Heretic Spellblade

by K D Robertson

  Lilac retreated every time the Empire soldiers thinned. She knew that her victory depended on being surrounded by human shields.

  And Fei had to follow, or Lilac would slaughter the defenseless soldiers.

  Nathan cursed. Lilac had stumbled upon a powerful tactic. Fei didn’t yet have the control over her ability or experience to easily defeat Lilac in this situation. Now his defenses crumbled, while Fei bled out.

  “Sen,” he snapped.

  “On it,” Sen said, raising her arms and casting a fourth rank spell.

  Sunstorm appeared behind them. Nathan stepped between her and Sen.

  “You don’t need to bother,” Sunstorm said. “The more Sen focuses on Lilac, the happier I am. I can cut off your head while she’s preoccupied.”

  “Um,” Sen said, eyes wide.

  “Help Fei,” Nathan snapped.

  Sen blasted off a wall of flames on the wall near Lilac. The amethyst Champion froze mid-step, finding herself cut off. A pair of fireballs soon followed, but were deflected by Lilac’s katana.

  Right as Fei closed, Lilac ducked, spun, and leaped at Fei. Fei’s eyes widened. She’d left her guard open, not expecting this move from Lilac.

  Lilac’s sword slid straight through Fei’s chest. The two Champions struggled for a moment, each using their strength enhancements to push against the other on the wall. Sen screamed, raising her arms and about to cast a desperate spell.

  Nathan slapped her hands down. “Don’t! You’ll hurt Fei.”

  Eyes wide and bloodshot, Fei grabbed Lilac’s hands. Lilac grinned in return and refused to let Fei pull the sword out. As an amethyst Champion, Lilac had the strength advantage in spades.

  “Idiot,” Sunstorm muttered. She shook her head. “That duel is already over.”

  Fei grinned. Lilac blinked in surprised.

  Then Fei’s entire body exploded in blue fire. Several seconds of blistering agony for Lilac passed before she realized she needed to pull her sword free from Fei’s chest. She tried, but Fei held her in place.

  Lilac must have wondered why she couldn’t overpower Fei. The truth lay in the blue flames. They consumed magic, and the strength enchantment of her amethyst ran through her body. Her body that was being eaten away by the fire melting her hands.

  With a vicious headbutt, Fei knocked Lilac to the ground. Both Champions vanished below the parapets. Lilac’s screams echoed across the battlefield.

  Every soldier nearby stopped fighting. They stared in horrified fascination. Many witnessed the death of a Champion for the first time in their lives. In their minds, they witnessed history.

  Not long after, Fei rose. Alone. The katana slid free from her body. Nathan saw the ashen remains of Lilac’s hands blew away into the distance, still holding the sword even in death. Blood oozed down Fei’s uniform and armor from over a dozen gashes. One of her cat ears bled. She looked around, then picked up her scimitar.

  The Federation soldiers dropped their weapons. Many tried to run and descend the ladders. They shouted to retreat to those still climbing. Within minutes, what had looked like the beginning of a crushing defeat for Nathan turned into a decisive victory. Hundreds of Federation soldiers fled across the field toward their encampment. More ran into the pass, as if already prepared for the loss and didn’t want to risk being caught by vengeful Champions.

  “Care to surrender, Sunstorm?” Nathan offered the Federation Champion.

  After a long, hard look at Sen, Sunstorm threw down her swords. They clattered noisily on the stone.

  Nathan blinked. “Can’t say I expected that.”

  Chapter 30

  Squeals and hisses emanated from the keep’s infirmary. Fei tensed and her tail stood on end. Her eyes watered as she stared at Nathan, who watched from the door with crossed arms.

  “The more you move, the more it will hurt,” Vera chided.

  She applied a glowing hand to the wound in Fei’s chest. The hole no longer gaped, but the surrounding flesh had swollen. Blood streaked with the water that Vera applied regularly. A large bruise had appeared around it, discoloring Fei’s skin and making her naked chest a little less appealing to look at right now.

  “I’m a Champion,” Fei whined. She hissed as Vera touched her wound and the flesh seared from the magic. Her tail shot bolt upright. Fei continued, her lip quivering, “Can’t I let the magic of the enhancement heal me naturally?”

