Awakening Arte (The Eldest Throne Book 1)

by Bernie Anés Paz

  Sethra twirled her guandao, raising pillars to either side, before thrusting her weapon deep into the chimera. Ichor gushed, the hoard aspirant screeched, and it flailed with its free pincer.

  The arm slammed uselessly against a pillar. Sethra tore her weapon free and slashed from the ground up across its body. She rose another pillar beneath her feet with the same motion and used its momentum for an empowered leap over the chimera and landed behind it. Her guandao plunged deep once again, splattering ichor onto the grass. Roun withdrew his tentacle as he neared, then ripped his axe free as the chimera tried to turn towards Sethra only to be held in place against the pillars by the polearm impaling it.

  Roun finished it with his axe and flicked away the ichor.

  Sethra clapped him on the shoulder, too breathless to speak, and Roun nodded in return. More warriors cheered as sergeants gave orders to close the gaps made by deaths or the insidious influence of night. Roun raised his axe at the warriors and followed Sethra.

  Ahead of them, an enormous dome of light flared around where Laeshiro’s web had been. The sight puzzled Roun for a heartbeat, then he spotted bastion pillars hovering in the air around a slumped Laeshiro. His spiders were dragging more pillars up—and Laeshiro was apparently Imbuing them, either through the strands or through his constructs.

  Roun didn’t know he could do that, and wondered if even Laeshiro had known until moments ago.

  The Guard’s warriors rallied within the dome to fight off the hoard queen’s thickening swarm of wraiths. Oyrivia stood behind them, sweat streaming down her face as she fired arrows without pause.

  The queen towered at the edge of the dome of light, chittering and shrieking while it clawed against Laeshiro’s web only to find itself stuck again and again. Several hoard aspirants flanked the queen, and black sludge continued to gush from its swollen abdomen, spawning an endless number of wraiths, which the lines of Guardsmen tried to prevent from reaching Oyrivia’s knoll.

  After a moment of hesitation, Roun decided to head towards Oyrivia. He gestured at Sethra, who nodded and followed without complaint. They fought whatever stood in their way until they came to a breathless halt beside her.

  “Where’s Fane?” she asked as her eyes went from his mask to Sethra, who must have looked as worried as he felt.

  “He doesn’t have much élan left, so it’ll probably take him a while longer to catch up,” Roun explained. “We wanted him to go with Zareus and Adan, but he insisted on helping and promised he wouldn’t push himself.”

  “Fane’s being his usual idiotic self.” Oyrivia rolled her eyes, then glanced upward and took in a deep breath. “Laeshiro! Roun and Sethra are—”

  The hoard queen’s ear-piercing screech cut her off.

  Laeshiro winced as the screech bored into his ears. The hoard queen lunged forward in the same instant, its strange, human-like arms all reaching for him.

  They clawed and tore at his web with empowered strength, draining his élan too fiercely for him to keep all the silk intact. Some snapped, dropping bastion pillars, but dizziness and nausea forced him to stop Imbuing most of them, anyway. The night didn’t hesitate to close in, stranding some of the warriors at the front.

  One of the hoard queen’s hands reached Laeshiro and closed its immense strength around him. He screamed shamefully, but bit down a moment later and swallowed the pain. He could feel his partial immortality resisting the crumbling of his bones and the bursting of his organs, but the agony that echoed through him seemed frozen at the very moment before it happened.

  Laeshiro had never wanted to be a warrior, but the Rhalgr clan had made him one through birth, blood, and bond, and the greatest warriors never surrendered—they needed to be stopped. He empowered his body to the very limits of his capabilities, shuddering as élan stormed through him and his reserves dwindled. He struggled against the chimera for several heartbeats and forced an arm free, drawing one of his kukris in the same motion.

  What remained of his web had caught the hoard queen’s arms, which was what had likely saved his life. He stabbed the kukri down, then sawed through the chimera’s flesh as ichor flowed. The hoard queen shrieked, but its grip weakened as it also struggled to escape. He wrenched himself free, still glowing gently from all the élan he was channeling, and stumbled backwards, his feet instinctively finding strands of spidersilk.

