by E. A. Copen
I built a fantasy world where he had never left, and in it, that attraction blossomed into love. We struggled together and built a life for the both of us, and maybe a kid or two. It was a modest life, spent in and out of guilds, but it was ours. I always thought we would be happy just being who we were.
But the Ash I had grown up with was long gone. That fantasy could never be, and I couldn’t see a way to build a world where the two of us were happy together. It would never work. Not now, not ever. Not after the rift.
Yet as we rode through the mountain forest that night, with the storm threatening above us, it felt like I could make it happen. The Ash I knew was still in there, somewhere. He’d been away a long time, and come back to be influenced by the wrong people. With time, patience, and enough reminders about how good life could be, maybe things could go back to the way they were.
Then my fingers brushed against the crimson dragon broach at his shoulder, and the terrible truth came back to me. I still didn’t know if he really was Ash or something monstrous sent through the rift.
In the back of my mind, a voice wondered if it really mattered. If we could be happy together, why did it matter so much whether he was real?
“Ash?”
He gave a small, thoughtful grunt in reply.
“I was just wondering. We’ve come all this way, and someone has died. More people might die. Why do you want the dragon’s heart so badly? The truth.”
“It will all make sense after,” he said.
We crested a small hill overlooking a valley, and my breath caught in my throat. Below, a rift glowed in the night, casting eerie shadows out over the valley. Magicite crystals jutted out of the ground in strange formations. Pale, yellow mist floated over everything.
Ash dismounted, but I stayed where I was, ready to bolt. “Ash, don’t you see the rift? We’re too close! We need to go.”
“It’s all right. I promise, nothing bad is going to happen to either of us tonight.” He gestured for me to come down off the horse.
I stayed in the saddle. “I’ve heard that one before. A lot of things can go wrong this close to a rift, Ash. Please, let’s just go.”
“Not until you see what I came out here to show you.” He lifted his arms to help me off the horse.
Reluctantly, I dismounted.
Ash took my hands in his and squeezed them before bringing my knuckles to his lips. “Do you trust me?”
“I…”
“Yes, or no, Ember. Do you trust me?”
I stared at our intertwined fingers. “Yes. I trust you.”
“Then don’t let go.” He turned toward the rift and started walking.
I wanted to pull away, to dig my feet into the ground and halt our progress. All I could think of was the moment I had lost him five years before. Here it was, replaying in real time, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
We stopped halfway down the hill with the rift floating twenty or thirty yards ahead of us, maybe ten feet off the ground. The yellow mist flowed around our ankles. Wind howled like angry static.
Ash let go of my hand and I immediately panicked, turning to check that he was still with me. He took my face in his hands and leaned down to press his lips against mine. When he straightened, the green light of the rift danced in his slate-blue eyes. “I love you, Ember Dixon,” he said and turned away.
I fumbled for words, to stay standing. My heart traveled into my throat and choked the air out of me. Stinging wind bit my cheeks. I wanted to cry, to scream, to tackle him to the ground and drag his stupid ass back to camp where we belonged. Instead, I stood there like a stunned idiot.
Ash raised a hand in tandem with another snarl of thunder. Shadowy tendrils shot out of his palm like lightning and wrapped around the rift, a cloud of obsidian black against ethereal green. He closed his eyes and lifted his chin. A deep breath, bared teeth. Magic swelled strong enough to buzz against my skin. Lightning flashed in the sky above.
He closed his fist.
The rift screamed like a living thing and shattered into a thousand viridian gems, scattering to the ground.
It was gone. Ash had done what the combined might of nations had once thought impossible. He had closed a rift.
He let out a pained cry and fell to his knees, holding his wrist.
“Ash!” I went to my knees beside him. “Are you okay? How did you…? When…?”
He gave me a tired smile. “Ever since I came back. The first was the rift I came out of. I did it without even thinking. Zia found me, saw what I could do, and swore herself to my side. She was also sworn to keep it a secret. If DEMO or The Institute found out, they’d dissect me, take me apart a piece at a time until they could replicate what I can do. Or worse, they’d send their own people through rifts, hoping to replicate it that way. I can’t allow that.”
“Why?” I shook my head. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Ash, do you know what this means? You can close rifts! This changes everything!”
