Of Killers and Kings

by Will Wight

  He had repeatedly assured Furman that he was going to wait until the battle was over.

  It seemed his ambition had outweighed his self-preservation.

  Before he was captured by his fellow alchemists, Furman executed a perfect swan dive over the edge. He had likely intended to swim over, but he was caught midair by a cloud of shining purple butterflies.

  “Well done, Mason,” Yala said as he was carried over the side.

  Furman adjusted his glasses. “Not a problem, High Councilor. He was the most irritating human being I have ever encountered. But what are you going to do with him now?”

  Back over on The Final Solution, Bareius stood up and gasped for breath.

  After years of fleeing Bliss of the Blackwatch, Bareius’ protections against assassination had reached truly paranoid levels. Even with Furman feeding them information, they had not been able to determine a way to definitely kill Bareius short of Shera tearing out his life with Syphren. The man drank a regeneration elixir with every meal.

  “We traded him,” Shera said, turning back to the captain. “We’ve lost too much time, Captain. Catch us up.”

  Furman’s eyebrows lifted. “If he survives, he will make a…tenacious enemy.”

  “We sent his escape plan to Bliss.”

  “Oh,” Furman said. “Very good, then.”

  Bastion’s Shadow approached a scene of such chaos that it was difficult to unravel the details.

  First, the sky had been reduced to shards of normal blue between an infinite void, where a battle raged that couldn’t be comprehended by the human mind. Shera had to keep from looking up, and even so, she fought back a headache whenever Urg’naut traded blows with the Outsider.

  The world flashed as they struck one another, the air crackled, and if Shera looked any closer, she risked losing her reason.

  That was only the backdrop for the earthly battle. The ships of the Navigator fleet were scattered, individual spots of color amidst a raging sea. The water rose in peaks as though whipped by a fierce storm, though Bastion’s Shadow sailed over only mild chop.

  Around the Navigators, the water boiled with Elderspawn.

  They crawled up over some ships, gnawing through the hulls of others. Shera couldn’t make out the details of the tiny creatures even with a spyglass; to her they looked like ants emerging from the water to swarm over the corpse of a bigger animal.

  But they had larger cousins. Real Elders. Those she could see all too clearly.

  A tube-shaped creature chewed on an entire ship with its wide circular maw filled with teeth. She would call it a worm if it weren’t so bulbous and fat. A massive, muscled humanoid fish-creature—similar to the one bound to Calder Marten’s ship—slapped cannonballs out of the air as they were fired by a ship that left a fiery trail on the water.

  Finally, the actual monster tied to The Testament wrestled with a kraken.

  The Elder was manacled to the bottom of Calder’s ship, as it always had been, and it already looked bloody and wounded. The creature was wrapped in tentacles, and it roared to reveal a mouth full of triangular teeth. As it did, it shoved the kraken beneath the waves. A giant squid could surely breathe underwater, but otherwise she might have thought it was drowning its enemy.

  The captain of Bastion’s Shadow had already spotted The Testament and was changing their heading accordingly, but Shera was more concerned about the battle in the background. The real battle.

  Behind everything else, the three Regents fought Kelarac.

  Shera’s view was obscured by distance and disorder, but she saw enough of Kelarac to identify him. A shark’s fin taller than the mast of a ship jutted out from above everything else, and his massive bulk reminded her of an island.

  Kelarac had the form of a shark with hide resembling stony, pitted skin. A rusted steel blindfold was bolted to his face.

  Shera had seen a shark similar to him before, in a vision that the Emperor had shared with her through the Optasia. That fish had been smaller than this one—though still the size of a ship—and had no blindfold. Had it been Kelarac himself, in a reduced form? Had she been present when the Emperor faced down a Great Elder?

  Well, I’m definitely here this round.

  In her black armor, Estyr Six hovered in the air over Kelarac. She launched one of her massive iron spikes with such force that Shera heard the crack of it tearing the air a second later.

