Loyalty and War

by Devon Vesper

  “Aesriphos!” someone shouted. “The Aesriphos are here!”

  Someone struck a large bell, the sound carrying over the din of men and women scrambling to dress and gather their weapons in the dead of night. It rang over and over until Valis found it and blew it out of the compound with a concussive blast. The blast was so powerful that the man who had been striking it with a hammer flew into the side of a building so hard that the back of his skull caved in. He fell limply to the ground, his sightless eyes endlessly staring into nothing.

  Valis shivered and followed Tavros into a line of black-clad figures streaming out of the barracks. Just then, Valis saw shimmers everywhere. The golden ghostly Aesriphos fought equally ghostly Qos adherents, creating confusion that gave Tavros a slight advantage. They positioned themselves on either side of the barracks door and beheaded those as they came out.

  It didn’t take long before the cry echoed through the stronghold, “Aesriphos stationed at the front door!”

  The shout didn’t seem to make much of a difference as the line didn’t slow. The people running out now were armed and fought back, the bodies and fighters clogging the door, so more Qos adherents slew their own men on accident as they tried to join the fray.

  Someone knocked over a lantern or some kind of lamp. Several people shrieked. Soon the barracks erupted into flames and chaos as the wooden structure caught fire. Valis took its cue and used the pyre spell on the building’s ground floor, setting it to engulf the entire building before cutting the spell off from himself. Screams of the dying would forever live in Valis’s nightmares.

  Before he left, Valis cast a shield over the building, molding it to the walls and roof, trapping everyone inside. The only thing that could get out was the roiling clouds of smoke that curled away from the fire like great black dragons. The only thing able to enter was enough air to fan the fire into a roaring blaze that lit up the night in orange and gold hues—growing ever more gold as the holy pyre blaze overtook the orange and red natural fire that started the whole thing.

  Tavros stuck to his side. They fled toward where Valis heard more shouts of alarm. But for as large as the stronghold was, as many people as were within its walls, the compound was now full of bodies. The sounds of battle slowly grew less and less until Valis felt like they had the stronghold under control.

  Then his stomach pitted, and Valis cursed. “Fuck. Tav!” He adjusted shield parameters so he could speak to all his men and women still alive. “INCOMING!”

  The grinding was Valis’s first clue. He looked toward the mountain, and the face moved slowly to the left, revealing the entrance into the labyrinth that would lead them to the monastery. Valis swallowed hard against the bile his pitting stomach kept sending up his esophagus.

  Valis glanced around. It still looked as if there were a full-scale battle going on. Those who poured out of the mountainside gave pause at the projected fighting. It looked like they didn’t know where to go or who to help. It wasn’t until someone in the back yelled, “If you don’t move your asses and start killing, I’ll make sure you all have unfortunate accidents before this battle is through.”

  That got them moving. Valis watched as they poured into the stronghold like a polluted river. Aryn did well to keep the illusions out of the way of the real, flesh and blood Qos adherents. It helped keep his men and women safe while they maneuvered under the cover of Valis’s invisibility shield parameter.

  Someone in Valis’s army screamed. Then more shouted, the voices loud, amplified by Valis’s shield until he figured out how to turn down the volume. Seza cried out in pain and shouted, “Valis! They somehow figured out how to see through your invisibility shield! We’re under true attack!”

  “Remember your training,” Valis said. “We’ve got this!”

  “Valis, this feels different,” Tavros said as he separated a man’s head from his shoulders. He sliced another from shoulder to halfway down his ribcage before raising his leg and kicking the almost-corpse off his blade. “How are they seeing through our shields?”

  Valis groaned. “It was only a matter of time before their tacticians or even the Sovereign Priest of Qos, himself, learned the shield parameter that would allow them to see through all invisibility shields.”

  “Got any other ideas?”

  Valis winced as he swung in an arc and hacked a man’s leg off at the thigh. He cleaved the man’s head in two as he fell to the ground. “Don’t die.”

  “Great, Valis. Very uplifting.”

