The voices passed by, but Ari still knew that it was time. He took deep breaths as he made his way upstairs and into the room that he and Kerys had shared for but a single night. He crouched down at her side and took her sole remaining hand into both of his, kissing the back of it and still forcing himself to ignore the pressure of his pounding heart.
“Kerys,” he whispered. “I… have to leave, for a little while.”
She’d been resting with closed eyes, but upon hearing the sound of his voice, she blinked them open. She was beautiful, even with sweaty strands of hair and streaks of blood plastered to her forehead. Her form-fitting red dress had gracefully borne the blood stains and looked almost as good on her as it had at the beginning of the night.
“Leave…?” she whispered. “No. Please. Just stay here. Ari, please.”
“Kerys,” he said. “I can’t. It would only put you in danger. With you like this, we wouldn’t be able to…”
He trailed off, wishing he’d never started a sentence so impossible to finish gently.
“It’s my fault,” muttered Kerys. “If I’d been faster, or more aware. Or just… better, this wouldn’t have happened. I guess I really can’t take care of myself, huh? I’m not like Eva.”
“Kerys!” Ari clenched the fist of his free hand tight enough to make his knuckles pop. He tried and failed to look her in the eyes. “I… I promise I’ll be back. Once you’re healed up in a couple of months, I’ll come back here and get you.”
A couple of months. Ari wasn’t entirely sure if he had that much time left, and he wondered if that was why he’d picked that time frame. Wouldn’t things ultimately be simpler for Kerys if she could just stay in Cliffhaven? Adopt a new identity, start a new life, and cling to at least a modicum of safety. Finally have a chance at being a part of a community similar to or even better than the one she’d lost in Golias Hollow.
“You’ll come back?” asked Kerys.
“Of course,” he said. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
Kerys blinked a couple of times, and a single tear ran down her cheek.
“Are you lying to me, Aristial?”
He couldn’t answer that. It was a question without an answer, at least one that wouldn’t break his heart along with hers. He leaned forward and gave her a soft kiss, letting his mouth stay against hers until he finally felt her lips begin to move properly.
CHAPTER 56
“You’re doing the right thing, lad,” said Durrien.
Ari nodded. He’d already returned his sword to its scabbard across his shoulders and was hurrying to stuff his pack with the donated supplies collected from around the inn by Durrien. Amber stood watching him with her arms crossed and a frown on her face.
“Don’t forget about the potion I gave you,” she said. “If you need it, don’t hesitate to use it.”
Ari raised an eyebrow, feeling a bit of his focus returning to him.
“You think it’ll actually help me?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” said Amber. “Whether or not it has side effects, well, that’s a question that you may help me answer. Assuming you don’t get yourself killed.”
“I might die, but I won’t get myself killed,” he said.
He headed for the door. Durrien came up alongside him and set his hand onto Ari’s open palm. There were coins in his hand, and it took Ari a second to realize that they were the same ten gold coins he’d given the innkeeper earlier that day.
“I get the sense that you’ll need this more than I will,” said Durrien.
Ari shook his head once and flipped his hand over. “Give them to Kerys. And these, too.”
He pulled the rest of his accumulated wealth, the coins and the jewels, and forced it into Durrien’s hands.
“Ari, you can’t truly mean to part with all this,” said Durrien.
“You can split some of it with Amber and set the rest aside for Kerys, once she…” He trailed off and shrugged. “Anyway, I won’t be needing it.”
“Mind telling me just why that is?”
Ari met Durrien’s gaze and clenched his jaw.
“Because I don’t intend to stay here in the city,” he said. “If Marshal Luka plans on searching for me, I don’t see the point in making it easy for him.”
“That’s suicide,” said Durrien. “Lad, there are other inns you could stow yourself out at. Heading outside the city during a storm is complete insanity. You know it as well as I do.”
Ari rested his hand on the hilt of his sword. On the hilt of Eva and Azurelight. He squeezed the pommel and slowly took a breath through his nose.
“Take care of Kerys, Durrien,” he said. “Please.”
He turned around and pushed open the door, slipping out into the pouring rain and the rushing wind. He could hear the sounds of the heavy, slithering footfalls of the fishers as they moved through the city on limbs and tentacles. He could hear the screams. He shut the door behind him.
There was no point in leaving his sword sheathed, so Ari pulled Azurelight free of its scabbard and moved forward with it gripped in both hands. He kept his eyes constantly scanning, as though he could counter the adversity of the weather and the darkness by just looking around faster.
Under normal circumstances, he could have made it to the gate in a couple of minutes if he moved at a full sprint. The storm changed that, and the fishers forced him to accept it.
The strangest aspect of the night was that the fishers hadn’t created complete chaos, or sacked the city, or done any of the things Ari would have assumed. They’d done most of their damage in the Noble Quarter, and that seemed to be mostly due to how many nobles had been outside, not paying attention.
The city’s gate had fallen, but the architecture and people of Cliffhaven had both been molded by the constant threat of the Weatherblight. Buildings too flimsy to withstand the brunt of a fisher at the door, or even a couple of them, had apparently been abandoned at the start of the storm.
