“Fucking run!” Brisethi hissed, breaking into a full sprint. She had no desire to attack men that were simply carrying out an order. Moreso, she was uncertain she would have the energy to put up a fight.
Etyne summoned his mystic on each of them to distort their appearances. He realized Brisethi was leading them to the plateau that rose nearly forty feet above them and spanned for miles north to south. Sprinting through the waist-high grass proved to be risky as each of them tried to avoid tangling their legs in the grass, stumbling over unseen rocks, and nearly crippling their ankles in rodent holes.
“The rope I packed isn’t long enough so you’ll each need to climb at least ten feet,” Etyne told them. He then dematerialized himself into his spirit form and rushed up the cliffs until he reached the top. He became corporeal again, unpacked his rope to tether it to himself and let the rest of it fall below. “Come on, Reej! Reach for the rope!”
“I’ll distract the dogs!” Brisethi shouted and retraced her steps back into the grasslands. She wanted only to throw off the scent to keep the patrol men from seeing the slight distortion in the cliffs of her comrades. Since she was still under Etyne’s mystic protection, she kicked at rocks to spur up dust and even whistled to grab the attention of the dogs.
Livian quickly reached the rope and wrapped it around her arm. She grabbed it with her other hand when Etyne swiftly pulled her up. When he helped her onto the ledge he tossed the rope down again for Korteni who had already climbed halfway up in the time he attended to Livian. She took a hold of it and used her feet to help climb when he pulled her up.
“That climb was way easier than the one near Mt. Bavala,” Korteni exhaled.
“Just a tad,” Livian panted.
“Get out of sight, run over there,” Etyne pointed to the small outcrop of boulders in the distance. “I’ll go help ‘Sethi.”
Brisethi had initiated her climb by the time Etyne spotted her. The two dogs were barking wildly beneath her while the men on horseback fired their rifles at the cliff walls, unsure of their target. Debris from the bullets hitting the rock around her caused her to flinch. She saw the rope just above her and swiftly climbed toward it, adreneline and muscle memory taking over until she grabbed it in both hands. She kicked at the cliff with her legs while Etyne brought her up.
“That was odd,” she told him, nearly out of breath when he helped her to stand.
“What was? You didn’t think they’d chase after us?” Etyne asked, packing the rope away.
“No, not that. My mystics – they were, trying to summon something other than destruction,” she told him, following after him toward the other two.
“Your spirit is probably just trying to get used to defending you again now that it’s returned to your vessel,” he explained.
She gave Etyne a confused look and was urged to ask. “What do you mean ‘returned to your vessel’?”
Etyne cursed to himself, not meaning reveal to her what he had done. “I’ll tell you as soon as we get to those boulders,” he told her, squinting in the faintest light left of the evening.
They waited until long after the sun set, to start a small fire, when they could be sure the hunting party had moved on. The circle of boulders where the Resarians hid portrayed evidence of past visitors from the carefully placed rocks around a fire pit. After cleaning the meat rack, Brisethi placed the remaining uncooked boar meat on it to let it cook naturally in the fire instead of her instant cooking.
Etyne was perched on one of the boulders, trying to study a map of Trycinea in the dim firelight. He listened to the soft footsteps approaching and guessed correctly that Brisethi had come to pay him a visit.
“What do you have to tell me?” she asked, sitting down next to him.
“There’s a town nearby - Essenar, along a massive lake. We can make it there in two days if we leave just before dawn,” he explained to her, straightening the map folds on his lap. “I think we deserve to stay at an inn for once, with a proper bath, replenish our supplies…”
“Tell me, Etyne,” Brisethi replied. She glared at him until he could no longer take her scornful gaze.
He folded the map and placed it in his coat pocket. “Let’s go for a walk.” He helped her stand and climb down the boulder. He signaled to Korteni and Livian that they would return soon.
Awkward silence initiated their slow walk under the starry, indigo sky. Brisethi took out a few pieces of cooked boar meat wrapped in food cloth and shared some with her companion.
