Heretic Spellblade

by K D Robertson

  Then Sen slipped in the mud. Her guard went down. Fei was there. An instant later, Sen’s arm twisted and snapped. Her sword fell into the mud. Sen fell down, holding in a scream. Red light burst from the cairn as Sen prepared one final spell in a last ditch effort.

  A moment later, Fei ended Sen’s resistance with a knee to the jaw. Sen flopped over into the mud. Before Fei could blink, the hoplites were on the bandit spellblade, dogpiling her and grappling her. The fight was over.

  Fei had won her first true battle as a Champion. She looked up to where she knew Nathan was and tried to shield her eyes against the rain.

  Both Sunstorm and Nathan had seen the cairn sputter out as Fei put Sen out of the fight. Only one opponent remained for Nathan. One person to capture.

  His eyes focused on Sunstorm. “Care to come quietly?” he asked.

  She took a step toward him and shook her swords menacingly at him.

  “I take it that’s a no.” He sighed.

  A pair of hoplites closed in on her. She exploded in a burst of shadow and turned one into a pile of armor, before returning to her previous position.

  Nathan didn’t have a clue how he’d capture her. He didn’t have the power to take her quietly. If he tried to force her, most likely he’d hurt her a lot. Or kill her.

  Another blast of light flew toward Sunstorm, and she deflected it. Her attention turned toward Vera, who was slowly moving closer.

  Nathan’s hand closed on his sheathed sword and his eyes narrowed.

  Sunstorm froze. Her eyes turned to him. “You haven’t even been taking me seriously, have you?”

  “I’m taking you seriously as a threat,” Nathan responded.

  Sunstorm cursed. “Your nights are limited, Bastion. Arrogance is a curse.”

  Shadow exploded around Sunstorm. Nathan whirled and fired off a wind blast where she knew she would appear, this time empowering it with the binding stone.

  As before, Sunstorm blocked it with a sword. She screamed as the blast knocked away her sword and cut her hand open. Blood flew, mixing with the rain for a moment. Her hand was still there, but long gashes ran along it. She glanced between her fallen sword and Nathan, her eyes wide.

  Then she vanished in another puff of shadow.

  “Like hell she’s getting away,” Vera shouted.

  With a gust of wind, Vera took off into the mist.

  “Stop!” Nathan yelled after her. He cursed when she ignored him.

  If Sunstorm stopped to fight, then Vera would get herself killed. Nathan glanced down the valley. Fei was standing guard over Sen and waved at Nathan.

  “Keep watch over Sen,” Nathan shouted. “I’m going after Vera.”

  Fei tilted her head for a moment, as if confused by something, then saluted as an acknowledgement.

  The mist was too dense to see either Sunstorm or Vera, so Nathan had to follow them using their magical presence. Fortunately, both were using their magic so were easy to track. He stumbled through the forest, trying not to trip over fallen branches or slip over in the mud.

  By the time he found Vera, Sunstorm was gone. Her presence had vanished almost a minute earlier.

  Vera kneeled in a small clearing, her staff held before her in both hands. A half-dome of solid white light stood in front of her, projected from her staff. She was shaking, staring at the ground. Her arm and face had slashes on them, but otherwise she appeared uninjured.

  “You’re alright,” Nathan said. It wasn’t a question. Given who she had chased, these were very light wounds.

  “Physically,” Vera said quietly, with only a hint of fire in her voice. “My pride? Not so much.”

  “Your pride can recover from a loss. Your body can’t recover from being decapitated,” Nathan said.

  Sunstorm was an assassin by trade. She enjoyed chopping off heads. Vera was very lucky.

  “Speaking from experience?” Vera asked, a hint of a smirk on her face.

  Nathan stared at her. Vera’s smirk vanished, and she looked away.

  “Let’s head back,” he said. “Fei’s captured the spellblade. We can rest up, wait for the storm to pass, then ride back to my keep.”

  Chapter 14

  “So that’s what gem abilities are like,” Fei said on the ride back. “I thought a monogem Champion would be stronger.”