The fishers paid no heed to empty buildings and seemed incapable of teamwork when faced with a city with a spread populace. They were like a mob of looters, each picking a house on a whim and attempting to smash inside to take the prize of prey within.
It reminded Ari more of how the monsters had attacked Varnas-Rav, rather than fighting a group of them alone and outnumbered as he and his party so often had. There was strength in numbers, a strength that explained how cities like Cliffhaven and Varnas-Rav had managed to find a foothold to begin with.
A fisher spun around abruptly as Ari ran through the nearest crossroads. He dashed to the side as the monster pounced, ducking under one outstretched tentacle and severing loose another. The fisher drew back, giving Ari a few seconds to catch his breath and contend with a realization that undercut his momentum.
He was fighting without Eva, for the first time in longer than he could easily remember. Sure, he still had the sword, her “body”, in a sense. But she wasn’t there to advise him. He couldn’t rely on her to shift forms and surprise his opponent on a whim or pick him back up once he’d fallen.
Of course, that didn’t mean that he was helpless or entirely without tricks up his sleeve. Ari pulled his lips up into a cold smile as he pushed his will into the Ring of Insight. The smile shifted into a darkly humorous grin as he considered the fact that he’d almost made a Ring of Fire instead.
The Ring of Insight responded to his query with exactly what he needed to hear. The ring told him that he needed to fight like a man stripped of all he’d once had to lose.
It was the first time Ari had ever heard that advice and seen the wisdom in it. He squared his shoulders and took a half step forward, keeping the point of his blade fixed on the fisher. It swatted at him, but he dodged and shifted his sword in defense.
The fisher lurched forward, seizing Ari by his neck and three out of his four limbs. Ari used the one free arm he still had to plunge the tip of Azurelight through the monster’s face as it reeled him in. Green blood splattered out, dou
sing his neck and shoulders. Ari shook the tentacles free and wiped his blade clean.
He didn’t stop as he reached the city gate. It was half open, caught midway down on a stuck wagon full of heavy iron ore and missing a wheel. All Ari had to do to abandon the confines of Cliffhaven and its limited safety was to duck his head and slip under.
He could see the fishers as soon as his eyes began to adjust to the rich darkness of night. They were far more populous outside, without walls and cobblestone streets to discourage their numbers. Already, they had begun moving, circling in on him with deadly focus.
Ari had been hoping that he’d be fortunate enough to leave the city just as the storm was coming to an end. If anything, it currently seemed to be building in strength, and he felt water streaming across his feet as he hurried down the sloping cliff path.
He spotted Cythia’s small store and noted, with a pang of despair, that the door had already been smashed open and at least one fisher was currently inside. He hadn’t expected to find a safe haven there, but he couldn’t help but worry for the woman, as short a time as he’d known her.
Ari broke into a sprint as he hit the grass, constantly scanning from side to side as the fishers finally came within striking distance. One attacked from his right. He slashed and then hurled himself into a forward roll across the muddy ground.
Another surprised him, leaping out from a dip in the ground in between two hills. Ari cut one of its tentacles off and kicked it in the chest. It knocked the monster back, but it also threw him off balance and drew in his awareness.
A tentacle hissed through the dark, striking the back of his hand at precisely the wrong time. He’d been in midswing, preparing to fend off another fisher, and because of that, Azurelight was knocked loose from his grip. The sword flew a fair distance, far out of his immediate reach.
“Eva!” shouted Ari. He reached his hand out and summoned the weapon.
Nothing happened, and as much as it was what he’d expected, it still gutted him. He tried twice. Three times, with all the willpower he could muster. Nothing.
The fishers were closing in on him, taking their time now that they had their prey effectively surrounded. Durrien had been right, and part of him had known that before even making the attempt. Being outside during a storm was suicide, something only a man that was already dying would even consider.
Ari laughed and reached into his pack. He pulled out the Weathersense Potion Amber had given him, flipped out the stopper, and downed it in a single, painful sip. It tasted like acid mixed with charcoal and made his eyes and nose feel like they were on fire.
The fishers surrounding him let out high-pitched, purring shrieks, flailing and thrashing their tentacles and seeming altogether enraged by what he’d just done. Ari felt his muscles start to cramp up as something wriggled inside his body. He fell to the ground and began to seize as his vision blurred and then dissolved entirely.
CHAPTER 57
The darkness faded as quickly as it arrived, at least from Ari’s perspective. He was left somewhere else in its wake. Or rather, in multiple places.
He could see through their eyes. It was a perverse sensation, like discovering a fact about a person that revealed an intricate spiderweb of hideous truths. The fishers were empty. The vodakai were empty. There was a missing element to them that made them what they were, intangible, indescribable, and utterly horrifying.
Through that emptiness, Ari could see. He saw the streets of Cliffhaven, and felt the one-dimensional, mindless reactions of the fishers as they tracked noise and motion. He saw the Vodakai Sands and felt the rumble of the wind storm and the way it seemed more alive and active than the Weatherblight within it.
He saw Jarvis, surprisingly. He was on a beach in the rain, defending a small group of men and women from the Fairweather Fleet against one of the fishers with his curved greatsword. Ari had time to recognize the Sailmaster among the survivors before he felt a jarring hook yank on the edge of his psyche.
