by Kova, Elise
Her hands reached for him as she drew closer. Closer to the man she had killed. Closer to the man who had held and hurt her. Nearly close enough to touch, to reassure herself that this wasn’t a psychotic break.
Taavin’s fingers wrapped around hers. They weren’t as solid as she remembered. Was this identical to how she’d first spoken to him in Shaldan? He’d seemed so real then, as though he’d been standing in the room with her. Now, the ghost of magic wriggled around his body. It created a barrier she couldn’t seem to cross.
He uncurled one hand and pointed his index finger at the watch over her chest. “I’m here.”
“The watch?” Vi looked down at the faintly shimmering glyphs that hovered over the token. “Yes, I remember it connects me to you, but where are you?”
Pain flashed through his familiar emerald eyes. Taavin opened his mouth, then closed it, as if unable to find the words. His finger had yet to move. “I’m here.”
“In the watch?” Vi dared to ask. Taavin nodded. “But… how?”
“The watch was the key to it all.” She remembered him saying as much in Risen. “In it were my memories… all of them. In it, the Champion’s future is ensured and preserved. In it, my consciousness now lives, so I may guide you.”
“I don’t understand.” She wanted to. Vi repeated his words mentally, but she couldn’t siphon out the deeper meaning clearly hidden beneath them.
“One moment.” Taavin gave her hand a light squeeze and, without further warning, stepped away. He stretched out his arms before him and curled his open palms, as though holding an invisible book. His lips moved with low whispering tones; it must have been some kind of Lightspinning, but Vi couldn’t make out a single word. She suspected that even if she could, she wouldn’t have understood them.
This was a magic the goddess had given only to him.
The glyphs above her watch spun faster. Like a spigot, magic poured from the necklace into symbols that hovered between Taavin’s arms. He watched them carefully as they piled, one atop the next, shifting and changing. The green of his eyes faded to the same pale blue as his magic, glowing brightly in the dark room.
Finally, Taavin lowered his arms, the light between them vanishing into the still air.
“All right, I think I’ve cobbled together the swiftest explanation that will make it easiest for you to understand,” he began. “You met Yargen, correct?”
“Yes.”
“What did she tell you?”
Vi sighed and closed her eyes, thinking back to her interaction with the goddess. She remembered pain, then life, then Queen Lumeria—who hadn’t actually been Queen Lumeria, but Yargen masquerading as the sovereign.
“She told me… That she was restarting the world,” Vi paraphrased. “Returning me to a time before her power had been turned against itself, and destroyed.”
“Exactly. You know what time you’re in, yes?”
“Norin fell in three hundred twenty-two.” Vi raised a hand to her forehead and shook her head. “Just saying that aloud is madness.”
“Yet you know it to be true. You can feel it in your marrow, just as you can feel Yargen’s power. This will all be easier if you don’t try to fight the truths before you.”
“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t feel,” Vi snapped. She was a rope fraying at all sides. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be curt,” Vi said hastily. “It’s a lot to process is all. I was just thrown back in time and now I’m talking with someone akin to a ghost. Not to say I’m not happy to see you, but…” She trailed off in the wake of Taavin’s tired smile.
“I understand. You’re not alone in feeling jarred by all this. From my perspective, I just died for the ninety-third time and it gets no easier.”
“Ninety… third?” Vi repeated. He seemed determined to look anywhere but at her.
“This point in time is the furthest at which Yargen can remake the world with the limited power she had,” he continued, determined to ignore her probing stare. “So it is where our work must begin. Your job is twofold. Foremost, your goal is to ensure the birth of a new Champion and another attempt, should you fail. While doing so, you must collect the crystal weapons in order to consolidate Yargen’s power once more and prevent Raspian from ever being set free.”
“So I am to change the past?”
“There is no past—not the past you knew, at least,” he said gravely. “The only time that exists is the one in which Yargen exists. The world you and I knew, the world we were born into, is no more. She lives in this world now, in you.”
