“There’s nothing wrong with being afraid of the night,” he said, nodding.
“I’m not afraid,” she snapped. Then, after brushing a hand through her hair, grudgingly added, “Alright, maybe I’m a little afraid.”
Roun looked ahead towards where the light faded into darkness. “The night exploits instinctual fear. Since that fear is a part of us, you can’t do anything about it except try and ignore it. My father taught me that, and he was fearless enough to face chimeras.”
She sighed. “I’ll try, but I still can’t believe Exarch Kuro sent you out here alone—just thinking about it is making me angry all over again.”
Roun grinned behind his mask. “And agreeing without complaint was pretty stupid of me, now that I think about it.”
“Well, you’re not on your own anymore,” she said. “Even though I’m probably not making things any easier right now.”
“Talking to my father always helped distract me from the false sounds and illusions. We can try that, if you’d like.”
She nodded, so he made idle conversation from whatever came to mind. It helped pass the time, and Roun was relieved to see the tension leave Sethra’s face after a while.
They reached the edge of the hill containing the Burrow before long, then Roun spent a few minutes explaining how he hunted. They had already gone over most of it hours ago, but Sethra had looked so excited and restless then that he wasn’t sure she had been paying attention.
“I got it,” she replied with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I’ll make sure to keep my Farsight close, but I still think we can handle any hoard aspirants that show up.”
Roun hesitated.
“I’m not underestimating them,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “We’re going to be in tunnels. I literally have soil everywhere. If we kill a few hoard aspirants every time we show up, then it’ll get easier to move through the Burrow. Besides, you really only need wraiths, and it’s the hoard queen that’s making them, right?”
Roun nodded. “True, and I don’t plan on going deep enough to worry about her.”
“So she’ll keep making wraiths, which means the hoard aspirants are fair game.”
“Fine, but if things get messy—”
“I’ll seal the tunnel off and we’ll run.”
Roun relented after deciding he was worrying too much, and pulled his axe out from his chest while invoking his augmentation from his left arm. Sethra held her staff like a walking stick, but after signaling her readiness, she tilted it over into a two-handed grasp and followed him up the slope.
Despite her confidence, Roun chose the same tunnel he had killed his first hoard aspirant in and hoped none would appear. An anxious pulse of Farsight showed nothing other than the weak glow of wraiths, which Sethra confirmed. Through their exchange, they also learned that the range and quality of Farsight’s sensory information seemed to be far worse for Sethra.
“Huh,” she said while they moved through the tunnel. She prodded the violet wax on the walls with her bō and wrinkled her nose when some of it crumbled into chunks. “No wonder the exarch wants you in his slayer coterie.” She glanced over at him curiously. “Do you feel weaker at all?”
Roun frowned from beside her, his Farsight tracking the approaching wraiths further down the tunnel. “Not really?”
“I do,” Sethra said. “During the day, the Throne feeds me a constant stream of élan and the ambient élan in the air helps enough that I still gain a little indoors. I was so used to it by the time we met that it was honestly a little worrying when you told me it wasn’t the same for you.”
“It definitely worried me too.” He shrugged. “Still does. I can sense the élan, but it just passes through my spiritual vessel.”
“You told Exarch Kuro you walked back without light that first night, but if I did that, the night would drain me just like any other source of élan.” She shook her head. “If night doesn’t affect your vessel either, then maybe it’s sealed off? Well, enough that your arte is the only way for anything to get in or out.”
That… actually makes sense. Roun thought about it for a moment, then refocused as he cleaved through a wraith and watched Sethra huff as she shattered another two with quick whirls of her staff. They battled their way down the tunnel side by side, though he let her range ahead so as not to get in the way of her staff or impede her ability to close off the tunnel.
Things went slowly at first; Sethra was nervous and as a result kept making simple mistakes. Roun ignored them and instead covered her as needed. After all, he still remembered his own embarrassing first venture into the Burrow.
Sethra eventually relaxed enough to lean into her skill and experience as the hour passed. Before long, the two of them were fighting in near-perfect unison. It helped that he had a lot of experience with her arte and fighting style, but he also liked to think that he understood how Sethra perceived the battlefield as a person, which then made it easier to choose targets and position himself.
Sethra trusted him to deal with the wraiths that made it around her guard while leaving him ample room to maneuver his axe in between the endless movements of her own staff.
It was his least stressful harvest, and that was partially because of his arm augmentation; the pincer granted him immense versatility, allowing him to drag down wraiths from the walls and ceiling and take teeth or claws on his shield-arm instead. It also made for a surprisingly effective weapon; the pincer could crush or bludgeon the impish monsters pretty easily, so Roun used it as often as his bloodhawk axe.
This is how being a hero should feel like, Roun thought as he and Sethra cut through the swarm, each of them erasing the other’s mistakes and together adjusting to the shifting flow of wraiths or the widening and narrowing of the tunnel.
They did it all without words, truly partners in the moment, and the comfort and sense of relief from having someone at his back left Roun grinning behind the ever-present rictus grin of his mask.
They had reached the same intersection he had used for his failed ambush by the time Sethra asked for a break.
