Ruins of Fate

by Alledria Hurt

  "You don't trust me."

  "You led us to slaughter the last time we trusted you."

  "Truth," she admitted. "I did lead you to death before. For that, I am sorry. I made what I now know is a poor choice, but I do not want to see us all destroyed for this."

  "You deserve your destruction. As does he and all your ilk."

  "Even Backaran, who returned everyone to themselves, despite the knowledge he might well be destroyed when you sought revenge? Does he deserve also to be destroyed?"

  Backaran. Jalcina remembered the mad city and its enigmatic queen with little fondness. When she visited she had been a prisoner. When Leviana visited, she had been a guest. The third cast the vote to think of him as a benefactor. They had little to lose by allowing him to survive, if they did. If he wasn't destroyed when they went after Nalcet.

  Ancel and Sinda continued to bicker as Jalcina drew closer to Warden. "What do you think?"

  "I think they all should hang," he said. "They brought it on themselves and if they are all gone, no one can repeat their mistake."

  His decision made sense and she didn't try to dispute it. If he wanted to kill them all, then reasoning would not help him see anything different. Jalcina, on the other hand, did not think everyone needed to be destroyed. Backaran had given them everything.

  She almost missed it when Sinda pulled a sword and thrust it at Ancel. Seeing it, she lunged forward but Ancel waved her off.

  "Let me handle this."

  The former lovers danced around each other, swords at the ready, with the others looking on.

  "I trusted you." Ancel thrust his sword across the space between them. Sinda slid past it and slashed at his face, forcing his retreat.

  "I gave you everything you needed to defeat him, but you trusted him. Not me. You trusted him."

  The glitter of tears in her eyes did nothing to soften the determination in her teeth as she continued her flurry of attacks. Ancel fell to defending himself against that onslaught as she screamed her frustration.

  "I didn't want to die. I chose life and you let him destroy all of us."

  Her accusation slowed him enough that her sword went through his side low.

  "You failed us," she said. "I trusted you to stop him, to help him find another way. You were the only one he respected. That's why he chose them. He respected you and thought you would see the light of what he sought to do."

  Fight drained from her as she looked at Ancel's blood staining the hard ground.

  "He asked me to come here and stop you. I don't want to stop you, but I don't want to die either." With a hiccuping sob, she collapsed to her knees. "I don't want to die, An-kara. I don't want to die."

  "We all die, or we should have," he said as he held his wound closed. "My children died for his ambition. What he intended never mattered. He chose to take away my family to have it. He took you from me."

  His bloodstained hand left a trail along her cheek.

  "I remember many nights together with you. Sharing secrets. And you gave me what I need to insure he never rises again."

  His sword hand came around like a breeze and off came Sinda's head. As the body hit the ground, he fell beside it. Only then did Warden and Jalcina move, obedient to his commands.

  "I cannot go further with you. I am barred from entering the realms of the cities," Ancel said. Then he pulled the Black King's seal out of the air. It shone with a new light as its shell cracked and inside came forth another, cruder figure.

  "This will breach his defenses. Just as it was meant to stop the magic he summoned long ago."

  "Father, what about you?"

  "I will stay here and mourn. I will look for the lights in the sky of his demise. I will wait when the sky lights."

  Warden snatched the figure out of the air and tucked it away in a hidden part of his tunic.

  "Go both of you. Coralai," he addressed. "You know the way. You must go through the forest of Jalcina's youth where the soul eater dwells."

  The memory froze her insides, remembering how she faced down the creature seeking to eat her younger brother Sorren. Leviana remembered it as the moment of her waking, when she became aware once more.

  Now they would go through there to reach what…

  "What are we looking for?"

  "The figure will show it to you. Be wary though, the soul-eater is not the only thing in those woods which might well do you harm."

  In The Lair Of The Soul-Eater

  The copse of trees still stood, untouched. The braided ropes dyed scarlet as a reminder of the danger lurking within brought back memories as Jalcina touched them, fingers light against the hair. Though they were newer, they remained the same.

  "You were here a long time ago," Warden said. "Do you remember what happened?"

  "It is one of my last clear memories before Leviana and I began to war for control," Jalcina said. "She stirred awake when the creature tried to eat me, finding me a more powerful snack than Sorren who was the reason my father and I came here in the first place."

  Warden nodded. He knew of Sorren. Vadian's recollections of Jalcina telling him about her family remained strong.

  "You loved him more than your life."

  "I suppose. I think I more loved the idea of my father not losing anyone else he cared for. My mother disappeared into a blizzard not long after my youngest siblings were born. Gone without a word, leaving him with four bodies to mind. I never knew why and if he knew, he never said."

  "Awful strange thing for a Mother to do."

  "What happened to your mother?"

  "She died trying to keep me warm," he said. "I survived and killed the one responsible so he could never curse another family to the merciless cold." He passed the ropes and looked back at her from the shadows under the trees. "Time waits for no one. Let's go."

  Old fear kept her rooted a moment longer. Her childhood had been spent avoiding this place. Her only memory of a time when she had been nearly killed. Her wariness was not without merit.

