Diamantine (Weapons and Wielders Book 2)

by Andrew Rowe

  “They’ll be fine.” The Blackstone Bandit waved a hand dismissively. “Dropping this far isn’t going to hurt someone with a shroud. You’d know if you had one.”

  “You’re in an aggressive mood today.” Keras chuckled. “Am I ruining your plans by being here?”

  “Not as such. In fact, I’m grateful.” The Blackstone Bandit shifted into a fencing stance, his hand floating to the golden sword on his left hip. “I wasn’t going to get any exercise otherwise.”

  Keras adjusted his own scabbard, but only slightly. “We’re actually doing this? Really?”

  The Blackstone Bandit smiled. “Appearances must be maintained.” A familiar sword gleamed as it slipped free from his scabbard. “And besides, I’ve picked up a few new tricks since our last bout.”

  “Admittedly, that air rippling thing was interesting. I wouldn’t mind seeing—”

  The air rippled, the Blackstone Bandit stepped backward, and then vanished.

  Keras’ ripped his own sword free, feeling the metal approaching from behind him, and flipped his sword behind his shoulder to parry the incoming swing.

  After that, he spun around to find the Blackstone Bandit behind him, emerging from an identical tear in the air to the one he’d just seen.

  “That’s a faster technique than I expected,” Keras admitted. “What else’ve you got?”

  “You’ll see.” The Blackstone Bandit raised his blade.

  ***

  Sometime later, Keras knocked on the door to the cabin the students had been sitting in.

  It was Vanniv that opened the door. “Ah, good sir. You’ve returned to us...mostly intact.”

  Keras sighed, self-consciously reaching upward to adjust the torn remains of his shirt. “I’ll go change in a minute. Everyone okay in here?”

  Mara ducked under one of Vanniv’s wings to step out in front of him. “Everything’s fine. What happened up there? I heard thunder.”

  “Just a reunion with an old—,” he stopped himself. Mara might have already realized, but he didn’t want to give too much away to everyone. “Acquaintance.”

  “Right. But did you win?”

  Keras snorted. “Obviously. But he, uh, unfortunately got away.”

  “Right.”

  All of the students, Vanniv, and Researcher (when did Researcher get there?) were giving him skeptical looks.

  “Well, go get changed. Then, if you’re going to be cagey about this, you owe us the next part of your story.”

  Keras blinked. “Right now? Don’t you all need to, I don’t know, calm down or something?”

  Sera leaned forward in her seat. “Do we look that worried to you? Aside from Corin.”

  Corin was writing more runes on the walls of the train car. There were dozens of them now. He seemed to sense people were looking at him and turned around only briefly. “I’m just taking reasonable precautions. We weren’t properly prepared for this, and I’m ensuring we are in the future.”

  Sera snorted. “Anyway, we’re fine. Besides, a good story would help us unwind.”

  “I’d rather hear about your fight with the Blackstone Bandit.” Mara folded her arms. “Because you had to send me away beforehand.”

  Keras gave her an apologetic look. “I was really just worried about everyone else. Did anyone get hurt?”

  That was a deflection, and frankly, mostly a lie. He justified it by telling himself that Mara probably already knew at least most of what he was up to.

  Mara shook her head. “No serious injuries that I saw. Corin left the car and wandered off for a while, though.”

  Keras looked at Corin. “What? Why?”

  “Your story first.” Corin didn’t even bother turning away from drawing on the wall. “I’ll tell you mine later.”

  Keras sighed. “Fine, fine. You win. Let me go change.”

  A few minutes later, freshly redressed, Keras returned to the train car and sat back down. Vanniv and Researcher had vanished; only the students remained.

  That was good, because he wouldn’t have been comfortable telling his story around the summoned monsters. They were more of a security risk than the students seemed to realize...but that was a discussion for another time.

  “Where was I?” Keras asked, leaning back in his seat.

  “On your way to Edria,” Patrick offered helpfully.

  “Edria...” Keras muttered. “That’s going to be a long story.”