  “That magic is the only reason you’re still alive,” Nathan said. “You have a punctured lung, a high level of blood loss, and one of your tendons has been slashed.”

  Fei’s jaw dropped. She looked at Vera for confirmation, and the sorceress nodded grimly.

  “Normally, I would have given you a very different type of spell and moved on to a patient that I had a chance of saving,” Vera said. “I rarely see people complaining when half of their veins have emptied out on the ground and their lung is pulling in more blood than air.”

  “Oh.” Fei’s voice was nearly inaudible.

  “Let Vera take care of you, then get some rest. When the adrenaline wears off, the exhaustion will hit you like a battering ram. You’ll sleep like a log,” Nathan said.

  “Will you visit me?” Fei asked.

  “I’ll try to be here when you wake up,” Nathan promised.

  Fei’s ears twitched happily, and her tail swished a few times. Then Vera continued to cauterize the wound, and Fei returned to whining.

  As Nathan stepped outside, Vera’s voice stopped him.

  “Are you sure you can trust her?” she called out.

  He looked back in and saw that Vera was busy treating Fei. A rhetorical question, in other words.

  Standing outside the room was the subject of Vera’s question. Sunstorm stood in silence, a shimmering collar around her neck. Her hands and legs were shackled. The restraints prevented her from using her enhancement and gem ability, as there was no way to outright remove the onyx without killing her.

  Sen stood next to Sunstorm and looked annoyed. Evidently, she had failed to strike up a conversation with her apparent lover. Former lover.

  Nathan didn’t know what to make of the revelation. Sunstorm and Sen had never shown any inclination toward sexual relations toward each other, or even toward other women at all. This was entirely new to him, and it had apparently happened before he had arrived in this world. He was thrown for a loop.

  Gesturing for them to follow him, he made his way to his office. The sun shined outside. The assault had been relatively brief, and there was plenty of daylight left to clean up. Nathan even had almost all the power from the binding stone left to repair what little damage the keep had sustained. By tomorrow, much of this would be a memory.

  Except the casualties. Unfortunately, the binding stone couldn’t be used to heal wounds, other than powering his own healing sorcery. Living things were outside his area of expertise. He hadn’t understood how Kadria used it to affect his body.

  “I didn’t expect you to surrender, Sunstorm,” Nathan said, repeating a comment he had made several times, to no response. “With your ability, you could have escaped in a heartbeat.”

  Several moments passed.

  Then Sunstorm said, “I want to see for myself what is so impressive about you. Sen has joined you. You turned that catgirl from a greenhorn into a terrifying warrior within weeks. And you terrify the Federation.”

  Nathan’s eyebrows shot up, and he stopped in the middle of a staircase. He looked down at Sunstorm. Her face was impassive.

  “Terrify them?” he asked.

  “You should have been swept aside here,” Sunstorm said. “Instead, I was sent to confirm their fears. You turned up in Nair’s tower when you could not possibly have had the resources or time to do so, given you were being assaulted by demons. Even your intervention in the leylines disturbed them, for reasons I don’t understand.”

  “If you were sent here to confirm that I am incredibly dangerous, shouldn’t you have retreated then?” Nathan said. He beg
an walking again.

  “Theus will need a scapegoat for his failures. If he had been wise, he would have accepted the advice to focus his efforts here,” Sunstorm said, her voice turning bitter.

  “Advice from who?”

  Sunstorm didn’t answer.

  Nathan sighed. “I assume that means he actually did attack Forselle Valley at the same time.”

  Sen giggled. “Didn’t you say something about how only somebody really dumb and arrogant would do that?”

  “Sounds like our Theus fits the profile.” Nathan looked at Sunstorm.

  She smirked and looked away.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Nathan said. “And that arrogance prevents him from taking advice from those with more experience in warfare. It’s an unfortunate problem with many Bastions. The power can get to our heads, and because we make the decisions, we forget that our Champions often have years or sometimes decades of experience on us.”