“But this world exists along the same lines of fate… so it appears identical,” Vi said, remembering more of what the goddess had told her. She sank heavily onto the bed behind her. “My mother, father, brother?”
“They do not exist, yet.” He was silent for a long moment, then added softly and apologetically, “And the Aldrik, Vhalla, and Romulin who will exist, will not be the ones you knew.”
She looked down at her hands. They were trembling again. Her whole body shook. Vi felt painfully cold, like no matter what she did, she’d never be able to warm up again. “I wanted to save them.”
“Preventing the Crystal Caverns from being tampered with is how you will save them.”
“No, the family I loved is gone—you just said so.” Vi tilted her head up to the man as if pleading with him could change the terrible fate she found herself in. “The world was in danger, so I did everything I was told; I did everything to stop it from ending. I did it all to save my family.”
“And this is how we will stop it so your family is never in danger again.”
“The world—my family—merely ended at the hands of a different tyrant!” Vi was on her feet again, pacing. Her magic crackled, stronger than ever before, ready to collect in her palms and burn the whole broken world and all its pieces. “Raspian didn’t end the world, so Yargen did? So we could try to fix a new version of it? How does that make any sense?”
“The timeline we were on was a failed future. It made sense to abandon it.”
“The timeline.” Her hands shook harder. “Don’t call it a ‘timeline’ as though it’s just dates and facts in a book. There were people, Taavin. Hundreds of thousands of people. A whole world of them. My family was in that world… and they’re all gone now.” Vi didn’t remember approaching him, but her fists knotted in the simple tunic he wore—the same garment he’d had on when she’d found him in his room that fateful night. A night that might as well have been a thousand years ago. “Yargen killed them all.”
“Yargen is life. Vi, don’t think of it as them dying.” His hands wrapped around hers again. His tone was soothing. “As it stands now, they never existed in the first place. But fate can see them born again in this world—a world you will save. You saw it yourself, the end of the world.”
For a brief second, her eyes were as haunted as his, as visions of her falling before a dark god flashed across her mind.
“If we had remained in that world, Vi,” he continued, “the cycle of light and dark would’ve ended. Raspian and Yargen would’ve battled again. But since she was weak and didn’t have all her power, he would’ve killed her for good. There would’ve been no eventual return of the goddess, no great war, no subsequent age of light. Darkness and death would’ve ruled forever. It was the end.”
“You’re saying no matter what… the life of everyone in that world was forfeit? Every beautiful, hidden corner, every person, all would’ve been destroyed?” Her voice quivered alongside her hands. She had been born into a dying world and she was the only person to survive it.
Vi felt profoundly unworthy of each breath she took.
“Yes.”
“I thought, as Champion, I could save it. Save… them.”
“You were chosen for this world, where you stand now. It was the last Vi’s failure that doomed the world you knew.” A ghost drifted around his words, one that seemed to cloud his vision whenever his eyes settled on her.
&nbs
p; Ninety-three times. His earlier words stuck in her mind.
“How many times have we had this conversation?” Vi whispered.
“What?”
“How many times have you explained all this to me?”
“I don’t know what you’re asking.” The lie was so obvious Vi had to bite back bitter laughter.
“Yes you do. I know you too well, Taavin; I see behind any mask you try to wear.” She swallowed, her throat drier than the Waste. “This isn’t the first time I’ve asked, is it?” Taavin pursed his lips together and narrowed his eyes. “How many times, Taavin?” she reiterated. And then, just to twist the dagger, added, “How many times have you died by my hand? Has the world been rebuilt? How many times have we tried and failed to stop Raspian? How many other Vis failed?”
She didn’t know why she was asking. She’d already figured out the answer.
“Ninety-three.”
Somehow, hearing it from his lips was worse than she expected.
