The line of battle was already chaos, though not somehow as bad as it had been in the Heia Pass. The titans fell at a faster pace here, even without spellcaster magic at Sanctuary’s easy disposal. Cyrus watched three titans turn on their brethren, and knew as a fourth and fifth joined the fray on the Sanctuary side, that J’anda Aimant had entered the battle.
Still, the titans were relentless, flooding into the battlefield as they had into the arena in Kortran, enthusiastic if not skilled, trying with everything in them to overmatch their tiny prey and constantly outmaneuvered by them nonetheless.
“Sure you don’t want to do that wedding now?” Cyrus shouted as he launched himself up and landed on the back of a stooped-over titan’s neck. He plunged Praelior into the sweet spot between vertebrae, and exited with a leap before the titan toppled over.
“I hope you’re not asking one of these dead beasts to marry you,” Vara called back from some fifty feet away. “Because I would expect that from the Guildmaster of Goliath, but we hold you to a somewhat higher standard in Sanctuary.”
“Is that so? Then should I take aim for royalty of some sort, then? Perhaps hold out for a dwarven princess or some elven royal—?”
“It’ll be a frosty day in the Realm of Fire before you get any offers from elven royals, I’d wager, other than a few opportunists who have more issues with their father than even you do,” Vara said, leaping from the shoulders of one titan that she had just struck down to the next. “But I might know a certain elf of some importance that could be interested.”
“Is that so?” Cyrus asked, splitting a leg from a titan to the howls of his victim.
“Don’t be coy,” Vara said, smirking as she vaulted down, “or you might lose your ‘last hope.’”
“Never, shelas’akur,” Cyrus said, not entirely able to cover the anxious feeling that followed his braggadocio, and instead planting his blade in a leaning titan’s skull. “Never leave me.”
The titan numbers were increasing, but Cyrus saw little sign of his own troops growing in number. A trickle of Sanctuary fighters were coming out of the trees of Amti, a few at a time, and then they stopped altogether for some several long moments, during which J’anda, still unseen, seized a never-ending procession of titans and reversed them upon their own, single-handedly holding off any assault from their left.
“This lack of reinforcements is concerning,” Cyrus muttered as he was kicked by a passing titan. He clipped a tree and caught himself on one knee, the wind knocked out of him.
“Perhaps your people thought the better of throwing themselves into this fruitless endeavor,” Gareth said, running past in a flash, yanking Cyrus back to his feet as he went.
“We’re not that smart,” Cyrus replied, straightening up with some effort.
“You’re also not alone!” came the call from above. The armor of Alaric Garaunt came raining down into battle from on high, the axe of its new wearer brandished above. Terian’s blow found the back of a titan’s neck and separated it cleanly as the white knight swept down to Cyrus’s level on the wings of a Falcon’s Essence spell.
“Glad to see you,” Cyrus said with a grin as Terian sped down to him. “Might not want to rely on that for loft when the cessation spells come to call, though.”
“True enough,” Terian said, and with a wave of his hand his boots slapped back to the earth. “Sorry for the tardiness. It took a few minutes for your spellcasters to coordinate and bring mine in, but …” He grinned. “Now we’re here, and more of us are coming all the time.”
“Then maybe we’ve got a little more of a chance,” Cyrus said, with a grin of his own, as the next wave of titans burst through the trees in front of them.
“I wouldn’t call it even just yet,” Terian said, and now he was back to grim. “You got a plan for ending this?”
“I was thinking we’d just fight to the death.”
“Oh, hell.” Terian puckered his lips. “I should have known.” But he swung his axe, delivering death to the next titan, and the one after that, his army falling in behind him, a trickle of spellcasters joining them now in the battle at the trunk of the trees.
The titans came thicker now, and more armored, sweeping in under branches as warriors and rangers of Sanctuary and the Sovereignty fought side by side. They gave against the onslaught, surrendering ground and pressing back, and Cyrus was reminded of the days of Luukessia once more, of the ceaseless drive of the scourge to knock them back.