  “I do try.” Valis grunted as someone shocked them with a concussion blast. His and Tavros’s shields took the brunt of the attack, but it still skidded them forward a few feet. Tavros turned to take care of their back while Valis shoved his parrying dagger into the eye socket of the woman he’d bumped into. He yanked it out, the woman falling like a sack of grain, and plunged it into the neck of the man to her right. The brute managed to land a punch, but when his knuckles broke against Valis’s shield, he seemed to give up the ghost and collapsed, his last breath expelling from his lungs in a wheeze that made Valis’s skin crawl.

  One of the Qos adherents yelled above the din of fighting, “How are they getting through our shields?”

  Valis didn’t deign to answer him. He adjusted his army’s black magic shield to make sure they could get through any black magic they came across. He had it overlaid on the holy gold that held all of Valis’s main parameters. Hearing the panic in the voices of those who took up the call of the first, Valis grinned and turned to Tavros as an idea sprung to mind. “Tav. I need you to trust me. I’ll be back, okay?”

  Tavros glanced over at him with an open expression. He wasn’t about to blindly say no, and Valis loved him for it. “What are you going to do?”

  “The blink tactic.”

  His husband sighed and sliced another man in half as they advanced from the back wall of the compound. “I’ll trust you. Make it quick and check in.”

  “Will do,” Valis said. “Shout if you need me.”

  Then he phased behind a Qos adherent, straight inside his shield. Before the man realized what was happening, Valis plunged his parrying dagger between the man’s neck bones. Then he phased behind the next, and the next. He picked random targets, moving from one side of the stronghold to the next, always changing direction so he couldn’t be tracked.

  Combined with the chaos that Aryn created with his projected scries, Valis felt like they might finish this battle sooner than he initially thought.

  Shouts echoed in the early morning, bouncing off the stronghold walls and those of the buildings that dotted the area. All the enemy saw of their fellows’ deaths was their bodies jerking before crumpling forward with a new hole in their necks.

  As Valis got comfortable with the rhythm he’d set and grew familiar with phasing at such a fast pace, he pushed himself to go faster. He had to pay close attention. If he made a mistake, he could end up maimed or dead, and Tavros would never forgive him.

  He also had to make sure he fully stopped. If he didn’t, his prey would seem like nothing but a black and skin-toned blur. Stopping fully was what slowed him down. It was what made him vulnerable.

  Valis stopped behind a woman, and as if she sensed him coming, she was already half-turned toward him. Her dagger met his shields, and she screamed, “What the fuck are you?” just before Valis slit her throat. She clutched at the wound, her eyes blazing with hate. Valis grunted as his shield dripped with her blood.

  And he phased. Just as he drove the blade into the man’s neck, Valis dropped his shield to get rid of the blood, re-erected it, and phased on to the next person.

  As he moved, Valis tried to get a feel for how many of the enemy were left, but no matter where he looked, and no matter how many Qos adherents he slew, it seemed like twice as many poured out of the mountain to join the fight.

  How many forces did the monastery house? Were there as many as in Avristin? If so, Valis wasn’t sure how they were supposed to kill so many. His army wa
sn’t big enough. They couldn’t move fast enough. No matter how much Valis tried, he couldn’t kill enough, even though the ground within the stronghold ran red with fresh blood. It seeped into the ground creating mud that sucked at Valis’s boots and the shoes of those around him.

  Cries that Valis recognized made his blood run cold. None of them seemed to be Tavros, but they were known to him. They were his army. With his mind running at a frantic pace, he tried to find a way to save his people. He couldn’t re-shield them all. Not without taking himself out of the fight and making himself vulnerable.

  Taking a deep breath as he punched his dagger through yet another neck, Valis called out, “Report! What are those screams for?”

  “It’s fixed,” Seza said. “A few of the guys got caught in a concussive blast, and their shields dropped. Zhasina re-shielded them before anything too bad happened. I’m healing them now.”

  “Good. Keep it up.”

  “SIR!”

