Awakening Arte (The Eldest Throne Book 1)

by Bernie Anés Paz

  Kamil’s orbs continued to fall on the hoard queen’s exposed side; the orbs that missed their mark and strayed into Oyrivia’s arte slowed, and the fire already there flickered with mesmerizing slowness. Oyrivia suddenly decided not trapping the chimera in its entirety might have been a brighter stroke of Fate than she first believed.

  Oyrivia caught Fane sprinting towards her out of the corner of her eye and twisted in confusion before screaming his name, but her field slowed her voice’s passage and distorted the words. That idiot knew how her arte worked, so what was he—

  Fane approached the edge of her influence, flipped forward, and used his arte’s explosive force to propel himself high into the air.

  Oyrivia knew his own arte couldn’t hurt him, even if the force it generated still affected him to a degree. He had been insistent on turning that into an advantage, but she had never seen him attempt anything like this.

  It was brilliant and yet so simple. Oyrivia felt her heart quicken; this was nothing new for him. Fane was clever, humble, and kind once you broke through that adorably thin act he liked to hide behind. She found herself vehemently jealous of his betrothed, and not for the first time.

  Fane arched over Oyrivia’s field while still laughing like a madman, and landed atop the grotesque abdomen of the queen. Kamil had halted the fall of his orbs, but Fane stood among the flames without a care as he interlaced both hands together and clubbed down into the chimera.

  A massive explosion rang out, sending Roun’s axe tumbling away and a huge spray of ichor into the air. The force also threw Fane along with them, and he crumpled onto the ground some distance away.

  She didn’t—couldn’t—focus on him. Instead, she willed her arms still and forced herself to breathe again as the chimera layered delayed shrieks into her arte.

  31

  Sethra groaned as she rose back onto her feet. She examined the damage the hoard queen had done to her walls and gave up on repairing them, then let the rest crumble away. A glance told her everything she needed to know; Laeshiro had finally fallen, and Oyrivia was doing her best to keep the queen at bay. She recalled that the other girl’s arte was difficult to maintain, so they probably didn’t have much time.

  She plunged her staff into the ground once again and drew soil up around her as if it were a stream of liquid earth. It was more draining to use her arte like this, but it let her élan soak into the soil, which let her more easily control of the earth beneath—and the timing for this would be tricky.

  Sethra looked around for Roun and found him dragging wounded Guardsmen to safety while swiping at wraiths.

  “You need to slay it or eat it or whatever it is you do,” she said as she moved by him and slammed her bō into a pouncing wraith. “And now, so let’s go.”

  Roun didn’t argue. She wasn’t sure the chimera was weak enough for his arte to devour it, but it didn’t matter. This needed to be enough. He followed at her heel after whistling, his body glowing from the élan empowering him.

  Hexagonal pillars rose beneath her and around her, out towards the hoard queen. They both drew on enhanced agility to leap with absurd speed from one to the next. The makeshift road left them above the hoard queen, which still burned even now. The queen was gaining momentum; Sethra could almost feel the fierce struggle between Oyrivia and the chimera.

  She realized this would be the deciding moment somewhere in the back of her mind, but there was no fear or worry in her heart; they had fought for what was right, and that was all that mattered to a hero, because that was what heroes did.

  It was a warrior’s truth that Sethra’s mother had taught to her older sister and her—and a tenet the Velle clan had carried since its very founding. The heroic didn’t measure life or tally battles with the coldness of mathematics. They made great sacrifices and took on equally great burdens so others wouldn’t have to.

  The hoard queen snapped free from Oyrivia’s arte. The petals returned to motion and fluttered towards the ground. Oyrivia collapsed, but Laeshiro dragged himself to his feet and hoisted her much smaller frame over a shoulder before stumbling away.

  Sethra raised a final series of pillars against the chimera and flung out an arm to stop Roun while doing her best to ignore her quickened heartbeat and the intense fatigue pressing down on her. He took the hint at the gesture, so he stopped just behind her, then a moment later reached up to snatch his axe when it reached him. The hoard queen’s madness was strong enough that it didn’t even bother looking at them, but it still continued lashing out in panic.