  Nathan’s original master called it “big dick syndrome.” Male Bastions made up the vast majority of Bastions, and they often had sex with their Champions. As such, it was common that they thought with their crotch, and didn’t value the opinions of their women.

  The original advice that Nathan had received to avoid this had been to avoid having sex with women he wanted to retain as advisers or strategists. That would have worked if said women had respected that advice. Instead, he chose a different path, which was to remember that the trigem mystic fox sharing his bed had been a duogem Champion before he had even been born.

  It occurred to Nathan that Narime was in the Federation right now. The fact that the Federation was making these mistakes despite the presence of her wisdom made him realize that many people didn’t particularly care about not repeating the mistakes of the past.

  “You don’t talk like a new Bastion,” Sunstorm noted.

  “I have a lot more life experience than your average Bastion,” Nathan said. “I also note that you didn’t say ‘Master Theus’ this time.”

  Sunstorm grimaced. “If he doesn’t have a place for me, then he’s useless to me. He’s not worthy of the title.”

  “Is that all your loyalty is worth? A trade of your skills for the protection of a superior?” Nathan probed.

  “Fuck you,” Sunstorm spat. “You don’t know me. I trade my talents as a Champion and assassin because they have a known value. Every head I hand my master is proof that I am of value to him, and therefore I get food and shelter for another day. But you’re some pompous Bastion from a noble house. You live off the teat of your beloved Empire. If you make a mistake, then somebody will cover up for you.”

  “If I make a mistake, I’ll be dead,” Nathan said flatly. “In case you didn’t notice, no reinforcements came to help me. Even though you took your sweet time to arrive and assault the fortress. A duogem Champion could have arrived from a nearby fortress any day and swept you all aside, but that didn’t happen.”

  Sunstorm shifted uncomfortably. “That doesn’t change the fact that I have to prove my worth. You were given it.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe that’s because you’re letting people like Theus tell you how to behave,” Nathan replied.

  “Don’t pretend like you know me,” Sunstorm mumbled.

  The three of them stepped into Nathan’s office. The black door sat at the back. As always, only he saw it. Sen opened her mouth to say something, then looked at Nathan.

  “Um, do you want me to help?” Sen asked Nathan.

  “Help with what?” Sunstorm growled.

  “You’ll understand,” Sen said gently. “Trust me.” She held out a hand.

  Sunstorm eyes Sen warily. Her guard dropped, and she smiled back at Sen. Their hands entwined, and they pressed their foreheads together.

  Nathan coughed. The two ignored him, gazing into each other’s eyes.

  “I’ll talk to Sunstorm alone,” Nathan said. “It’ll be easier this way.”

  Mostly because he didn’t know how Sen would react to seeing Kadria again. She didn’t remember anything about her encounter with the Messenger, but he didn’t want to risk her freaking out.

  “Okay,” Sen said. She stepped away from Sunstorm. “Remember: Trust me.”

  Sunstorm nodded. “Fine. I’ll trust you.” She glared at Nathan. “But not you.”

  “I don’t think you understand what she’s asking you to do,” Nathan said wryly.

  His words passed through Sunstorm’s ears to no effect. She leaned toward Sen and held her arms out, her hands still bound. Sen gave Sunstorm a quick hug, but nothing more. Then Sen ducked out of the room.

  The disappointment on Sunstorm’s face was tangible. Nathan felt his own mood falling just from looking at her.

  “If you behave, then you’ll be unbound and with her in a little while,” Nathan said.

  “You’re a little too confident in your ability to persuade me,” Sunstorm said.

  Nathan led her to the room at the back of the office. He confirmed that it was unlocked. Sometimes he couldn’t open it.

  One time he had opened it, only for it to slam in his face and nearly break his nose. He hadn’t seen what Kadria had been doing in her strange void space, but sometimes his curiosity kept him up at night.

  Sunstorm stared at him as he walked through a wall—at least from her perspective. He tugged her, and she followed. Surprisingly, she didn’t gasp when she entered the void.

  She did stare wide-eyed at the Messenger lounging on the bed, however.

  Kadria was reading a book. A tome, really. Nathan wanted to compare the thickness of the book to Kadria’s chest, but that would require Kadria to actually have one. Suffice it to say, the book could be dropped from a great height and kill somebody.

