He sat his back to her, his hand caressing the flames that did not burn hot. He was mumbling things to himself, like an old man who had gone senile. But he was not old, and he still wore the same armor she had last seen him in. Ahna could not move nor speak. She simply stared at this man’s back, frozen, feeling nothing else but the constricting force around her throat.
Her eyes traveled the cave’s walls. Thousands of markings had been carved into the concrete sand—letters, sketches, unintelligible figures, drawings that looked like an annotated map. Some words were in Common, like Nest, Crater, Horde’s Den, others were in native Bravan. In the corner of the cave was a wooden cart that carried items that could have come from a rubbish dump. The man upon which she looked had been wandering this place for decades in search of a way out. In search of his home.
She noticed he had stopped mumbling when her eyes returned to him. His posture was rigid. He knew she was there. He had heard her arrive minutes ago—he just could not turn around.
Cedric could have recognized the sound of her footsteps from miles away. He had never forgotten it, even after all these years. To think that a mere few months in someone’s presence could create such a bond that had survived lifetimes. But he could not turn around now, or she would disappear again. It was better to feel her there than to see her go. After all, she was a mere figment of his daunting imagination.
* * *
She was not moving. She was still behind him, looking at him. Maybe he could peek once, just to see her face. Maybe she would not disappear if he did not address her. And so, Cedric looked over his shoulder, meeting Ahna’s purple eyes. Her dawn blue skin was more real than he remembered. She flinched when their gazes met. It was as though her fortress had just crumbled.
“Well, come on, don’t look at me like that,” Cedric could not stop himself from saying.
His cerulean eyes pierced through the air, reaching her and penetrating her entire being. She had longed for this moment. She had seen this reunion happen in her dreams. Though now that they were both here, in a place that felt so unreal, Ahna just wanted to run. To go away. To escape back in time, back to her house in Miggdra, where she had lived a peaceful life. Back before any of this started.
But she could not go back, now, could she? The lone widow living in the north was long gone. So much had happened since then—all things she could not undo. Moments she did not want to be undone. Moments that defined who she was today.
Taking Kairen under her wing, watching her grow, training her because she could not afford to fight herself. Changing her mind and heart to return to the fight. Meeting the brave heroes of the Resistance. Joshua Sand, David Falco, Lynn, and Diego. Jules Halcyon and Cedric Rover. Thamias. Vanquishing the Curse of Sharr, freeing Bravoure, finding the magi, and bringing them home.
Seeing her mother again.
Ahna fell to her knees, her hands buried in the white sand. She was not crying, but the reality of everything that had happened in the past years crashed on her shoulders. It was not sadness she felt. It was not anger, joy, pain, or blame. It was redemption.
Cedric stood from the fire and came by Ahna, helping her stand on her feet again. He was holding her, delving into her eyes, searching for something.
“You haven’t changed,” he said.
Ahna’s lips trembled. “Neither have you.”
Cedric still looked exactly the same, with his blue eyes and messy brown hair. His beard had grown, though, making him look a tad older—everything to make this world feel real.
“I must say that I’ve gone creative this time,” he said with a chuckle. “You usually wear shrike leathers.”
“What?” Ahna was confused. “Usually?”
Cedric released her and returned to stand by his flames. “When you come to see me.”
“Cedric...” She hesitated. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re not real,” he shot back.
Ahna frowned. “I am real.” She dismissed his words instantly.
Cedric chuckled without looking at her. “That’s what all mirages say. I believed you at first. Now I know you’re just an excuse for my mind not to go insane.”
That pinch down her heart felt more like a blade. Cedric did not believe she was real. Like a tormented soul, Cedric had wandered the Hollow Earth sad and alone. What else had his mind made to cope? Ahna wanted to come closer, but Cedric had already shut her out. She felt sorry for him. How long had he walked here, in this place, far from anything real?
“I’m sorry I’m so late,” Ahna murmured. “There’s so much I want to say...”
