The God of War was the father of the being they shared a body with? It wasn't so much impressive as it was frightening. Sharing a body with the child of a god. It stunned the mind.
Around them, life shifted, the air became pregnant with power and yet they still could not move.
"What happens now?"
"We join or we die."
"Has this happened before?"
Silence to Vadian's question made the two younger beings exchange a look. Unease slid across Warden's nerves. Something about this was wrong. He had little idea of what, but he did not ignore his instincts. He'd done that too much of late and see where it landed him.
"If we don't join you?"
Warden didn't so much see Vadian readying his blade as felt it spring to life near him. HIs own weapons, long since taken from him by Helenia were once more at his side. Could they fight their way out of this? Against someone who shared their body? Wouldn't that be essentially beating on himself?
The questions rattled through his mind in the moments waiting for the reply. Vadian betrayed no impatience, it took a trained eye to see how he coiled ready to spring at the right breath. If he moved, Warden would move with him. Two had a better chance than one, even against a god.
"If we don't join, we will die. All six of us."
"Six?"
My sister, your lover, and the girl will die as well. We have come too far to turn back now."
Vadian's blade vanished from Warden's awareness and he relaxed. They weren't going to fight it out. Disappointment welled up to be squashed. He didn't need to prove himself by fighting against a god. He made a big enough mistake taking on the Immortal and losing. No reason to compound that.
"How do we join?" Warden asked. A flash of pain bolted through his body; a reminder of the world outside of their little pocket.
"Each must surrender," he said. "We are not three; we are one. Our lives intertwine outside of even time. Our lives have lasted far longer than even they anticipated."
"They?"
"Nalcet, Sinda, Backaran, Ernal, and Wrepta. Our other half has consumed Wrepta as it was foretold. We have taken Ernal. The others will bolt for their holes. Murderers all."
"Backaran?" Vadian snatched the other man by his nonexistent tunic. Warden almost moved to stop him, but stayed his hand. Backaran. That the lunatic city he and Leviana had gone to was involved didn't surprise him at all. "What of it?"
"He murdered us then and he would happily murder us now. Our lives together mean an end to his. He will blame his brother, Nalcet, but Nalcet did not make him stand still as a statue while my sister crawled across the stone floor gasping for breath to fight further."
The two separated.
"I want no part of this."
"Why because your friend betrayed you?"
"I owe my power to Backaran."
"You owe him nothing," Ancel's son roared. "You were chosen before he put his hands on you. He only sought to bend you to his ends."
Vadian turned away from the collective. As he did, he disappeared.
"We are incomplete without him," Ancel's son admitted. "We cannot hope to survive without his help."
Warden stared at the spot of Vadian's departure and a cough hitched up in his crushed chest. They were going to die forgotten in a hole. The thought should have frightened him. It didn't, not as much as it used to. His life had never been his own if what their third said was true. He was chosen before he was ever born to bear this burden. It made him wonder how many times this had happened before. How many before him and before Vadian. How many times had this vengeance failed to come to fruition.
He shrugged. If his life was going to end in a hole, he would do it as his own man, not a pawn in some cosmic game he didn't understand or want any part of.
Daylight found her still lying, her feet splayed and skirt hiked to her knees to combat this sweltering heat.
The others were there, but they kept to each their own, not crowding her thoughts but close enough she felt like she often did when a familiar presence was near.
"What do we do now?" she asked.
"What do you mean?" Leviana's question came back first with a sleepier slower echo coming from their third. A creature born of vengeance apparently needed her beauty sleep.
"We are three who are one, but also one of a pair. What happens now that we're all awake."
"We are all awake, but we are not a singular being, not yet."
"What you're saying is that each of us will disappear once we gather together to take the power you offer." Jalcina was a turn behind at understanding, but the older woman said the words with a sneer. No mistaking her distaste for the idea.
"If you wish to survive, we cannot do so divided."
"But if we aren't divided, who survives?"
"All of us and none of us."
Comfort colder than a Sartolian Spring blizzard.
Jalcina recoiled from the idea, her face showing every inch of her distaste for the idea of disappearing. She had come so close to that before. So close to being destroyed by the creature who was Leviana, yet she carried no animosity toward her. They all wanted to survive.
It was then she realized their third must also feel the same.
"You will disappear as well," she said.
"Yes, I will become one with you two. We three will be greater than we are apart, but I will no longer exist as a separate being."
With extended hands, Jalcina offered her what comfort there was to have.
"How can you ask this of us?"
"How can it be asked of me?" She asked. "I have spent so long trapped. Unable to move forward, to reach my peace. My father's curse has become as much a trap for me as it was for them. I am chained to his vengeance."
"Your father?"
"Ancel. The one you worship as the God of War, my father, the wronged one. They took everything from him and he wishes only to do the same to them. First he trapped them by their own greed, now he summons their greatest misdeed to destroy them utterly."