  Warden didn't try to drag her in, but he repeatedly snapped his fingers in an effort to draw her out of her head.

  "Do you think this is easy?"

  "No easier than me going into a stand of trees covered in snow," he said before turning his back and heading further into the darkness. Jalcina followed.

  Their footsteps left evidence as they trekked into the trees. The stones marking the edge of the creature's true territory were dusted with powder and Jalcina stopped a moment to contemplate them.

  "I wonder where it is."

  "Perhaps it's gotten away or disappeared and no one ever found out because they didn't know to look."

  "Or something worse has happened and that's why there is no one in this valley which should hold a thriving kingdom."

  "I don't have any memories of recent Sartol."

  "A year ago, Sartol thrived. They sent in their tribute and even had an audience with Leviana regarding it, they never said anything about a plague or another problem leading to kingdom-wide destruction."

  "So what do you think happened?"

  "It was set free somehow."

  "But those wards are meant to keep it in."

  "Yes, and they used to work. I just don't think they do now."

  "Why wouldn't they work now if they've worked for hundreds of years? You haven't been in this forest for more than three hundred years."

  "Something is wrong, Warden. I don't know what, but it is."

  "Shouting will not change the present that we have no idea what is going on."

  Jalcina slipped into silence.

  Then she heard it, whispering to her, beckoning her closer.

  The stones brightened with its presence.

  You've returned, its tone was almost friendly. And now you'll remain.

  Where once she might have felt fear at the sound of the creature speaking to her, she felt nothing now. The remembered fear of her youth drained away with the understanding she was greater than this spirit, greater
than it on its best day and a hundred years since its last feeding, it had nothing to fight her with.

  Only her fear.

  "You will let us pass," she said. Warden stood guard at the edge of the circle as she stepped within. "Or you will perish."

  I have stood guard over this place for centuries. None have passed. None will pass.

  "Guard?" Warden asked.

  My master set me here. My master allows me to remain. I am ever his servant.

  "Then perhaps he should protect you." Jalcina struck, the point of her blade a star in the shrouded darkness of the wood, and the monster howled its suffering to the branches. Yet it did not fall.

  Great claws appeared from the growing mist and clasped Jalcina in a pincer's grip. It squeezed her until she dropped her sword where it disappeared before hitting the ground. Warden rushed to her aid, slashing the claw, but his attack passed right through.

  I have stood long. I will not fall.

  Eyes, a mixture of garnet and emerald, stood out against the mist. Warden turned and struck between them, piercing something. Again the creature shrieked, and now it dropped Jalcina, those claws returning to protect the eyes.

  "Found its underbelly," Warden exclaimed.

  "Cut it open," Jalcina said. They flanked it and attacked from both sides forcing it to try and watch them both. It failed and they made it through the creature's obvious defenses.

  Then the mist grew bloody and the screams and howls turned into laughter. They gasped in the thick air as the monster chucked.

  Your blades will harm me, true. But in the end, I am better.

  Everywhere crept darkness and Jalcina flinched from it. Her breath came labored and she clawed at the hard-packed earth. Beside her, Warden strangled, the sounds from his throat becoming feral. She looked for him, but the mist had grown so thick he was little more than a silhouette.

  Her attempts to suck in a deep breath failed. Nothing would move the air the way she wanted. Darkness, deeper still than the shadows and mist, crowded her vision.

  As her eyes drooped shut, she felt Leviana shove her way forward and as she collapsed, her arms drew new strength.

  Her voice came out of her throat in a snarl.

  "You will not, creature." The forest exploded with blue light the shape of capturing chains. They reached for and supported Warden who seemed as if he too had fallen. Then his eyes blazed open.

  "We are not so easily defeated," he whispered.

  They were one each and yet not.

  Vadian reached for Leviana's hand and linked together, they rushed the eyes of the monster.

  It blinked and lost its life.

  They each struck an eye straight on and they turned into a bevy of stars twinkling down to the earth. In that moment, everything became made of light with the stones at the edge of the clearing taking on the greatest amount. They stood bathed in it.

  It hung there just long enough for Vadian to reach into his tunic and remove the statuette which held its own interior, darker, light.

  The statuette supped on the larger light, drawing it in and causing it to the disappear until they stood not in a forest thickly surrounded by trees, but in a plaza before a temple they had certainly seen before.

  The hidden temple beneath Backaran had been replicated in white. People moved back and forth chatting as if their sudden appearance meant nothing.

  "This must be Nalcet," Leviana said.

  "I suppose so. Let us go find our host then."

  Nalcet In His Own Home

  Nalcet's realm was one of alabaster columns and streets that seemed to be repel the dirt tracked by the humanity within. The silence, much like Backaran, was unnerving but did not carry the same tone of menace. This did nothing to keep Leviana and Vadian from being wary.

  "Where do you think we are?"

  "I never fully conquered the mountains beyond Sartol. The chance to take Utica was too good to pass up."

  "I approve."

  "I didn't ask for your approval."

