She was silent for a moment long enough to expose her as a reluctant liar. “Sort of.”
“You’re not an ice elemental,” said Damon. “I can’t imagine that even a strong ice elemental, or equivalent monster, would have the sort of power I’ve accessed through your enchantment. True Divine, I’m basically fireproof! I can summon ice elementals like a kennel master whistling for his dogs. I can float ice in the air and make shields of it, and…”
He shook his head, bewildered by how much his power, both as a wielder and a swordsman, had increased over the months.
“You aren’t wrong,” whispered Myr. “I don’t remember everything, but… I remember enough to know that I was pretty, um… scary, once upon a time.”
“Are you a goddess?”
Myr blinked, and then amazingly, began to blush and sputter. “Me? A goddess? That’s, well, just ridiculous. I mean… how would that even work? A goddess doesn’t get herself soul-trapped within an enchantment.”
“You’re not very convincing.”
Myr let out a sigh and scrunched up her face. “Gods and goddesses, at least as most mortals think of them, don’t really exist. Most religions are just stories that ambitious beings of power tell to make people serve them. Kind of like Avarice trying to be the Godking.”
“Fine, I’ll rephrase,” said Damon. “Are you, or were you at any time in the past, an ambitious being of power?”
Myr didn’t answer him, which felt like as much of an answer as any combination of words could have been.
“Is that why you don’t want me to break the last chain?” he asked. “Would it destroy me, or give you my body as a vessel?”
“No,” said Myr. “I’m not entirely sure what it would do. Likely kill us both and unleash an ungodly amount of power.”
Damon snorted. “Well, that’s good to know. Myr, I didn’t just come here to question you. I have to—”
“I know.”
She slid one of her hands under the chain running across her left shoulder, cupping her breast to hide it from Damon’s sight while simultaneously presenting him with a grip on the metal links.
“You’re not going to try to convince me not to?” he asked. “No objections?”
She gave him the saddest, most pitying look he’d ever seen from her. “Not this time. I think… if I don’t do what I can for you, Damon, you’re going to get yourself killed.”
“You’re saying this chain will give me the power I need to win against Lascivious?”
“I wish I were. I think you’ll still die, but you’ll have a better chance. You might manage to save other people, as well. A terrible thing has happened to your world.”
He nodded slowly. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You know that I love you,” he said. “Both as a sword, and as an… ice goddess?”
“I’m not an ice goddess!” snapped Myr, with a smile creeping onto her face. “But thanks. I love you too, Damon. I’m glad I can still be with you, here at the end.”
“Who says this is the end?”
Again, she didn’t reply, and again, it felt like more of an answer than any amount of words could have presented.
Damon snapped Myr’s second to last chain with a grunt and a force of strength. She let out a tiny gasp, as though she’d been wearing a fine dress and he’d torn the fabric, pulling it off her in a rush to get her naked.
New power flowed into him, as cold as a lake in midwinter, as warm as a well-fed hearth. Damon felt it on a level that went deeper than the sword’s metal, deeper than his skin. It was as though Myr’s power had been infused into his veins, into his very bones.
She kissed him on the lips in the lingering instant in between breaking the chain and returning to his normal reality. Damon gasped as he found himself back in the common room. He set a hand on the myrblade still lying across the table. It felt like a part of his body, an extra arm which happened to be separate from the rest of him and sharpened to a point.
“It is a part of your body now, Damon,” whispered Myr.
He sensed a deeper truth to those words. There was no line between him and his myrblade anymore, at least none that made sense to draw. He wondered if this was, in part, what Myr had feared, either losing herself to his will, or him being drawn into hers.
He carried his myrblade outside the inn, pausing by the door to search the surrounding trees for anything of note. Snow had begun falling again, accumulating in a steady drift of serene white flakes. He briefly considered making another ice platform to carry him up to the skybound Veridas Keep before realizing there was no need.
