by Wight, Will
Down the row of tents, a few red-robed Naraka Travelers ran with leather-wrapped Endross Travelers, lightning already playing around their hands. Some of them carried storms the size of their two hands together, and they were headed toward him.
Good. He wouldn't have to hold out long, and then they could begin the real search: finding his family.
He stepped forward and drove Vasha into the Incarnation's crystal chest.
Well, he tried to.
When he tried to maneuver his sword for a stab, both of his hands moved, jerking him off-balance. Both his hands had been cuffed together in solid crystal.
He didn't even let that slow him down. Without a moment's hesitation, he jumped forward, intending to slam his stone-encased hands onto the Lirial Incarnation's head.
In midair, he slammed into dark ice. Before he had a chance to react, the bar seemed to reach all the way around him, freezing into a wide circle of ice around his middle. The ice slowly levitated back down to the ground, locking him into an awkward position: twisted at the hips as if to stab, both hands clutching an immobile sword in front of him. The skin around his stomach was already starting to burn from the cold.
“I've been trying to do that since the fight began,” Lirial confided, running a hand over her crystal head. “Do you know—”
Indirial's legs were still free. He jumped up and slammed both his feet into the Incarnation's diamond chest.
With a satisfying crunch, she flipped over backwards, spinning a full revolution in the air before she crashed into the ground.
A second later, he fell into the bar of ice on his back, slamming into his ribs, and only the Valinhall ice he had called into himself prevented him from screaming out in pain.
But seeing the Lirial Incarnation's face right before his boots slammed into it had been worth every second of agony.
Helgard peeked over at him as the shouts from the allied Travelers grew louder. A bright orange fireball shrieked into existence over him, but it snuffed out in a flurry of wind and snow almost before it finished forming.
“You're unspeakably interesting, did you know that?” Helgard said. “What keeps you going?”
He struggled, trying to stretch Vasha's point closer to the Incarnation. With her bar of ice around him, surely she would be less protected now.
“I keep waiting for one of you to open your mouth,” Indirial replied. “Then I attack. You'd be amazed how many people choose to talk instead of fighting.”
A pale bolt of lightning crashed into a nearby tent, setting it ablaze. “I see,” the Helgard Incarnation said, even as Lirial pulled herself up and brushed dirt from her jeweled skin.
“It was my own mistake,” Lirial allowed. “I should never allow myself to be anything less than perfectly attentive.”
Helgard flicked a blue hand in her direction, and a screaming orange wasp the size of a small dog froze solid and dropped before it reached Lirial. “Hmph. Of course it was.”
“Shall we go?”
“The Gate is still open.”
Indirial screamed and yelled, but the Incarnations met any attack from the crowd of Travelers without seeming to pay attention. The band of ice around his ribs dragged him into the air, pulling him behind them.
And into the Crimson Vault.
As soon as he vanished into the tent, his Travelers tore the fabric apart, blasting it into shreds and ash inside a second, trying to catch sight of him again. Indirial caught a glimpse of a few desperate, friendly faces before the red Gate sealed shut.
Leaving him at the entrance of Ragnarus with two Incarnations.
Or...possibly three.
The sounds he typically expected from a trip to the Crimson Vault were all missing: he didn't hear the growls of a distant beast, or the rushing of a river that didn't exist, or the clatter of a dozen legs on the stone beyond this cavern. He heard only what might be a faint breeze blowing through a crack in the rocks, and nothing else.
But there was another detail that had changed from most of his visits: the silver doors, instead of staying closed, had been thrown wide open.
And through them, deep in the Vault, he could see a woman with red skin lounging on a dark chair. He thought she was looking at him, but it was hard to make out detail when staring into the depths of Ragnarus.
It wasn't any of the living Heiresses, he was sure of that, so it had to be the Ragnarus Incarnation. Had someone else in Cana trapped the Incarnation while the city was sealed? Had the Incarnation done it to herself?
Something inside him relaxed. He had been afraid, all this time, that when the barrier of Cana fell, they would find that Zakareth had Incarnated and had been soaking the city in blood. He knew that there had been a Ragnarus Incarnation sealed under the capital for hundreds of years, but somehow he'd always worried about seeing Zakareth with bright red skin or burning scarlet eyes.
At least his friend and king was truly dead, fallen in battle. In that, at least, he could relax.
Lirial and Helgard chatted with one another about the weapons here, and the history of the place, and who the Founder must be, and whether the weapons were added regularly or if there were an unlimited number.
At first, he listened attentively, trying to sift through the banter for a clue to his release. But then two things happened at once: first, he realized that they were passing time waiting for something, and second, his ice ran out. Suddenly, the actual, physical ice wrapped around him seemed to burn, and his crystal-encased right hand flared as if he had dipped it in molten steel.
He almost screamed, but bit his lip. In front of some Incarnations, he'd be better off tossing bloody meat to a pack of wild dogs than releasing a scream. He didn't think Lirial or Helgard would be that vicious, but he couldn't take any chances.
Lirial was examining a levitating javelin, silver-white crystals whirling around every inch of the weapon, when another Gate opened.
