Awakening Arte (The Eldest Throne Book 1)

by Bernie Anés Paz

  Roun watched as inky sludge oozed from openings alongside its swollen rear; wraiths rose in droves wherever the waterfalls pooled. Large, compound eyes tracked them and long antennae twitched as it stretched its arms towards them while inching closer.

  “Fate forbid,” Fane breathed as the chimera’s arms came further into the light.

  Not even the bestiaries Roun had studied could prepare him for how eerie they appeared. Rather than the pincers replacing the forelegs of a true mantis, the hoard queen had four limbs that vaguely imitated human arms, two to each side.

  Pale, silky flesh covered those arms, which moved sinuously and had no visible joints. Long, slender things that might have been fingers tipped them, except there were six of them and none of them a thumb. Liquid wax dripped from mouth-like openings in the hoard queen’s palms, and crystalline loops and chains made from the same wax decorated its limbs at symmetrical intervals.

  They were as decorated as the rest of the chamber.

  For a moment, Sethra, Fane, and Roun said nothing, but they stumbled away from the chimera as it crept towards them.

  Revulsion sent a shiver down Roun’s spine as he turned away and broke the silence. “Adan!” he called in a pained voice, hoping with all his might that the boy hadn’t become a part of the hoard.

  Fate’s stroke turned out to be bright, because the pulse of Farsight he had sent along with his call found a dim spirit.

  Roun pointed to his right. “Sethra, over there by the wall and that pedestal with tea cups.”

  She glanced at him, nodded, and took off. The hoard queen let out a deafening scream and the wraiths rushed forward and down along the walls like the tidal wave they appeared to be.

  Fane met them head on, one arm already covered in patterns, and punched into the air. A massive lance of force blew a gap in the oncoming wraiths, but there were so many that it hardly seemed to make a difference. Roun stood beside him, slaughtering the few the blasts missed, while Fane continued to alternate his arms even as his breaths became increasingly ragged and hoarse.

  Sethra sprinted back towards them, her bō striking at wraiths while she sheltered Adan against her torso. At a glance, Roun noticed the boy was trembling and covered in bruises and scrapes, but he was still alive and otherwise seemed unhurt.

  “The wax is too thick,” she shouted as she rejoined them. “I can’t reach any soil.”

  Fane simply slammed a fist into the ground. His entire body sprang back upright and an explosion radiated out, sending chips of wax and raw force rolling forward into a clump of wraiths; it also sprayed soil into the air and left a hole in the wax floor.

  Sethra raised an eyebrow, but didn’t hesitate to tear the boy from herself and throw him in. She immediately raised hexagonal walls around the hole with sharp flicks and twirls of her staff while drawing some soil into orbit around her.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked.

  “Run!” Fane and Roun both shouted.

  She frowned and nodded. “Alright, next question. How?” Sethra asked as she stood beside them and helped fight off the massive swarm; the wraiths along the walls had already maneuvered around and now stood between them and the tunnel they had entered from.

  “I’ll do the same as before,” Fane said. “We’ll shelter behind Sethra’s walls, then run and have Sethra seal off the main tunnel. I just need time.”

  “I’ll give you some time,” Roun muttered.

  He stepped into the sea of wraiths, his axe and pincer-arm blurring as he empowered his agility and strength as far as he could. Countless wounds and bite-punctures left his body a tapestry of agony, but he forced it deep down inside and focused on reaching the hoard queen, who seemed content to observe from behind the safety of her spawn. Breathe.

  “What are you doing!” Sethra screamed at him as she raised pillars and tried to create choke points. “You’re going to get yourself killed!”

  The hoard queen let out another screech, and more and more of the wraiths turned away from the others to instead focus on him like he had hoped. They refocused a little too quickly, actually, so for a moment he wondered if he had made a mistake—and then the hoard queen lunged at him with its lower arms.

  Streams of wax dripped from the finger-like appendages and sprayed towards him. Roun watched it splatter onto wraiths and noticed that it hardened almost immediately; he hadn’t thought about the wax, but it was too late now. He shivered as he drank from his vessel, and his élan reserves plunged even faster.

