. For once, it wasn’t the voices of souls he’d eaten that stalked him, but the enemies who thought to slay him while he slept.

  “Fools,” Lazarus muttered to himself. As if he wouldn’t notice the eight men that lurked in the shadows around the camp. He’d have picked them off while Quinn was training, but they were still too far out. One of them might have escaped, and with him, word of the very woman he was trying to keep under wraps. No, he needed to lure them in. Let them think that they’d all gone to sleep. He needed them to think that they were easy. That he was easy. And then, when they least expected their demise, he would slit their throats and let them choke as they bled to death.

  And that’s just what he’d do.

  With a nod to Dominicus, his weapons master took to the woods under the veil of night. His stealthy form slipped in and out of trees, far beyond what Lazarus could see—though he still felt the man’s presence. He sensed each of the enemy souls as the ex-mercenary quietly slipped close and then divested them of their life. There was no whisper of th
eir last goodbyes in the dark, no cries of outrage. They merely ceased to exist—just the way rats should be dealt with.

  One by one they dropped, and the feeling of their souls blinked out—until there were only three: Dominicus, his target, and the unlucky bastard who drew the short stick and would feed Lazarus’ demons that night.

  He went for the latter, trailing through the woods with the same silence his assassin had helped him hone years ago. The darkness was a void he knew well, Lazarus thought as he pulled the wraith from his skin.

  The vile creature was once a man, a rage thief gone mad. He’d killed himself, but his magic hadn’t been ready to return to the Gods and a wraith was born. A creature of pain that existed in-between, created from the harvested soul of its owner that wasn’t strong enough to hold all the rage it had consumed. This one had the ability to blend shadows and sense misery.

  It suited Lazarus quite nicely as he wrapped it around him like a cloak and took to the darkness. Animals scattered, unable to see him, but sensing his presence and the vileness of the wraith. They had an uncanny way of grasping what their human counterparts could not.

  As if to prove his point, the enemy mercenary came into view. He was stout man, but thickly built. The top of his head was balding, and his goatee was dark and well-kept. Lazarus hadn’t seen the man before, which meant he was either new or too incompetent to warrant notice. Lazarus had a feeling it was both. Not many would take a contract on him these days. There was a reason for it, and he planned to remind whichever royal brat that sent him of that.

  He moved like a shadow, his thick, calloused hand already wrapped around the back of the man’s neck before the fool could utter a word.

  “Let’s take a walk,” he murmured into the would-be killer’s ear. “Shall we?” The wraith curled closer, reaching for the fiend as he attempted to struggle before finding it futile.