“I’m waiting on you. The sooner you tell me what happened, the sooner we can get sleep before our watches,” she yawned.
He swallowed the mouthful of food before beginning his confession. When he did speak, his voice was soft. “When I found you in that laboratory cell, I couldn’t sense your spirit. Not even a trace of it. I thought for sure it had returned to the Sea of Renewal.”
“There’s no such thing as a Sea of Renewal,” she muttered. “We simply embody paranormal anomalies. Sariadne is nothing more than a land of unexplained scientific singularities.”
“’Sethi, what the fuck are you talking about?” He halted their walk to turn and face her. “Is this what the Lantheuns told you?”
“You of all people with your logical, Kiaran mind should know this fact!” She wasn’t sure why her voice had risen in volume.
Etyne suddenly lost all interest in letting her know what he did after her blasphemous words had cut through him like a dagger through his soul. He looked over when she had fallen to her knees. The illuminating white flashes in her eyes told him she was having another flashback. He silently cursed the Lantheuns again for the effect they had on Brisethi, the effect his soul was starting to feel from her. Since there was no chance of harming the others, he let her carry out the fit, watching her, listening to her.
“Sulica!” she shouted hoarsely. “Then why can’t I?” Her words drifted in and out of his hearing as if she was somehow talking through a warped time plane. After a long minute, she stood and started to fight her own phantom, punching, kicking, and leaping at nothing.
In the distance to the west, Etyne watched lightning illuminate the cell clouds, too far to hear the thunder. His eyes returned to Brisethi who still fought her demon, a demon she hadn’t conquered and still lived somewhere in Lantheus. He watched her fall to the ground and kick at nothing in front of her. Moments later she fell unconscious as the light in her eyes dimmed with her closed eyelids.
He knelt down and lifted her, noticing she had regained some of her weight. They returned to camp, and Etyne set Brisethi down on the opposite side of the fire, away from Korteni and Livian’s bedrolls.
“Did you two fight?” Korteni teased at seeing her unconscious friend.
“She fought someone, yes,” he replied, untying his sleeping mat from his pack for his friend to rest on. Since someone would always stand watch, they had only brought three mats with them.
Korteni did not need more of an explanation as she handed him her mat since she would stand the first watch of the night. She doused the fire with her water mystic and equipped her sword and pistol. She climbed the highest boulder near them and took a seat upon it.
-:- -:- -:-
“Sen Asel,” the voice bellowed in her head. “Daughter of Sentiar Asellunas.”
“No, Tirinnus Sen Asel is my father. His grandfather’s father was Sentiar Asellunas,” she corrected the obsidian dragon, taking in the view of the stars above in the crater. “How did you know my name? I don’t recall telling you.”
“I’m in your mind, in your dreams, ‘Sethi,” he replied using her nickname lightly. “I read your thoughts, your desires, your ambitions. Would you like me to enact vengeance upon Sulica for your torture?”
“You would do that for me?”
“Spirits, no, I would never leave my volcano for fear of ending up like my unfortunate mother,” he sadly reminded her. His giant scaled form walked around the Resarian girl, examining the wounds she tried to hide under
her uniform. He saw what she had seen, though, and knew they were still there. “I was unable to disturb your dreams while you were away from Sariadne,” he continued. “Though, you are still not returned to our homeland. Your adversary must have prevented my spirit’s infiltration of your mind.”
Brisethi realized the dragon hadn’t haunted her during her entire stay in Lantheus. She wondered if Roz had been visited by him more during her absence but asked about something that had piqued her curiosity more. “Did you know Sentiar Asellunas? Just how old are you?”
“I have watched the rise and fall of both your people and the Kiarans. I witnessed your warlord ancestor rise from the ashes of Res’Baveth to avenge his people. Do you have any more questions?” the dragon impatiently growled.
“Yes,” she quickly said, still standing in the crater of the once again dormant volcano. “Why is Sariadne the only continent with anomalies that embody the creatures who inhabit this place?” she asked, echoing the words of the Lantheun.
