“We’ll get to that in a moment. In the meantime, I’ll tell you that the power of a mage to move faster than any human should, when their life is threatened, is quite a potent trick.”
“Even with an avalanche?”
“Oh, quite. You haven’t dealt with a powerful mage before, have you?”
Eric thought of Kara and the young girls who had defeated Indica. Did they count? How did Romarus compare to them?
“In any case, though, I hid. I did not want to face Ragnor. I accept this makes me a coward, but frankly, after escaping, I was so weak that if I didn’t rest, I would hinder your progress. I waited until morning, and when I rose, I heard commotion from the temple entrance. That is when I saw Artemia. And…”
He paused, grimacing. Eric could sense the chill now, and it was not because of the ice and snow surrounding them. In fact, he just now remembered the entrance was supposed to be blocked with snow. It was wide open.
“Her horde of monsters. Demons.”
Eric stepped past Romarus and looked up. There were no more monsters encased in ice. Only empty spaces where they had once resided.
“What in the name of Hydor… what happened?” Eric said.
“Take a look outside,” Romarus said. “You’re going to have to go out that way eventually. You might as well see now what awaits you.”
This felt like a bad dream, worse than the ones where Ragnor haunted him. At least in those, he knew what he faced, he knew how he would “die,” and he knew what he would do.
But awakening to a second chance with Artemia having monsters, the demons of the temple gone, and something horrifying awaiting outside that Romarus wouldn’t even speak of wasn’t a nightmare. It was hell.
He walked forward, his grip on his sword strengthening in case he needed to summon it for battle. The snow crunched underneath him, but with less resistance than before. He knew something had melted it—perhaps the brown-skinned demon he’d seen here before?
As he got closer to the entrance, a familiar smell overwhelmed him. The stench of a dead dragon. He anticipated seeing a fallen dragon or two.
He was not prepared for the mass carcasses littering the fields around him, so many that he lost count after about fifteen and stopped trying to count altogether after he couldn’t even see certain areas of the mountains. The dragons had piled so far that it looked like a massacre, a slaughter, a genocide of the entire dragon race.
“Artemia did this?” Eric said, shuddering at the thought. If he’d known this is what the guild master could do, he might’ve chosen eternal rest with his family.
“Her monsters did, yes,” Romarus replied grimly. “They all obeyed her willingly and without argument. Ifrit—I believe that was his name—did the most damage, but many of the monsters possessed the power to destroy a dragon with a single spell. It will take the most powerful magi in Dabira just to stand a chance. The empire certainly has no shot.”
“With those things running around, the empire isn’t the concern anymore, if it ever was,” Eric said, but remembering what Romarus went through as a mage, he bit his tongue from saying anything more.
Romarus, though, nodded in agreement, no doubt in his eyes, complete resolution in the movement of his head.
“We must chase Artemia down,” Romarus said. “We must stop her. She is going to go after Bahamut, and either the king of kings will win and wipe out the world after in retaliation, or she will win, gain power, and wipe out the world in her own image.”
Her own image would have the world so perfectly ordered and bowing to her whim that we would all rather die in the mouth of a dragon than serve under her. Assuming she would even allow us to live.
How I didn’t see this before… I was so blind. How could I possibly have believed Ragnor had killed my mother and sister? Mom was too good a dragon hunter. Rey would never go near dragons so young.
Stupid, Eric, stupid.
But you can fix it now. Remember what Chrystos told you about her.
He had to find a new focus. And right now, that was on returning to Dabira, finding Abe, and figuring out what in the name of Hydor to do next. It certainly entailed chasing down Artemia and stopping her.
But then the question became, how would he ever stop her?
“Will you fight with us, Romarus?”
“Against her? I would be foolish to.”
But even as he spoke, he laughed in resigned fashion, running his hands through his gray hair.
“But I was foolish not to protect the girls when they went to Caia and foolish to think I could make up for it by joining you two to Ragnor. I might as well make it a pattern of foolishness here.”
“And the others in Dabira? They were very reticent to join us when we came through the first time.”
“With good reason, it would now seem!”
Romarus again laughed, this time crossing his arms and dropping his head.
“I think if anyone saw what Artemia was planning, they would know she has to be stopped. So yes. I say we make our way north to Dabira. We amass an army of magi. And then we intercept Artemia and stop her.”
Eric’s heartbeat accelerated in excitement. He even let a wry smile come to his face.
But then a depressing, mood-killing thought consumed him.
“Do we have a chance?”
Romarus shrugged, his smile going nowhere.
“I don’t think we have much choice, do we?” he said. As if to make the point, he moved past Eric, beginning his ascent over the mountain. “It’s a long walk home, we might as well get started now.”
Eric watched for just a second before he knew what he had to do.
“Indeed,” he said as he jogged to catch up to Romarus.
They scaled the side of the mountain, even as night fell. They used the glow of the moon to light their way, using it to get to the side of the mountains facing Dabira. He scaled down, not wanting to stop. He could not stop, not as long as Artemia had a head start. He could rest at the appropriate time way down the line.
He had his sword ready the whole time for a behemoth or a dragon that might become more curious about how he tasted. But none came, giving Eric room to dive into his thoughts.