And that didn’t end so well for us, Cyrus thought, with just as implacable a foe, but weaker, and more easily channeled along controllable lines. He watched Vara blast a titan with her force spell so hard that its neck was snapped back and was broken. Still, though … we aren’t failing … perhaps we could—
“YAAAAAAAAAAH!” the low, rumbling shout came from somewhere above, and the entire battle seemed to pause as everyone looked skyward. A black blur, a dark shadow in the night came falling down like a stone, crashing into the back of a titan’s neck and hammering him into the ground with fury. Rocky hands rose up and pummeled the already downed titan, shattering skull and drawing blood.
“I AM LORD FORTIN THE RAPACIOUS OF ROCKRIDGE!” the rock giant shouted, voice crackling in fury over the suddenly quiet jungle. “DEFENDER OF THE EMERALD FIELDS AND GRAND KNIGHT OF SANCTUARY!”
“I don’t remembering anyone bestowing him that particular title,” Vara said into the silence.
“I’ll do it later,” Cyrus said, transfixed as everyone else by the rock giant’s entry to the fight. “I like it.”
“IF YOU SEEK BATTLE, GLORY AND DEATH, SEEK ME, COWARDLY TITANS!”
With that, the fray resumed, but in a suddenly unbalanced shift. Titans that had been advancing toward Cyrus and the others, even some who had been in the throes of combat, broke loose and turned toward Fortin, coming at him in a knot, fighting amongst each other for their opportunity at the rock giant’s challenge. Cyrus watched a few breaking into fights with each other, jabbing out eyes, crushing throats, throttling their fellows, and he was hard pressed to say whether J’anda had even had any sway on this particular outbreak of feuding among the titans.
Cyrus fought to the side as well, the rock giant still in the midst of a thrashing ocean of titans. Body parts were being flung, knees were being crushed, and the anguished screams of titans were enough to suggest to Cyrus that the rock giant was in the thick of it, but he hurried along nonetheless, plunging his sword into the backs of exposed knee joints and slitting throats among the fallen in a race to move with the line into place to defend Fortin—
The sound of feet crashing into the clearing, louder than any others, made him turn his head to the side. He looked once, then did a double take and turned again to be sure he had seen what he thought he had.
It was exactly what he had feared.
A titan stood at the edge of the fight in full plate armor, covered from head to toe in the manner of Arkarian warriors. As Cyrus watched, awestruck in contemplation of trying to fight through even folded steel smithed at such a scale, the armored titan spoke in the familiar voice of Talikartin, but with an even rougher edge, the bucket-shaped helm’s dark eye slits focused right on him.
“Cyrus Davidon,” Talikartin said, “you let a creature of the earth do your fighting, issue your challenges for you? How cowardly you have become, to hide in the shadow of such things rather than fight your own battles—and scarcely worth the battle I came all this way just to have … with you.”
83.
“You came all this way for me?” Cyrus asked, staring across the darkened forest at the armored titan, whose head was held high, eye slits shadowed. “Well, then what are you shuffling toward that rock giant for?” He waved. “Come on over here, Tali, and let’s finish this properly.”
Talikartin’s nose flared in fury, snorts echoing in the dark under the canopy and the night sky. “Do you think me a fool? How many times have you run from me now?”
“Only every time your army tries
to rush in and crush us,” Cyrus said, swallowing his nerves. “If you came here for me … fight me.”
The battle around Fortin had ceased, and every eye in the forest was on the challenge being offered to Cyrus. “You negotiate like a merchant,” Talikartin scoffed. “Too long in that human capital and its profane markets has soured you, turned you into something weak and incapable of staring into the true face of combat, meeting it with your eyes and striking out at it.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t get to choose where I grew up,” Cyrus said, stalling for time. He saw Vara edging around behind him, circling up a tree. “Neither did you, big boy, though I suspect if you’d grown up in Reikonos like me, you might have also had some civilizing influences on you, unlike the sort you run into out here in the savage wilds.” He waved a hand around. “Like for example, you might have learned—very merchant-like—that you don’t necessarily throw your best warrior stupidly into a contest with a creature four times their size without some guarantee of gain.”