  She was either levitating the other two or they had their own methods of flying, because the other Regents flew at her side. Jorin swept his sword down, hurling a wave of corruption, and Loreli surrounded them all in a protective bubble of white light.

  Kelarac did not fight in a way that Shera would have expected from his form. He seemed to simply be circling the water beneath them as a storm of weapons fought the Regents on their own.

  Titanic, semi-transparent chains erupted from the ocean, knocking Estyr’s iron spike aside. Jorin’s attack vanished into a tiny spot that Shera couldn’t quite make out, but if she squinted into her spyglass, she thought the spot might have been a jar that swallowed Jorin’s power.

  A double-bladed axe the size of a full-grown man slid out of the void above Loreli, shining sickly green. It crashed down onto her barrier and split it into two halves.

  All in all, the closer Shera’s ship drew, the more she began to feel like they were sliding straight into a nightmare.

  “Light and life,” Meia whispered. “What can we do?”

  Shera, as was her habit, set aside her fear. Her unease. All her uncertainties about the future.

  She had a mission.

  “We can kill Calder Marten,” she said.

  She unleashed Bastion’s Veil.

  The mist pushed into the army of Elderspawn, shoving many of them back and leaving others confused. She could feel some of the weakest fleeing for deeper waters, and the silver-blue mist pressed against the larger Elders, weakening them.

  But it alerted them too.

  Shera could see very little with her eyes, but through the Veil, she saw the Elder with the circular mouth stop chewing. It let half a ship fall to splash in the ocean and turned toward them, shooting through the water with surprising speed.

  “Elder incoming!” Shera and Meia shouted at the same time.

  More helpfully, Meia also lit up the mist with a floating orange eye in the direction of the Elder. She pointed. “Mark!”

  “Gardeners,” Shera called. “Your turn.”

  Shera was saving her concentration and her stamina for maintaining Bastion’s Veil and killing Calder Marten. She hadn’t been able to witness her small army of new Soulbound fight the Elders Urg’naut.

  Now the time had come for them to prove their worth.

  The circular mouth, bigger than their ship, erupted from the mist with a roar that sounded like a thousand saws chewing through wood at once. It loomed over them, teeth spinning, bringing with it a stench like a thousand open graves.

  The monster was met by two firing cannons, a sapphire spear, a jet of pressurized water strong enough to slice through steel, a crimson flame, a flock of purple butterflies, and Meia.

  She shot off from the deck, slashed the creature a dozen times while weaving through friendly fire, and then leaped back to the ship.

  She even backflipped in the air, which Shera thought was showing off.

  The Elder quivered. Its body slowed.

  Only then did it fall into a thousand bloody chunks.

  Shera wasn’t sure whose Soulbound power caused the delay, but it was a nice touch.

  As a rule, Consultants didn’t cheer, but the sound that rose from the group was definitely approving. Shera suspected they had almost as many combat-capable Soulbound on this one ship as the rest of the fleet had combined.

  Through Bastion’s Veil, Shera caught sight of The Testament. They were close.

  And…was that Jyrine Marten on the deck?

  She wore a long golden dress, her hair tied back into a single braid. Her emeral
d Soulbound Vessel, once mounted in an earring, was now embedded directly into the center of her forehead. She looked healthy, confident, and deadly.

  Calder stood in the Emperor’s armor with his helmet off, red hair sweaty and bare to the air. Giant worms squirmed over the deck, as did what had probably been giant worms very recently. The wood was a slick mass of dark gore.

  Calder held his orange Awakened blade and stood at the edge of the deck, back to his wife, looking down into the ocean.

  For a moment, Shera wondered if she had been played again. If Bareius and Calder Marten and Jyrine had all planned this together, delaying Shera long enough that Calder could meet up with his wife and betray them to the Elders.

  If Calder took one more step, he would go down to Kelarac.

  Bastion’s Shadow loomed close, but not so close that Shera could make the jump. She gestured to Meia, urging her to close the gap first...

  …until Calder turned and faced his wife.

  Jyrine responded with a thin stream of green fire, and Shera changed her mind.