  The lettering on the front of the book was unfamiliar to Nathan. Strangely cursive, and clearly in the form of visual shapes. They vaguely reminded him of the characters that Narime wrote in, but were very different.

  “… I know what that is,” Sunstorm said after a lengthy pause, her eyes fixed on Kadria. She looked back at Nathan, who placed a hand on her shoulder.

  Nathan expected a scream, a shout, or some form of struggling.

  Instead, Sunstorm frowned and looked around.

  “Are we inside the binding stone?” she asked.

  “This isn’t the reaction I expected,” Nathan said. “You’re certainly full of surprises. And no, we’re not in the binding stone.” At least, he didn’t think so.

  “Inside the binding stone?” Kadria repeated. She cackled, kicking her legs into the air. Her face remained buried in her book. “The theories you people come up with about the binding stones and leylines are always amusing.”

  “Then what is this place, Messenger?” Sunstorm said, her brow furrowing.

  “My home away from home,” Kadria said. Her book vanished, and she straightened up. Nathan noticed that her clothing was askew. The moment he thought that, Kadria tidied herself up.

  “That’s not an answer,” Sunstorm said.

  “It’s as good an answer as you’re going to get. This is my demesne. My little playpen. Eventually it will be ready for a public viewing, but for now it’s only for VIPs and their lovely guests.” Kadria smirked. “Give yourself a clap that Nathan cares enough about you that you get to be invited. Clap, clap, clap.”

  Kadria clapped her hands in time to her voice.

  Neither Sunstorm nor Nathan joined in.

  Sunstorm looked at Nathan. “You care about me?”

  “I do,” he said. “I know who you are. I even know your true name, Choe.”

  Sunstorm leaped away from him. Or tried to. The shackles around her feet caused her to trip. She nearly slammed into the floor, but the room shrunk in an instant and Kadria caught her. A moment later, the room returned to normal. Sunstorm and Kadria shot across the room, the assassin held in Kadria’s arms.

  “Let go of me,” Sunstorm shrieked. Kadria tightened her grip around Sunstorm’s arms. “I don’t know what foul demonic m
agic the two of you are using, but you won’t fool me like you fooled Sen.”

  Nathan frowned. “It’s not magic. You told me your true name yourself, Choe.”

  “Stop calling me that! I haven’t told a single person my name since I left Kurai. Not since—” Sunstorm choked up and looked away.

  “Since demons killed your parents in the evacuation,” Nathan finished.

  She stared at him. Her body slackened. “How… No. Why?”

  “I said I care for you. I mean it.”

  “I have no reason to believe you,” Sunstorm muttered.

  Running a hand through his hair, Nathan wished that he had an easy way to make her believe him. In the end, he had no choice but to rely on Kadria to remind them of who and what he was.

  Kadria smirked at him when he looked at her. “Care to pay the price and have her remember you?”

  “Remember?” Sunstorm mumbled.

  “That’s right. You once loved him so much that you begged him to do things to you no other man ever will,” Kadria said. “Or at least, a version of you did.”

  “I don’t like men,” Sunstorm said.

  Kadria blinked. She ran a finger along Sunstorm’s head. In response, Sunstorm’s eyelids fluttered and her pupils dilated.

  “Huh. What a fun little variation,” Kadria mumbled. “Well, no matter. Once you have the emotions, trust, and other mumbo jumbo of your other self, you’ll think of Nathan the same way you think of women. Except, you know, he can give you hot, gooey injections.”

  “I’d rather be dead than let a man touch me with his thing,” Sunstorm growled.

  “Let’s see if you say that in a minute.” Kadria laughed.

  Before Sunstorm could respond, Kadria placed a hand on the assassin’s jaw. Just as happened to Sen, Sunstorm fell silent and her body fell slack in Kadria’s lap.

  When Kadria was finished, she pulled her hand away. Sunstorm blinked several times. Her gaze fixed on Nathan and she took a deep breath.

  “Nathan,” she breathed out.

  “Choe. Feeling better?” he asked.