The Ragnarus Incarnation must have opened it for them, because it was an ordinary red-bordered Gate to Ragnarus, leading out into the royal palace. The Blue Room had been decimated, its shattered blue tiles held together by twisting red wood and stone evidently summoned by the Ragnarus Incarnation, but he still recognized the remnants of the rooms.
Helgard and Lirial left, Helgard walking out of the shadows with a dissatisfied look, and Lirial giving one last, longing gaze to the vault full of weapons.
Helpless, Indirial drifted behind them, suspended in a prison of black ice.
He had spent most of the last twenty-five years in the royal palace, so it only took him a few minutes to map the passages in his head and realize where they were going: the throne room.
A sick feeling grew in his stomach, and he struggled against his bonds even as the last of his steel ran out and the pain threatened to overwhelm him.
Much of his job as King Zakareth's bodyguard had taken place in the throne room. When they reached the great double-doors, etched with a nine-pointed star and a bright red eye, Lirial flicked a single wrist toward the hall. Two crystals flew out, pushing the doors open.
The room had greatly changed since his last visit. He remembered it as a high, wide room with the royal throne at the end, and a row of tall windows on the east side. Banners had hung from the ceiling, and tables for documents and chairs for petitioners were often laid out on the wooden floors.
Practically the only thing that remained was the throne. The windows were gone, replaced by black stone that glowed with veins of sullen red, providing bloody light to the room. The banners were gone, replaced by spiked iron cages dangling from the rafters. Most of them were empty, and a few held corpses, but on first inspection he didn't see any living prisoners.
The throne remained intact and unchanged from when he'd last seen it: a solid block of ruby hewn into the shape of a wide chair, and ornamented in lines of gold. A man filled the throne, one elbow propped up on the left armrest, his chin held in one hand. He wore a tall, spiked crown, and in his right hand he gripped a ta
ll ruby-headed staff. From the bulk of his silhouette, he seemed to be wearing plate armor, and his left eye burned with a bright red light all its own.
Indirial almost screamed, trying to call more steel, trying to shatter his frozen bonds. But his steel had run out, and nothing he could do would call more.
“Welcome home, Indirial,” King Zakareth said. He leaned forward, and Indirial got a better look at his face.
Patterns of red and gold swirled up over his skin, as though he had been painted with whorls of metallic pain. The mesh seemed to glow softly, but not enough to overshadow the light from his left eye, which gaped empty. Instead of the stone, which Zakareth had given to Indirial personally, his left eye was composed entirely of swirling crimson flames. His right eye, which still looked more human, had turned red instead of its usual icy blue. Even his hair hadn't escaped unaltered: most of it was still iron-grey, but it showed odd threads of bright gold or ruby red.
Indirial's greatest fears had come true. He had been afraid of any Ragnarus Incarnation, but in the same distant, vague way he would fear any Incarnation: not someone he would choose to fight if he got the chance, but not anything that would cause him to lose sleep at night, either. He was a Valinhall Traveler, after all. He feared very little that other Travelers could do to him.
But Zakareth...Zakareth knew him.
And that meant he could hurt Indirial very badly indeed.
“You know why I brought you here,” the King said, and his voice was so much the same that it filled Indirial with a mixture of revulsion, relief, and anger. Even his way of cutting straight to the topic at hand, without any sugar-coating or dancing around, proved that this was the real Zakareth.
“You want something from Valinhall,” Indirial said. “You're holding my family hostage until I give it to...”
He trailed off. That couldn't be right. Zakareth knew Indirial, better than almost anyone else. Surely, the King would know that Indirial wouldn't betray his Territory to save his family. He would do everything he could to save his wife and daughter, and if that failed, he would do everything in his power to end those responsible.
He wouldn't give in, and Valinhall could strengthen his body and fortify him against pain. So what did Zakareth want that taking Indirial's family would get him?
Cold washed through Indirial like a breath of Nye essence. “You want me,” he said.
Zakareth nodded.
“Why take Nerissa and Elaina, then? Zakareth, you can let them go. They're unnecessary.”
Pleading with King Zakareth the Sixth's pity was an exercise in futility, but appealing to his sense of efficiency could often work.
Then again, he realized, the King had never needed to take Indirial's family to get him here. The two Incarnations could have made sure of that on their own. And that meant...
He still needed them for something.
“I do need you, Indirial,” King Zakareth said, his voice as blank and expressionless as ever. “It would have worked with any Valinhall Traveler, but when the fates were unkind to me, I decided to exercise my will more directly. And that meant I got to pick the Traveler I wanted.”
“All you had to do was tell me you were alive,” Indirial said. Maybe if he kept the King talking, he would reveal something about Nerissa or Elaina.
The King drummed his fingernails on the arm of his throne, and they clicked like stone-on-stone. “You would never have obeyed me as I am now. It is not within you. Not as you are.”
“Of course I would have!” Indirial lied. “I would always serve you.”
“On that, we agree.” Without any visible signal from Zakareth, two of the cages above began to lower, their chains rattling. Indirial wasn't sure whether the King was doing it himself or whether he was getting Lirial or Helgard to do it for him, but that thought soon left his mind.