  Vera gave Fei a look of disbelief. The three of them were riding back on the horse automatons, with Sen tied up on a third one accompanied by the hoplites. The storm had taken a few hours to pass, and it was late afternoon. By the time they returned, Nathan expected that dusk would have fallen.

  “Stronger?” Vera rolled the word over her tongue as if trying to understand Fei’s mental state. Evidently, the sorceress came up empty. “She deflected third rank spells like they were pebbles. And what was that explosion you caused, Nathan? It took out half the valley, but she barely felt it.”

  “Third rank?” Fei repeated.

  “The triangle spells,” Nathan said offhandedly. “You really haven’t learned anything about sorcery before, have you?”

  “I grew up in a fishing village to the south.” Fei bit her lip and looked away.

  “It’s fine. I just need to teach you more,” Nathan said. He knew about her upbringing, but somehow it hadn’t occurred to him that the reason she knew so much in his timeline about sorcery was because of her experience, not because she was taught it as a Champion.

  Vera looked between the pair of them, an annoyed expression on her face. When Nathan looked at her, she glared back at him as if to say “So what?”

  The sun rolled over the horizon while they rode. The keep wasn’t in sight yet.

  “Fei, you’ve felt the power that your enhancement gives you, right?” Nathan asked.

  “Um, among other things.” She blushed.

  “I mean in battle.”

  Fei nodded, her blush fading.

  “The binding stone provides a certain level of power to Champions on top of the enhancement itself. That applies to me as well. Magic now runs through your veins. Strictly speaking, Champions and Bastions are no longer human. Or beastkin, in your case.” Nathan eyed Vera, who was listening intently. Much of what Nathan was explaining wasn’t common knowledge.

  Everybody knew Bastions were inhumanly powerful. But Bastions kept a lid on the exact reasons why.

  “Oh. Does this relate to how I was always warned that once you become a Champion you can’t turn back?” Fei said. “I never really had a choice, but lots of people got cold feet when they found out. The meisters spoke to everybody in private several times before we left the academy.”

  Vera’s eyebrows shot up. Nathan gave her a warning glance, and she raised a finger to her lips with a nod.

  At least she understood that he was being kind by letting her hear this. Perhaps he could chase her away, but the conversation had otherwise been fine up to this point.

  “More or less,” Nathan answered. Fei shifted in front of him. She tried to look up at his face from her seat on the horse. “Gems cannot be removed. And each gem increases your bond with the binding stone, and with your Bastion.”

  “My bond,” Fei whispered.

  “That’s why a monogem Champion is powerful, even if her gem abilities don’t seem as dangerous as they appear. The Federation Champion not only had a base enhancement as strong as yours, but she had more power from the binding stone and her shadow ability from her gem.” Nathan bopped Fei on the head to make her pay attention. “So a straight fight between you and her would have been extremely dangerous.”

  Fei scowled up at him. “You came out fine.”

  “I can draw directly on the power of the binding stone. I used a lot of it to enhance my sorcery so that I could overpower her gem.” Nathan sighed. “That’s going to cost me if the Federation attacks soon. I planned to use that power to slap a barrier over the keep.”

  Dusk arrived. The keep came into sight, and a patrol of guards wandered out to greet them. At the sight of Sen, bound and tied
to an automaton horse, the guards signaled the keep using a lantern. Lights flashed from the walls in response. The gate rolled open, and more guards spilled forth, saluting Nathan as he entered.

  “I saw it from afar, but you really have been busy,” Vera muttered. “This place has been a ruin for as long as I remember.”

  “Feel free to stay the night. I can send you back with a horse if you’d prefer,” Nathan offered as they dismounted in the courtyard.

  He waved off the guards when they attempted to carry Sen off. Nathan wanted to deal with her personally. Despite his gesture, they milled about nearby, still wary of the bandit spellblade.

  For how long had Sen tormented this county that the guards recognized her so readily and glared at her with such ferocity?

