by Wight, Will
Alin didn’t care. He was in no hurry. Red gnomes circled the crumbling building, and the roof was covered by blue floating jellies. Come to think of it, he never had learned what those jellies were called. He should find out.
With trembling hands, the Avernus Traveler poured the handful of herbs into the bag. She started to say something, but Alin didn’t wait to see what it was. He flicked his long, violet bandage like a whip, cracking it into her hand.
The bag and its contents vanished. Finally, the Avernus started to show fear. Her skin paled, and she swallowed visibly, but she ground her jaw and forced herself to meet his eyes.
In front of her, the Valinhall Traveler had finally lost his concealment. He stood, looking years older than he had earlier, the black chain-marks peeking through the top of his shirt as they showed on his collar. He swayed as he stood, and he held his cracked sword in both hands as though he didn’t have the strength to hold it one-handed any longer.
Somehow, the man smiled reassuringly, despite his obvious fatigue. “This is unnecessary. Nobody has to die today.”
Alin heard the words, he weighed them, and he found them less than honest. “You’ve killed many of the citizens of Elysia.” He gestured to the steps and to the street, where corpses of all colors bled a rainbow of blood. “A dozen dead, maybe two, I’ll need to get someone in here to check. Do they not matter to you?” He was honestly curious. “Is it because they’re not human?”
“I’m sorry about that,” the Traveler said easily. “Nobody else has to die today.”
Unlike his previous statement, that one was true. “You’re right,” Alin said. “Surrender yourselves, and I’ll take you alive.”
Alin waited.
The Traveler waited.
His eyes flicked toward Simon’s body, and his shoulders seemed to slump. “I’m sorry, I can’t do that. It’s gone too far.”
The man’s shoulders firmed. His bright smile grew steadier. The point of his sword stopped wavering in midair, and stayed pointed at Alin’s chest.
The woman behind him let out a bleak laugh. “You always have to be the hero, don’t you?” Her eyes drifted to Alin. “I’m not going to surrender either, but I won’t be so dramatic about it.”
Alin wanted to answer. He tried to make his voice work, but something had stuck in his chest, as though he had swallowed a bone.
You always have to be the hero, don’t you?
Through the ruthless honesty of the Violet Light, he took a look at himself. And he finally saw.
He was the powerful, all-but-immortal Incarnation standing tall after a harsh battle. He was the menace, looming over a weary swordsman who kept his blade raised in futile defiance. He was the uncaring master, carelessly discarding minions by the score, their bodies strewn all over the street. He was the traitor who had beaten Simon bloody for trying to protect Alin’s own sister.
At last, the Violet Light showed him his own appearance in a cruel, unrelenting mirror.
He looked like a villain.
Alin drifted back, away from the Travelers, until he felt a wall where he could brace himself. He leaned with one arm against the cracked wall, the Violet Light fading from his body.
When the Violet faded, the other voices returned.
The enemies are still there! the Gold Light raged. Go get them, you coward!
This is wrong, said the Green.
Sadness radiated from the Silver. There were so many other ways you could have handled this.
Spare them, the Blue begged. Please. For your own sake.
They were your friends, the Orange said.
The Rose Light whispered, What have you done?
And then a smaller, more distant voice, one he almost didn’t recognize.
Who am I?
***
Overlord Feiora Torannus watched the Incarnation of Elysia limp away to lean against the building on the opposite side of the street. For her life, she couldn’t figure out what they had done to drive him away.
But she intended to take advantage of it.
“Indirial, make a Gate,” she ordered.
The other Overlord looked as stunned as she felt, and even more bruised and battered. “Why did he leave?” Indirial asked.
Feiora clapped her hands loudly. “Indirial! Gate!” She pointed to the blue jellies floating over the roof, their giant tentacles dangling down.