What would Artemia really want? Was defeating the legendary dragons really what she sought? Did she, like he, struggle with a deeper meaning—even if her meaning was far more selfish and less altruistic?
She’d always stated she dreamed to hunt the three legendary dragons. She’d gotten Indica. She’d brought about the downfall of Ragnor. But to take on the one that only a mage could fight seemed suicidal.
Would she really go after the mightiest of them all? Bahamut?
No one could defeat it. What makes her think she’s so special?
Eric could not imagine a scenario in which this dragon would go down so easily. He could imagine plenty of scenarios in which Artemia and her monsters went down easily, but to kill what was essentially the dragon god seemed highly improbable.
Just before the dawn of the first night, Eric saw flares of fire and sparks of lightning appear far off in the distance. The mileage between them was so great that he heard no sound, but he didn’t need that sense to know the truth.
He wasn’t far removed from Artemia.
He wasn’t far removed from the true dragon, the true danger to Hydor.
CHAPTER 5: ZELDA
The days passed as Zelda moved south with Abe. She tried to hunt with her magic, but Abe would only allow her to do so once per day, usually in the morning after a restful night of sleep. He said that he wanted to maintain his level of skill as a hunter and she needed to sleep and conserve her energy.
Zelda acquiesced, but with some trepidation. When she faced Ragnor, she suspected only she would have the ability to take down the legendary dragon. No human could. Not Abe. Not Eric. Not the emperor. No one. Only a mage. And, perhaps, only a mage as powerful as she.
But even with that knowledge, could she really do it? Should she turn around and ask
Tetra and Yeva to abandon their plans for her? Maybe I can. But… if it took a moment near death to defeat a guard, what would it take for a dragon?
More than once, she and Abe had to take the circuitous route to avoid the behemoths which wandered the plains. Every time Zelda saw one, it triggered an ugly flashback to her time in the cave. How perilously close had she come to dying? The sheer luck of a missed attack was all that had let her live. How close, she thought, the boundary was between life and death. How she had straddled it so much in the last two months—she knew her luck wouldn’t last forever.
When the third night arrived, she found a nearby tree on which to settle. Abe dropped his equipment and grunted.
“Longest hunt I’ve been on in some time,” he said with a chuckle.
Zelda was curious. She knew much about Abe’s personality, but seemingly little about his job. Dragon hunting, after all, required a great degree of skill and almost foolish bravery in the face of nightly death.
“How were your hunts?” she asked. “I’m sorry if you don’t want to talk—”
“No, quite all right, Zelda,” he said. “Dangerous. They’re frightening and a fool’s game. The only reason I took it on? Look at me. Listen to me speak. Do I sound like a scholar? Do I sound like someone smart enough to sell anything? I have been blessed with quick reflexes, a swordsman’s skills, and madness that both helps me fight dragons and makes me blind to what those I like do.”
Zelda’s face went blank, and for a brief moment, Abe kept a serious face. Then he let out a gentle, reassuring laugh, leaving Zelda more confused.
“It’s true what I said, but it’s also true that there are benefits. The brotherhood and sisterhood I had growing up in the guild was unlike those who have more wealth or more brain power will ever experience, and I thoroughly enjoyed being a mentor to Eric.”
“It sounds like being a mage,” Zelda said. “If I saw another mage, I instantly felt another connection with them, even if we had nothing in common. But it’s so bad being a mage. The empire…”
Abe nodded as if to prevent her from revisiting the nightmare of just a few days prior.
“The empire must pay for what it has done, I agree,” he said. “That is why we are going to Ragnor. We will meet up with any of the survivors, grow our forces, and then do what needs to be done.”
Zelda knew Abe agreed with her, but sadly, there was no way he could ever understand what it was like to be a mage. He could never know what it was like to have to keep a personal part of yourself so secret that even just a sliver of it would result in your death. He could never understand what it was like to see a crowd of rabid, organized town folk gather under the banner of their leader, chanting horrible things about her kind, including threats of death. He could never understand what it meant to be a persecuted part of society.
She didn’t fault him for it. He had no way of choosing to be a mage or not. It was something that one was born with. No one chose to come into Hydor as a mage and suffer the slings and arrows and the piercing of cruel, bloody words. But she had to understand that Abe could only fight to a certain level of justice and would never reach the level she did.
“How are you feeling, Zelda? Do you still think about what happened?”
Every hour. Every minute. Almost every second.
Any time Zelda wasn’t talking or hunting—and even sometimes during those moments—the downfall of Dabira crossed her mind. What more could she have done to save the city? What if she’d watched the guards instead of Tyus, knowing full well those men served the emperor and not the young boy? What if she’d used her magic quicker? What if she’d helped Tetra at the first ceremony instead of running? What if, what if, what if…
“All the time,” Zelda said.
Abe bit his lip as he nodded, his eyes going down, his arms crossing. Zelda had to admit no one without the use of magic had ever tried to relate to her like Abe. Perhaps, if he had taught Eric well, they could cross the mythical boundary the empire had thrown up and show the people what it meant to coexist.