“Wish you had brought me earlier now, don’t you?” she teased as she wiped sweat from her eyes.
Roun agreed without reservation before absorbing his mask and taking a drink from his canteen. It was rare to find Grimoires working in anything less than pairs, and he was starting to understand why. If we can convince Fane and Oyrivia to take Exarch Kuro’s coterie seriously, then maybe we really can become something impressive.
Sethra lunged forward and jolted him out of his thoughts. She swung her staff upward from the ground and hexagonal walls formed just in time for a hoard aspirant to crash into it; another soon tumbled into the first. She didn’t say a word while she closed the tunnel and only made it halfway before all the soil she was drawing towards her collapsed the tunnel and made her work easier.
Roun’s heart raced while he watched her, then he too sprang forward as a third chimera lunged from the darkness of the other tunnel. He flung his axe and sent it whirling into the chimera’s abdomen, then whipped out his tentacle to shut the pincer it was opening closed and began dragging the hoard aspirant towards him. The chimera struggled against him, its free pincer opening to release three tentacles, until his axe’s script sent ichor gushing into the air.
The chimera stumbled and filled the air with high-pitched chitters.
Sethra had already spun to help him face it, but then soil sprayed from behind her, prompting her to twist back in alarm. “You weren’t lying about them showing up out of nowhere,” she murmured breathlessly as she turned her staff into a guandao and sprinted forward to his side. She swiped at the hoard aspirant’s tentacles when they reached for Roun.
The hoard aspirant screeched in rage as he dragged it a little closer, but seemed unable to decide which between them was the more immediate threat—it eventually seemed to choose Roun, then withdrew its three appendages and then clamped down on his tentacles with enough force to make Roun scream.
He felt his tentacle fall limp past the point and could feel his body cycling élan in response.
Sethra closed the distance to the chimera at the same moment, her staff now in its warhammer form, and delivered a heavy two-handed blow that cracked one of the hoard aspirant’s slender legs. Ichor gushed from it and the limb danged uselessly while it healed.
She reverted the weapon back to a simple bō and windmilled it. The joint of another of the hoard aspirant’s legs shattered and glowing welts and bruises soon appeared along its body as its élan struggled to repair the damage.
Roun soon joined to cover her with his augmentation, after which it soon fell beneath their combined onslaught.
His axe continued to bleed it of ichor while he deflected its own swiping pincers and allowed Sethra to flank it. Her pillars also obstructed the chittering monster’s movements, and it was already struggling to reposition because of its healing legs. Her guandao left streaks of liquid gold all over its exoskeleton as it danced and whirled within her hands. Roun almost laughed when he thought back to when he had dreaded facing one.
Proof of how far I’ve—no, we’ve—come, Roun realized in satisfaction as the hoard aspirant’s wounds dimmed and its ichor gushed free more slowly.
He could feel the chimera’s very spirit quiver when it flared against his awareness like the exposing of a neck. Sethra let out a fierce cry as she noticed the signs of death for those with partial immortality, then glanced over at him.
“You don’t have to eat it like your axe, do you?” she shouted to him. “I can’t hold my walls much longer.”
“No,” he replied—he didn’t actually know what to do because it was more like an instinct, but his right hand was already a squirming mass of ink; the strands had emerged directly from the sleeve of his outer robes.
“Here we go again,” he muttered as he lunged forward.
The chimera shrieked with undiluted fear and not even bracing himself could reduce the euphoria it sent through his nerves.
Roun ignored it as best he could and latched onto the phantom orb inside the chimera’s vessel, a physical gesture, but it was his arte and the chimera’s will to live that fought the actual battle. He grunted and felt his muscles tense as ichor gushed out from around where his arm had entered the monster.
“Should I, uh, help?” Sethra asked as she stared dumbfoundingly.
Roun shook his head while struggling to unclench his jaw. “Just keep the others back and watch for wraiths.”
Sethra nodded. A few seconds later, the chimera’s spirit ripped free and he gasped as the orb illuminated the tunnel more brightly than their lanterns—but only for the moment before the oily tendrils protruding from his arm consumed the spirit and brought it into his own vessel.
Roun retrieved his axe from the corpse. “Let’s go,” he said, hoping with all his might that the pleasure flooding his head was absent from his voice.
They retreated together, sprinting back the way they had come and out into the night. It was colder in the Burrow than it was outside thanks to the thicker night, but out here the winds blew freely, so they shivered as their sweat left them chilled.
They returned to his boulder-camp, then sat down on the larger boulder itself, their backs pressed together. Neither of them spoke for a while, instead focusing on their breathing while watching the tall grass sway.
“That wasn’t too bad,” Sethra eventually said.
“It went better than the first time I came here,” Roun agreed with a laugh. “And better than the first time I fought a hoard aspirant.”
Sethra laughed as well, then swerved and scooted along the rock until she sat beside him. He felt her prod his side.
“You know what this is the perfect time for…?”
Roun raised an eyebrow. “Are you really going to eat something that’s been inside me?”
“Alright, first, never say it like that ever again or I will hit you.” She gave him a severe look when he laughed and shook her head. “It’s in a box. We can wash the ichor off our hands with my canteen.”