  “You trying to get out of telling it to us?” Sera asked.

  Keras turned and nodded to her. “No, no. But I don’t think I’ll get finished before we hit Caelford. Should I wait until we’re on the way back?”

  “Nah,” Mara waved a hand. “Get us started. We haven’t got anything better to do, and I wanna hear about some fights.”

  “And about the real Dawnbringer...” Patrick muttered, almost too quiet to hear.

  Keras glanced at Patrick, seeing the replica sword sitting unsheathed across the Elementalist’s lap. He must have drawn it at some point while Keras was gone.

  It looks so much like her.

  For a moment, he was silent, his eyes closing as he pictured Dawn in his mind.

  Regret burned, and his eyes opened. “I’ll...start the story. But be warned, I’m not going to finish it all right now. That trip to Edria...what I learned there...it changed everything for me.”

  He took a deep breath, remembering, and he began the next step of his tale.

  Chapter I – Four Swords

  Of the two magical swords I carried, I wasn’t sure which was more difficult.

  The Sae’kes, or the Dominion Breaker if you prefer a name that actually has some meaning in the Valian tongue, was so ludicrously dangerous that I couldn’t use it properly even after a lifetime of training. A portion of that was because it had somehow been damaged, but a larger part of the problem seemed to be poor sword design. They’d built it to be so dangerous that no one could wield it properly, not even the gods that had forged it.

  Dawnbringer, on the other hand, was a different type of difficulty entirely.

  Her voice chimed in my head. She was currently sitting in the new scabbard I’d bought her, but that was still enough contact with my body for her to communicate with me telepathically.

  She did it incessantly, since there was very little else she could do on her own. Aside from turning her blade’s glow on and off, which didn’t entertain her for long.

  Getting Dawnbringer a humanoid body was feeling like a bigger priority by the day. I didn’t know how plausible that concept really was, but if she had the ability to walk around, she’d probably be much happier and at least slightly less annoying.

  (In reality, I wasn’t confident about the second part, but I was hoping oh-so-much.)

  I was growing more confident with each passing day that every sword I added to our little family was going to cause more problems, but I was in too deep to turn back. One simply did not stop after acquiring one sacred sword out of a set.

  And so, we were heading down to Edria, where it was obvious that at least a couple other sacred sword wielders had similar goals to my own.

  We were headed south west from the small town we’d found along the railroad that crossed the Unclaimed Lands. The terrain was flatter here, the weather warmer, and the trees a bit more sparse than we’d seen on the northern side of the road.

  Three days passed. Reika spent the first two of them with an awful fever, likely because a portion of one of her burn injuries had gotten infected. I treated her wounds as best I could with the medical kit we’d purchased, but that was no substitute for magical healing. I hoped we’d find more healing potions soon.

  By the third day, she was looking a little bit better, but I was still worried.

  We hit Lake Corval largely by accident, but it was a good thing. By that point, Reika and I were both running low on water, and more importantly, we desperately needed a good bath.

  We’d hit some smaller streams and such alo
ng the way, so don’t think we’d gone days without any form of bathing, but having a huge lake to jump into was a much-needed change of pace.

  After that, we spent the next couple days walking west along the lakeside. The waters were clean and contained plentiful fish. A few fire spells made for easy meal preparation.

  The fresh water made travel much easier for us, but as we moved on, Reika grew progressively more distraught. By my best estimates, we were only a couple days from the Edrian border when Reika stopped walking, and I realized we had a problem.

  ***

  Reika turned toward me, taking a deep breath. “I have to go back.”

  I stopped walking, my heart sinking. “Feeling homesick?”

  “No. I mean, yes, but that’s not the issue.” She turned to look at me. “I need to go back for Frienemy.”

  I blinked. “Frienemy? Who is…oh. The nightmare spirit? Is that his name?”