Cedric countered with a deep and annoyed sigh. He crouched, ran his fingers through the thin sand, and cast some grains in the white flames. “Alright, I’ll play along,” he said, standing back up and briefly looking at her. “Please, do tell.”
The elf took a few steps forward, wanting to come close to him but not knowing how. She figured the fire was a good place to stand near. She checked him for a reaction, for a sign that indicated he knew she was really here, but there was nothing. Cedric simply stared at the warmthless flames without seeing her.
Ahna swallowed before gathering enough courage to speak. She might as well start from where they left off. “The Resistance won, Cedric. Thanks to you.” She smiled wistfully.
“I barely remember anything,” Cedric declared. It was a lie. Of course, he remembered. He remembered his life, the squalor, the survival, the Resistance. That was not something he could ever forget, not even in centuries.
“I don’t believe you,” Ahna said.
“Sure, you’d know.” Her apparition was his mind’s doing, so she definitely would know. “So you’re saying it’s thanks to me?” A smirk appeared on his face.
“Well…” She did not immediately find the words to say. Cedric’s fate is what had saved them all but also what had brought him here. How could she bring those words to sound when she still felt so guilty about it? “You fought until the end.” That day, the day she lost him, still felt like yesterday for her.
“Look how brave I am...”
“We don’t have much time.” She raised her voice, interrupting the brief silence that had settled. “I have a way to take you back.”
Cedric chuckled again. He turned to Ahna and examined her, scanning her from head to feet. This could not be the Ahna he knew who had just come to rescue him. That idea was a mere dream, a fairytale. “You can’t be her. It’s been decades. Ahna has already lived lifetimes. I don’t think she even remembers me.”
“I remember you.” Ahna instantly stepped closer to him. She was right by his chest, raising her chin to look into his eyes. She wanted to hold him, to caress his face and let him know she was here, but he would not accept it. How could she get to him? What could she say to convince him?
She reached out a hand out, but her muscles failed her. She had to awkwardly retract her arm, or it would stay hovering in the air forever.
Ahna inhaled deeply. “Whether it’s months or centuries, I can never forget you.”
Cedric closed his eyes. He struggled so hard not to give in. It was not her, it could not be. His mind was toying with him so he would not attempt to leave this place like he had done over and over. It was his mind using Ahna to bring him peace, the peace he had no wish for. Because he would find a way out of this godsforsaken place. One way or another, he would.
“I remember when it was just your voice,” Cedric said distantly. “Then I started seeing your face. And it all went silent. I thought my mind had let me win! But it’s the second time now in days, and it’s really starting to get on my nerves.”
Ahna closed her eyes to hold back tears. In vain, because they rolled freely down her cheek. Cedric frowned.
“Oh now, that’s cheap,” he jerked. “You know I can’t bear to see you cry.”
A question appeared in her mind. All these times she had dreamed of him, in the darkest of places to this wasteland, had it been real? Had she, somehow, ma
naged to reach out to him? What kind of power was that?
It was inexplicable at best. There was nothing that could explain a bond between two mortals stretching across planes of existence.
She was still bombarding her thoughts with these questions when his arms wrapped around her. She felt his warmth and the caress of his breath over the crown of her head. He pulled her against his chest and breathed the scent of her hair.
“Gods, you feel so real,” he said in a plaintive murmur. “Even your smell...”
Ahna jerked him back. “It’s because I am real, Cedric!” The frustration rose. She wanted to scream at him, to hit him in the face so she could show him how real she was. “Does this feel real?” she yelled as she shoved him in the chest. “How about this?” She swung a punch, which he dodged, fortunately. Why would he not listen? She had to make him; she had to prove to him that she was here to bring him home.
Cedric stared at her incredulously. Now, this was something new. It was almost believable.
In his pause, he welcomed her punch against the side of his jaw. This was getting him angry. He pushed her back, surprising her. She almost toppled over, but she caught his arm and used the momentum of her fall to raise herself up. She slipped behind him and smashed her hand against his back. He fell face first in the sand.
