The sound of Amaya’s laugh. Alda’s cautious smiles. The warmth of Amaya’s skin against mine. Kel’s defiant grin as she threw me to the ground. Jaren’s gentle wisdom. The endless ringing of Rastor’s hammer in his forge. Jarut’s patient instructions. The large, shady tree atop a low hill, where I said my first vows. Amaya 's soft lips. Unending longing.
I teetered backwards as a violent shudder ran up my spine, and Lia and I both gasped violently as the influx of information surged through us. I lost track of my body for a brief moment, confused as to which inputs came from Lia’s body and which came from my own. “Are we...are you okay, Lia?” I asked, clutching at my chest. A strange feeling pulsed through me, but I couldn’t identify it as I reeled from the overwhelming burst of emotion.
“I’m okay,” she answered in a shaking voice. My stomach dropped as she turned her face up to look at me and revealed her tear-stained cheeks.
“Oh, no, Lia,” I said, holding a hand to her face, “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“No,” she said firmly, shaking me off, “really, I’m fine. It’s not me, it’s...you. I’m in your head, so all those emotions you had locked up in there are just...processing. Like they were mine.”
“I’m sorry, I—”
She put a finger up to my lips. Don’t apologize. Just...feel this. With me. Another pulse of energy echoed through me, and I began to puzzle out its source: Lia. As soon as the memories had resurfaced, part of my consciousness had recoiled in an attempt to hide from the pain, but Lia was pulling me back.
I don’t know if I can.
We can do it. Together. With one final tug, she forced my dissociated mind back together and brought me face to face with my repressed pain.
You will never see Amaya again.
I felt an immediate leap in my heart rate as my chest battled to breathe.
Alda is dead, because of you.
Images flashed behind my eyes at a rapidly growing pace, and I gripped desperately at Lia’s arm to find an anchor against the maelstrom.
Your darkness will corrupt Lia, like it corrupted you.
I clawed at the side of my head to silence the thoughts, but the onslaught continued.
Virram brought you here. He needs to SUFFER.
“No,” I wheezed, fighting to stay conscious as every instinct in my core opposed me.
You will lose everything and everyone you love. Again, and again, and—
You won’t lose me. The statement didn’t come from Lia’s voice in my head, but a feeling that resonated through every inch of my body. I promise, you won’t lose me.
The assault on my senses slowly faded as she released our mental enhancements, and the world around me reappeared. Our fire had burned low and brought a chill to our tiny campsite, which nipped at my face despite my drawn hood. I slumped forward and was kept upright only by the grace of Lia’s supporting shoulder against my chest. “Are you alright?” she asked gently.
I gave her a weak nod, too mentally exhausted to manage speaking. “I know it was easy not to think about it while we were in Lybesa, but you still have so much pain locked away up here,” she said, tapping my forehead, “and being back in Kaldan is just making it worse. You can’t keep it all bottled up inside you anymore.”
The thought of doing anything aside from sleeping was too much for me to bear. “You’re right,” I groaned. “Of course you’re right.” I propped myself up into a more comfortable position and leaned my forehead against her shoulder. “I wish you weren’t.”
“I know,” she laughed softly, “but I’ll be here to help you, whenever you need it, forever. I promise.”
I closed my eyes as my physical and mental exhaustion overcame me. “I love you,” I murmured sleepily, and unconsciousness overtook me before I heard her reply.
---
I awoke the next morning still propped up against Lia’s shoulder feeling more refreshed than I had in months. Our deepened bond remained perfectly intact, allowing me to express to her my renewed resolve without the need for imprecise words. My feelings radiated through our shared consciousness as we ate a quick breakfast and packed up our camp: thankfulness, relief, and determination to finish the task set before us. When our morning routines were complete, we trekked back to the road and resumed our journey north.