  The wax that had remained liquid while he was in the chimera’s grip began to harden, but most of it was thankfully on his raiments. He tore off his outer robes and pushed through the agony still ringing through his body as it tried to drink even more élan to heal. The surrounding battlefield blurred, his balance became unsteady, and nausea overwhelmed him, but Laeshiro forced himself into action. He conjured his spider-constructs, used Farsight to find the others, then sent the spiders after them.

  He clutched at the plan sprouting within his mind and began to give his orders.

  Roun watched as the hoard queen lunged for Laeshiro and for a terrible moment feared he was about to witness his friend’s death. He rushed forward with Sethra, but Laeshiro freed himself before either of them could get close enough to help.

  Oyrivia fired an arrow over his head that cracked the hoard queen’s flesh, but other than that, it didn’t seem to do anything aside from making the queen angrier. I know chimeras have more élan than Grimoires, but this is a little ridiculous…

  He glanced up and reached out an arm towards a spider-construct that was dropping towards him. Another landed on Sethra’s own outstretched arm.

  “Roun,” the spider echoed in Laeshiro’s voice. “Bleed the queen while it’s trapped, then head towards it. Sethra, follow him.”

  Roun sent his axe spinning and watched it careen into the chimera. The script activated after a ripple of light and a stream of ichor gushed out from the bottom of the haft. It lit up half the queen, leaving it eerily contrasted.

  “Are we going to wait it out?” Sethra asked as they neared the edge of Laeshiro’s web.

  “Unless Roun’s bloodhawk axe is different, its script will shut off to protect itself from being damaged long before the queen runs out of élan. It’ll still help, though, and right now we can use all the help we can get.”

  Roun nodded. “What do you want us to do?”

  “Delay the wraiths alongside the Guardsmen for now—Oyrivia might not have enough élan left to finish off the queen, so I want you both close by, just in case.”

  They both gave an affirmative grunt as they made their way through the panicking lines of warriors, his pincer and tendril crushing or sweeping away wraiths. The hoard queen towered ahead; it focused entirely on Laeshiro’s web, but the growing sea of wraiths surrounding it was forcing the Rozarian Guard back. Roun threw himself into the thick of it while empowering himself as much as possible.

  Swords and halberds littered the ground, but he didn’t bother picking any up. Roun had already experimented with other weapons during his trips to the Burrow; he couldn’t drain the élan of whatever he slew unless he was in contact with his opponent or used his axe. It might not have mattered in another situation, but at the moment he was the only one between them capable of meaningfully restoring his reserves.

  “Leave the wraiths to Roun, Sethra,” Laeshiro’s spider echoed out from her shoulder. “I want you to raise walls between us and the hoard queen, but leave gaps to channel the flow of wraiths. Do you think you could also make trenches in front of them? It doesn’t matter if they’re shallow; anything will work.”

  “Maybe if I’m careful with how I draw in soil,” Sethra replied. She gave Roun a hasty glance, spun her staff upright, and stabbed it into the ground with both hands. It sunk into the earth with ease and soil billowed fluidly upwards to form a long line of large hexagonal pillars. They continued to rise a good distance ahead of Sethra as she sprinted towards the west, her breaths now deep and controlled.

  Laeshiro’s spiders echoed his intent to sergeants along the line, who then began repositioning warriors a
round the gaps or sent them out to support the far flanks. Some warriors followed after Sethra, while those already forming lines dealt with the wraiths that were cut off from the main swarm.

  The hoard queen continued screeching a little way beyond the makeshift walls; still jerking and twisting within Laeshiro’s diminished web while his bloodhawk bled its élan, but the chimera had already freed one arm. Hoard aspirants lurked around the queen while wraiths continued to spawn from it without end.

  Sethra eventually returned, took a deep breath, and repeated the process in the other direction. Those eastern walls left them with a controlled killing ground that allowed them to rotate Guardsmen out to rest or tend to wounds.

  When Sethra again came back to his side, she looked pale and her eyes lacked focus. Despite that, she still moved towards him as if she intended to fight.