  “I donno, it seemed appropriate.” She sighed. “I’m worried about him. He was following us all the way out to the shrine, but I haven’t seen him in days. I was kinda hoping he could follow us even while you had the mask on, but…”

  I pondered aloud. “I could take the mask off for a few days to see if he catches up, but that would sort of defeat the reason I put it on in the first place.”

  “I agree. And that’s why I should go back and find him. Miyuri was probably tracking you or Dawn, not me.”

 

  I ignored Dawn. “Maybe, but if the tails find you while you’re alone and wounded…”

  “I’ll be flying. While some hydras can fly with magic, most of them can’t in their larger forms. I’m better at it. I can out-pace them.”

  I still didn’t like it. “How would you even find him? We’ve covered a lot of ground. He could be anywhere.”

  “Watch.” Reika raised her hand and pointed two fingers at her eyes. After a moment, they flashed and started to glow, a trail of white mist flowing from their sides.

  “That’s…new, isn’t it?”

  She grinned. “Ever since we visited the shrine, I’ve been feeling a little bit better grasp on my own abilities. I think visiting the spirit plane — or whatever that space was between our world and the spirit plane was — strengthened my magic a little bit, or just gave me a better connection to it. I’ve been figuring out some new applications.”

  “And that…what, helps you see spirits? Couldn’t you do that already?”

  She nodded. “I could see spirits before, but with this active, I can see collections of spirit energy more easily. I’m betting if I go back to where we had the fight, I can find a trail.”

  “Would a trail last that long?”

  Reika frowned, considering that. “For an ordinary human, probably not. For a forest spirit like Frienemy? I’m hoping so. I…just wouldn’t feel right if I don’t even try.”

  I nodded. “I can backtrack with you, then. I’m worried about him, too.”

  She shook her head. “I appreciate that, but you’d slow me down. Like, a lot. Walking this far has taken us days — if I fly at full speed, I could be back there in hours.”

  I saw her logic. “Is your larger form recovered enough to fly that distance?”

  She winced. “I hope so.”

  “If you’re feeling too badly injured, make sure you turn back before you get too far. Don’t take any risks. And remember to eat.”

  Reika snorted. “I’m not a child, Keras. I can take care of myself. I lived alone a long time before we met, remember?”

  “That’s fair, I’m just worried about the tails. We barely survived against Zenkichi, and we’re still in rough shape.”

  She gave a solemn nod. “I’ll be careful. I promise.”

  “Are you going back to your forest if you find him?”

  “I don’t know. I need to find out what Frienemy needs. After I help him, though, I’ll try to come back here if I can. Would it be too much to ask for you to wait near the border for me for a couple days, if I don’t find you sooner?”

  I felt a bit of relief that she was asking — I was worried that she was planning to go back home and stay there. “No, that’s fine. I’ll see if I can find the border fort, or maybe a border town, and stick around there. Does that thing you’re doing with your eyes let you see my trail while I have the mask on?”

  She shook her head. “No, you’re not leaving a visible trail right now.”

  I had mixed feelings about that. It meant the mask was working, but it also meant that she’d have difficulty finding me if I kept the mask on.

  “I’ll take off my mask briefly at sundown each night, so you have something to look for. I’ll also leave some directions for you with whoever I talk to.”

  “Okay. Good.”

  We paused awkwardly for a moment, then Reika rushed forward and gave me a hug. “I’ll see you soon, okay?”

  I pulled her tighter. “You’d better.”

  ***

  I was more than a little worried that our plan wouldn’t work. There were several possible points of failure — she could fail to find Frienemy, she could get attacked by the tails, I could be attacked when I took the mask off, she could fail to find me…

  But Reika was right. We couldn’t abandon the forest spirit. I felt guilty that we hadn’t gone to look for him sooner, and that she was the one that had made the call to go back for him.

  If we’d taken more time to think about it, we probably would have set a more coherent meeting point. Maybe I would have just camped out in one place, or specifically stayed at the first town right across the border.

  In spite of our planning flaws, however, Reika found me just after sunset on the second night.

  She was in her human form, with wings, and carrying a body in her arms. I felt a sense of dread as she descended.