  Roun darted to his left, following a sweep of his pincer that cleared a small bit of space, and gracefully spun out of reach of the hoard queen’s grasping arm. His axe followed the movement, leaving a long gash, then he leaped and stepped off a wraith in front of him that had found itself stuck in a wad of wax.

  With his heart thudding and his physical body engorged with élan, he whipped out his pincer-arm’s tentacle and wrapped it around the queen’s arm as it snapped back by him. The retreating arm tore him up from the undulating field of wraiths and suspended him over them, though that didn’t stop the wraiths from leaping or piling to try for him.

  Roun sent his bloodhawk axe flying a moment later, curving it so that it spun by the hoard queen’s other arms and plunged deep into its abdomen.

  The weapon sank into the inky ooze and for a moment Roun feared he would lose his precious axe, but then its script flared to life and a startling amount of ichor gushed into the air.

  The hoard queen, unsurprisingly, did not like that. It shrieked and flailed its arms, swinging and tossing him along with them, but the chimera’s distress also drew the attention of nearly every wraith in the chamber and sent them into a frenzy. Some of them turned in place mid-strike against Fane and Sethra, both of whom looked shocked. Well, I didn’t expect it to work this well either.

  He didn’t know how long that would last.

  Roun stared down below as he continued to dangle from the flailing arm and more wraiths rushed back towards the chimera’s feet. The stream of ichor distracted the newly born ones already clustered there, but he didn’t know how long that would last.

  “Fane!” Roun called.

  “Almost done,” the other Grimoire weakly replied.

  Roun glanced over and saw that Fane was now standing outside Sethra’s little fortress, hands on the ground, while Sethra’s guandao-form weapon guarded him from the few wraiths that hadn’t returned to their queen.

  Fane’s arte already stretched far across the lair, to Roun’s surprise.

  The patterns continued spreading at a crawl, but it was still faster than when he had used the same technique in the tunnels, and Roun knew it was costing Fane; the other Grimoire’s eyelids were drooping, his head was lowered, and streams of sweat poured from the tip of his nose, but he didn’t stop.

  Fane eventually straightened and glanced around; Roun took that as a sign that he was ready. He whistled at the same moment Fane called out and watched his axe propel itself from the hoard queen in a burst of liquid gold.

  The chimera reached for it, swinging all four arms forward. Roun panicked for a moment before using the momentum to drop himself closer towards the others. He crushed a wraith in his pincer as he landed, rolled, and then sent several more flying with a sweep before sprinting through the rest before they could reorient.

  He caught his axe without looking and stumbled through the opening of Sethra’s bunker; she followed and sealed it. Fane was already waiting at the center where lines of his writhing patterns gathered into a focal point.

  “I don’t know if I can keep my walls up through his arte,” Sethra blurted out.

  Roun frowned from behind his mask, shrugged, and hunched around the trembling boy to shelter him with his body. “We’re about to find out.” He glanced at Fane, who was teetering. “Do it.”

  Fane nodded and pressed a palm against the patterns.

  The explosion was deafening and flattened all of them. Sethra’s walls lasted a few heartbeats before cru
mbling away, but left them unharmed, aside from the ringing in his ears. More importantly, the surrounding area was clear of wraiths. Plumes of soil and a fine dust of wax also filled the air, and most of the closest gruesome displays had been shattered or destroyed.

  The hoard queen screeched, clearly unhappy.

  “Let’s go,” Roun said. Sethra nodded, but Fane didn’t move.

  Roun reached for him. He looks terrible. Roun knew all too well how being drained of élan felt, but he was more concerned about the fact that it also meant Fane wouldn’t be able to heal from serious wounds.

  “I’ll carry him!” Roun shouted at a frowning Sethra. “I still have plenty of élan. You grab Adan.”

  She nodded and scooped up the boy while Roun threw Fane over a shoulder.

  They empowered themselves, then ran as fast as they could as a furious shriek followed them.