  Roun shoved by her to take the backward swipe on his pincer-arm, using it like a shield. She knew from personal experience that it defended well against even empowered blows, so hearing him cry out when the arm shoved him back was a little startling.

  She cradled him in her arms and helped stop his momentum. The hoard aspirant’s limb returned, this time falling towards them; they had the hoard queen’s attention now, and it twisted to face them, its other hands crushing through pillars. Sethra used soil from a nearby shattered pillar to turn her staff into a guandao, then, suddenly inspired, let the earth continue swirling around her staff until it formed a hexagonal panel that left her polearm piercing through its center.

  The hoard aspirant’s lower arm slammed into the blade, impaling itself, and both wax and ichor splattered against Sethra’s makeshift-shield. Her muscles burned as she cycled her last reserves of élan through her body.

  She had sensed Kamil’s approach with Farsight and breathed out in relief when he sent out his chain to catch another arm on the far side.

  The chimera halted, held taut between them, and screeched as its upper arms flailed and sent wax everywhere. Around it, Guardsmen rushed to Laeshiro’s aid and struggled to keep the newly born wraiths under control, but the hoard queen was making them much slower now.

  “This is the best chance you’re going to get,” she told Roun.

  Roun didn’t even glance at her; he sent his axe whirling into one of the hoard queen’s bulbous eyes, and then whipped his slightly disgusting tentacle around one of its arms as the chimera swung it back, launching himself forward before letting go.

  Sethra willed him every bright stroke of Fate in existence, because she was out of everything else, élan included.

  Roun launched himself forward towards the hoard queen and whipped his tendril around the top of its thorax. His arte gave no indication that its spirit was vulnerable, but Sethra was right; they needed to kill it now.

  So, instead of letting the hunger blossom on its own, he willed his arte to hand it to him like one drew a blade from the sheath. It worked.

  His right arm gushed living ink that soon coiled and squirmed around the limb, then his awareness of the hoard queen’s spirit deepened to the point where it blinded him from all else. The sensation left his mouth watering—and it took him a moment to realize black ooze was dripping from his mask as well.

  Roun didn’t give it any thought and instead plunged his arm into the hoard queen, breaching its vessel, and clutched the burning sphere waiting there. It shocked him to sense the hoard queen not only resist, but fight back. The queen alternated between damaging the cage of his trapped chimera spirit and hungrily trying to breach his Hollow.

  Ichor gushed out from where his arm pierced the hoard aspirant, and also from further above him, oddly—then he remembered his bloodhawk axe.

  Breathe. Roun whistled as he warred against the chimera. The axe burst free of the chimera’s eye and spun a sharp arc to return to him. Roun dismissed his pincer-arm, propped his boots against the chimera’s bulk, and allowed his grasp on the hoard queen’s spirit to hold him.

  The axe returned to his free hand and never stopped moving. Roun slammed the weapon into the chimera. Ichor gushed out in rhythm with its renewed shrieks. Roun ripped the axe free, then struck the chimera again and again.

  Roun felt it weakening. Blind fear filled the chimera, stoking his hunger until he at last tore the hoard queen’s spirit
out from the vessel with a cry of his own.

  He fell as the last of the hoard queen’s élan gushed out in a great spray and its life ended mid-screech, leaving the chimera standing motionless like a statue.

  Roun landed hard on his back. He gasped for air as inky tendrils and his trembling arm swallowed the spirit. Blind fear overwhelmed despite everything, but he couldn’t calm himself no matter how many times he repeated his father’s mantra; he didn’t know what the spirit would do to him, and that terrified him.

  It settled within his vessel. The singular bright stroke of Fate was that the hoard aspirant’s spirit remained inert, despite being a slave to the queen in life. The dark stroke was that his Hollow diminished in its struggle to hold back the malice radiating from his new occupant.