“You shouldn’t be here,” hissed Mordus.
Ari was standing on top of Deepwater Spire in the soft, trickling rain. Mordus was staring at him and reached one of his strange, spindly arms out to point a finger in his direction.
“I told you not to come back,” said Mordus. “Though the irony here is not lost on me. I suspect you’re going to regret what you just did a very great deal, once you realize what it means.”
Ari felt himself flailing again and realized that he was back outside Cliffhaven, where he last remembered being within his physical body. He let out a soft, purring hiss and looked down at himself. Mottled, oily black skin. The ends of the tentacles curling forward around him from where they protruded on his lower neck. Murderous, claw-like fingers, and the sensation of too many jaws with too many teeth.
Ari screamed, and blessedly, the noise came from somewhere other than where he felt like he was. He spun to the side and spotted himself on the ground, eyes wide and blank, body twisted and contorted painfully, but still human. He blinked, and he was back, suddenly appreciating his relatively frail, easily bruised flesh in a much deeper way.
The fishers were still near where he’d last seen them, but they were paying him no more attention than they were to each other. He slowly stood to his feet, wiping mud off his face and out of his hair.
He remembered how he’d lost Azurelight and went to find the sword first. He made the same desperate plea to Eva that he’d tried before as soon as he picked it up, again with no reply. He felt a surge of disappointment, but it was lacking in the desperate loneliness he’d endured before.
He could still feel the awareness of the fishers. It was there, almost like a vivid memory or overactive imagination. He could see what they saw, feel the basic triggers of their reactions, and sense what they were about to do.
They were starting to notice Ari again as an “other.” He decided that meant it was time for him to get moving. He sprinted forward, forcing the aches and cramps out of his legs through the blunt work of running.
“Weathersense Potion,” he muttered, shaking his head. He felt a sudden surge of sympathy for the poor dog Amber had first tested the concoction on. It had worked, at least. He hoped he’d get a chance to tell her that it was worth making more.
The lingering effects of the potion lasted for long enough for him to reach the rune sled. He resisted the urge to set off immediately, knowing that the combination of the night and the storm would make navigating the hills a dangerous affair even without bringing monsters into the equation.
Instead, Ari climbed one of the trees, found himself a perch, and tried his best to get some sleep. It was uncomfortable, as much physically as for the memories it brought back. It was how he and Kerys had hid from the monsters on their very first night on the surface.
He leaned against the branch and closed his eyes, as much to lock his tears in as in pursuit of sleep.
***
The sky was clear the next morning. Ari climbed down from the tree slowly, feeling as though his dour mood was a poor fit for the fair weather. He bristled at the brightness of the sun and felt actively mocked by the chirping birds and gentle, warm breeze.
He pulled the rune sled out of the hollow log he’d hidden it in and prepared to set off. He was hungry, and he remembered the various supplies Durrien had set him off with, though he’d been numb at the time he’d stuffed them into his pack.
He found a hunk of bread and his waterskin and had a quick breakfast. After trying one more time to get Eva to respond to him, he climbed onto the rune sled and started off, feeling a building certainty as to where he needed to go.
The journey southwest would be treacherous, and he would need to cross the ocean at some point, but it would mean returning to the tower. Ari felt a sneaking suspicion that it, or at least some of the places it could take him, would hold the answers that he was seeking. For himself, for Eva. Perhaps even for Kerys, if he could find a better way to keep her safe.
He made quick tim
e, stopping only to use his Essence Bracelet to refill some of the rune sled’s wards. He wasn’t worried about being pursued by Marshal Luka, which meant that his attention was elsewhere midway through the day, and the shadow that passed overhead caught him off guard.
He brought the rune sled to a halt and watched as a large, birdlike form slowly circled and descended. Ari shook his head, smiling a little as Rin landed on the grass and offered him a small wave.
“Where are your companions, chala?” asked Rin.
Ari kept his gaze forward, not looking over to meet her eyes.
“Kerys is safe,” he said. “Eva is…”
He touched the hilt of Azurelight and winced. Rin stayed quiet, watching him with an extra measure of respect in her expression.
“What about Leyehl?” asked Ari.
“What about Leyehl indeed,” said Rin. “I have not found her. Which has given me much to think about.”
“I know the feeling,” said Ari.
Rin flashed a somewhat forced smile. She let out a sigh and waved a hand at the rune sled.
“This is quite the contraption,” she said. “Did you make it yourself?”
“No,” said Ari. “It’s another salvaged Saidican artifact.”
“Is it safe?” asked Rin.
Ari let out a low chuckle. He was no good at sulking.
“No, but it’s fun,” he said. “Here, get on. I’ll give you a ride.”
“A ride to where, chala?” she asked.
“Wherever.”
THE END
Thanks for reading. I had a lot of fun writing this book and can’t wait to introduce you to more of the world with the sequel (Potion Politics, will be out on March 20th). To get in touch with me directly, send an email to [email protected]. For updates and occasional freebies, sign up for my newsletter.
Edmund
Vision Voyage (The Weatherblight Saga Book 2) Page 34