  “No, I’ll stay. A hot bath would be nice.” Vera ran a finger through her matted locks of hair. While she was still beautiful, the storm had dulled her glossy appearance somewhat.

  Fei was in a similar state, moaning at the state of her tail. She shot puppy dog eyes at Nathan in an attempt to convince him to brush it later.

  Nathan gave Vera a nod while waving off Fei. “We can talk in the morning then. I need to interrogate this one.” He gestured to Sen. “And then contact Bastion Leopold. Now that I have confirmation that a Federation Bastion is involved, he may be more interested in acting. If not, I’ll continue as planned.”

  “What about the leylines?” Vera asked, biting her lip.

  “It will be a few days before I can tell if this lot were the only ones behind it. Unless I find out more.” He locked eyes with Sen, who glared at him. “If the leylines remain disrupted, I’ll need to patrol around the other cairns and look for other sorcerers and bandits. If they begin to restore themselves, then…” Nathan trailed off.

  There was a risk of something much worse happening, he thought. Now that he knew the cause behind the leyline disruption, and that a Bastion was behind it, everything had changed.

  And he really meant everything. He had always thought the demonic invasion had been an accident. That the demons had slipped through while the Empire had been weakened from a two-front war, and the Federation had been too weak to quell multiple portals opening at once.

  But if the Federation was weaponizing demons, it meant that Nathan needed to change his thought processes.

  The war that consumed his timeline had already begun. He had arrived too late to stop it. All he could do was prevent it from taking the world with it.

  Leading Sen to his office, Nathan tried to push down the thoughts. The black door stood at the far end. Somehow, Nathan had gotten used to its foreign presence. He blocked it out most days and kept his back to it when doing any paperwork, reading, or going over the map.

  Sen’s eyes scanned right over the door. Despite its foreboding appearance, she didn’t react.

  Nathan knew this was because she couldn’t see it. The binding stone couldn’t sense Kadria’s little pocket dimension, and nobody other than him could see it. It was as though Kadria was living in his mind.

  The door scratched at Nathan’s thoughts when he looked at it, so he led Sen to the far corner and dumped her in a chair. He then took a seat himself and faced away from the black portal.

  Sen glared at him. He removed the wooden block gagging her mouth.

  “Not going to spit at me?” Nathan asked as he cleaned off the wood with a nearby cloth.

  She threw a sullen look at him. “You killed Derek.”

  A picture of a hulking giant wearing scratched and faded Empire armor appeared in Nathan’s mind. “The deserter? Was he your leader?”

  “My friend. And you killed him.” Sen’s glare grew fiercer. “And he didn’t desert. The Empire betrayed him. Left him for dead.”

  Nathan didn’t care about some random bandits. He dropped the wooden block on the table and leaned back in his chair.

  How could he go about this? The Sen glaring at him felt so different to the timid, clingy girl he had known.

  “I’m Nathan. Nathan Straub,” he said.

  “I know. Sunstorm told me,” Sen said. “Why should I care anyway? Why do you care?”

  So much fire in her. So unlike the Sen he knew.

  By the time Nathan met Sen in his timeline, she had become timid. She never spoke about her past, and all Nathan knew was that the Amica Federation had forcibly recruited her when they invaded the Empire. He hadn’t even known she was close to Gharrick Pass at the time of the invasion.

  “Because I don’t want to be your enemy,” Nathan said. “I’m a Bastion. You’re a highly capable spellblade. I can help you.”

  Sen stared at him. The fire in her eyes didn’t vanish, but a look of disbelief appeared.

  “If you wanted to help me, you’d have left me alone,” she muttered.

  Looking into her green eyes, Nathan’s heart fell. This Sen was too different from the one he knew. What had the Federation done to her in the few years between now and when he met her in his timeline? How had her spirit been broken so badly?

  Could he ever meet his Sen again? He wondered if the quiet, clingy girl with white hair—the one who came to Nathan for comfort after a nightmare, a battle, or whenever she smelled ash in the wind—was gone forever.

  “Why were you working with Sunstorm,” he asked, leaning back and rubbing the bridge of his nose.

