by Kim Wedlock
Nothing moved. Nothing breathed. There was not even the buzz of the smallest insect's wings.
Dolunokh was as still as death, watched only by the eyes of ghosts.
Until the air shuddered and a disembodied cry obliterated the silence.
"--nds off me!"
In that same instant a flash of endless black tore itself into being, shifting and jerking its shapeless form, expelling pops of light, threads of heat, a tinkling melody, and two figures in a flurry of leaves before imploding on a whim and leaving the ravaged land to its sorrows and the rages of these sudden arrivals.
They struck the ground. One of the two staggered immediately back to his feet and lunged forwards in desperation, sparing not a moment for the portal nor his sudden and decrepit surroundings. The impossible twilight would have made little difference had he tried to observe it - their world had been much darker and much less possible a moment before - but the urgency firing his blood seized him to his core and continued to overpower any thought for anything other than escape.
The second figure moved close behind him, and unwillingly. Even as he limped, the first dragged him along by the collar of his soiled shirt, which was only half as tattered and blood-stained as his own. Their bodies were in little better state, but despite cuts and burns, atrophied muscles and devouring hunger, the second maintained a bestial fury, clawing at his captor, trying one moment to free himself and the next to pull himself closer so that he might rip out his throat. The first managed easily to stay ahead of it.
"Let go of me!" The captive roared, groping up his arm in an attempt to grasp and violently wrench his long, black hair. "I'll kill you!"
"I'd like to see you try." But the retort was weary, forlorn and without heart even as he continued to evade the attacks.
Finally, Rathen's haunted eyes began to rake the surroundings.
His heart faltered immediately. Doubt seeped in, but this, he remembered painfully, was Dolunokh. Dolunokh, after a torrent of agitated magic had surged from Khry's Glory with Garon, Petra and Eyila's escape, and ravaged the real world. It had been a site of cataclysm before that moment, but now it was only a floating river and faceless harlot away from mirroring that cursed arcane realm.
And if the turbulent magic had devastated this immediate land so immensely, what had it done to the rest?
What had become of Turunda?
He swallowed hard and forced the cascading images from his mind in favour of movement. He had no idea where they were going, but he knew they couldn't stay. They had to find the others.
Anthis raged and bellowed about half breeds and arrogance. Rathen ignored him.
How long had they been trapped? The false sun had never once moved, hanging eternally in a midnight sky; it had felt like an age... Then the others would not be nearby. Salus had been there when they'd first leapt through the doorway, and he would surely have waited for their return. He may even have captured them the moment they'd gotten out.
Perhaps the pair's entrapment had been a blessing, keeping the Zi'veyn from his clutches.
He tightened his grip on the strap of the near-empty bag slung over his shoulder, and gave Anthis an encouraging jerk as his efforts turned once more away from attack and onto freeing himself from his grasp. Their first priority was to get as far from the riven fields as possible.
Anthis suddenly ceased his struggle, and Rathen looked back in sickening understanding. The young man's eyes were desperate, flicking around in a fever until his head snapped around to the right and behind. Someone was following them. And Rathen didn't need long to work out who.
He slowed and looked around, but, as he'd expected, there was no sign at all of any movement. He looked back to Anthis; the direction of his focus hadn't changed.
He released the bag and quickly flexed his fingers, shaping and releasing a single spell. He swallowed hard. Twenty, twenty five feet behind them and to the right, where the cracked ground was several feet higher and jagged, a lone man was following them. On perfectly silent feet.
Rathen's bearded jaw tightened. He grasped the bag and continued onwards, urgency renewed, and pulled Anthis along in his impassioned distraction. "Eyes front," he whispered, though he knew it was hopeless, and focused instead upon keeping the figure in the centre of his mind's eye.
He continued to track them, remaining out of sight, hidden beneath the peak of the ledge, footsteps light and soundless.
Rathen glanced further along to the right. Ahead, the high ground dropped and a series of tusk-like rocks rose from its lowest point, while on the left the ground dropped sheer into a chasm. The path became constricted. It was an ideal location for a small and precise ambush - and what else would an Aranan hunter deliver?