He growled again, letting flames flare from his nostrils at her description of his sacred spirit. “Sit down!” He shouted at her.
She slowly sank to the ground and perched on a lava rock, abiding by the dragon’s frightening command.
The dragon walked up to Brisethi and lowered his rear haunches, resisting the urge to eat her. He would have had she not embodied such a powerful spirit for fear he would upset those in the Sea of Renewal. “Before humans existed,” he began, “dragons ruled the world of Falajen. When the millennia of ice overtook the surface of the world, we fled to Sariadne, the last continent to fall to the devastating winter of eons.”
Brisethi sighed impatiently, “Yes, I know, we’re taught that we have dragon spirits-”
“Do not interrupt me.” His claws raked the ground with his words. “We fought one another for the heat of the two volcanoes in a constant struggle. In the end, only forty-eight of us survived; forty-eight out of hundreds of thousands of us. As each immortal dragon froze to death, their spirit was returned to what you call the ‘Sea of Renewal’, near the northern volcano. When the ice melted, and creatures emerged throughout Sariadne once more, the dragon spirits who wished to leave their incorporeal state began to reside in these creatures. When the first Resarians and Kiarans left the caves to initiate civilization, we embodied them, too.
“Unfortunately, the Kiarans were keen on destroying the dragons who gave their vessels extended life and mystic spirits. We stopped choosing their vessels to inhabit and remained loyal to the Resarians who feared us enough to leave us alone. That is,” the dragon growled, “until a group of your people decided to hunt down my mother.” He flared his fire and clawed at the ground beneath him to calm his anger. “Because of this, I have asked the spirits to never inhabit any human again. But my mother’s spirit is too forgiving and wanted to experience this ‘human’ life of yours.
“Your immortal spirit is a gift, Sen Asel. Treat it as such. Or we will take them back suddenly, ending the life of any Resarian older than the average human and leaving you all vulnerable to your adversaries.” He spread his wings wide and roared.
Brisethi inhaled deeply at the sight. She felt a pang of guilt in her heart for her temporary loss of faith. The urge came over her to kneel down on one knee before the majestic dragon. “I’m sorry that I ever doubted your spirits,” she told him, hoping her words conveyed the appropriate amount of shame.
“Save your apology for your companion. He’s the one who prevented your rare dragon spirit from returning to the Sea of Renewal before his time,” he flapped his wings and leapt into the sky.
“What?”
Brisethi opened her eyes and stared up at the immense amount of stars in the endless sky above. She sat up, waiting for her eyes to adjust to see Livian and Korteni asleep on the opposite side of their camp. Etyne’s silhouette could barely be seen sitting atop the boulders facing the northwest.
She climbed the massive rock and sat down next to him and watched as he put his pocket watch away. Removing a pack of sweetened hard cinnamon candies, she popped one in her mouth and offered one to him as well.
“You’re about an hour early to watch,” he quietly told her, taking a candy from her hand and unwrapping it.
“He told me what you did,” she vaguely stated, rolling her tongue around the cinnamon-flavored chew in her mouth.
“Who told you what?” Etyne slowly asked after yawning.
“Oh, spirits, I never told you,” she nearly whispered. She scratched at the back of her neck then raked at her uneven hair.
“We have a bad habit of keeping certain things from one another,” Etyne admitted, biting down on his candy.
Brisethi nodded and looked down at her hands. “Since you already think I’ve lost my mind, I might as well tell you.” She inhaled slowly. “Acolyte Roz and I met a dragon during expedition training.”
Etyne remained silent. A confrontation would risk destroying their suddenly fragile friendship, especially given the recent event. Doubting her was the last thing on his mind, so he carefully listened to her instead.
“I know you don’t believe me,” she continued after a pause. “You’re probably thinking that the Lantheuns completely fucked up my mind more than I’m willing to admit. But he exists, and he haunts my dreams every now and then. I’ll even take you to him when we return to the harbor outside Ancient Kiar – he’s wanted to eat a human lately and I think you’d satisfy him quite well.” She half-smiled.