  30

  Laeshiro walked across his web. While it appeared hazardous to others, to him it might as well be solid ground. He didn’t even need to think as he moved across the strands with perfect balance while his spiders repaired and widened the reach of his web. Wraiths struggled all along his nest, and he slew them one by one with simple thrusts of his kukri while maintaining most of his focus on his spiders, which he had sent to the warriors lined around the Burrow. They granted him an awareness of the battlefield that would have made any commander envious.

  As for Roun, Sethra, and Fane, the Burrow interfered with his link to the constructs they carried. Reaching out drained him, and what he received from his spiders’ senses ended up warped and muddied. It was easier to use the spiders in the Burrow solely for speech and reach out only when they said his name.

  Unfortunately, that also left him blind to what was happening in the Burrow.

  Not that I don’t have my own concerns. Laeshiro laughed dryly as another hoard aspirant fired its tentacles at him, only to have them caught in his web. It pulled with terrifying force, but his spiders were already reinforcing the strands around its appendages. The chimera was too far for him to reach himself, but it would be easy prey for Oyrivia now that his webs trapped it in place.

  An arrow pierced through the chimera almost as soon as he had the thought. Laeshiro glanced down behind him where she stood looking as exhausted as he felt. A tingle of awareness touched his mind, warning him that Kamil was speaking to the spider he carried.

  “I’ve slain all the hoard aspirants on the northern half,” Kamil’s voice echoed into his skull. “Should I come to you?”

  Laeshiro shook his head even though his friend couldn’t see him. “No. Help thin the wraiths, but don’t waste all of your élan. I’ll let you know if we need you.”

  “Understood,” Kamil replied. “I’ll work my way around the hill.”

  Laeshiro glanced skyward. The Eldest Throne now slumbered, its halos and reddish cracks the only natural light left in the world. He frowned at it for a moment, then tilted his head as another jolt of awareness pierced into his forehead; this time from the distant constructs in the Burrow. He fed élan into their bond, strengthening it.

  “Adan is alive,” Roun’s panicked voice spat out. “We’re on our way out with him now, but the hoard queen’s really upset. Fane doesn’t have much élan left, so we’re carrying him through the tunnels. We’ll hopefully reach the surface soon—there doesn’t seem to be much left in the Burrow.”

  A dozen responses flashed through his mind, but he simply nodded to himself and said, “Good work. We’re waiting for you, so don’t worry about whatever needs doing until after you make it back.”

  Nothing returned from his construct, so he let the bond weaken before reaching out with an empowered pulse of Farsight.

  The approach of the hoard queen’s spirit was easy to sense even through the murk of the Burrow. Laeshiro tracked it until it burst up through the hill’s peak with a screech, scattering violet wax chunks and dirt so far that some of it even reached him across the grassy field.

  I was hoping we wouldn’t have to deal with it so soon, but as always, Fate is more fickle on the battlefield than anywhere else. Laeshiro frowned as he dusted his shoulders and felt more than saw the enraged hoard queen charge down toward his web.

  “Kamil,” he whispered. “I think we need you now.”

  He never got a response, because the Burrow suddenly took on the appearance of a storm and surged outwards, shrinking the bastion pillars down to dim oases and forcing Laeshiro to unmake most of his spiders.

  Roun sensed something was wrong the moment they made it out of the tunnel; it hit him like a wall of anxiety. He apparently wasn’t alone, because Sethra froze too. He gave her a look while sending his Farsight outward. The sound of battle filled the air as Farsight returned a messy sea of spirits clustered around strained artificial lights.

  “It’s all night…?” Sethra asked. She twisted to glance at her own back. “And Laeshiro’s spiders are gone.”

  “The Burrow is pulling in more night,” Roun whispered. “This isn’t good; only older chimeras can do that, so the hoard queen must be closer to the peak of High Copper than Avyleir thought.”

  Sethra turned toward him. “But our lights—” She paused and frowned. “Oh, right. I’m so used to channeling Imbue that I don’t even notice it anymore.”

  Roun nodded. “Don’t give away too much of your élan.”

  They hurried down the slope. Roun pushed his Farsight further and found more surprises. The hoard queen had emerged from the hill and was now at the southern side where Laeshiro had built his web. He sensed another Grimoire, likely Kamil, drawing nearer. He also sensed hoard aspirants and wraiths, but at this point, that was to be expected.

