Chapter One Hundred and Eighteen

  The Beginning of an End

  “I just realised Amekot is still down in the Murk, right now.” Klaryah rubbed her tired eyes bitterly. “That greasy prick might outlive us,” she grumbled as another enormous slam stretched out the steel hinges of the keep door.

  The Legacies had compressed themselves down the end of the hall, and James had spent the last few minutes hacking and stamping at the bunker door, unable to open it.

  Oliver sat watching him as Aroha ordered those able to stand in rows, trying to structure the two dozen or so Legacies in a way that might matter, though he was sure she mainly did it to distract them. Oliver let his head hang, still sitting slouched against a pillar, softly holding Sarah’s head. His hand trembled as he did so, wondering if she would ever wake again, or if he even wanted her to, if it should be to a time like theirs.

  Klaryah stopped her anxious pacing and saw Aroha endlessly switching Syon and a young Paladin back and forth. She stepped to Aroha’s side and laid a calming hand on her wrist. “Looks good, Oswald.”

  Aroha swept her hair back and another crash came, warping the doors inward and letting light spill into the hall alongside thousands of berating voices, all shouting in the Obthraien Garganii. She looked away, feeling her heart begin to race and breathed out the shock before it could latch on. Aroha glanced to the wounded. Most who were conscious enough refused to move from their spots, and instead sat, leant against the wall adjacent to reception with hand-crossbows in their grips.

  Lillian and Avery were among them after finally coming to, and whilst they couldn’t stand, let alone fight, they decided they might be able to bring down some final Arcancy destruction, if it should come to it.

  Aroha had divided up her arrows and handed out short bows she’d scoured from the nearby rooms. Part of her had wanted to curl up in one of the bunks, activate the shutter, and just lie there. But another piece of her would’ve rather died than leave now. So, back in the hall, she pulled the empty quiver off her back and tossed it to the ground. It skittered and bounced, and as she watched it settle on the marble floor, a memory flickered in her head.

  “I’ll be right back!” she yelled and took off at a run toward Michael’s cabin.

  Oliver adjusted his recline, ignoring the snarls and shrieks which now filled the corridor. He turned his gaze up to Klaryah and the longbow she lightly held.

  “You ever kill someone who didn’t deserve it?”

  The assassin shrugged while getting Kirkley and Marken to their feet, gently guiding them to the front of the unit. “Once... No, Carlisla you’re done, stay down.” She stepped over to the grim-faced Pridemian and forced her back to a sitting person.

  James’ endless pounding on the floor bunker door became louder as he cried hysterically. “Open!”

  Carter grabbed his shoulders, softening his strikes, and held him tightly. “It’s okay, dear. It was a good idea, but it needs a Fortmaster or a Warden’s hand. If we could open it with force, it wouldn’t be worth hiding in.” He helped the trembling boy to his feet and held his face softly as tears began falling down his bright face. “It’s okay.”

  “Once?” Oliver frowned, realising Sarah had small strawberry streaks in the roots of her blond hair.

  Klaryah cast down her longbow, stepping into Amekot’s office as she yelled, “Yep! One mo’!” She quickly jogged up to the Fortmaster’s desk to find his ceremonial officer’s sword in its scabbard. She pulled it out of its sheath, then pushed over a crystal vase in the corner for no particular reason. As it hit the ground with a porcelain smash, the assassin walked back out with a narrowed face. “My friend Helene was killed by a drunken guard. They covered it up and wouldn’t even open an investigation to fake interest in justice. I was seventeen, I think? Followed some rumours about a certain guard, found him, slit his throat in his bed, and his last words were ‘it wasn’t me...’ It’s how I discovered my Arcancy over Truth. He was guilty of plenty, but not that.”

  Aroha came jogging back out into the main hall with one long, slender arrow on her bow. In its point, there was a small chip from where she’d fired it before, nearly a Cresk ago.

  A resounding crash boomed throughout the hall as a Mountain Wolf crunched its body against the bent hinges, peeling the doors nearly halfway from the roof, still too tall for the Obthraie to crawl over.

  Oliver realised he was crying, but he didn’t bother to try stop. He instead shuffled himself out from under Sarah and lightly rested her against the pillar, facing away from the invaders. As he took her hands and shakily placed them in her lap, Oliver looked up to Klaryah, glassy-eyed and defeated.