The path ahead of us was less of a road and more of a depression in the otherwise deep and all-encompassing snow. While it was clear that the roads had been maintained at some point during the winter, recent snowfall had accumulated undisturbed with no sign of tracks from plow horses or foot traffic. Our journey was far more tiring than the day before as we pushed through the knee-deep snow, but we still made more progress than we ever could have by carriage or horseback. Lia’s general knowledge of Kaldan told us that we would find the town of Yenn on the far side of the forest, after which the road would branch off to the east and lead us directly to Shadowmine.
When the first buildings of Yenn came into view of our Detection, it became clear why traffic along the road had stopped. Most of the houses sat completely empty, carefully and neatly stripped of every valuable and scrap of food inside. Judging by the level of snow piled against the front doors of the houses and shops, the entire town had evacuated at roughly the same time. However, as our vision approached the town center, we found small ruts in the snow that led out from an abandoned general store out towards Yenn’s periphery.
The scene at the end of the ruts revealed the full story of the town’s abandonment. A separate set of monstrous, clawed tracks joined the footpaths on the way to a group of three isolated houses, all of which were missing the entirety of their front walls. Snowdrifts mingled with the wooden wreckage inside entryways and living rooms that were still otherwise furnished for daily life. Streaks of frozen blood painted the interior of the houses, marking where the stubborn stragglers had fallen, though their bodies were nowhere to be found. Beyond the houses, the beast’s tracks carried on alone to the north across the open, snowy countryside.
Lia and I broke off from our eastward journey without hesitation and followed the tracks north. A more focused sweep with Detection found the telltale aura of a single monster lingering in the fields a few miles away from Yenn. We slowed our pace as we entered the suffocating aura and began to sweep the area, but our search didn’t last long; the sound of crunching snow echoed clearly over the white expanse as the beast charged us, clearly ready to make a meal of the travelers that had entered its domain. We calmly drew our weapons and spread a few yards apart as we waited for our foe to reach us.
The monster exploded out from a nearby snowdrift with its scythes raised, aiming to skewer Lia through the chest. She leapt back and dodged the predictable blow with ease while I sprinted ahead and circled the beast. My sword was already in motion when the beast leaned forward onto its scythes and kicked out in my direction with both taloned feet, and I severed the incoming limbs at the knee joint. Without their support, the beast’s chitinous midsection collapsed into the snow, where Lia was already waiting to pin it to the ground with her fused greatsword. The monster struggled feebly against the onyx blade before falling still, and the field repressing our mana dissipated. Our newly expanded Detection found a roughly hewn crater in the center of the field that had served as the monster’s den, and the pile of bones within it solved the mystery of the missing villagers.
We returned to Yenn and followed the road that branched off to the east, having only spent a few minutes on our impromptu hunt. All signs of the path disappeared soon after we left town, and it was only by the grace of our Detection that we could continue along in the right direction. Apart from the absence of the road, our traveling conditions were beautiful, with clear blue skies and radiant sunshine that sparkled in the pristine snow while keeping us comfortably warm. The clear conditions also helped to illuminate the end goal of our journey: two gigantic snow-capped mountains standing side by side in the far distance. Somewhere in the shadows of the twin peaks laid the entrance to
Shadowmine, and hopefully, a final end to the invading beasts.
Over the course of our day of travel, we encountered three more abandoned towns along the road. Whereas Yenn had seemingly been given plenty of time to evacuate, the towns closer to Shadowmine had not been as lucky; each painted a sadder picture than the last, with half-packed homes and scenes of bloody destruction in a majority of the structures. Alongside the ruined homesteads, we also found the monsters that had caused the ruination. They had all created nests only a few miles away from the towns, hidden amongst thickets of trees or natural rock outcroppings, most likely in an effort to monitor their hunting grounds for more prey. Each was handily dispatched with the same simple gambit, and our confidence against them increased along with our knowledge of their tactics.