“You truly are haggling,” Talikartin said in disgust.
“I don’t hear you making a counter-offer,” Cyrus said, narrowing his own eyes, “so listen to this: I beat you, your people get the hell out of this jungle and don’t come back.”
Talikartin bellowed out in laughter that seemed to shake the trees around him, laughter that was quickly echoed by the titans standing around listening to the discussion play out. “You wish to barter for the lives of these elves?”
“They’ve never been a threat to you,” Cyrus said, clenching Praelior tightly. “They’ve kept to their lands and—”
“You think we would countenance invaders?” Talikartin asked, still tall, still implacable, still refusing to bend to so much as look down at Cyrus through those eye-slits of his helm. “Tolerate this weak elven scum to sit in our lands unchallenged? How far you have fallen from the height of a warrior, how low you are in my estimation, how feeble in the beliefs that I was so sure bred true in you.”
“You don’t know me,” Cyrus said darkly.
“Indeed not,” Talikartin said. “You wish to bargain? Very well, I offer you this: Fight me, now, alone, without your healers or other spellcasters as aid, to the death, or I will slaughter without mercy or weakness every one of your guildmates I can lay hands on, tearing them to ribbon and mashing their little heads to paste beyond any hope of healing magic to repair them.”
“Here endeth the vendetta,” Cyrus whispered, looking up at the titan. “All right. Fine. I—”
“Don’t!” Vara slid into place next to him. “That thing is armored from heel to crown.”
“So am I,” Cyrus said, nodding at Talikartin.
“It doesn’t matter,” Vara said with a frown, “even Praelior is going to take time cutting through that—assuming it’s even possible.”
Cyrus eased in her closer to her. “We always knew it was going to come down to this—coming here, I mean. This was always a fight to the death.”
“Yes,” she said archly, “but I was supposed to die first.”
He frowned. “All these years, you told me that you were afraid you’d die last—”
“Well, yes, and that was why I didn’t want to be with you—”
“But now you are—”
“And you don’t even have the good grace not to go feeding into my greatest fears about our relationship, you inconsiderate arse—”
“ENOUGH!” Talikartin bellowed. “Enough bickering!”
“I haven’t had enough yet.” Cyrus leaned in and gave Vara a kiss, short, but filled with meaning. He saw the regret in her eyes, the fear, and he tried to smile. “Don’t get involved in this one,” he said.
“I will try not to,” she said, looking as troubled as he’d ever seen her.
“Talikartin the Guardian,” Cyrus said, turning back to look at the titan, “I accept your challenge.”
“Good,” Talikartin whispered, and finally, at last, he looked at Cyrus. His helm moved just enough to give Cyrus a full view of the eye-slits beneath, like windows into the soul of the titan he was about to do battle with.
And it was enough to drive the cold of winter into Cyrus’s very soul.
As he stood there, staring at his considerably larger opponent, it was not the armor, nor the disparity in height, nor even the challenge of strength that caused Cyrus to hesitate, to feel that ephemeral sense of fear that he thought he had long ago banished from his life, at least for himself. None of that weighed in his considerations at all, in fact.
It was the glowing red eyes that sent the twist into his stomach and the hint of weakness into his knees, for Cyrus knew at once that they were eyes he had seen in a thousand dreams over his many years, eyes that had looked into his very soul and handed him a mission to collect the pieces to put together the very sword he held in his hands.
The eyes of the God of War himself—Bellarum.
84.
“My Lord Bellarum,” Cyrus said, mouth suddenly dry. “You’re … here. You …” A thought tumbled loose. “You taught the titans magic?”
Talikartin the Guardian smiled a viler smile than Cyrus had seen from him before, visible underneath the helm’s gap. “I gave them no spells of teleportation to go to the north, nor healing magics to give them silly regard for fixing weakness; no, I gave them the power to strike out, to build my kingdom in the south and to go north by the pass if they could.”