  “What’d you do after?” he asked.

  Klaryah planted her sword between her feet and smiled slightly. “I vowed never to go hunting without knowing the whole story. Now, every contract I take, I make them tell me their story and use my power divine their innocence.”

  “And the guilty guard?” Oliver asked weakly, yet to let Sarah’s hands go.

  “I found him. Listened to him. And gutted him like a pig.” Klaryah let out a long remembering sigh. “Never a lost a night’s sleep over it. Nor over killing the other one. Wanna know why?”

  Oliver shrugged numbly.

  “I tracked the wrong guard because he was on that guilty one’s patrol. He might not’ve done it. But so fuckin’ what? You’re not a bystander if you have the power to stop something and don’t. You’re an accomplice.”

  The screeches and shrieks heightened outside as the Mountain Wolf began its last charge, and Oliver watched as Sarah stirred lightly in her sleep. His eyes glistened again as Klaryah began shouting orders, and in amongst the yells and unsheathed swords, he pressed his head to hers and sobbed.

  “Go back to sleep, gorgeous. It’s okay. Everything’s okay. It’s just a bad dream. I’ll be right over here,” Oliver stammered, choking over tears.

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  Magnus helped him to his feet as they watched the Yiraa trampling the crowds of Shade Hounds and Soiltorn through the warped slit of the keep door.

  James, Flinn, and Carter stepped up beside them as Nydol, Kirkley, and Marken raised their weapons high, chanting, “Voe Armoni!”

  Every Legacy but Oliver called back, “Ka Aey!” and the shout fell deafly against the tidal wave of shrieks and barks.

  Oliver unhooked his scabbard from his belt and drew his iron sword in the glint of the hallway torchlight. In the same, soft movement, he cast the leather sheath to the polished marble, looking one last time to Sarah. He didn’t hear it land as the keep doors of Fort Guardian were ripped from their hinges and the forces of Enthall poured forth.

  *****

  Nikereus watched the long, meaningful silences run through the Legacies and hoisted Michael tighter by the throat, shouting, “Enough! Weapons down, all of you or I will water the soil with his blood!”

  Jack gritted his teeth but his grasp didn’t loosen, and neither did those of his companions.

  Nikereus watched the Legacies’ obstinacy and their delicate, angular face contorted with dark rage. They raised the elbow of their sword-bearing hand and pushed it further into Michael’s neck, filling the valley with his screams as blood leaked from the incision.

  Nichole ripped her arrow-hand from the bow and shouted, “Alright! Stop! We’ll do it!” She held eyes only with Michael.

  “Now!” the Creation roared.

  Karmine and Sidney seethed as they threw their quarterstaff and maul into the mud, followed briskly by Rose, who’d been silent from the moment she’d seen Michael in Nikereus’ grasp.

  Jack let his mace fall to the soil with a trembling grasp and Nikereus looked at last to Nichole, still standing with her bow in one hand.

  “I won’t ask again.”

  Nichole looked at Michael, watching him writhe in pain as the sword tip was pulled from the side of his neck. The Arcancy target on his breast vanished under the wave of pain, but the space it’d sat upon was etched into her memory.

  Nichole knelt to the ground as Arcancy moved into her veins. In that moment, Nichole only knew what she had done in the past. Her power was in staying unseen. In disappearing from the world and keeping things hidden. As she moved to the ground, Nichole thought of the first day she’d found Michael, and the first day Aroha found her. She remembered how scared she’d been. To know, that if it had been anyone but the love of her life, then she’d probably be in prison, or hanging from some rotting pole in Aria Square for breaking and entering. She wondered if Michael had felt the same that terrible day he’d met her.

  Nichole pressed the bow into the mud as she concentrated. She let her Arcancy bleed through her, and in quivering agony, used the very power of concealment on the signs of her own magic. The veins that threatened to glow were painted over. The seizing muscles were quietened, all beneath the cloak of illusion. And while placing the weapon, she felt a dark, unspoken tongue of Creation Magic flow within her, and using all the pain of those horrors she’d seen, all the yearning to unsee them, and every ounce of hope she might see her love and friends again, Nichole summoned a perfect illusion of the bow within itself, like one drawing traced over another before being separated.

  So when Nichole stood, the weapon appeared as though upon the ground, and Nikereus’ snide eye missed the awkward crook in her hand as she stood upright, with her concealed ranger’s bow in her grasp.