But he didn't deviate. There was nowhere else to go but along that narrowing path. And it seemed that Anthis had heard him, and more impressively yet had understood. Or perhaps Rathen had simply returned to being the focus of his rage, for his frenzied clawing, snarling and nonsensical cursing had been revived.
But, again, Rathen ignored it. He kept his eyes locked forwards and his focus to the right. The assassin was drawing nearer. With every step they took, the tracker took two. Soon they were level, and the ground began its descent. The stone tusks were ten paces away. Eight. Five.
He released Anthis's collar.
In an instant the young man spun and launched himself like a manticore completing its ground stalk. The face of the ghostly assassin as he left his cover had barely a moment to flicker in shock. The meagre sunlight was caught in a flash of steel. The air was pierced by a manic cackling. Anthis leapt upon him.
Rathen turned away while the man gasped and gargled as his throat was cut, and chose not to hear the archaic elven words that fell so easily from the insane historian's lips, nor the carnal gasp that rose with the other's last breath. He didn't look back for some time.
"We need to keep moving," he said at last, and heard Anthis rise. A strike to his shoulder shoved him forwards.
"You," Anthis snarled as Rathen caught himself, his voice still elated but tainted with a lingering venom, "you don't tell me what to do. I'm so sick of you."
Rathen turned slowly and levelled his gaze, in part to keep his eyes from wandering down to the cut along Anthis's forearm as it knitted itself back together. Instead, he saw the lust over his kill and the high from the power he could almost physically feel emanating from him ringing the young man's green eyes. But comprehension had also returned; for the first time in Vastal only knew how long, Anthis appeared almost like a man again. And so Rathen had no qualms with planting his fist in his gut.
"And I," he said coolly as Anthis wheezed, "am sick of you."
He turned away to survey the area, broadening his magic to detect anyone else nearby, and so he noticed immediately when Anthis's false magic shifted. It was little trouble to deflect the phantom burst of energy thrown towards him.
Anthis grunted when it returned to hit him in full force, throwing him backwards several feet, and Rathen's stoic facade collapsed as he rallied his withering energy to storm the distance. "Don't ever use that filth against me."
"It would be filth to you, wouldn't it?" He puffed. "Anything beneath you is filth!"
Rathen's lip curled, but he snatched back his composure, straightening and ignoring the daggers shot by Anthis's bitter eyes as he fought to reclaim his breath. "I'm not going to keep arguing with you."
"Why? Because I'm beneath you too?!" He watched the black haired mage turn in silence, lift the slackened bag from the ground and begin to limp away. The heat of rage flashed through his chest like a bolt of amethyst lightning, encouraging his weary body to pick itself back up. "What a surprise," he jeered. "Walking away all tall and rigid, so very high and mighty. You were always insufferable, treating your magic like a curse, like you were too good for it, too good for everything and everyone around you, lowering yourself to our level just to make us more comfortable in your magnificently formidable presence!"
"Acknowledgement! How generous of you! When all I was doing was 'prattling' - but that's all I ever do, isn't it? Like the rest of the riff raff." Anthis chased after him, falling in step just behind and burning his sight through the back of his head. "We have nothing of value to say; if it didn't come from your lips it's not worth being heard. We're not worth talking to - your company is the best there is, why bother with the rest of us? But I suppose that's what comes from hiding all alone in a corner of the world, crying over your fate, wallowing in your own self pity and enjoying every moment of it." Again he said nothing, and Anthis's fury doubled.
Rathen grunted, shoved again, but he didn't slow or turn. "I'm not fighting with you."
"No, why would you? What would be the point? You could tear my throat open in a heartbeat. Why would you even feel threatened with what you're capable of--"
Now he whirled. "What I'm capable of?!"
"Oh," Anthis's green eyes flashed in satisfaction, "have I trodden on a golden nerve?"