The mork shan, a move he would surely recognize, the dokkalfar slither.
He tried rolling to his back, but she had crawled on top of him, and she pinned him down by the shoulders. Her chest heaved from this scuffle. Her purple eyes pierced through his. She was panting above his lips. Her silver curls fell to the side of her neck and brushed against his face.
“Tell me this doesn’t feel real,” she growled and went for his lips.
She first touched a stone statue before Cedric relaxed and accepted the kiss. She had done this without thinking, without weighing all the pros and cons. A sudden strike that she damned well deserved. She needed it. She needed to feel him. How could he bring so much passion out of her? Fury she needed to release, and the only way this was possible was by locking lips with him.
At that moment, nothing else mattered. Not even Bravoure, Jules, Thamias. Not even Luthan.
His tongue met hers as he gave in even more. His hands slithered from the bottom of her back to the nape of her neck. He ran his fingers through her silver hair before clenching a fist and pulling her head back. He raised himself up so he could gain control. He wanted to see the look in her eyes because maybe this was real, and if it was, he had to make sure. He had to see into her through the purple window that led to her soul. He had to know one single damned thing.
“I lost count of the days, Ahna,” Cedric grunted. “What took you so long?”
Ahna burst into tears in his arms. She did not know whether she was crying or screaming. It sounded like both at the same time. She felt foolish for it, putting all this on the one man that had driven her to pursue her quest. The one idea that had kept her going. Nothing else mattered. And now, she was emptying her eyes, screaming until her voice would fail her and she would be silenced forever in the crook of his chest.
Cedric had begun caressing her hair to soothe her, still holding her. “I waited for so long...” He was crying too.
Ahna tried to speak, but only confused moans and snorts escaped her mouth. Cedric simply held her and hushed her with a calming whistle.
“I was going to save you,” Ahna cried. “I promised I would. I was going to come back from Luna and find a way to save you.”
“Luna?” Cedric wiped some of her messy curls away so he could see her face better.
Ahna had no energy to speak of her adventure on the moon, so she kissed him again. One long and intense kiss that ended with her forehead rested against his.
“I’m not even sure what happened,” she murmured. “But I’ve been gone for far too long.”
A long pause followed. Cedric had not much of a clue what to make of this, but he knew for sure she was real. She had finally come to him, after all these years. He did not understand what she had just said, but it did not matter anymore. She was here. Ahna was here, in his arms, and he was not going to let her go.
* * *
They both sat by the crackling flames without heat. Ahna had asked him about it. This had always been his way to feel safe, even if the fire brought nothing but nice decor. She sat beside him, her head rested on his arm. They were silent for a long time, remembering what each other’s presence had once felt like. Everything was different now, yet what they felt being so close to each other was just like one hundred and ninety-one years ago.
“I didn’t even say goodbye,” Ahna murmured to the flames. Cedric turned his face to her to show he was listening. “Kairen and David...Lynn and Diego...I disappeared, and they went on without me.”
“I’m sure they did a great job,” he retorted, before realizing what that sounded like. “I mean, they were the most resourceful people I knew.”
Ahna was only now processing that she would never see them again, those she loved. When she had first set eyes on the Falco-Dallor grave, something in her had hoped she could somehow travel back. Now, she knew she would never be able to. She had to make peace with that fact that hurt more than she wanted it to. Cedric had long since moved on from that pain.
“Jules is still here, though,” Ahna said with a wistful smile. She could hold on to that. “He traveled with me to the moon and back.”
The moon again...the more she spoke about it, the more he wished to know what in Hell had happened there. But first, Cedric was relieved that, out of all the people he had known, his favorite lieutenant was still around. Joy sparked in his heart as he thought of seeing him again, the young shrike who could kill with a glance. He had not forgotten that face either.