Damon drew his myrblade into his body as easily as if he was merely taking a breath. The sword and scabbard shifted to ice, sliding neatly into a small, matching ice patch which had appeared in the center of his palm. He exhaled frozen condensation as an odd, pleasurable shiver ran through him.
“You still there, Myr?” he whispered.
“Mmm,” she sighed. “You’re so warm.”
“Not too warm for you, I hope.”
“No. Just right.”
He nodded, rolled both of his shoulders into a simple stretch, and dropped into a crouch. His entire body was ice. As much as he’d sensed a lack of separation between himself and his sword earlier, he now realized how much deeper it went. He was ice. He was the cold. He was what ice elementals played at being, what they would have dreamed of, had their absent minds been prone to such fancy.
Damon could levitate ice, so he levitated himself. He rose into the air, slowly at first, drawing even with the roof of the inn. He felt like a boy again in his awe and delight, though both emotions were tempered by the rawness of the day.
With a focus of his will, he sent himself hurtling through the air.
CHAPTER 40
The land spread out beneath him, patches of green pasture and darker green forest mottled by the melting snow. Towns and villages, some clearly built with the forethought to be arranged in neat, orderly rows, others aimless, sprawling expanses of ramshackle homes and structures.
It was Veridan’s Curve as he’d never seen it before. There was a clear distinction, almost a traceable line, of where the colonized area ended and the Rem lands began. It made the Merinian occupied areas look sparse, eaten away, used up to the limits of their capacity. It was an interesting sight, an overhead view of a complicated problem with no simple, profound solution.
Veridas Keep, on the other hand, was far more straightforward. He could see it in the sky above him, floating like an island amidst the night’s shadowed clouds. Seffi had excised the keep’s entire foundation along with a chunk of the underlying earth when she’d sent it skyward. The entire structure was still cocooned in an eerie crimson glimmer, and he half expected to crash into a solid barrier as he approached its edge.
Other than a slight tingling sensation against his skin, Damon encountered no obstruction as he passed into the crimson cocoon. He landed within Avarice’s once prized Garden of Statues and prepared himself to storm the castle.
The wind was intense, whipping through his hair and clothing with as much force as it had when he’d been flying. The ground shifted underneath him, swaying with small motions like a ship at sea, but less predictably. Damon started toward the keep’s main doors, but he only made it a few steps forward before realizing he wasn’t alone.
Several crimson revenants born from the bodies of various attendees from Avarice’s party earlier in the night stalked through the courtyard. Damon found it hard to perceive them all properly, shadowed by night, interspersed between the unmoving statues.
He reached for his myrblade on reflex before feeling silly and remembering that he’d absorbed it. Damon didn’t need a sword to deal with the monsters, though it felt sacrilegious to admit that to himself after so many years of being a prodigy in that regard.
He slowly turned in a circle, identifying all of his enemies and noting the speed with which each approached him. There were fifteen of them in various st
ates of injury and aggressiveness. Some hobbled on injured legs, others crawled on all fours. Most were still intact, posturing with aggressive, hungry focus.
There wasn’t much snow on the ground, but such things hardly mattered to him anymore. Damon clasped his hands together, drawing from within himself and from within Myr. He gathered cold power into the center of his palm, slamming it down against the ground while focusing on the positions of his enemies.
Ice spikes rose from the grass and the dirt underneath each of the crimson revenants, striking like perfectly thrust spears from below. Several of the monsters hissed and groaned in response to the attack, but none of them managed to continue moving toward him.
He considered rushing down each of them, striking with additional ice spears or hacking them apart with an ice sword, but it would have been a waste of time. Instead, he sent a pulse of power through each of the ice spikes, enough to extinguish the entirety of the already diminished heat from the body of each monster, freezing them solid and adding more than a dozen new works to the Garden of Statues.