  The spider she carried warned her away. “No, Sethra. Focus on maintaining your walls. If they fall, then you and Roun will both fall too, as will many others.”

  She didn’t look pleased, but nodded and stayed back.

  Roun focused on his own efforts, sucking in raspy breaths as the tide of wraiths undulating just beyond her walls worsened no matter how many he and the Guardsmen slaughtered. He wasn’t sure they could hold for long like this—he was fighting a losing battle within his vessel, even with the influx of élan—and aside from Oyrivia, they weren’t even attacking the queen—

  Red and gold orbs flared to life above them. There were so many that the night dispersed, though it was still thick enough that the surrounding area remained gloomy.

  Then they started crashing down into the gathered wraiths.

  Kamil distractedly tried to wipe streaks of ichor from his spectacles again and only smudged them further. Despite the anxiety thrumming within his chest, despite the strain of using so much élan, despite the cold, hard fear that lurked inside him with the patience of inevitability, Kamil could think of nothing but his irritation over not having found a way to keep his spectacles from getting smeared with blood and ichor.

  He hadn’t needed them since becoming a Grimoire, but he was used to wearing them and liked how they made him look. Throw them away, you stupid damn idiot. He grudgingly did so while commanding another barrage of his dawnfire orbs down, then held his kusarigama back between both hands.

  Kamil shook his head at himself as he sent yet another wave of orbs down. The wraiths were bunched up against Sethra’s walls, allowing him to make the most out of every orb, and the shallow trenches helped focus his flames. Still, he was lucky his affinity for his arte was so powerful thanks to having inherited it—there was no way he would have been able to conjure and control so many orbs otherwise.

  Even so, he was still running on what felt like a thimble of élan. A headache hammered against his skull, joining the huge, throbbing bruise along his thigh. A hoard aspirant had left the wound, and it was taking longer to heal because of his depleted reserves.

  “You and Oyrivia are going to need to slay the queen,” Laeshiro’s spider said. “I’m trying my best to help, but other than distracting and nipping at it, I’m not managing much.”

  “Don’t worry,” Kamil replied.

  Seeing that the swarm had diminished, Kamil conjured another series of dawnfire orbs in the sky above. This time, he sent them crashing down against the hoard queen. They burst and spilled their élanic flames, dousing it in liquid fire that would burn as long as he willed it. An inferno soon surrounded the chimera, and many of the new wraiths it created melted away into nothingness.

  The agonized screams emerging from the chimera pleased him as much as hearing what Exarch Kuro planned for them had. Things weren’t going the way he had hoped, but this would still prove they could become the coterie the exarch wanted—and that Kamil now also desired.

  It would help with his dream of surpassing his parents. They both all too happily encouraged that ambition, so Kamil didn’t see them as rivals; they were instead lines on a measuring rod. Lines etched high, considering how they were a legendary Orihalcon pair famed across all the demesnes and even Hearth.

  They believed the desire to make them proud drove him, which wasn’t wrong, but Kamil had never found the courage to tell them the full truth. Conflicted memories came flooding back; periods in his life that were defined by embarrassed tears and a deep sense of helplessness, all of which had eventually ignited into a singular fury. That it wasn’t his fury wasn’t important, because he had been the one who promised to keep its pyre burning until the world feared and respected it.

  Until he was more than just a boy, more than just a whelp of a Grimoire, more than just his father’s heir. Those who rule over the Imperial Cantons would surely have to listen to me then…

  Kamil closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and continued feeding his arte’s flames. He did so knowing the professional apathy he struggled to maintain left them no less intense.

  The hoard queen’s screams were proof of that.

  Oyrivia exhaled and inhaled until the trembling stopped and scratched at her scalp through damp hair. She nocked an arrow and fired, then fired another, and another. Her arte trapped them in stasis, then magnified their momentum with invisible tension until finally…

  The three arrows burst away from her, and she gasped in relief as her arte’s burden withdrew. The arrows whirled into the hoard queen with enough thunderous force to send amber cracks running along its body.