Etyne leaned back on his hands to look at her easier. “You met him over eight years ago? How could you have not told me after all this time? Especially during the four years in officer training where we spent nearly every day with one another. Why didn’t you trust me then to tell me about this unique encounter?” His words were calm, but he seemed hurt by her mistrust.
Brisethi looked away again, glancing up to the endless sky for courage. “I wanted to tell you the very next day, but there was a time that I had a reputation to uphold to you. I didn’t want you to think I was mental or making things up to impress you. Despite my somewhat arrogant persona, I do care what some people think of me – what those I care about think of me.”
Etyne leaned forward again and placed his elbows on his knees. “You have no idea how highly I think of you, ‘Sethi. I will always admire the person you are, no matter how difficult it is for me to believe some of the things you tell me. But I will never call you a liar, and I will never call you crazy. I hope you believe me.”
She brought her knees up to her chest and held them. “I do believe you,” she sighed.
“Tell me from the beginning. I want to know how the two of you avoided this dragon’s teeth,” Etyne asked, giving her his genuine smile. It was the first genuine smile he was able to show her since their two-week integration.
She bit her lower lip to keep from grinning childishly. She eagerly recounted to him the entire event from the moment she inadvertently summoned the dragon, fended his flames from them, and the dreams he had inhabited.
Even in the dim light of the stars, Etyne could see the passion in her face from the way her eyes lit up while telling him her story. He could hear the excitement in her voice of every detailed action. But what surprised him more than her story, was how he had actually believed her. He was envious of her that she was blessed by this dragon and was particularly intrigued to learn that she was a descendent of Sentiar Asellunas.
“And just what did this dragon say I did to you?” He asked carefully when she paused.
“He said that my spirit was on his way to the Sea of Renewal. Etyne, please tell me you didn’t perform Soul Reclamation on me.” Brisethi repositioned herself to sit on her knees, almost as though begging him to say he hadn’t.
Etyne nodded slowly, staring into her eyes. “I had to,” he softly replied.
Tears distorted her vision for the ultimate sacrifice he made to prevent her life from ending. That explains your recent demeanor, she thought. “Etyne, why? Why would
you shorten your own life to extend mine? I had given up, I was practically dead.”
He shrugged. “I’m a bit selfish, actually. I’d rather you suffer in sorrows when I die before you, instead of the other way around,” He chuckled dryly, but was only holding back his own tears from the recollection of his partner’s broken vessel. He had been mere minutes away from losing her forever.
Brisethi reached over and brought his head to her chest, holding his neck and shoulders tightly against her while leaning her head on his. “You foolish, inane man. I’m not worth sacrificing half your life for. Your dragon’s spirit is probably plotting its revenge as we speak,” she tried to tease him but stifled a sob instead, holding him even tighter when she felt his arms wrap around her. “You once made a wish with me, in the desert, to live forever. Oh spirits, why?”
He buried his face into her uniform, not wanting to let go of her from his embrace. He couldn’t allow her to see the tears he’d been holding in since the night he found her. “‘Sethi, don’t,” he replied, not wanting to be reminded of simpler times. When he was confident that most of his tears were wiped from his face he looked up at her. “You have a bigger goal in life that I need you to carry out for both our peoples. You’ve told me of all of your ambitions. How could you expect me to allow you to die if I didn’t have to? It’s not like I won’t still be here another four hundred years or so.”
She reluctantly let go of him as Etyne gently pulled away. “Looks like I have less than four hundred years to reach that goal so you can see me succeed,” she smiled at him. “You should go get rest, Etyne. Leave me your sword and pistol.”
He looked at his pocket watch again to see that she had taken nearly the entire hour to explain her dragon encounters to him. He obliged, standing to stretch and relinquishing his weapons to her.
Tired though he was, Etyne laid awake for some time on the bedroll, considering all that Brisethi had told him. His spirit still remained restless from experiencing a fraction of what she had gone through. When sleep finally took him, his dreams consisted of crimson fire, flight and an inexplicable pain.
Spirits of Falajen Page 35