“I wish I had something better to say, but unfortunately, I am someone who plays things over in my head to an unhealthy degree. I can only say that as time goes by, the frequency and the intensity of said moments diminishes.”
He looked to the sky.
“The light of the day will vanish within the hour,” he said. “I’m going to go hunt us a boar.”
“I want to come,” Zelda said immediately. “I feel fine. I’m well-rested. Thank you for only making me use my magic once per day. But I am ready to hunt now. I promise.”
“I did say I was following you, not the other way around, so I suppose I won’t stop you.”
Zelda rose up so rapidly it was as if magic had pushed her out of her seat. She and Abe moved away from the side of the fields, scanning the area.
Boars had become less frequent this far south in Hydor, but there were still a couple in the far distance. It took little effort for Abe and Zelda to find it, and Abe nocked his arrow as Zelda crouched down.
“Let me try and hit it with some magic,” Zelda said. “I may just burn the arrow. But I want to see if I can make it work.”
“I have more than a dozen of these in my quiver. Losing one would not harm me.”
Zelda smiled. Abe pulled the arrow back. Zelda imagined its flight, how quickly it would move, how it would strike the boar. She imagined Abe’s fingers releasing the string, the tension of the string snapping the arrow forward, the arrow starting to twist upon itself.
And then an incredible thing happened.
Time actually seemed to slow down.
She could see Abe’s index finger slowly pull off, signaling the rest of the arrow would follow. She could see the arrow depart from its rested state, the string’s tension releasing. She saw the arrow leave the bow, the string snap against Abe’s forearm—he had held it too close—and begin to rise to cover the distance.
This was her magic, she knew. But she had not even commanded such magic to happen. She didn’t even think she was that good of an internal magic user, but then she remembered her teleportation spell. What other things did she have that she didn’t realize?
She saw the arrow reach its peak in the arc. She would have to cast her spell quickly if she wanted to use it.
She shifted to bringing the pulse of fire into her hands. She felt it shoot out, the magic leaving her hands without a medium and without damaging her, and reach the arrow as it came down into its descent.
Then, all at once, normal speed returned. The boar shrieked and went up in flames as the arrow pierced its hide.
“I have never seen that done before,” Abe said, and his awe wasn’t subtle. “I have seen a mage embed a weapon with an element, but I have never seen a mage add an element to a weapon already fired.”
He looked at her, and the dumbfounded expression on his face made Zelda blush.
“Just… who are you?” he said with a laugh.
He didn’t mean it as an insult, and while Zelda didn’t take it as one, when she didn’t exactly know how to answer the question other than by saying, “I’m a mage,” she felt a bit embarrassed.
“I’m only teasing you,” Abe said. “Come. Let’s feas—”
But before he could finish the word, a loud shriek came from the south.
It sounded like the shriek of a bird, but it was different. The intensity was far more shrill, the voice sounded warped, and it was much deeper than a normal bird’s cry was.
Zelda gazed over and found it. A massive bird with what looked like multiple colors soared through the sky. It bore some sort of helmet on it. Its eyes gazed over the field.
Then she felt a firm hand on her shoulder yank her down. It hurt and Zelda grunted, but Abe put a hand over her mouth.
Moments later, when she heard the clopping of a horse and the roar of monsters, she understood the hunter’s rushed action.
The clopping became louder as the horse moved at a near-sprint. Zelda didn�
��t have time to contemplate what had happened before an entire cadre of monsters appeared about a hundred feet west of her, stopping suddenly.
“Master,” a voice from above came. It was the bird’s. “I saw two humans out here. I swear to it.”
“Is that so,” a female voice, one cold but somehow enticing said. Where have I heard that voice before? “Strange that you would point this out but I do not even see a single cloth fluttering through the air.”
Zelda didn’t dare peek up, not with Abe’s hand resting tightly over her mouth and with the sound of fire, ice, thunder, and clopping of hooves and boots making their way closer. But peering through the blades of grass, she could see about half a dozen monsters and a woman that looked familiar. Where had she seen her? Not in Dabira, but—
Artemia. She hunted Indica with us. She’s the one Abe was talking about.
“I swear to it, Master,” the bird said.
Zelda imagined the bird flying toward her and Abe, revealing their location, forcing an ugly fight. If Zelda and Abe were to win, it would require skills Zelda didn’t even know she could unlock, unleashed on all the monsters, all without suffering a fatal blow somewhere along the way. The odds didn’t seem too favorable.
“This way, I know—”
“Valigarmanda!” Artemia snapped. “What did I tell you we were going to do when I released you from that temple?”
A pause came.
“Defeat Bahamut.”
Even though Zelda figured that’s what the huntress would do after defeating Ragnor, it sent a chill down her spine. To tackle what not even Garo could defeat? It would’ve seemed suicidal if not for the minions around her.
“And does stopping here to search for stragglers help us in that regard?”
Another pause came. Zelda couldn’t imagine that even for monsters like these, serving someone like Artemia felt pleasant. She suddenly had a lot of questions for Abe, all of which would probably not paint Artemia in the most pleasant of lights.
Legends of the War (War of the Magi Book 3) Page 6