Roun sighed, but let her pour lukewarm water over his hands while he conjured the élanic container out through his chest. It appeared just as his axe had; both vest and outer robes liquefied into an inky mass from which the box then emerged.
Sethra took it from him, undid the latches, and examined its contents with comical intensity. After a moment, she took one of the meat-filled buns and bit into it.
Roun watched her shut her eyes and inhale.
“It’s still hot!” she exclaimed through a mouthful. She regarded him just as intensely as she had the steamed buns.
“What?” he asked.
“Roun,” she began, her voice dripping with emotion. “I vow here and now to bring you to Sothis even if that means dragging you to the Eldest Throne’s summit myself.” She frowned and nodded dramatically as she glanced down at the box again. “The world needs you to ascend.”
“The ‘world,’ eh?” he replied with a slow roll of his eyes.
Sethra’s words made him think of the ultimate purpose of Grimoires, however, which was to cultivate their spirits until they radiated as brightly as the Throne. That would not only allow them to become an immortal champion of Sothis, but also supposedly birth a star that granted humanity access to their artes.
What would happen if a Grimoire like me ascended? Roun frowned and closed his eyes while Sethra continued chewing beside him.
He reached into his vessel. The extra spirit seemed to be attracted to the caged one and was lazily orbiting around it. What that meant, he couldn’t say. There’s so much I still don’t understand about my arte, but I guess that’s true for the others too.
With a mental shrug, he tried to impose his arte on the free spirit, hoping it might give him another augmentation from the hoard aspirant, or maybe make the first stronger—and was pleased to find whatever power his mind visualized as thorny chains reach out towards the new spirit.
The trapped spirit immediately reacted, and strongly.
It all happened so fast that it caught Roun by complete surprise; the hoard aspirant’s scream reverberated through his mind, body, and vessel, but he couldn’t help cupping hands over his ears, useless as the act was.
The free spirit unraveled into streams of gold that poured into and fused with the caged one, creating a denser orb that gave him a far stronger impression of the hoard aspirant—and it was stronger, because he felt his spiritual cage strain as the spirit fought to break free.
Then there was a terrifying moment when memories flashed through him and foreign instincts overwhelmed him. He couldn’t tell which thoughts or needs were his own and which weren’t.
“…Roun?” Sethra’s voice asked.
He opened his eyes with a gasp and found himself lying on the grass. Sethra was worriedly kneeling beside him.
“Oh, thank goodness,” she said after that moment, her voice thick with relief. “You started flailing, then that black stuff started gushing out from all over you and you weren’t listening to anything I was saying—” She paused, then took a slow breath. “When you passed out, I honestly thought you might have died for a moment. You looked that bad. What happened?”
Breathless and trembling, he could only shake his head when she helped him sit up. “I don’t know,” he answered truthfully after taking a drink from the canteen she offered him. “I tried to use the spirit of the hoard aspirant we just killed.”
“And?”
Roun frowned. Before, the spirit had been mostly helpless, but now the chains and cage holding it strained against its throbbing presence, and he had seemingly gotten nothing out of the exchange.
Could it break free? What would happen if it did?
“Roun?” Sethra asked.
“I’m fine,” he answered, then sighed. “Maybe I should avoid using the spirits of chimeras I’ve already taken. I don’t know what just happened, but I don’t want to go through it ever again.”
“Good,”
Sethra said gently, then helped him onto his feet.
He dusted dirt and bits of grass from himself while she stood watching. “Good? That’s it?”
“Discovering what your limits are is important too, Roun. It’s also better to find them yourself before your enemies do.” She grinned and shrugged. “Have you ever seen me try to create a full-sized castle or walls as big as Rozaria City’s?”
“No,” Roun admitted with a soft laugh.
“Well, I tried. Or at least, tried to get close.” She shrugged again. “Same conclusion: won’t do that again. At least, not for a while.” She thumped him on the shoulder when he shook his head. “Stop giving me that look and get moving, because I’d rather slit my throat than walk through the night alone.”
Roun laughed more earnestly this time. He knew she was only trying to distract him from his own fears like he had done for her earlier, but he still appreciated it.
They made their way back to Avyleir Library together.
22
They returned to the Burrow every day that week at Sethra’s insistence. Roun didn’t need the élan, but agreed without complaint, sensing Sethra wanted either a distraction or a change of pace from their usual training. That training continued regardless, however, so she soon learned the same painful lesson about remembering to sleep that he had learned; they spent some mornings stiffly letting their weapons fall on each other because they were too tired to swing them.
Yhul hadn’t been pleased and had stated that the only excuse he would ever accept for not taking training seriously was death—and told them to their faces that he’d still try to drill their corpses harder just to be certain it wasn’t instead a case of lacking motivation.
Roun suspected that the Centurion was aware of their outings, but Yhul apparently didn’t think skirmishing at a Burrow was enough of a reason to adjust their regime. Zareus knew, but, if anything, he cared even less and instead viewed their exhaustion as another layer to their training.
Awakening Arte (The Eldest Throne Book 1) Page 17