  Just as Valis yanked his dagger out of another Qos adherent’s neck, he heard Tavros shout. Valis’s head whipped toward the sound, but he couldn’t see Tavros through the throng of bodies.

  “Someone get to Tavros. I’m on my way.”

  “I can’t see him,” Brogan said. “Where is he?”

  “I left him by the wall nearest our horses.”

  “I’m close by,” Cassavin said. “On my way.”

  Then Tavros let out a blood-curdling scream. Valis’s stomach pitted, and before he took his next breath, Tavros called out, sounding terrified, “Valis! Help!”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Valis groaned from the ferocity of his stomach’s precognitive pitting. He took several deep breaths to fight it off. As he made his way toward his husband, Valis continued phased into enemy shields and dispatched their creators. By the time he made it to his husband’s side, he was surrounded by Cassavin and Nevesar, and a host of Qos adherents bent on taking them all down.

  Valis phased into the shield with his husband and reinforced it. “What happened?”

  Tavros shook himself and struggled to get off the ground. When he failed to get up, Valis saw the awkward twist to his leg and hissed. “Shit.”

  “Concussive blast hit me hard,” Tavros said, his words slurred from pain. “My knee doesn’t like going backward.”

  Valis pursed his lips then bit them together. It wouldn’t do to laugh at his husband while he was in pain, no matter how cute he was.

  Dropping to his knees, Valis wrapped his hands around Tavros’s leg and pulsed his magic into the knee with the intent of killing the pain. When Tavros relaxed, Valis yanked his knee in place and bent it the right way. After that, it only took a few moments to heal the area’s torn tissues and irritated bones.

  When Valis stood up, he swayed, and Nevesar steadied him with a hand clamped tight to his shoulder. “Steady, Valis. What happened?”

  “He’s overextended himself again,” Tavros said. “Valis, how many—”

  “I’m okay,” Valis said as he regained his balance. “I just stood up too fast.”

  He glanced around to where the surrounding Qos adherents gave their all to trying to break the shields that surrounded his group. Valis focused on phasing behind those at the back. He killed four before the others realized what was happening. He took out several more before any figured out how he was getting in their shields. After he dispatched three more, Valis phased back to Tavros’s side to regroup.

  It seemed that the more enemy he killed, the greater his exhaustion. He took stock of his magic pool, and it seemed fine—his dual magic roiling against the edges of the “lake” Valis had expanded to encompass it all. But when Valis went to cast another spell, the exhaustion clamped down on his mind, and Valis felt himself sway again. He wasn’t magically depleted, just magically exhausted from constant casting. He still had magic. He just couldn’t cast it.

  Then he remembered the vision he’d had long ago where he and Tavros fought against many until he’d depleted his magic, leading to their enemies decapitating Tavros. The old vision overtook him. It was the same scenario, except this time Cassavin and Nevesar fought with them. One of the Qos adherents called to the rest to do a coordinated attack, and the moment they did, Valis’s shield dropped.

  Valis screamed as he felt it tear down. He turned just in time to block a sword attack that would have decapitated Tavros. Finally, Valis shoved his magic at his husband and shouted, “Shield us! I’m compromised.”

  Tavros snapped up a shield around their group almost immediately.

  “Good, now add the parameters for it to be soundproofed, connect to everyone else’s shields so they can hear our orders, and mold it to our bodies so we can still fight with our blades.”

  His husband took only a few seconds to follow Valis’s orders, and soon, Valis and his group were able to fight more freely.

  Cassavin and Nevesar destroyed shields while Valis and Tavros cut their shieldless enemies down with quick strikes. Valis tried to pay attention, but the fatigue gripped his mind in an iron fist that only tightened as Valis continued to fight.

  “Valis?”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong, Tav,” Valis said loud enough for Cassavin and Nevesar to hear. “My magic well is still full. I think I’m just mentally exhausted.”

  “Then take a moment to gather yourself,” Nevesar barked. “We’ve got this.”

  Just then, a group of Kalutakeni warriors broke through the line of the enemy. Tavros immediately added them to their shield as they surrounded Valis and his group. It only stuttered once, but Tavros managed to get it back up within the span of a breath.