  “Is he…”

  “He’s alive.” She landed in front of me, setting down the unconscious body. As I took a closer look, my worries increased. “Barely.”

  He looked like Raizo, but wearing Sterling’s clothes, and with Aayara’s hair. More importantly, he had obvious burns on his shoulder, face, and chest.

  I knelt down next to him, unslinging my backpack. “Is he stable?”

  “No.” Reika knelt down with me, her eyes full of worry. “He’s dying. I don’t think he has much longer. Hours, maybe. I don’t know what to do. He shouldn’t be hurt like this. Forest spirits usually heal from damage almost immediately.”

  I opened up my medical kit and did what little I could to treat his injuries, but I honestly had no idea if it would even be effective on a spirit. His natural state was, as far as I was aware, a glowing ball of energy. “Maybe Zenkichi’s acid hurts spirits the way my sword or aura does?”

  “No. It shouldn’t be that.” She shook her head. “Otherwise, my two forms would have suffered mirrored damage, like when you cut me. They haven’t.”

  I nodded at her logic. “Okay. So, something is preventing his regeneration from working. If we can fix that, maybe we can help him. Maybe we should try to get him to town and get him a healing potion?”

  “I’m not convinced that would work on him, and I don’t know if we have time to get to a town. He’s fading fast, Keras. We have to do something!”

  She was right — even if we had a potion with us, it wasn’t likely to help. Healing potions fixed flesh and bone, not whatever this was. Maybe a healing potion would have helped get his natural healing properties working again, but there was no guarantee. “Where do you think his regeneration normally comes from?”

  Reika pondered that. “It’s probably an application of spirit mana. He should be—oh. The forest. He’s a forest spirit. Maybe it’s the forest itself that he draws his energy from?”

  I nodded. “That makes sense to me. If the area is suffused with spiritual energy, maybe he naturally draws on that to survive. And if the spiritual energy in this area is lighter, then he might not be getting enough to
recover. Do you want to fly him back?”

  “…Maybe. But that’s a long way, and I don’t know how much longer he’ll last. I…don’t know what to do.”

  “Okay. We’ll figure this out. What about the spirit gateway crystal? Could it heal him?”

  “Almost definitely, but I don’t know if it would. It’s already granted us both our boon. I don’t even know if it would let us back inside to talk.”

  I grit my teeth. “Okay. He’s a spirit. You’re a spirit dragon. Do you think you could figure out some kind of spirit healing spell?”

  She shook her head. “I’d have no idea where to start. That kind of magic exists, but it’s not the type of thing that you just experiment on without any training. Any kind of healing magic is dangerous without knowing what you’re doing.”

  If that sounds like a jab at Corin, it definitely is.

  Anyway, even if healing magic wasn’t an option, that did seem to give Reika an idea. “I think I have something else I can do, though. Maybe. It’s a risk. But, uh, maybe a smaller risk?”

  I glanced down at the injured spirit. He was cold to the touch, which wasn’t a good sign for people, but I didn’t know how bad it was for a spirit. The burns on his body were definitely not a good sign, though. Any potential plan to save him sounded worth discussing. “What’s the idea?”

  “I could try to make a contract with him and give him spirit mana.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “A contract? Isn’t that what the Summoner attunement does?”

  I wasn’t super familiar with attunements at that point, but I’d read about them in Reika’s books. I knew about the Valian ones, since those were the most commonly discussed in the books written in a language I could read.

  Reika gave a considering look, then nodded. “Yes, it’s basically like that. I’m not a Summoner, but many monsters have natural abilities that are similar to attunements. I’ve never made a contract before, but it’s spirit magic, and unlike healing, it’s something I know how to do. Dad taught me about it when I was young, I’ve just never done it before.”

  “Okay. And it works just like a Summoner contract?”

  She shook her head. “No, this is an older magic, it’s not identical. It’s closer to your bond with Dawn. It makes a connection that mana flows through. I don’t think it would let me summon him or anything like that, just transfer mana.”