Rathen shook his head, searching the historian's eyes in disbelief. "You actually think I enjoy it, don't you? You really believe that I hold some value--"
"Why wouldn't you?! You're half-elf! You're superior to all of us! Stronger than any mage!"
"And you're...what, you're jealous?!" His incredulity swelled as Anthis scoffed.
"Why would I be jealous?! I've studied the elves my whole life! I've single-handedly unravelled a number of their mysteries and I'm acknowledged as a nuisance for it among my peers! I even possess a 'filthy' form of magic! Why would I be jealous?!"
The air seemed to fall notably silent at the sound of knuckles crunching into a jawbone.
Anthis spat blood and scowled, but before he could begin to struggle back to his feet with another acrid remark, a great weight pressed against his chest, and another clasped about his long-unshaven throat. He panicked and stared up into eyes that boiled with barely suppressed rage.
"Believe me," Rathen growled, pressing his knee harder into his sternum, "I am cursed. What you would apparently consider a blessing has ruined my life, and I would never wish my misfortunes upon even you." Anthis clawed at his arm, but Rathen's grip was not tight enough to damage him. Somehow, he had restrained himself that much. "You like history - let me share some: all through the Order I was dogged by unreachable expectations, and when the underlying power my superiors were so convinced I carried finally reared its sickening head, I killed sixteen people, and was banished for it - an insult disguised as leniency, a 'mercy' for my service to the country, when really they just didn't have the courage to do the responsible thing and kill me." He fought to keep his blood from boiling, but this time he couldn't prevent the force of his knee nor his grip from closing. "They took my whole life, sure enough - my career, my family, my future - and held it all out of my reach, forcing me either to die slowly and painfully from my wounds or continue to exist without them. I left my home in the middle of the night rather than see through the week of grace, all so my wife wouldn't follow me and share my sentence or watch me die. But through no fault of my own, I survived. Kienza found me, and she saved me, but she couldn't keep the ugly grudge from consuming what small world I found myself living in, one directed towards any figure of authority, and one, to this day, I am still disinclined to change.
"Then the Crown had the audacity to reach out and ask for my help, and I loathe them for it. I am here only because I want to keep Aria safe. And you may spit on that fact, call me a liar, tell me that I'm seeking glory, or even - and I dare you to say it - that as long as Aria is with me, she is always in danger. And that is true. Everyone is. But believe me when I say she has no one else. She shouldn't even have me. So don't tell me that I don't feel threatened because of what I'm capable of, because it's what I'm capable of that does threaten me, constantly, I have no control over it--"
"Oh," Anthis rasped as he dug his fingernails deeper into Rathen's bloodied arm, "no control? Not even with such direct attention from the elves? But, then, what could they teach you that--mmph! That you don't already know?!"
Rathen's eyes flashed again, but somehow he forced himself back in check. Choking him would achieve nothing. He withdrew his hand. With effort. "You have looked at me with disdain from the moment my secret came out," he said heavily after a moment of collection. "Perhaps it was irresponsible of me to conceal it, but what good would it have done to tell you? Probably as much as had you told us your secret. Because," his eyes softened, causing more than a flicker of mistrust through Anthis's, "you're as much a victim of your...faith, as I am my own blood."
He shifted his weight and rose from Anthis's chest, leaving him lying in another wheezing battle for breath, lifted the bag and began to stagger away. "Come on. There will be others." He glanced back as Anthis stared after him, choking, but pensive, his eyes an open mixture of surprise and confusion, equally intense. "Hurry up!"
Anthis closed his mouth. He stifled his sudden questions, pushed himself up in spite of the dead and heavy weight of his limbs, and followed him along the narrow path through the ruined landscape at a wary, silent distance.
The twilight had neither faded nor deepened, but the sun had dropped beyond the horizon - it made a nice change to finally have some indication of the passage of time beyond beard growth, which Rathen still couldn't shave through his weakness to conjure a blade. He needed to conserve what little strength he had in case the need for defence arose, for he still had no idea where they were, and if Anthis knew, he wasn't telling. He hadn't said a word in hours. But at least he wasn't attacking him now.