We stopped to make camp an hour after sunset when the night air became too cold for Lia to comfortably continue traveling. Without any nearby structures to provide us with shelter, we created a campsite on the main road itself; I suffused the path ahead of us in a wide circle and invoked the Fire rune within my ring, creating an intense burst of crimson flame that instantly sublimated the snow and created a patch of warm, dry dirt. Lia quickly buried herself within the folds of my cloak, sending a shiver up my spine as her cold body pressed against mine.
“What do you think we’ll find tomorrow?” she asked, nodding her head towards the looming pair of mountains that blocked the sky ahead of us.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’d like to think it’s some sort of nest that we can destroy and put an end to this once and for all, but I get the feeling there’s more to it than that.” I stared off into the darkness, trying to gauge how far Shadowmine was from our camp. “Maybe I can get an idea of it from here. I’m sure most of the mine will be blocked by that damn static, but I might be able to get a rough count of how many we’ll be facing.”
Lia hummed in thought. “You’ll probably have to wait until we leave tomorrow for that. We’re still a good forty miles from the mountains at this point.”
“Oh?” I said, raising an eyebrow. “Do you think that’s a problem?”
She let out a sharp laugh. “There’s no way you can reach that far.”
“You doubt my abilities?” I asked with mock offense.
“I do,” she grinned. “But please, by all means, prove me wrong.”
“Maybe I will,” I replied as I settled into a more comfortable meditative stance. My deep reserves of mana activated as I took a centering breath and began the ritual of circulating the energy through my body. After another moment of meditation, the energy streaked out across the ground like neon lightning, racing along the road we would travel at daybreak. I felt a sweet ache in my mind as the mana sped away, similar to the relief of stretching a well-worked muscle. The stream of energy was so narrow that it hardly relayed any information as it traveled, allowing me to push the mana farther without worrying about accelerating my mind to keep up. Lia watched with quiet amusement as mile after mile passed without any sign of the mana slowing down.
A strange series of indentations in the road suddenly flashed through my mind, and I halted my advance to expand a small Detection radius at the end of my extended mana. Wagon ruts. Footprints. Fire pits. The playful nature of my experiment faded away as I made a more concerted effort to study the area. There’s a lot of them. A map of neon lights continued to expand within my head as the seconds passed in total silence, revealing a mess of overlapping wagon tracks and dense patches of footprints. A LOT of them.
The first foreign mana signal appeared at the edge of my Detection after another minute of slow expansion. The faint red light belonged to a young man dressed in chainmail and unadorned leather armor. He stood in the center of the road, staring straight ahead with his hand placed calmly on the hilt of a shortsword belted on his hip. More lights appeared as I pushed ahead, all similarly dim and undeveloped within the men and women who gathered on the road. None of their various outfits matched one another; some wore military-grade steel armor, while others stood completely unarmored, opting instead for heavy winter coats. The only unifying detail of the crowd was the direction they faced: straight forward, training their eyes on a shared target.
I felt sweat drip down my forehead as the strain of my Detection began to wear on me, but my curiosity pushed me onward. The crowd appeared to number easily in the hundreds, but I ignored as much information about them as possible in an effort to gain more ground in the direction of their attention. After a small gap of unoccupied dirt, a raised wooden platform stood before them, currently holding only a pair of flickering braziers. They’re waiting for someone. Somewhere within our shared consciousness, Lia and I already knew who it was, but neither of us acknowledged the answer.
I found a large cloth tent erected behind the platform at the edge of the plowed clearing. Two men stood watch at the door, each armored in the all-too-recognizable armor of Virram’s guard. As we watched, one of the men turned and pushed through the tent flap, and I struggled to push my mana ahead to follow him. He stopped at a waist-high table and said a few silent words to the tent’s owner, then turned and left. I waited, frozen in anticipation, until a familiar figure entered my Detection and sent a sickening rush through my stomach.
Val.
The King’s Shield was dressed in her usual scale armor, though it was significantly more battered and stained than when we had last seen it. The namesake shield strapped to her arm was as flawless as the first day I had laid eyes on it, but the mana stored within it was shockingly dim. Val stood at the tent flap, staring straight into the fabric with her hard, inscrutable eyes. She took a deep breath, then stepped forward and exited the tent.