  “Sorry!” he shouted.

  “No apologies. Just keep it up. Break it off from yourself for now,” Valis said. “Add permanence and impermeability as parameters.”

  The moment Tavros added the parameters and broke it off from himself, Valis felt the draw on his magic fade until Tavros pulled on it again to help break shields now that they had the Kalutakeni with their deadly blades surrounding them.

  Valis added to the flurry of daggers and swords. He grunted with the force of his swings. Sweat beaded on his forehead and upper lip, soaked into his padding, and plastered his hair to his head and neck.

  Just as he kicked another corpse off his blade, the world went dark, and Valis fell limp. He felt the thud as he hit his head on the cold, hard ground just before he fully landed in the vision.

  When Valis could see again, he rose from where he lay within the shield Tavros kept up and flew through the air. Valis looked down, following the path out of the south gate of the enemy stronghold. Then the vision followed a magically hidden path, based on the shimmer, toward the side of the mountain. He went slow enough that he could memorize the way but fast enough that the mountain flew by at dizzying speeds.

  Just as Valis was about to run into a cliff face, the vision slowed down, and Valis stopped at a spelled gate that looked like it was dug hastily and without finesse. But it looked tall enough so those entering wouldn’t have to stoop.

  The vision took Valis through the spelled gate that looked like a transparent boulder, and into the rough-hewn tunnel. He saw what looked like words carved into the sides that glowed, spells left to the tides of time.

  Abruptly, the tunnel emptied into one that appeared more professionally built. When he looked behind him, the rough-hewn tunnel seemed to have disappeared until he noticed the sheen of magic hiding the entrance.

  Then Valis shot up into the air and looked down. Rather than another random tunnel, he saw the labyrinth laced with floor traps. And just as he got himself oriented compared to the map he’d commissioned, the world went black, and Valis screamed as he fell through what felt like a caustic void.

  “He’s coming around,” Tavros shouted. “Keep up the attack.”

  “That’s the shortest damned vision he’s ever had, I think,” Cassavin said.

  “No.” Tavros’s voice sounded closer. “He’s had shorter.”

&nbs
p; Valis did his best to regulate his body temperature. He fought to open his eyes, and when he was able, he stared into worried pools of Tavros’s storm-gray eyes. Tavros leaned in and pressed a kiss to his forehead, a too-quick show of devotion that Valis drank up like a parched sponge given a taste of water. It was nowhere near enough but helped Valis feel more grounded in his body and loved in a way he needed in this battle.

  As he regained feeling in his fingers and toes, he tried to sit up. Tavros helped him, and several others helped him stand. Valis glanced around and saw Seza and Zhasina had joined their team. It took him another minute to regain his voice, and when he did, he touched the shield and pushed his intent to broadcast to everyone’s shields in his army.

  “I need eight assassins from the mercenary band, twelve Kalutakeni warriors, forty Aesriphos, and twenty reliquary guards to meet me at the south gate.”

  He glanced back behind him and frowned. Then he pulled out his pocket watch and chanced a quick scry using the side of a dagger that lay beside Aryn. “I need you to cover our retreat to the south gate. Can you do that?”

  “I’ve got you handled. Head out in ten,” Aryn said in clipped tones. “Be careful and protect my older brother.”

  “Will do.”

  Valis closed and put his pocket watch away. After ten seconds, doubles of them shimmered around their bodies. Valis added the invisibility and track erasing parameters to their shield, and their doubles swarmed off toward the north gate. Valis motioned toward the south. “Move out.”

  As he and Tavros led their retreat, Valis saw others, their shields shimmering, their invisibility shields keeping them safe. Seeing them dispatching unshielded laymen Qos adherents, Valis glanced around. Why were their laymen unshielded?

  Valis advanced. “There are unshielded laymen in our way. Take them out.”

  His team fanned out. They slew any who stood in their way. Chaos erupted as shouts rose. “They’re invisible! Tighten your ranks! We need shields!”