  "And yet you have it." His smile kept pace with his words as they walked, even the sounds of their shoes muted against the stones where they should have rung out. They journeyed toward the center. Again, like Backaran, the center held a magnificence hardly paralleled. It stretched toward the sky, like Wrepta, but around it like a band crystal blue water ran.

  "True water is clear," Vadian said. "I wonder…" He nearly slid his fingers in the water and it leapt up to met him, coating his skin. Vadian jerked back and flung the offending mess away.

  "Wariness is perhaps a better part of survival here."

  "I expect we will have to bathe in the blood of our enemies before we reach our prize."

  Leviana nodded. The idea brought her no pause but also no solace. Many would die. Perhaps unnecessarily and for a feud so ancient only the beings involved remembered why. The rest, they were merely babes on the threshing floor waiting to be killed.

  She could almost pity them. Jalcina did.

  A drawbridge awaited them over the moat leading them into the heart of the temple with thick as three men's torso columns. The smoothness begged to be touched, but after the moment with the water that was not water, neither of them made any move to touch anything. Better they save their limbs for the fight ahead.

  Entering the entryway, a man stepped out at the far end of the hall and he wore nothing more than robes, no obvious weapons.

  "Are you Nalcet?"

  "Master will not see you," the man said as he advanced.

  Leviana stepped forward, her blade at the ready, the man wore Kendrick's face but did not have Kendrick's voice. If he had a twin, they had never spoken of it, but then they had spoken little of his childhood at all. Perhaps they should have. Far too late. If she ever saw him again, she would insure he never spoke again.

  By the time he reached them, the man created weapons, one for each hand connected by a long slim chain.

  "Break the chain; throw off his balance," Vadian said as Leviana engaged. He turned just in time to see another, a perfect copy, attempt to stab him in the back with a poniard. They engaged and a third appeared out of a side door hidden in the hall, distracting them both.

  With a bit of colorful cursing, Leviana cut the first one down without flourish. He was immediately replaced by the third and then a fourth. All of them wearing Kendrick's face. All of them moving with an uncommon and awe-inspiring grace she did not have time to admire. Blood spilled to the floor only to spread and then be slurped up by the white.

  The floor dined on the fallen, their bodies disintegrating into dust only to disappear.

  "Nalcet cares nothing for these creatures."

  "Then I suppose neither should we?"

  "Do you wish to offer them quarter?"

  "No," Leviana shook her head, black hair flying over her shoulders. "What good will it do them? Even if we let them live, what will he do to the dissenters?"

  Vadian nodded his understanding and used the pommel of his sword to slam a man in the throat. It crushed under the blow and down he went before Vadian kicked him out of the way.

  "We are wasting time," he said. "Our true objective lies within." He gestured to the doors at the far end of the hall. Bodies began to pile up around them, creating a dead barricade against their advance.

  "Push through." Leviana moved with her own grace, destroying what stood against her and changing as she went. Wings spread, she used them to buffet those who tried to attack from the sides while her sword weaved deadly patterns in the front.

  Vadian followed behind, scales growing over his back and chest to armor him against his assailants. He held on to his sword as long as he could before having to abandon it for his now sharper claws. The sound of their advance was the ring of metal on metal, scuffling of feet, cries of pain, and sighs of death.

  They reached the doors and used them as backers to keep from being surrounded.

  Those against them had little hope and the urgency of their attacks betrayed their desperation
. More and more they threw themselves at the pair only to be cut down faster than over-eager youths against a master.

  The onslaught finally stopped.

  No more men ran forward to find their death at the hands of the fated pair. They surveyed their handiwork, the death which lay around them. Though drops of blood still fell from wounds, the hall stood pristine. Not a drop of viscera or blood marred their surfaces, just staring bodies like clay jars. Then the hall was empty of even that.

  "Our revenge has only begun," Leviana said and when she looked into the mirrored doors they would go through, her eyes were no longer simply blue, they were sapphires set in her face, as emotionless as a sea creature from the depths.

  Vadian's eyes disappeared into garnets, beautiful with hidden dark centers.

  The doors did not resist as they pushed them inward to take in the inner sanctum of their enemy.

  Were it not for their knowledge, they might have thought it nothing more than a simple temple to some well-loved god. Things appeared tended, the fires banked so as to produce little ash in the air. In the center of the room, a glow suffused the air from a column built of marble bricks to stand a little more than waist high.

  "His well," Vadian said. "But where is he?"

  "Fled? He cannot go far."

  "No. His destruction will follow him wherever he goes."

  "Then we search."

  "You don't have to look for me," Nalcet stepped in from another room. "I do not run like my brother, Ernal. I do not simper like my sister, Sinda. I will not hide like my sibling, Backaran, either. They have chosen their fates. I have no reason to join them."

  "You speak of the dead."

  "Backaran lives. Ernal lives within you. Sinda chose her path when she defied me ages ago. Wrepta gave herself over to her guilt. I have no interest in watching others repeat her mistake."

  Moving toward them, he aged until a long white beard hung from his face to curl against the floor.

  "I should destroy you both where you stand. You cost me my greatest son."

  "He was hardly an opponent," Vadian said. "Was that truly the best you could field?"