“So, tell me, Archmage,” Cedric began, using words he had said long ago. “What’s the plan?”
Their eyes met, and he smiled at her. He could not stop himself from kissing her and feeling the softness of her lips again. Who knew, maybe her plan would fail. But at least he would have touched her one last time.
Ahna took something out of her belt satchel. It was a medallion of some sort with an odd symbol on it. She had placed it in the center of her palm, and it glowed as her hand came closer to him.
She was looking at it for a moment before answering his question. She had to tell him. Cedric’s soul was in the Hollow Earth, but whatever he had left behind was still in the tangible world, in Bravoure, ready to be awakened.
“Bravoure is about to be overrun by a tide of undead,” she revealed. “I don’t know how to explain, but part of you is still there. What your body became after the naming.”
Ahna mentioning the naming urged memories out of the coffins buried in his mind. Cedric remembered it, his final moment in the tangible world before had been sucked into a maelstrom of unending darkness.
It was as though Ahna had noticed what he recalled at this moment. “Do you remember?” she asked.
Cedric gave her a distant nod. “That’s the last thing I remember before...” He paused. “Before everything went black.”
The beast he had become, the void dragon that had scorched the battlefield of Orgna with funeral flames, had never truly been him. It had been part of him, a shadow, perhaps. A mere memory. Cedric had been sucked into the Shadow Realm, only to be discarded, for gods knew what reasons. That was still a mystery to him and to Ahna. Why had he not been consumed like every soul that dares strike a deal with the Shadows?
“This is a soul sigil,” Ahna explained, looking at the talisman that glowed blue. “I can carry your soul out of the Hollow Earth with it.”
Cedric smiled like she had just told him something obvious.
“What’s wrong?” she wondered.
“It’s just amazing how powerful you are.” She could name a Dragonborn, teleport, travel to the moon and back through time, and now, she could help him escape this place that had kept him trapped all this time. “What will you
do with my soul?”
Ahna realized what she had to tell him. The last part of the plan. Cedric’s soul must be returned to his body to undo what had been done. To rectify the error. Cedric and his body were in an undefined state. The only way to amend this was to unite the two.
But this also meant one thing. Cedric would be freed from the undead curse by reuniting his body and soul, and he would be allowed to die. That was how it worked with the undead. That was how it had always worked.
She could not hide this fact from him.
“I will return it to Terra and free the void dragon,” she said with a certain sadness etched in her voice.
“Why that look?” he asked.
Ahna swallowed and looked deep into his ocean blue eyes. “Once I return your soul, you will die. The undead curse will be undone, and you will finally be able to ascend to the Heavens.”
Cedric took a deep breath. He had not expected that answer. It struck him like a knife to the heart. Did he want that? Did he want to die, after all he had missed? He felt short of breath, even if he was just a soul. But the more he thought about it, the more sense it made. Death did not sound so bad. Death was better than being here, alone, in an endless game against his mind. It was better than becoming like the creatures he hid from, those that roamed this place.
It was all right, he could do that. He would see his friends again, the people he loved.
He shrugged. “Provided that I am allowed in the Heavens, of course,” he said in a jocular tone.
Ahna chuckled. She had feared his reaction. The last thing she wanted to do was make him more desperate. What he had just said lit a warm flame in her heart, one that compensated for the chill of the white fire.
“Of course, you’d be allowed in the Heavens, Cedric,” she said like it was more than evident. “If I have a place there, so do you.”
“Then I guess I’ll be waiting for you there.”
He held a longing smile. The flames reflected in his eyes like resolute sparkles. He kissed her again, not letting her respond or show any reaction. He just wanted her to feel how grateful he was. She closed her eyes and cherished this moment. He took her hand in his and led it to his chest, where she could lay the talisman flat. As he slowly withered into a flow of blue light, he pressed her close to him, so she could feel his warmth one last time. Ahna only opened her eyes once Cedric was gone.
Tempest of Bravoure Page 21