"These ones he seeks to destroy, who are they?" Leviana asked.
"The murderers of his children. My brother and I were snatched from him by their choices and he will make them pay for that, but he wills it that they be faced by the ones they killed. Therefore, my brother and I return again and again to see an end to this. Except no vessel has made it this far. We return and we die before we are able."
Her palpable sorrow rocked Jalcina's limbs as she held her.
"You were murdered on the battlefield," the speaker pointed to Leviana. "Nalcet insured you would die because he feared you."
"But no one caused Vadian to die. He was killed by a lover."
"Who do you think provided her the poison? Who do you think poisoned her mind with the thought? Over and over again, he has insured we do not survive. Over and over again, but now, we have. Now we have the strength. If we stand together."
"How is it possible I survived death?" came Jalcina's question.
"My strength and yours together allowed us to transcend time. The three of us will be able to do even more. She survived because our strength sustained her even through the darkness of sleep."
"So what happens now? How can we do this?"
"Gather close," she opened an arm to Leviana. "Each of us must concentrate not on each other and our differences but the great falcon within us all."
The great falcon, a creature the size of a dragon, with talons as long as a man's body and a beak capable of rending limbs. Like dragons, they were mythical, creatures lost to legend. No one living had ever seen one, yet Jalcina saw her clearly, every feather outlined in a silver-blue light. This was their true form. It was their power manifested.
Whoever else she had ever been, she found herself now in this moment as that falcon stared into her with one liquid eye full of suppressed fire. Her companions glowed in concert with the vision, then started to lose distinctness. Jalcina broke the gaze to look at her hands. The world showed through them. The woo
d of the deck brown to black through her knuckles. Her heart raced, yet she didn't want the change to stop. Exhilaration worked on her like wine making her head spin. Peace suffused her and offered her such a gift.
Beside her Leviana disappeared, the third was already gone. Only Jalcina remained. Stepping forward, she put her hand out to the apparition which moved to be stroked about its beak like something tame.
"Am I you or are you me?"
The eye focused on her and she felt the others beckoning.
There was no need to hesitate.
Jalcina let herself sink into the eye and the air grew warm like kettle brewed tea. Relaxing into it, the peace wrapped her and she disappeared leaving the deck of the ship populated by only the dead.
The long hours of the sea stretched below the beat of their striving wings. The falcon knew where it wanted to go and went there with a speed no horse or ship or perhaps even dragon could match. Far below, the distance sped by and soon they were over land. The green and brown and blue patchwork spread out like a quilt below still they continued on. When they came to the edge of the vast plain, it winged in a circle and screamed.
The keen held loss, longing, and a touch of fear.
Their brother, the dragon, lay below.
He lay dying below, incomplete and unable to access his true power to dig himself up from the earth as a hatchling from his shell.
Strong wings kept her aloft as she screamed again, encouragement for him to throw off his mortal bonds and once more find the power lying within. Certainly if she could, then he must be able to. He did not lack strength. He lacked…
He lacked conviction.
His triumverate refused to each other and with that refusal, they lost their ability.
Below he heard her call.
"Sister calls to us," Ancel's son said. "She calls for us to rise, but we cannot unless we are one."
Vadian's spirit offered them nothing and his refusal kept them stuck in a hole. Warden stormed out in search of the erstwhile spirit.
"Who do you think you are to kill all of us for your 'friend'?"
"Backaran was never a friend. He was a means to an end."
"And he's going to be the reason we all die without light and air, food and water. Because you don't want to go against him. Do you fear him?"
"All with sense fear the mad city."
"Knowing he is a foe we can defeat changes that."
"Until we have defeated him, it changes nothing."
"Let's go defeat him then. We have the power, or so our friend says. Above us, the others are waiting. Let's not keep them waiting up there for too long."
"There is one other thing," said Ancel's son as he joined their conference. "If we do not join our sister, then we will eventually die anyway as will she. The curse relies on us both to work."
"Think about it, you doom Leviana to death, again. Even if you were going to live, would you be able to live with that?"
"I would go to the abyss before I let her die again."
"Then join us. Focus on the dragon within each of us and let it flow out."
Warden stepped back, considering the implications of what he had just done. He chose his own death, no different than going up in smoke on the pyre for a false crime, he was going to die.
He touched his chest where a spreading stain of blood rose. He would die soon, his body failing, and all three of them would go to the abyss.
"We need to hurry."
"We feel the ebb of your life, Warden. We must choose our fate. Whatever it may be."
Warden entertained a vision of ramming a sword down his throat. He sounded too much like a sage for his taste. However, the whole situation smacked of a learning lesson taught to children.
Don't choose to die in a hole surrounded by various parts of who you are.
"Together then." The three gathered close and in the center, a dragon great and majestic in its black scales with violent red eyes. It spread wings over them, hiding them in shadow. The darkness came alive. It blanketed them and cloaked them before entrapping them in something like comfort. Too cold to be true comfort, Warden relaxed into it anyway.