  Sethra and Roun sprinted straight ahead, cleaving through wraiths and resisting the urge to fall upon the few remaining hoard aspirants. The chimeras ignored them in return and instead focused on crushing armored warriors with their pincers or ripping flesh from both the dead and living with their mandibles.

  Roun rushed by a dimmed bastion pillar and through a line of warriors. A sergeant stepped in front of them, his face strained with controlled panic and fear. He held an élanic arming sword slick with ichor in place of a standard Guardsman halberd.

  “Honored ones!” he shouted. “Something’s wrong with our lights! I don’t know—”

  “It’s the hoard queen,” Roun replied as he dropped Fane on the trampled grass.

  The sergeant frowned and glanced beyond them. “There aren’t many hoard aspirants left, and the wraiths were manageable, but now…” He swallowed and shook his head. “What… what should we do?

  “You need to keep holding,” Sethra answered. She peeled a trembling Adan from her torso and sat him down too before placing a comforting hand on his head. “If our coterie doesn’t kill the hoard queen, then we’ll lose to attrition because of the wraiths. The queen is also unifying the remaining hoard aspirants.”

  The sergeant’s gaze settled on Adan. “With all due respect, if that’s the boy we were searching for, then shouldn’t we—”

  “The queen needs to be slain,” a voice said. “Otherwise the chimeras might follow their stolen ‘treasure’ back to Palem, and that’s a risk we can’t take.”

  Roun startled and turned to find Zareus approaching. The scribe’s eyelids were heavy as he passed a scalpel between his fingers. Roun couldn’t help but notice that ichor splotched both over it and Zareus’s bare chest.

  “Hoard aspirants and their queen are envious beyond belief and thieve with the same amount of passion,” Zareus continued, “but they hate being stolen from even more.”

  Roun nodded in agreement as he turned to Sethra. “We need to get back to Laeshiro.” He hesitated as he eyed Fane and Adan.

  Zareus gave them a dismissive wave. “I’ll watch over Fane and will keep Adan safe with his mother. I can do that much.”

  Roun decided against asking questions and instead nodded in gratitude. He hefted his axe and faced Sethra, who looked miserable.
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  “Wait,” Fane croaked. He groaned and sat up before rubbing fingers against his temple. “Help me up before you go.”

  “Fane—” Roun began.

  “Don’t worry about me.” When he saw the look both Sethra and Roun gave him, he laughed and added, “I’ll stay away from the worst of the fighting, I promise; there isn’t much Laeshiro will be able to do with me, anyway.”

  “I’m going to kill you if you die on us, Fane,” Sethra snapped.

  Fane raised an eyebrow, but a smile crept on Roun’s face.

  “Duly noted,” Fane said. Roun offered an arm to help him up. Fane took it, rose to his feet, and made his way southward.

  Sethra gestured for Roun to follow and took off. They charged back the way they came together and veered towards the nearest hoard aspirant as they sprinted by groups of warriors struggling to keep their formation intact.

  Sethra’s warhammer-form staff slammed into it with the full force of her empowered strength, sending amber cracks along the chimera’s side and toppling it over. Roun was on it the next instant, his pincer trapping its own flailing arm so it couldn’t use it against him while he chopped down on the wound again and again.

  The élanic lanterns and weapons they carried were the only nearby lights that hadn’t faded to a ghostly hue, so they made for an easy rallying point. Warriors of the Rozarian Guard cheered as the chimera gave out one last chitter before falling still.

  They continued onward and Roun sent his axe spinning ahead towards another hoard aspirant. The weapon sunk deep and began bleeding the chimera as it let out a distressed cry. It turned and launched tentacles from its pincer, but an array of Sethra’s hexagonal walls caught the appendages and shielded Sethra and Roun’s approach. She dipped her bō and swept it along the ground, transforming it into a heavy guandao as they continued advancing.

  The chimera tried to retract its tentacles while holding its other pincer defensively, but Roun’s own pincer-arm opened and set out an appendage. He wrapped it around the hoard aspirant’s bulbous arm and jerked it out of the way.