Concealed within one short and shallow crevasse among the riddle of arcane destruction, Rathen turned the small onyx-gold relic over in his hands. He'd long stopped marvelling at its lightness, its perfect lines, its central lotus and geometric hooks and thorns. Instead his attention was focused deep inside at the spells that filled it, the complex chains and irregular connections that linked each together at least four times over, creating an impossibly intricate web of information. A few weeks ago it would have overwhelmed him, but he'd since had far too much time to analyse it. Even under his present fatigue and the hallucinations that would surely return before too much longer, he observed the labyrinth of magic with logic and direction, following the path through the apparent chaos like a child's puzzle completed so many times.
His task was still daunting, and now that he was in a position to safely use his magic again, he felt the pressure despite his weakness to repair the relic as soon as possible. But with every moment he took to penetrate the magic of the Zi'veyn, the clearer the frays and breakages became, and after an age of nothing but staring at the thing, he was sure he'd found a way to achieve it. And with little idea of what had become of the world after the surge that had followed the others out, there was no time like the present.
"Have you..."
Rathen jumped and looked up, further along the crevasse. The camp was black but for a sliver of moonlight slipping through the gathering clouds; they hadn't risked a fire, certain they were still being stalked though neither could detect a thing, but there hadn't been any kindling nearby anyway. And so all there was to reveal Anthis sitting against the opposite earthen wall some ten paces away was a trace of light glinting back from his eyes.
Rathen looked back down to the elven relic. "I'm there, I think. But patching it won't work, like I thought. The spell is too complicated. I might cover more than I should. I'll have to..." he shrugged, deciding that such detail was needlessly elaborate. Perhaps even arrogant. "I can fix it."
Anthis nodded slowly and said no more, leaving Rathen to further ponder the artefact and finally dare the first of his highly tentative reparations, until the deathly rumble of the young man's stomach forced him at last to his feet. "I'll see if I can find some food."
Rathen watched him stagger off. He didn't bother telling him not to go far, nor to be careful, nor that he was most likely wasting his tim
e. Because he was just as starved and didn't want to put him off. His eyes dropped back to the relic and his attention returned to the spell, and after ten minutes of intense concentration interspersed with a few careful injections of magic, exhaustion finally beat him to sleep.
He awoke the following twilight morning to a handful of berries left in a hollow in the ground beside him, which he ate without question in a single, voracious mouthful, but almost half an hour passed before he finally saw Anthis. He appeared at the end of the chasm, lurching forwards and tightly hugging his chest. Rathen leapt to his feet in a panic, certainly using what little energy he'd gained from the berries in that single, urgent movement, but as Anthis moved closer, Rathen noticed that his clumsy movements were listless but devoid of severity, and it was not his chest he hugged, but the husks of some kind of fruit.
The five scaled shells, he discovered when he hurried to help, were filled with water from a nearby stream. Anthis had already drank his fill; these were for Rathen, who had just enough energy to express surprise. But that was all. Once drained, they set back out on painful limbs, eyes peeled in the hope of finding more berries or the ripened fruit the husks had once encased, their guard ever raised against pursuers.
The day passed in a blur of tedious motion; the uneven ground rolled along incessantly beneath their feet, tripping and staggering them when they couldn't keep up with it. Their vision hazed and legs buckled, but when one collapsed the other picked them up, and they continued to struggle over the rotating land, too debilitated to even mutter complaint.
But the haggard landscape did begin to subdue; the rifts and fissures became smaller and fewer, as did their detours around them, while the outcrops of stone grew more weathered and natural, and the few trees began standing upright. But the changes came too slowly for them to notice. It was only when Anthis fell for the seventh time and Rathen followed while trying to help him back up that awareness struck, and they finally noticed the most drastic change of all. Lying on their backs, staring towards the midday sun in exhaustion, they found that the sky was blue. Not indigo, not streaked in violet, but blue, partially clouded, and delightfully ordinary.