  Slowly, she straightened up, praying the arrow wouldn’t slip from its hold.

  “Quite the dramatic lot, aren’t you? How about this, why don’t you all kneel? And I hope by now you understand the cost of refusal.”

  Karmine’s knuckles were white with anger as he fell to one knee, muttering curses in Old Crekaen. “We gain nothing from being two feet taller.”

  Michael wept strangled tears as one-by-one he watched Rose and Sidney bow, unable to speak by the stone forearm crushing his throat. He wanted to scream, to yelled and thrash, but it would only get him killed faster. It was then that he saw Jack pull off his Javen-helm and the ice-hard look gleaming in his eye.

  Nikereus pushed the sword into the open wound again, smiling as Michael screamed, unable to pull away. “I heard once that the Javen don’t kneel. Be that your choice?”

  Jack watched Michael twist his lower body and roar out in agony as the blade went deeper, and finally let his Brightsteel helmet fall to the mud. He shook his head and let his knees sink into the soil beneath, slouching onto his fists.

  Nichole looked to Nikereus, slowing inching her backhand to the unseen bowstring as the Obthraie tightened their grip around Archie’s sword. “You must enjoy his pain.”

  She went down to one knee before they could further antagonise Michael, feeling the breath in her lungs tremble. Every muscle in her arms burned as she linked her fingers around the real, yet unseen flight of her arrow. Nichole rested her stringing arm upon her bent knee as convulsions threatened every aspect of her aim, and she cried softly.

  “I love you, Sparky.”

  Nikereus looked to her in astonishment, letting their grip slack for one moment.

  Michael sobbed, “Thanks for savin’ me, Nicky.”

  Nikereus watched her kneel, shaking and trembling in her very shoes as her hand pulled high to her chest for no apparent reason.

  Nikereus frowned and sighed, “I think it’s time we wrap things up.” The Obthraie placed the length of the sword’s edge on Michael’s throat.

  Michael closed his eyes.

  Nichole raised her head, arched her back, and before Nikereus scarcely had time to be shocked.

  The Arcancy concealment broke.

  The illusion dismantled.

  The hidden bow appeared in Nichole’s hands as the arrow leapt from it. The Monarch blinked in pale disbelief as it punched right through Michael’s armour, shirt, and flesh, piercing Nikereus all the way through the body of the boy.

  Nikereus stumbled back in wincing pain, dropping Michael to ground. The Soiltorn looked up in outrage to see Michael lying in the mud, still as stone while the Legacies stood frozen. Nikereus glanced to Nichole and a long smile stretched across their face.

  “Clever. I’ll give you credit where it’s due, but a lone arrow would never kill two...” Nikereus stopped mid-stride as a glassy clink sounded. They looked down to see the Heart Stone in their chest completely shattered where the arrow had struck it, through Michael, catching the sunlight while it fell. “No... how…”

  The arrow sticking from Michael’s body, the tip now dripping with his blood, glowed with the burning gold light of the Immortal Flame.

  Nichole and Rose ran to Michael, weeping as they rolled him over, and Jack, Karmine, and Sidney all rose from the soil as the Javen warrior picked up his helmet, not bothering to grab his mace.

  Nikereus fumbled with the shards of the ancient artefact, growing louder with each shout of, “No, no, no!” They looked up just in time for Karmine to sledge his maul through the Obthraie’s sword-hand, sending Archie’s blade to the ground.

  Sidney roared and drove her steel staff through the commander right kneecap, snapping it with slate crack, sending the Soiltorn screaming as Jack tackled them into the mud, so filled with malice as crimson poured from his eyes that for a small moment, he forgot his own name.

  Jack slammed his wedge-shaped helmet into the commander’s head, breaking off pieces and chunks of their face as Nikereus raised their hands to defend themselves. Jack shouted and roared as he slammed steel into those too, rending fingers, hands, and limbs from the commander with every monstrous bellow. With a final Brightsteel crack, Jack slammed his wedge-helm into Nikereus’ chest, leaving the bent and fractured armour-piece imbedded in their body as the Creation lay there, sputtering dark essence. The Javen collapsed backwards from the effort and glanced to Sidney. Her eyes fell with grief, and Jack followed her gaze to see Rose and Nichole holding Michael’s hands while he bled into the soil.