Indirial shook himself, gave her a sheepish smile, and started cutting one of his Valinhall Gates. She could have opened a Gate to Avernus, but her scouts had told her about the guardians on the other side of this place, and she had no wish to run into them. The only token she’d brought that would send her directly into safe lands had gone with Leah, who had probably followed Eugan straight to a comfortable Corvinus tribe lodge.
The thought of her raven was too painful to focus on, so she hurried as best she could over to Simon, keeping one wary eye on the Incarnation, in case he changed his mind and returned to sanity.
Her shins would be nothing more than a set of massive bruises tomorrow morning, her fingernails were scraped bloody, and she was sure she’d twisted her left ankle. But somehow, she managed to lower herself and scoop Simon into her arms, cloak and all.
She almost fell, and her knees sent bolts of pain shooting all the way up into her spine. He looked small, but this kid was heavy. He had put on more muscle than it looked, apparently.
Feiora staggered over to Indirial, leaving Simon’s sword lying in the street. If she had learned anything about Valinhall from watching them today, it was that they could banish and summon their swords as they liked. Even if it wasn’t as easy as she imagined, she simply couldn’t carry the sword and him both. So that was that.
The Elysian creatures had started growing restless, shouting and growling and shrieking around them, but they still didn’t charge. They seemed as confused by the Incarnation’s change of heart as Feiora herself.
When she reached Indirial, his slice in midair had snapped into a proper white-edged Gate. An old-fashioned, well-appointed sitting room rested on the other side.
Indirial wasn’t looking through the portal, though; his gaze remained locked on the Elysian Incarnation.
“What happened?” he wondered aloud.
Feiora shoved Simon through the Gate, onto the carpeted floor beyond. She couldn’t carry him any farther, and if she tried, they were both going to pitch over. “I don’t know,” she said. “And I don’t care. Let’s get out while we still can.”
Indirial shook his head, took one last look at the Incarnation in his shredded remnants of gold armor, and then walked into Valinhall.
The Gate zipped shut behind them.
***
Something grabbed Ilana, and she struggled, but she wasn't strong enough. They grabbed her, a whole crowd of creatures and two-foot-tall men in hats, dragging her out the broken window of the waystation. She screamed, but it was swallowed up in an explosion from outside, where Simon and her brother fought in a battle she would never have believed a few weeks ago.
She lashed out with a foot and kicked one of the gnomes in the chin. He didn't seem to mind. In fact, he took the kick on his bearded chin and nodded approvingly. What kind of weird, twisted people were these?
Ilana didn't stop fighting. She punched, kicked, screamed, clawed, and bit until she was exhausted.
When her strength ran out, she realized she was lying on a bed of soft grass, looking up at a golden sky. She glanced around, seeing nothing but a grassy horizon occasionally broken up by flowers. Surely this plain of waving grass didn't go on forever. It had to stop at some point, right?
When she turned back the other direction, she was met with bright blue eyes and a fuzzy white snout.
She yelped and scrambled backwards on all fours. The dog—which, she now noticed, was wearing plate armor of bright gold—bounded after her. It let out one bark, which rang in the emptiness like a bell echoing in a castle.
Ilana was no Traveler, but she knew a
Territory when she fell headfirst into one. And this dog was wearing armor, so that was another clue that she wasn't in her world. Dog-armor. There was only one reason for that: someone expected this dog to fight in a battle. This was obviously a vicious warrior-dog, protecting the Territory from intruders. Intruders like her.
She got to her feet and backed slowly away—somewhere she had heard that if you moved slowly, dogs wouldn't chase you.
The dog sat on its hind legs, puzzled. It scratched at the armor around its neck and whined.
She glanced over her shoulder to make sure that she wasn't about to step into a pit full of armored snakes, or whatever other horrors this Territory had in store for her, but when she turned back to the dog, there was a face three inches from hers. Golden eyes stared straight at her.
Ilana screamed, the face screamed back, and the dog barked happily and started running around in circles. That was when Ilana realized that the face was upside-down. Long, gold-blond hair dangled from the top of this upside-down girl's head, almost reaching to the tops of the grass. She wore a white one-piece dress, belted in the middle by a gold sash.