Vi’s fingers slowly uncurled from the man’s garb. She smoothed out the wrinkles thoughtfully, almost gently. The motion was a stark contrast to the torrent of anger brewing within her. Abruptly, she went to the narrow window. It was her only source of fresh air and she desperately needed to take a breath.
“Ninety-three times,” she finally repeated quietly. The world had been destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed again, over and over, ninety-three times. It was incomprehensible to her.
Mortal minds weren’t made for this.
Vi stared at the stone wall outside of the window, willing the wind to blow, to feel some movement in the air. But everything was stagnant, making a hot day only hotter.
“What makes you think we can do this now?” Vi asked without looking at him.
“Nothing.” That drew her eyes back. Taavin elaborated without further prompting. “I don’t know if we will be successful this time, or the next, or the time after. But I have faith eventually we will. I have to, otherwise we are trapped in this torturous vortex forever, always spinning, down and down.”
They were cursed. She’d known it on Meru. He’d confirmed it now.
“How long have you known this was our fate?”
“Only when you used the word thrumsana. It unlocked the stored memories from my past selves in the watch, returning them to me. Then, I knew what must be done to finish the turn and start anew.”
Vi narrowed her eyes slightly. She vividly remembered the power that had been unleashed when she used that word. Just as vividly, she remembered learning not long before that Taavin had betrayed Vi and her father to the Swords of Light. That wound had yet to be mended, and now Vi wondered if they’d ever have the chance. Did she have any right to still be angry with him for a father that no longer existed?
The thought made her throat close up.
He had betrayed her. She had killed him. Perhaps it was better to destroy the hurt of those transgressions with the world she’d known.
Mother above, her head ached.
“What do we do now?” Vi forced herself to ask.
“We need to be careful going forward.” Taavin crossed to her side. “Very careful, for a number of years. Until you ensure Vhalla receives the watch, the birth of a new Vi—a new Champion—isn’t guaranteed. Which means if you die… it ends for good.”
“It will end for good.” Ninety-three times. That was ninety-two too many. “We will end it, this time.” Vi turned to him.
Taavin placed his hand at the small of her back, staring down with worried eyes. He wasn’t as warm, she realized. Little things kept adding up that made his presence here torture. He wasn’t really with her any longer. Not really.
“I told you once: I look back, you look forward. This is the curse you always felt, but never fully knew. You’re forced to see the end of the world encroaching, and you feel an obligation to try, futilely thus far, to prevent it. Whereas I…” He swallowed hard. “I remember the past. I exist to watch and be a living record of your every action. To serve as your aide in finding what will succeed by ensuring you don’t repeat what failed. I remember every time you’ve fallen and every hurt you’ve endured. And the only thing that enables me to carry on is the knowledge that someday, I will see you again.”
Or some version of me, Vi wanted to say, but couldn’t. The truth, even though they both knew it, was too cruel to speak aloud. If what he was saying was true, every Vi was a unique person that lived, fought, and ultimately perished underneath the wheel of time.
“So you must be careful, until Vhalla Solaris gives birth to a Vi Solaris in this age.” Vi gave a small nod. She was too tired to fight. Taavin must’ve sensed as much. “You should get some rest. Norin will fall soon, and you’ll want to be nimble to try to get close to Fiera and the sword when it does.”
Vi grabbed his bicep before he could pull away. Her grip tightened, trying to press through the thin barrier of magic that kept him from her. “I want you to stay,” she whispered. Pain flashed across his face.
“I wish I could. But you know how this works.” He leaned forward, planting a gentle kiss on her forehead. “Now, rest.”
With that, he vanished; the glyphs above her watch dimmed and faded, and the room seemed darker and lonelier than ever before.
* * *
An explosion woke her.
Vi was on her feet in an instant as shock waves rattled the city. She heard shouts, and the clash of steel on steel. Her heart raced as she stared at the door.