Cyrus blinked, feeling like the jungle was closing in around him, the air reaching out to strangle him in his armor as he stared, helplessly, at the red eyes that had followed him through a thousand dreams, and had reached out to him in one vision in particular that had changed the course of his life. He held Praelior weakly in his fingers, afraid to clench his hand around it for fear it might strike out at him with the anger of the one who had as good as put it in that hand. “Why?” he asked, voice cracking.
The red eyes narrowed, and the voice of Talikartin changed into a deeper timbre, that strange tone taking over. “I wanted to give you room to grow, to build a kingdom for me in the north while the titans did the same here.” He made a scoffing noise. “You were handed those plains and what have you done with them? Nothing.” He sneered. “You’ve grown weak, Cyrus. And weakness must be purged.”
“I’m not …” Cyrus felt staggered, as though the titan had already punched him squarely in the jaw. “I’m the strongest warrior in Arkaria.”
“On the contrary,” Talikartin said, thumping his chestplate.
“You’ve taken him over?” Cyrus stared at the God of War in the titan’s form. “He’s your … avatar?” A nod followed, and the sense that battle could resume at any moment hung about them. “Why? Why bring an avatar to Arkaria?”
Bellarum laughed. “You of all people should know why, Cyrus. Did I not work that sword into your hand and place Mortus into your path, knowing that he wanted nothing more than to kill the woman you fawned over?” A discordant guffaw sounded like a blade jabbed into Cyrus’s ears. “Did I not set Yartraak in motion on his grand plan to destroy the lands that you loved?” He glared down at Cyrus with amusement. “Oh, yes. My hand has been guiding the events of your life to my purpose—that to which you swore your loyalty!” The voice of the God of War caused a pain soul-deep in Cyrus. “I have done more for you than you even know, and you have turned away from my path. You were my loyal servant. I saw potential in you, strength in you. I groomed you for greatness … and you embraced mediocrity.” He pointed into the stunned crowd of fighters that encircled them, singling out Terian. “You might as well be wearing that armor.”
“Hey!” Terian said. “It’s … well, it’s comfortable. A little loose around the—”
“SILENCE!” Bellarum shouted into the night, and the command was obeyed by sheer force of the volume it carried. “Now,” the God of War said from his earthly form, “Cyrus … the time has come for me to beat the weakness out of you.” He smiled. “I know your armor protects you against most attacks, so this may take
some time, but we will get all the pesky disease of compassion … of the heart … that your former Guildmaster seeded in you, I will have you strong … or I will have you dead.” The eyes burned. “And at this point, I have lost all care which it will be.”
85.
The first punch was fast, faster than Cyrus remembered either Yartraak or Mortus being. It came with a speed that Cyrus recalled of wagons racing through the streets of Reikonos when he was a child, the wheels threatening to roll unceasingly over any child or man that got in the way. So too was this punch, a metal-encased hand as big as Cyrus’s entire chest, thrown at his midsection and dodged only just in time.
Cyrus landed face first in a patch of grass. The scent of greenery invading his sinuses forcefully, the tickle of the blades ironic at a moment when he feared death itself was coming for him in the form of his angry god. He rolled as hard as he could to the side, already knowing that a killing attack would follow. It did, only a moment later, a fist slamming into the ground with merciless force where he had lain only seconds earlier, shaking the earth and rattling him in his armor, down to his very teeth.
“You are running from your fate like a coward!” Bellarum’s voice echoed angrily in the night. “Stand and take your punishment like a man of war!”
Cyrus rolled once more, narrowly avoiding another hit, his head swimming. Is this really happening?
Is Bellarum really attacking … me?
The world shook at the landing of another punch, and Cyrus rattled once more.
Yes.
This is happening.
Cyrus lurched to his feet as Bellarum’s titan shell took a step back and surveyed him with unmistakable anger. The eyes showed a seething rage, furious at being thwarted even slightly in front of an audience. Bellarum balled Talikartin’s fists and shifted on his mighty feet, and Cyrus knew he would be much more sure before the next attack came.
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