Strangely, Ilana found herself wondering how the woman's skirt stayed up, when by all logic it should have flipped down and covered her completely, but Ilana’s instincts ran away without her.
On pure panicked reaction, she punched the woman in the nose.
Her fist slammed into a surface that felt like metal, but looked like a six-sided plate of green glass that floated in front of the other woman and definitely hadn't been there a second before.
Pain shot up Ilana's fist and into her arm, and she backed away from the floating woman, cradling her hand. It wasn't the first time she had punched someone, but it was the first time she had tried to punch somebody who could conjure armor out of nowhere. This woman was obviously a Traveler, and that meant that Ilana's chances of getting out of here alive had shrunk to almost nothing.
“Oh, I'm so sorry!” the other woman said, drifting around so that she looked Ilana in the eye again. She was still upside-down. “Here, let me help you with that.”
Ilana wasn't fooled; she kept her distance from the weird floating Traveler. “What are you, a Traveler? A ghost?”
The other woman shrugged, which looked particularly disturbing when she was hanging upside-down. “A little of both, actually,” she responded. Then she gave a bright smile and flipped right-side-up. “My name is Rhalia, and you must be Alin's sister!”
She stuck a hand out for Ilana to clasp.
Ilana bolted.
Whatever reason this Traveler had for dragging her here and persistently trying to touch her hand, it couldn't be good. Maybe they could kill with a touch, she didn't know. Half the things Simon and Alin were doing before she left, she would have sworn were impossible.
She managed to run for perhaps ten paces—the armored dog easily keeping pace with her the whole time, like he thought it was a game—before she slowed to a halt. She couldn't help it.
A wall of white stone, gold edges, and silver plating rose in front of her, seemingly a hundred paces in the air. It was definitely miles long, as it stretched around a city bigger than anything Ilana had ever seen or imagined. Tower-tops rose over the wall in every color she could think of, silver and gold and ruby and white and green...
Now that she thought of it, even the walls were worked with a variety of colors. Emeralds spiraled in complex patterns over a seemingly insignificant stretch of wall, next to a mural of a rising sun made out of precious stones.
She stood, stunned by her own wonder, as a column of light like solid lightning rose from somewhere in the city and blasted into the clouds.
At least I know what Territory this is, she thought.
Rhalia drifted up beside her, smiling like a proud mother. “Isn't it wonderful? You should have seen it when Travelers lived here to hold Gates open, and people came and went...” She sighed. “Sadly, they're all gone. For now.”
“What about my brother?” Ilana asked. “You mentioned him. This is his Territory, isn't it?”
“It's his Territory, yes, but I wouldn't call him a Traveler any longer.”
Elysia was plenty warm, but Ilana shivered. “Why did he bring me here, then?”
Rhalia's eyes widened. “Oh, no, he didn't bring you here. I did!”
“Why?”
The other woman floated behind her, pushing gently to guide her toward the city gates. “There's someone I'd like you to meet,” Rhalia said.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN:
THE FOUNDER'S HEIR
When Simon woke up, he couldn't move.
He lay on his back, staring up at the plaster ceiling of his bedroom back in Valinhall. As far as he could see from craning his eyes, he was still fully clothed and wearing his Nye cloak. The bed was soft beneath him, but he wasn't wrapped in a sheet. Someone must have taken him here and dumped him on his bed. Bits of his clothes were still damp, and the rest was stiff, as if recently dried—someone had taken him on a trip to the healing pool.
He was grateful. If they had dumped him here without healing him, he would have felt burning agony instead of paralyzing numbness.
I guess we won, then, Simon sent.
A few of the dolls tittered, some scoffed, and a few groaned. The total effect was like one long, exasperated sigh.
No one died, if that's what you're asking, Caela told him.
Not as far as we know... Lilia added.