  “Not going to ask my name?” Sen said.

  “It’s Sen.”

  She stared at him in shock.

  “Again, why are you working with Sunstorm? I’m going to be kind and assume you don’t know what destabilizing a leyline does, but you must have had a reason to work with the Federation. The moment the Empire cottoned on to the fact you were working with another nation was the moment your time was up.” Nathan clicked his fingers for effect. Sen flinched at the noise.

  “Nobody tells us anything,” Sen mumbled.

  “So, you played along for no reason?”

  “The Federation promised me a future. All of us a future. They’ve been good to us in the past, back when we helped them stop the tolls. Derek trusted them.” Sen bit her lip. “This time felt different. I’d never dealt with a Champion before.”

  Nathan sighed. A typical reason for bandits. They didn’t trust the Empire, but the Federation was a different story as it was ruled by merchants. Where the nobles of the Empire constantly suppressed bandits and their ilk, the Federation knew how to play their game. Bandits could become mercenaries, guards, or even establish their own trading company in the Federation. They weren’t restricted in what they could do because of what family they were born into.

  “I can promise you that future, Sen,” Nathan tried, feeling his offer was futile.

  “I already told you—”

  “I heard you.” Nathan sighed.

  He stood up. Sen flinched and looked down. Her eyes were wide open. Magic began to build up within her body, but she couldn’t focus it because of the enchanted rope around her body. She tried again and again until she collapsed in her chair. Her glare tore into the back of Nathan’s head.

  The black door beckoned him.

  Chapter 15

  Kadria had said she could restore Sen’s feelings toward him. Would that bring his Sen back, rather than this furious bandit girl that wanted to turn him into ash and hated everything he stood for?

  Nathan grabbed Sen and dragged her to the door that led to Kadria’s domain. She struggled, but he ignored her.

  The door opened this time without requiring Nathan to knock. Despite his fears that it would be impossible, he pulled Sen into the void with him. The moment she passed through the door, her struggling ceased.

  Her eyes widened, and she stared around her. Her pupils expanded as large as they could, almost completely blotting out the green of her irises. She slumped against Nathan’s side. Moments later, she shivered.

  “Where…” she mumbled. “Where are you taking me?”

  Kadria’s room looked identical to Nathan’s last visit. Outlin
es of furniture and a black void occupied his vision. Kadria was nowhere to be seen, however.

  “What can you see?” Nathan asked. He clicked his tongue as he realized this trip had been pointless.

  “Nothing. Is this how Bastions get rid of people they don’t need? Leave them in a void while we waste away, so nobody ever finds the body?” Sen shivered and stared up at Nathan.

  “No,” he said.

  So, she couldn’t see anything in here. Probably for the same reason she couldn’t see the door when she was outside.

  Several seconds passed as Nathan considered what to do. The room was warm, but without Kadria there was no reason to do anything here. He turned to leave, still holding Sen’s arm.

  “Wow. And here I thought you were looking for somewhere private to ravage her and awaken her memories of you the old-fashioned way,” Kadria’s voice said, echoing around the room.

  “Who is that?” Sen shouted, trying to pull away from Nathan. He held her close to him.

  Turning around, Nathan concentrated on the bed. He couldn’t sense her, but there was the fuzziest imprint of something there. The outline of the back of the bed looked wrong, he realized.

  “Show yourself. You’re on the bed,” he said.

  Kadria appeared where Nathan was staring, her body taking shape as if it were an oil painting. Color oozed from the ceiling onto her and ran down the length of her nearly naked body. She took shape over the course of several seconds, as scantily dressed as always, and running a finger along one of her curly goat horns.

  “How sharp of you,” Kadria said. “Did you like my trick?”

  “An impressive illusion.”

  “It wasn’t an illusion.”

  Nathan sighed. The room hurt his mind if he thought too much about how it worked, so he wasn’t about to consider the magic behind what Kadria had done. He knew the basics of distorting space and manipulating force, but her magic was on another level.