  His arte’s awareness again made him aware of the finite points in which he and the hoard queen overlapped. They flashed through his mind and each one tempted him, but then he saw the ability both aspirant and queen had shared—a sensory affinity for the night that would not only allow him to more easily hide his spiritual presence within it, but also let him use it as a medium himself to both expand his gaze and sense that of others.

  It was a dizzyingly alluring choice, especially after seeing it used by the hoard aspirants, but he also saw that there would be a trade-off this time; the augmentation would cripple his spiritual senses in daylight. Roun thought about it for a moment and decided it wasn’t so terrible a price. If he was to guide his friends in the dark, then why couldn’t he trust them to cover his blindness in the light?

  Roun made his choice and his arte responded. The thorny chains that were his imagination’s representation of his power slithered over the hoard queen’s spirit like serpents. There were many more than there had been with the hoard aspirant, and they caged the greater spirit far more zealously. Blackened script again flowed across its surface, then it was done, leaving yet another malignant thing suspended within his vessel.

  The spirit throbbed like an aching sore, and he was colder inside, but as far as Roun was able to tell, his Hollow continued to shelter his deepest sense of self.

  Roun exhaled as his awareness snapped out of his vessel. He rose unsteadily and cast his reforged cantrip, Darksight. It threaded through the Burrow and allowed him to be conscious of all things within it; the brighter the spirit, the better. There was no resistance, and his cantrip reached further than it ever had before. He even sensed the others probing with Farsight; to him, it was like they were clumsily feeling around in the gloom. None of them ‘reached’ for him, but he was certain the touch of their Farsight would be as obvious as them physically patting him along his face.

  Roun also sensed that the Burrow was already weakening back into a simple knot now that the hoard queen was no longer using it like a cocoon. Come dawn, it would likely shrink even further.

  He glanced around him. Sethra was staring at him despite looking pale herself, and Kamil was making his way back towards the hill, his orbs now giving off far more light as they crashed down on the remaining wraiths. Roun’s Darksight revealed a handful of hoard aspirants across the hill, but they could wait—the hoard aspirants moved around like drunkards, confused and aimless.

  Roun’s eyes fell on Zareus, who was now standing a short distance away. He was tapping a scalpel against his chin, but their gazes slowly met.

  “Is your work here done?” the scribe asked him.

  Roun sighed and went in search of his axe.

  32

  Roun greeted dawn numbly, while the others welcomed it like a lover. The warm cascade of light only gave him a little élan, and the ache from his spirit squeezing down and being rubbed raw was the last thing he wanted right now, but he was more aware of the need to strengthen his vessel’s walls than ever before.

  They all eventually rose from their cross-legged meditation, some feeling better than others. No one spoke as they stared across the grassy fields and hills that were littered with dead chimeras and not a small amount of human corpses. Roun doubted any of them would ever forget their first mission as Grimoires.

  Sethra straightened beside him. “Do you still have my steamed buns?”

  He didn’t know where else they’d go, but he nodded and conjured it from his chest while everyone else watched with amusement. He handed her the meal box and smiled as she opened it and breathed in the steam.

  “Still hot!” she exclaimed.

  Sethra caught him shaking his head and returned his grin before removing one of the meat buns and slowly pressing it against his lips; Roun had drawn his mask back into his vessel a while ago, so his face was the only part of him that wasn’t streaked with dried ichor.

  He bit down on it with only a little indignation and started chewing inward. Sethra shared the rest with the others as Vess and her son approached. Noban and Zareus followed behind them.

  “Adan wanted to thank you before the Rozarian Guard took us home,” she mumbled. “So did I.”

  The woman placed a hand on her son’s shoulder, but Adan refused to look at them when he shuffled forward.

  “Thank you for…” he began, then something passed across his face and tears streamed down his eyes.

  All six of them fell silent and shared mirrored frowns as the boy silently wept. Sethra crouched and handed the boy a steamed meat bun.