Not even Alin! Rebekkah said, irritated. You waste way too much time standing around when you're wearing that mask. Leah almost got him, but he ended up going crazy and letting everyone get away. You should have punched him harder.
How did I get back here?
Ask him, Angeline sent.
Before Simon could ask who she meant, a dark hood leaned over his bed, giving him an eyeful of the void the Eldest Nye wore for a face.
His whole body twitched, and his heart hammered against his ribs. Everything he'd learned in Valinhall was screaming at him to jump up and stab the Eldest through the chest, before the Nye could draw a chain around his neck and choke the life out of him...
“Be still, son of Kalman. I have not come to kill you while you sleep away the effects of your mask.” He leaned closer. “Though my mind could always change.”
“What…you want?” Simon grunted. It was the best he could manage through his all-but-paralyzed throat.
The Eldest held up a shriveled fig the color of blood, pinching it through his sleeve. “Why did you bring this here? It's not a weapon, it cannot be attuned to us. If it were planted here, it could be the end!”
What is it? Simon tried to ask. It came out sounding more like “Whatsit?”
In a flicker of one black sleeve, the Eldest made the object vanish. “It is a seed of the Crimson Vault's domination. It is vile. It is disgusting. And it is not something the Founder's heir should ever touch!”
He seemed genuinely angry rather than simply menacing or threatening, and maybe that had led the Eldest to speak carelessly, but Simon felt sure he had let something important slip.
With a monumental effort, Simon craned his head forward and spoke clearly. “Founder's heir?” he asked.
The dolls went totally quiet.
The Eldest hesitated. “The point remains that you were careless, bringing this here. This seed is not something we can make our own! I am afraid even to destroy it here, in case we awaken it through careless action. You have put us all in danger!”
Simon refused to be distracted. “Tell me.”
The Nye's hood twitched from side to side, as though trying to think of a way out. At last he began to speak, forcing the words out as though they pained him. “This Territory...it began as dozens of empty shards, splinters of a world that came before. Perhaps all Territories begin this way. In our case, Valin was the man who bound our splinters together into one new Territory. He was, and is, our Founder.”
He drifted out of Simon's sight, but from the rustle of shuf
fling robes, Simon got the impression that he was pacing. “When he was taken from us...we discovered that Valinhall needs a Founder. It is a relationship of equal exchange that we have with our Travelers, you see, and without a Founder, the two sides do not balance. Our Travelers take more from us than they give. We needed our master back, but we could not have him. So she selected a replacement.”
“Who?” Simon grunted.
Mithra, Angeline sent. The other dolls remained silent.
The Eldest's hood flicked over to the dolls' shelf, but he addressed Simon again. “Mithra was always Valin's blade. Whoever inherits her, inherits the responsibilities of Valinhall's Founder.”
“Kai,” Simon said.
A laugh scraped its way out of the Eldest's robes. “Kai? He shirked his duties even before he was crippled by Ragnarus. Now, if someone does not make up for his lack, our world will fade away, another dead splinter adrift on an endless void. Just like before.”
Simon tried to ask another question, but his throat wouldn't cooperate. What responsibilities? he asked the dolls.
Angeline dutifully repeated his question to the Nye.
“I have said too much, daughters of wind,” the Eldest replied. “He will learn fast enough by doing as he is instructed.” The Nye flowed over to the door, out of Simon's field of vision. His voice floated back to the bed. “I am taking this demonic seed with me. Perhaps I can find a way to dispose of it.”
He made no other sound.
Is he gone? Simon finally asked.
No, he's behind you! Otoku called.
He's gone, said Angeline.
You're no fun.
Simon found himself mentally rehearsing the Eldest's speech, and it didn't comfort him much. What does he want Kai to do? You know, don't you? Does he expect that of me?
Gloria sighed. Oh, honey, I don't think it would be wise to talk if the Eldest doesn't want us to.
It sounds smart to me, Otoku said. What can he possibly do to us? Oh, I'm sorry, I meant what can't he do. That list is much shorter.