Nerissa, his wife, huddled in one cage, her back pressed against the bars, her knees drawn up to her chest. His daughter Elaina slammed her fist against the bars of the other, shouting his name, telling him to run.
He had expected it, but the sight of his family still acted on him like a spark on tinder. He wrenched the last drop of liquid steel from Valinhall, surging to his feet and stumbling three feet toward the throne before tipping over forward, almost impaling himself on his own crystal-frozen blade.
“I will hold them here,” Zakareth said. “I am in no rush. I require only one thing of you: survive, Indirial. If you don't, neither will they.”
The crystal holding his hands together vanished, and with a crack like a calving glacier, the ice around his middle dispersed into dark snowflakes. He shivered uncontrollably and pitched over, Vasha falling from numb hands.
His steel and Nye essence were completely out, and would take minutes to regenerate. He had other powers he could call, but none of them were likely to help him here. Worse, his chains wrapped almost all the way around his shoulders. He had to wait until his steel was back, but even then, would he be able to fight his family free before he transformed into another Incarnation to threaten them?
A bare foot, hard as stone, met him under the ribs and kicked him up. He landed on his knees, a flower of pain blooming in his chest, his breath leaving his lungs. The Lirial Incarnation stood over him, dispassionate, glancing into a crystal lens she held in her left hand as though she were more interested in what was happening far away than in his torture.
King Zakareth leaned back, resting against the throne. “We have time, Indirial. We don't eat. We don't drink. We don't sleep. And while you're here, neither will you. How long will you last, I wonder?”
Indirial couldn't help it: he called stone. The next kick hardly hurt, but when he tried to grapple with the Incarnation's crystal leg, he didn't have the strength to knock her on her back, as he intended.
The King wanted him to Incarnate. If he wanted to win, he would have to remain himself at all costs. But that meant not calling upon Valinhall, which would surely result in his death, not to mention the deaths of his only remaining family.
He would simply have to draw it out as long as possible. He'd endure as long as he could without Valinhall powers, and—once he called them—hold onto them as long as he could.
If he could only survive long enough, then at some point, he'd think of a plan. He always did.
Korr whispered into his mind, more worried than Indirial had ever heard him. So much danger…
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:
A CONVERSATION IN AVERNUS
359th Year of the Damascan Calendar
1st Year in the Reign of Queen Leah I
3 Days Since Spring’s Birth
Leah marched through the undergrowth, her whole body burning from the aftermath of the fight in Enosh. She hardly knew how long it had been since she'd found herself in Avernus, but she and the raven, Eugan, had spent one night huddled under a wide-leafed bush, sheltered from the rain. She seemed to remember that time in Avernus moved more slowly than in the outside world, which meant two whole days may have passed in Damasca. Perhaps as many as four in Valinhall.
Leah tried to stop herself from wondering why no one had found her yet. She was capable of speech again, finally, but the other part of her crown's cost had yet to wear off.
She still couldn't summon Ragnarus. Even the Lightning Spear was nothing more than an ordinary weapon to her now—she had tried to throw it at a bird that startled her the night before, and the Spear practically flopped into a bush.
Leah didn't expect to be able to open a Gate to the Crimson Vault. That never worked in a Territory. But she could usually call on her Ragnarus weapons no matter where she was; it was the crown's price that prevented her from speaking and from using any other weapons from the Vault. After she used the circlet to issue one absolute command, it took time to release her from the price, usually in proportion to the strength of the order. She had put everything she had into binding Alin, but it rarely took longer than twenty-four hours for the curse to wear off. If that remained true this tim
e, she should be getting her Ragnarus powers back any time now.
Worse was her physical condition. She had suffered only minor wounds in the fight against Alin, but she was still painfully bruised in her left leg, her right hip, both her elbows, and her neck. She was covered in more scrapes and cuts than she liked to think about, and hiking through the Avernus wilderness wasn't helping that. More than that, throwing the Lightning Spear the way she had took its toll on her body. The pain that tortured her with every throw was more than in her mind, and her limbs still shook with echoes of that agony.
“How much farther?” she asked Eugan.
He screeched, and Leah may not have been an Avernus Traveler, but she got the message: 'Don't ask stupid questions.'
Then she pressed through the next clump of underbrush and found that she was standing on the top of a hill, overlooking a wide camp of wooden outbuildings and crude tents.
She looked over at Eugan, who had perched on a branch beside her head. “You could have told me,” she said.
The raven opened his beak and let out a raucous laugh.
Leah's whole body ached with pain, and she hadn’t slept last night, crouched as she was beneath a leaf and soaked with freezing rain while birds screamed practically in her ear. So, all things considered, her brain wasn't moving at its customary speed.
But she was still embarrassed when she realized she had stood there, staring at the Corvinus tribe Avernus outpost, for five minutes without making a move. She'd been wearily trying to construct a stealthy plan of approach that would allow her to survey the area and find a loyal Damascan Traveler who could open a Gate for her, but that was an idiotic plan. For one thing, she was a Lirial Traveler. She wouldn't need to go down there herself; she could summon a couple of scout crystals, send them down there, locate an appropriate Traveler, and then send Eugan to guide them back to her.