  “Meia,” Shera asked, “can you carry me over from here?”

  Rather than responding, Meia scooped her up beneath one arm. It would be hard to maintain the element of surprise, but Jyrine was carving the Emperor’s armor off Calder in pieces. Clearly she wasn’t trying to kill Calder, or she would have aimed for his head. She was trying to leave him vulnerable to Kelarac.

  That was exactly what Shera was here to prevent.

  Just as Meia was about to leap over from one ship to another, she froze. Evidently, with her Soulbound power, Meia saw the same thing that Shera did.

  Calder’s figure blurring as he closed the distance between him and his wife, slamming his fist into her ribs in a punch that sent her rolling across the deck like a tumbleweed.

  Shera hadn’t even seen him don his helmet, but he wore it. Now he marched on Jyrine like a faceless titan, driving his sword into her shoulder.

  “I didn’t know he had it in him,” Meia said. She sounded impressed.

  Shera tapped her on the elbow, reminding Meia to release her. “Looks like we can take it slow. Benji, can you lift me over?”

  Benji was waving his hand through the cloud of purple butterflies in irritation as though trying to shoo them away. “Yes,” he admitted.

  “…then do it.”

  He sighed but agreed.

  Although, as Shera was carried over a stretch of Elderspawn-filled waters carried by a flock of brightly colored butterflies, she did see Benji’s position. This would not be the most dignified way to travel.

  It was effective, though, and that was what mattered.

  Shera set down on the stern railing, her figure concealed by Bastion’s Veil. Her vision through the mist and Syphren’s sense of everyone’s presence helped keep her oriented as she moved herself, creeping along the deck.

  When she checked on Calder Marten again, he had ripped his wife apart.

  She was bleeding from a dozen wounds, the most grievous of which was a slash across her face that tore her mouth and nose in two.

  She begged for mercy, and Shera braced herself for Calder to grant it. He was going to let her live, and then Shera was going to have to finish the job herself. She drew her shears.

  Calder stomped Jyrine straight through the railing.

  The wood splintered, his wife fell through, and the body made a splash as she hit the water.

  In the mist, Shera froze. His extraordinary strength and speed were new—they had to have something to do with the way he had survived Syphren. Alchemy of some kind, she was sure.

  But more than that, she was shocked by his sudden and decisive brutality. If he had always been so heartless, he would have been a far more frightening enemy.

  Then again, Shera would have had an easier time understanding his motivations. She might have liked him more.

  She sheathed her shears and settled down to watch, but she was sure her job was over. Calder had resisted the call of the Great Elder.

  Maybe they could reach an understanding after all.

  The other three members of Calder’s crew made their way onto the deck, trading comments and picking their way through worm pieces, but Shera didn’t listen. The Regents seemed to have Kelarac under control, after which they only had to clean up the remaining lesser Elders. They were almost safe.

  Then a deep masculine voice echoed in Shera’s mind.

  It laughed and laughed until laughter was all she could hear. The water around them began to shine green, and Shera dashed to the railing, looking down.

  The water beneath them was glowing and spinning as though they floated at the center of a whirlpool, but the ship remained still. Shera cast her mind out through Bastion’s Veil and looked to the Regents.

  Kelarac’s stone shark form was crumbling. Pieces fell off into the ocean as he dissolved to rock and sand, his laughter echoing in the hearts of men. He disintegrated in seconds, and the last thing to fall was his steel blindfold. It kicked up a huge wave as it hit the sea.

  Then a beacon of green light shone from beneath the ship, and something else drowned out the Great Elder’s laughter in Shera’s mind: her Vessels.

  They spoke in unison, delivering her an impulse that needed no translation.

  FLEE.

  Jyrine’s body rose from the Aion Sea, her gold dress spotless and even more ornate than before, her flesh whole.

  But Jyrine wasn’t the one wearing that body anymore.

  Invisible power crashed against Bastion’s Veil, breaking Shera’s vision and dispersing the mist like a strong wind. She got a taste of the Intent that opposed her: it was bottomless, infinite, unfathomable greed.