Damon continued forward, up the main stairs, to the door leading to the castle’s entryway. Aside from his brief exploration of the castle while sneaking in through the dungeon with the others, he hadn’t seen much of its interior. He guessed the way to the audience chamber from the style of the doors, finding most open and easily unlocking the ones that weren’t.
Seffi, Lascivious, waited for him on Avarice’s throne. The audience chamber itself was spacious, regally decorated, and had been spared the bloodshed and destruction elsewhere in the keep. She had a bottle of wine and a small, half-full glass, both of which seemed to highlight the mismatch of her young apparent age and immense power.
“Hello, Damon,” said Lascivious. “You came. I wasn’t sure whether you would.”
She regarded him with an icy stare that left him with no shadow of a doubt who he was speaking to. Seffi, the precocious, unassuming young girl was gone, or at least, suppressed. Damon was looking at one of the Forsaken, a being of immeasurable power who’d already taken the lives of three of her brethren that same day.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“Your aesta?” Lascivious leaned sideways, swirling the wine in her glass. “She’s unharmed. Recent events have taken a powerful toll on her. She’s resting upstairs. I will, of course, need my sorceress at full strength for what comes next.”
“For what comes next?” repeated Damon. “What are you planning?”
She didn’t answer him, but the dark smile her lips twisted up into told him everything he needed to know.
“Lascivious,” he said. “Seffi. Please, listen to me. You have every choice, every path open to you moving forward. Step back from the destruction. If you wish more revenge against the other Forsaken, so be it. But please, be reasonable. Think about the impact of your actions.”
“I’ve barely even begun, and you’ve already come to me begging,” she said, crossing her legs. “I forgot how much I enjoy all of this.”
“What is it you want?” snapped Damon. “I spoke with Kastet. Do you wish to be a Godqueen, to have this land for yourself, like Avarice? She’s open to that. She’ll compromise with you.”
“You’re terrified, aren’t you?” asked Lascivious. “I’ve taken someone precious to you, and you’ll make whatever deal you have to in order to get out from under my spell. It’s inspiring. Truly, it is. Why don’t you get down on your knees and beg, Damon Al-Kendras?”
He remained on his feet, keeping his expression neutral. He wouldn’t beg. It would only lead him down the same path as giving up outright, the same path as surrender. He looked at her again and for an instant, saw the girl in place of the god. He took a breath and tried a harsher tone.
“I’m not scared of you, Seffi,” he said. “I’m more powerful now than I think you realize. You’re going to let my aesta go, and you’re going to leave Veridan’s Curve at peace.”
“And if I don’t?” asked Lascivious.
Damon rolled his sleeves up. His hands flashed, turning to perfect white-blue ice from the elbows to the tips of his fingers. “If you don’t, I’ll destroy you.”
“You can’t,” she said. “Though I must say, I admire your courage. I see what Wrath saw in you.”
She set her wine glass down and stood up. They faced each other from opposite ends of the chamber, holding eye contact amidst the fragile silence.
Damon attacked first. He leapt into the air, shifting his body as he flew at her with inhuman speed. His forearms become swords of ice, frozen blades sharp enough to rend flesh and cold enough to freeze anything they touched.
Lascivious dodged his first flurry of cuts and slashes, moving with speed that nearly matched what he’d once seen Wrath manage. He kept expecting a counterattack, a blow to the back of his head, or the side of his knee, but none came, despite numerous openings.
He changed tactics, waiting until she leapt backward and landed in a crouch. Damon thrust his hands down into the floor, attempting a variation of what he’d used on the revenants. He knew Lascivious would be too quick to pin with an ice spear, so he simply tried to freeze her feet to the floor instead.
His trick seemed to work, though he knew from a single glance at her bored expression that she’d allowed him the small victory. She flashed a tiny smile, as though taunting him to do better as a wreath of fire surrounded her feet and melted the ice.
“It still isn’t too late,” said Lascivious. “Down on your knees. If you swear your fealty and serve me well, I’ll let you see your aesta again.”