The others did the same.
The creature offered them something missing from each, a sense of strength meaning nothing to do with strength of arms. Minds melded with the beast and it came alive all the more. Flapping and stretching its wings, jaws opening and closing. It was as if they animated it.
Warden stared up at it in awe as it grew and took on stronger characteristics. He, like many, had never seen a dragon up close. Even in the moments when he had been the dragon, he had never looked at himself. Now it towered above him before opening its throat in a roar vibrating the ground and sending rocks tumbling down the hole they hid in. For just a moment, Warden wondered what it would be like to be crushed by either the rocks or the dragon. Then his sight faded.
His eyes opened and his view had changed.
The world danced with colors he had names for in a tongue he had never uttered.
Nothing would ever be the same.
He clawed at the thick rock above him, taking the ascent out of the earth one clawful at a time, his wings pressed tight against his back. Soon he would be free.
Soon he would join his sister.
Soon they would exact revenge.
He trained his entire life for this.
In Search Of Father
Below them the great mount upon which Arathum rested seemed little more than a child's hill. Together, dragon and falcon circled. The knowledge their father waited below spurred them forward. The awareness of great evil waiting kept them back.
Something isn't right.
We must fight. It has the taint of the murderers upon it.
With an internal nod, they both swooped down toward the summit well above the eyes of most.
Putting her feet down on the ground of the mountain brought a swell of memories to Jalcina. This was home. She had run up and down the paths of this mountain. Once she had been a child here. She looked at her companion.
"Who are you now?"
He didn't answer. His features were both familiar and foreign. Someone she cared for, perhaps, and a stranger. Her heart welled up with the thought of him. The timbre of his voice when he spoke brought her tears of remembered pain.
"Where is father?" He asked.
"I don't know," she said. "I don't know."
Casting about for any sign of their parent, she tried not to wonder what happened to him. Had he been caught in some way by the same ones who had ended them so long ago. Finally succumbed to his grief at their destruction and flung himself from the mountain into the rocks below. Of course he hadn't. Their father was no coward. He would never allow something so simple as death cause him to forget his strength.
"He must be here somewhere."
They began the walk down the mountain together.
It wasn't long before they passed the escape route from the palace dungeon.
"We should go this way," she urged. "The taint resides in the palace and we must free our people of it."
Thinking of the people as hers came as a shock. Jalcina thought of the people of Sartol as her people, but Arathum was Leviana's home. It offered her nothing. Now it offered her everything.
"How do we get in? Isn't it locked from here?" He placed his hand on the smooth stone, caressing it with his fingertips.
"That cannot stop us."
She pressed her fingers into the rock and it gave before her nails like rotten cloth, shredding and leaving long tears. He joined her in destroying the hidden door and it opened into a cool, dark tunnel. They filed into the tunnel and crawled down its length.
"We will have the element of surprise," he said. "And we will certainly be able to defeat whatever awaits."
"Yes."
Jalcina kept to herself how she felt that might not be the case. Her apprehension was mirrored in the minds of her compatriots. No matter which way she looked, there was definite uncerta
inty. It dogged her steps, an unwanted puppy yapping at her heels.
They reached the back corner of the dungeon seemingly minutes later though Jalcina remembered it taking much longer to get from the dungeon to the outside before.
Mekan led them out even though he was injured.
The others had run off to insure they weren't caught.
She didn't know what happened to them. Perhaps the Fate Circle turned in their favor.
The sudden arrival of a dozen guards on the dungeon level said for the moment, the Fate Circle did not turn well for them.
"Stand down!" He commanded and they wavered, the points of their spears weaving patterns in the air. He cast a glance at her. She nodded. He stepped forward with his empty hands visible.
"We will do no harm, so long as the one carrying the taint is brought to us."
Furtive glances went back and forth between the assembled. Jalcina felt their thoughts like whispers over her skin.
Fear. Worry. The acknowledgment they had been tainted by evil. She let those touch her and then brushed them away. They were soldiers, the arm of those who would cause trouble for them. Better to wipe them out and have done.
With a quick step advance, she went at the first of the guards who defended himself with the pole of his spear against a sword she hadn't had a moment before. He danced back breaking the formation and chaos reigned. The group broke in all directions forcing her to chase.
Her companion put his hand on her arm.
"Let them go. They are only soldiers."
"We do not leave behind live enemies."
"If they threaten us, then they will forfeit their lives. For now, we move forward."
The pair took the stairs out of the dungeon with men fleeing before them. In the above hall, Xasan threw a spear at them which lodged itself in the wall next to Warden's head. With a quick jerk, Warden snatched it out and advanced on their would-be killer. He landed on him like an avalanche.
With each motion, Xasan's face betrayed how close to death he came. If he disengaged, he would die. If he did not, he would die anyway. With his jaw set, he fought on, despite growing wounds and an opponent who seemed not to tire.
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