“Damnit Val, don’t do it,” I cursed, struggling to my feet. Lia and I were already sprinting through the snow as we watched Val make her way towards the raised platform.
I felt a small pulse of reassurance through our mental link. We’ll make it in time.
I measured the distance to our destination over and over as we ran, hoping for a different conclusion with each repeated attempt. Val paused at the edge of the platform and looked out over the sea of faces watching her, then stepped up and raised her shield in a silencing gesture. No, I thought bitterly, we won’t.
***
20. PERSPECTIVE
I scratched at an odd prickling sensation at the base of my skull and took a deep breath. My strength is their strength. My resolve is their resolve. What I give to them now must carry them through the night to come. Do not falter. I looked over the faces of the men and women assembled before me and knew that many of them would never see the light of day again. On my orders, they will die. By what right do I send them to their deaths?
I took the final step onto the podium and raised my right arm above my head. Dancing lights flitted across the assembled onlookers as the sputtering braziers reflected off of my upraised shield. My symbol. My namesake. My authority. While the perfectly polished outer surface of the shield faced the crowd, I stared at the intricate system of gears and levers attached to my hand. My failure. My shame. The intrusive thoughts began to prickle at the edge of my mind, and I shook away the feeling as I lowered my arm. No. My strength is their strength now.
“Men and women of Kaldan,” I shouted, projecting my voice to the very back of the assembly with a practiced power. “I stand before you tonight in awe of your bravery. You have answered the call to action with strength, courage, and selfless conviction. You have assembled to stem the tide of darkness encroaching on our lands, though this was never your duty. Those who pledged to keep this country safe from all evils have forsaken their oaths. You have taken their places; not by obligation, but by choice. By witness of the Primes, I swear that each and every one of you is more honorable than any knight I have ever met.”
The crowd rippled as the armored men and women nodded their heads in agreement. “You know what awaits us within Shadowmine. You have seen them with your own eyes; many of you have lost friends, neighbors
, and loved ones to the unholy beasts known as Serathids.” A low murmur rumbled through the crowd as the shared pain of Kaldan echoed in each of their chests. “But you also know this: Serathids can be killed. You have seen this with your own eyes as well.” Enthusiastic shouts of “Holy Shield!” and “Commander Sesaude!” called back at me.
During the hard march north from Yoria, we had encountered a solitary Serathid only a day’s journey out from the capital. The majority of the volunteer army was made up of refugees from the northern towns of Kaldan, where the beasts had wandered unopposed for weeks. Fearing that any losses would permanently discourage the newly assembled force, I had faced it alone, taking only a minor wound to my left forearm for the effort. The boost in morale at seeing the Serathid fall was so powerful that we reached the mine an entire day ahead of schedule, despite the terrible traveling conditions on the unkempt roads.
I raised my shield above my head again, and the crowd gradually grew quiet once more. “I cannot say for certain what we will face within the mine. Only the dead hold those secrets. But, prepared or not, our objective remains the same: Eliminate the Serathid threat, or, if the enemy force proves too powerful, collapse Shadowmine permanently.” The contingency plan was not one I relished. The vast majority of Kaldan’s usable ores and gemstones came from the single network of mines beneath the twin mountains, so sealing it would devastate the country for years to come. I will pay any cost to save this country. I owe them that, at least.
“If we are to succeed tonight, I will need the help of each and every one of you. Men and women of Kaldan, can I put my faith in you to carry us through the night?” A loud chorus of shouts answered me. “Will you shield me, as I have shielded you?” Another round of cheers echoed through the night, louder and more synchronous than the first. “Will you enter history with me tonight as the bravest army ever assembled?” The passionate roar that filled my ears strengthened my resolve and convinced me, just for a moment, that our plan would succeed.
Restart Again: Volume 3 Page 45