Damon was ashamed by how tempted a part of him was by her words. He took a breath, gathering his resolve. The situation was larger than him and his desires. Lascivious was a threat to the entire world, unhinged and dangerous, an agent of chaos too callous and unpredictable for him to trust.
He rushed her again, attacking with different ice weapons on each strike. He tried to smash her upside the skull with a massive ice mace, and missed. He made his arm into a spear and jabbed at her heart, but again, she evaded him.
Lascivious countered, striking his chest with a solid palm strike. Damon’s rib cage exploded with pain, breaking in several places in a manner that left him with the distinct sensation of jagged, free-floating pieces of bone within his chest.
He landed on his back, coughing up blood and what felt like shards of molten glass. The pain was unreal, but it didn’t have to be. He was beyond taking that kind of basic damage. He simply turned his chest to ice and reformed it into flesh afterward, healing himself in the time it took to breathe a second breath.
He stood up, awestruck by his own power. He wondered absently if Wrath might still be alive if she could heal with such ease, though his injury hadn’t been nearly as severe as hers. It was an open question whether he could still form ice to repair massive internal injuries or resupply himself with blood.
“You are so close to being great,” said Lascivious, shaking her head. “You would make such an efficient tool. But no, I can already sense that intolerable flicker of righteousness within you. You have power but lack the wisdom to see what must be done with it.”
“You expect me to stand here and be lectured by a child?” snapped Damon.
He turned more of his body into ice, not just his arms, but his shoulders, his neck, and his lower back. He flexed his will, sending more than a dozen spears of ice jutting outward from himself like the branches of a tree. With razor-sharp tips, they sought Lascivious, curving outward and attacking her from all angles.
She dodged each one, making a point to stay as much in place as possible to emphasize how easy it was for her. She spun, shattering most of the ice spears with her arms, and then shot her arms forward, sending a gout of fire the diameter of a wagon wheel surging toward him.
Damon countered with his own blast of ice, powering his inner cold into a matching attack. Lascivious’s flames met Damon’s ice, filling the room with steam, along with a dangerous tremor of power.
It was a brusque, efficient test of each other’s innate magical strength. Damon clenched his jaw and grunted from the exertion. Lascivious merely kept her arm raised, fingers splayed wide, eyes blazing with crimson brilliance.
It wasn’t a clash between good and evil, not how it might have seemed on the surface. True, from Damon’s perspective, Lascivious was evil, of a sort. But he didn’t consider himself to be good or altruistic. He wasn’t fighting for peace and a kinder world order or any such principled, elegant virtues.
He just wanted to end her, and violence was the only available method.
The steam became so thick on the air that Damon couldn’t see what was going on. He was sweating, despite his cold affinity. He felt Lascivious’s flames overwhelming his ice more through the heat they gave off than anything. He felt his power failing as the fire drew near enough to keep him from forming any ice at all.
And then, all at once, he was overwhelmed by blinding light and blistering heat.
CHAPTER 41
Damon was comfortable when he awoke. The pillow was soft, and the sheets felt clean and silky. He was only wearing his undershorts, a fact which compelled him to keep his eyes shut, keep resting, and put off whatever the world held for him for just a few minutes longer.
He sat up as small pieces of what had occurred before came back to him. Lascivious, the slaughter in Veridas Keep, his return to Veridas Keep. His heart pounded, and sweat beaded against his forehead.
“Solas?” said Malon, in a gentle voice.
“Aesta!” He sought her out with his eyes, but it was too dark. “You’re here. You’re safe.”
“I am, and so are you.” Her voice was the essence of comfort, as soothing as anything could be. The sound of chair legs sliding across tile sounded as she moved to sit closer to him. “You don’t have to get up yet. You can keep resting.”
He felt her hand run through his hair. He reached out, wanting to touch her too. His fingers brushed something that could only have been her breast, and heard her laugh and let out a patient, loving sigh.
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