  She dropped to the deck, trembling, praying not to be noticed as Kelarac hovered over the deck in Jyrine Tessella Marten’s flesh.

  Kelarac smiled through Jyrine’s lips, revealing a mouth full of yellow shark’s teeth. “This body barely passes muster…but any port in a storm, as they say. And neither of us are willing to let you go.”

  Kelarac wore gold rings on every finger and layers of jeweled necklaces. Jyrine’s face was covered from nose to hairline with a polished steel plate, the very center embedded with the most impressive jewel of all: her emerald Soulbound Vessel.

  He continued speaking, but Shera noticed what he hadn’t: a pile of wood that had once been a ship levitating before Estyr Six. The Regent gestured, and the wooden missile struck like a fist from heaven.

  The Testament buckled under the impact, knocking Shera from her feet, but she used the motion to roll and grab the railing.

  She looked up, hoping to see that Kelarac had been knocked off The Testament’s deck.

  Only to realize that the Great Elder had noticed the attack after all.

  He burned through the wood with green fire. Both halves of the wrecked ship slid away from him to either side, charred in the middle.

  But Estyr had arrived. She followed her first attack with another of her iron spikes, a divine spear descending in judgment.

  The hand of a bronze titan reached up from the depths and caught it midair.

  A moment later, the statue at the end of that arm rose from the water. It was a giant that loomed over all the ships, and it was made in the image of a woman with a long coat and a crown of reptilian skulls.

  Shera’s heart sank. She recognized the statue.

  Years ago, the Emperor had taught her some precautionary tales of those who had dealt with Kelarac. One particular example involved the Four Protectors of Beldin, ancient bronze statues of the four Regents. They were crafted by Soulbound and invested by the Emperor himself to defend Beldin, a city in the region of Erin, but the city leaders had become so afraid of Elder attacks that they had sunk the statues down to Kelarac in a bargain for peace.

  In seeking defense, they had traded away their only protection.

  The Emperor had personally executed them all.

  All the Emperor’s stories, it seemed, ended in mankind doing som
ething foolish.

  So Shera knew that not only were these statues meant to defend against the possible rising of a Great Elder, but they had also been sunk thousands of miles from here. Kelarac had somehow transported them here.

  And this was the statue of Estyr Six.

  There were three more.

  Sure enough, Jorin’s effigy soon joined Estyr’s with bronze sword in hand, hat on his head, and glasses over his eyes. Followed by Loreli in her armor and her braided hair, then a squat man with a tall staff. Alagaeus.

  Four bronze Regents rose to face their living counterparts.

  Calder rushed at Kelarac below as the Regents joined battle against the statues. Alagaeus’ giant staff crashed through The Testament’s mast, sending it crashing down next to Shera even as the representation of Jorin’s sword met the real thing.

  The noise, chaos, and impact on the boards deafened Shera. She was drowning in a battle that was too overwhelming to fully process.

  So she shut it out.

  She dove into the ice, letting all her disorientation and her fear freeze over. She had never been so grateful not to feel as deeply as others did.

  Because she could keep her eye on the goal.

  She had come here to kill Kelarac’s vessel, and that was what she intended to do.

  She levered herself over the railing, holding on and sliding slowly down the side. The wood bucked beneath her hands, threatening to spill her into the wall, but from this angle she couldn’t be spotted.

  Slowly, just a little at a time, she began feeding more power into Bastion’s Veil.

  Kelarac had broken the mist on his arrival, and he could do it again…but he would have to spend his attention to do so. She was betting he wouldn’t distract himself. And the cover the Veil provided could mean the difference between a successful attempt on his life and throwing Shera’s own life away.

  Her mind flashed back to the last time she had crawled up the side of The Testament to assassinate a target. Not so long ago, in the grand scheme of things.

  It felt like a decade.

  Lucan had been alive. Shera hadn’t been a Soulbound. There had been no Guild War. She had never lost control and killed a Guild Head.