  But not enough to kill it, let it alone slow it. Ichor gushed from the wounds, black and gold, and it glowed from the élan immortal blood-stuff carried. Roun’s weird axe continued to gush out even more ichor.

  The damn thing was on fire.

  And still the hoard queen raged and screamed. It was a terrifying lesson in humility to witness the difference between Copper Grimoires and a High Copper chimera; they only had so much élan and were only able to inject so much of it into their artes and bodies, and it obviously wasn’t enough.

  Oyrivia shook her head. She didn’t know if she could do this for the rest of her extended life and definitely knew she had never wanted to do this. Fate forbid, she once would have fainted from embarrassment at the mere thought of being seen this sweaty and filthy. Oh, how childish that girl had been. Yes, girl. Innocent, with clean hands and a conscience flawed by nothing more than youthful mischief.

  She ignored her burning limbs and reached for another arrow. Ahead of her, warriors fought beside Roun and cheered at the destruction wrought by Kamil’s arte.

  “How are you holding up?” Laeshiro’s spider said from atop her head.

  Laeshiro was still within his web, just behind where Sethra’s walls stood. He had given up on using his knives against the hoard queen’s arms and instead teased the chimera’s reach while a fresh retinue of spiders struggled to repair the web and further trap its arms, but it had already freed another. Violet chunks hanged all across his web. More than a few of them contained spiders within; Laeshiro apparently couldn’t dismiss them once the wax caught them.

  “I’m fine,” she said curtly so he didn’t hear her gasping.

  She startled as someone placed a hand on her shoulder and turned to find Fane. He looked as tired as they all no doubt felt. He had been dealing with stray wraiths and helping pull wounded warriors to safety, but she had also seen him face a hoard aspirant, to her immense displeasure.

  Something in the air shifted, and they both whirled. The hoard queen took its freed arms and reached out for Laeshiro in a frenzy again. This time, however, wild desperation and not frustration colored its shriek; the chimera threw its entire body forward into the web, panic reverberating through every cry it uttered.

  It caught Laeshiro off guard, and his spiders vanished in a swirl of élan along with most of his webbing. Kamil’s flames now also burned through the spidersilk, and Oyrivia sensed Kamil’s indecision as several of the fires started fizzling out into sparks.

  It was too late, though. Laeshiro’s web gave, droppin
g the remaining bastion pillars and Laeshiro along with them. The hoard queen, now freed, stumbled forward and toppled vast swathes of Sethra’s walls. It splattered warriors as if they were overripe fruit, and the queen’s continued flailing sent violet wax gushing everywhere around it.

  Oyrivia dropped her longbow and sprinted forward without thinking. Fane screaming her name—along with other things a gentleman shouldn’t say—suggested she was being as stupid as she believed, but she didn’t stop.

  She exhaled and empowered herself with inhuman speed and balance, her arte coiling within her chest, the blue petals already emerging from her flesh. Laeshiro was just ahead, limping away from the hoard queen.

  A swipe of its lower two arms threw him to the ground and splattered him in wax. Laeshiro cried out and held an arm against his chest, shivering from the harsh draw of élan their bodies took without consent, though she supposed it was better than dying.

  Oyrivia saw that the wax had joined his legs together. The hoard queen noticed too, and reached for Laeshiro with all four arms. She leaped in front of him with a grace that wasn’t hers and threw out her arms, sending petals fluttering; she had always guiltily found her arte beautiful, despite the deaths it had caused.

  Oyrivia drew on her diminishing pool of élan and stilled the petals. Sounds stretched into echoes and the hoard queen’s arms slowed. Her own body, Farsight, and immediate vicinity were unaffected by the arte, so her senses remained whole both within and outside her field of power, but no one else could reach them without being influenced.

  She hadn’t even caught the entire chimera; all those wasted months had left her far less skilled than the others. Maybe if she had trained more, she would have been able to—No. I’m not going to think like that.

  Oyrivia sensed a surge of élan radiate from the chimera as it contested her arte’s hold. Spiritual muscles tensed and bulged. One of them would break, and a growing number of wraiths and hoard aspirants were rushing into her field and burdening her further.