Vi took a step forward, and one back, then two forward. Keep yourself safe, Taavin had said. Another rumble shook the city, and she was off. Running, Vi threw open the door and was down the ladder in a breath, steps ahead of Lucina.
“Yullia!” Lucina called after her, following close behind. “Where are you—”
“Lucina. Lucina!” The young woman’s grandmother was upright in her cot, calling out to her granddaughter. Vi paused at the top of the stairs, watching as her wrinkled hand reached out, grabbing at the air, milky eyes unseeing.
“Granny, I’m here.” Lucina rushed over to her kin, sitting on the edge of the bed as another shock wave rattled the city. The two huddled together tightly, holding each other.
“Lucina.” Vi summoned the girl’s attention with her name. “I’m going out. You’ll want to lock the door behind me.”
“Out? Yullia, there’s a war going on out there.”
“I know, and I have every intention of fighting in it. Lock the door behind me.” Vi didn’t know if that was entirely true. She still wasn’t sure if she could pick a side in this war—not when both sides were her family. Or at least… once upon a time, they had been family. Though the waters were murky, Vi couldn’t help wanting to jump in with both feet. Sink or swim.
She sprinted down the stairs, unbolted the door, and stepped out into the dusty street.
When she heard the bolt engage behind her, she started off in the direction of an orange haze. The fires of battle were already burning the city; what was once the greatest kingdom in the history of the Dark Isle would fall before the sun rose.
Chapter Three
Vi ran toward the carnage along the main street of Norin. Doubt nipped at her heels as she fell into step with men and women carrying various weapons—everything from forged steel to fishing spears. Her beacon was an orange haze glowing off smoke rising in the horizon. If Vi kept solely focused on that, maybe she wouldn’t question too much what, in the Mother’s name, she was doing.
She pushed against the masses who were fleeing as fast as they could in the opposite direction. Women carried wailing children tightly in their arms; those large enough to walk were half-dragged along the dusty ground.
At first, most of the people fleeing seemed unscathed, but the further she ran, the more Vi saw wounded and dying.
A man staggered through the street, soldiers and civilians alike parting to run around him. His clothes had been nearly burnt off; charred ribbons clung to blistered and reddened skin. He stared with a plea
ding expression and a gaping mouth that couldn’t seem to find the right words to beg for help.
Suppressing her instinct to gag at the putrid scent of burnt flesh and hair, Vi stopped right before the man, not daring to touch him on his reddened and bubbled side.
“Come this way.” His eyes swung to her when he realized someone was speaking to him. Someone had actually heard his soundless cries. “I can heal you,” Vi said softly. Somehow, little more than a whisper felt loud when the man’s crazed gaze was on her. It was louder than the sounds of fighting in the distance, or the crackle of flames that blazed at the far end of the main street. “Will you come with me?”
He made a choked noise, barely bobbing his head.
Vi took his left hand—the one that hadn’t been burned in whatever blaze he had been caught in. She led him out of the street, making sure no one bumped or jostled him in the process.
“This won’t hurt,” she whispered. She wasn’t good at halleth, but surely, anything was better than the pain he found himself in. Vi murmured under her breath, “Halleth ruta toff.”
She kept the glyph tiny and tightly wound right underneath her palm, holding it above the man’s burnt forearm in such a way that he would see nothing more than a faint glow. Vi focused only on mending his forearm, ignoring the rising sounds of battle and the countless others in just as bad a state as this man. Grow, mend, heal, she willed to the flesh through her magic. When his forearm was no longer blistered and red, Vi moved on.
Section by section, she mended the worst of the burns. She tried to focus on what seemed the most life threatening, but Vi was no cleric. Her healing was clumsy, scarred and knotted, just as Taavin had said it was when she washed up on the beaches of Meru. But it was better than dead. It had to be better than dead, she insisted to herself.
Vi lowered her hand, having finished with the side of the man’s face. His eyes were on her, much more focused than before. He swallowed once before rasping, “Thank you, your highness.”