  “Why are you crying?” she asked. “You’re back safe with your family now. That’s worth a smile, isn’t it?”

  Adan wiped his face. “Many people died to save me.” He glanced miserably out towards the hill. “I even almost got Grimoires killed…”

  It was Fane, of all people, who answered first, and his answer was a derisive snort. “Oh, did you? I missed the part where you lounged lazily at the hoard queen’s feet, penning indignant missives demanding we come rescue you immediately.”

  Sethra glared at him, but Laeshiro laughed.

  “Or as Sethra might have put it,” Laeshiro said, “this is what Grimoires do. We’ll always fight for Rozaria’s people, Adan, and someday we’ll probably die for you, too. That’s just how it is.”

  Roun and the others nodded in agreement.

  Adan looked unconvinced, but he bowed to them. “I still won’t ever forget this. Thank you, Honored Ones.” His mother patted him on the shoulder and led him away.

  Noban bowed to them as well. “I’ll submit my report and whatever else Avyleir asks of me, but know that you all impressed me last night.” He regarded them thoughtfully. “Hoard queens peak at High Copper, but that one turned out to be an old and fierce beastie, so I don’t think it was ever going to be a pretty fight. Yet, despite your inexperience, you adapted against every tumble and stood your ground to the end. Can’t ask for more than that in a warrior.” Noban grinned. “Which probably isn’t the greatest of compliments for a Grimoire, but to us grunts, it’s worth some hard respect.”

  Noban punctuated the words with a shrug and moved forward to drag Roun into an embarrassing embrace. The Guardsman captain then thumped him on the back when they parted before taking off after the two Palem villagers.

  Roun watched them for a moment, a smile lingering on his lips, and turned to Zareus. “What now?”

  The scribe raised an eyebrow. “We go back to Avyleir Library to see what the exarchs think of you, of course.”

  Their return to Rozaria City was uneventful. Avyleir gave them holidays after they arrived, but didn’t allow them to leave the immediate vicinity of the Blue Moon Tower. Zareus brought them food, discouraged them from training, and told them to study their scripting tomes.

  In the end, that left them waiting around with too much time to spare, but the days following their return weren’t completely empty; Blue Moon librarians brought them individually to suites on the opposite side of the tower’s grounds. There, the librarians drowned Roun in questions and the theme changed with every visit. Sometimes it felt like a scholarly inquiry over his knowledge, while at other times it seemed like a criminal investigation.

&n
bsp; Sometimes the sessions were more open-ended however, and during these the librarians asked for broad opinions; about the others, about Rozaria and Avyleir, about his scribes, about Exarch Kuro. Even about himself.

  Roun decided to be honest. He didn’t hide his initial frustrations with Zareus or his concerns about what Exarch Kuro asked of them. He told them of his uncertainty regarding his arte. When asked about Fane and Oyrivia, he told them the truth here too; they had proved their worth as much as anyone else, and he was willing to place his life in their hands.

  The process lasted an entire week, then the librarians vanished. Avyleir still prevented them from attending formal training, but they had started exercising together after greeting the dawn. Yhul, who was of course present, gave them ‘suggestions’ after their apparent slacking roused him from the center of the summit.

  They didn’t treat them like suggestions.

  The librarian exarchs of Avyleir eventually called on them one by one and Roun was the last to be summoned. When he entered their great chamber, he couldn’t help feeling anxious as gazes settled on him. The first few probing questions made it clear that they had read every word he had spoken to the lesser librarians. They also knew everything about his trips to the Burrow and his discussions with Exarch Kuro and Zareus.

  Exarch Kuro, for his own part, remained silent throughout the rest of Roun’s questioning, his parasol held open over a shoulder and his face carrying nothing more than the simple smile he always seemed to have.

  Roun swallowed after an hour passed and the exarchs at last fell silent, leaving Master Librarian Lilisette, who had been as quiet as Exarch Kuro throughout the interview, to address him.