“That power comes at a terrible price.” He reached up and carefully unbuttoned his shirt. There, glowing with a dull indigo sheen in a diagonal line across his chest, was a thick line of magicite crystals.
Ash was infected, just like me.
Chapter Eighteen
I stood in the dark, magicite crystals glowing all around me, in front of me, in me.
Ash was infected.
Ash was infected! And he could close rifts.
That was too much to process. I hugged myself and turned away, squeezing my eyes closed. Fabric rustled behind me as he rose.
“Ember?” A hand closed on my shoulder.
I shrugged it off and spun around my throat tight and fists clenched. He staggered back seeing the look in my eyes. “It was murder, wasn’t it?”
He looked like I had slapped him for a moment before making a full recovery. “No, no, no, Ember!” Ash placed his hands on my shoulders. “Kenny wouldn’t have been like me. What happened to me, my ability, it’s because I went through the rift. Don’t you see? It’s changed me.”
I shrugged his hands away and took two steps back. “But you’re infected just like Kenny was. You knew there was a chance, and you killed him anyway.”
“Ember…”
“Don’t deny it! That scar would’ve spread by now. The magicite would’ve eaten its way into your bones if you weren’t doing something to stop it. You have a treatment, and you kept it a secret and now someone is dead because of it!”
Ash let out a small huff of breath and shook his head. “The treatment needs ingredients to synthesize. Expensive ingredients. The antigen is very costly and time consuming to make. Besides, it’s not a cure. It achieves stasis at best.” He waved a hand dismissively. “But that’s why we have to find this dragon. There were writings in the Institute libraries, ancient alchemical texts in Elvish that claimed the heart of a dragon had healing properties. Don’t you see, Ember? With one final potion, I can be cured.”
“Maybe you can, but what about the rest of us?” I tugged up the lower hem of my shirt, revealing the scar across my stomach.
Ash’s eyes widened. “Ember… You?”
“It happened the night you disappeared.” I dropped my shirt and smoothed my hands over the fabric. “I’ve been taking antigen this whole time. That’s why I’m not in a guild, Ash. It’s why I work alone. Everything I’ve done since that day is because of this thing growing out of me. And now you’re telling me that, not only is there a cure for the thing that’s been ruining my life, but that you can close rifts? What else don’t I know about you?”
He opened his mouth and snapped his jaw closed in thought before blurting, “We can find another elder dragon. There’s one. There must be more, right? We’ll kill this one, I’ll take the cure, and then we’ll hunt another one to cure you. Simple!”
“You’ll take the cure?” I clenched my jaw.
His face twisted in disbelief. “Well, yes. It is my hunt, Ember. Besides, I’m the only one who can c
lose rifts, aren’t I? No offense, but that makes my survival take precedence over everyone else’s.”
“I don’t believe what I’m hearing. I did not just hear you say your life is more important than anyone else’s!” Tears fell when I blinked. I pushed them away. I wasn’t crying because I was unhappy. Yes, his words hurt, but it was worse knowing who he had been. “And once you’re cured, what will you do then? You’ll close all the rifts? All over the world?”
He let out a bitter laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous. The world is broken, and anything I can do would just be a Band-Aid on a fatal blow. The world has changed, Ember. We can never go back. We can never close the rifts, not really. We wouldn’t know how to live without them. Imagine a world where magic was suddenly a finite resource, the wars that would be waged over the magicite that remained. Is that what you want? Besides, even if I were to close the rifts, the monsters would still be here.”
“The only monster I see is you.” I turned my back and started up the side of the hill.
Ash called after me, but I didn’t turn around. I couldn’t. I had defended him against Dex and Ike, but they were right. The Ash I knew was gone and dead. I wanted nothing to do with this thing he had become.
The air a few feet in front of me crackled and split open with a banshee scream, ghostly green light bleeding into the night. Wind roared in my ears. The grass at my feet curled into black tendrils and died. Rocky soil lifted off the ground and floated, suspended as if there were no gravity.
A rift.
A rift had just opened directly in front of me. It began as the size of a hand mirror and grew by the minute.
I turned around to escape the rift’s pull and saw Ash lower his hand. Sweat had beaded on his forehead. Bright red veins bulged in his lower eyelids. His nostrils flared. “You should think twice before walking away from me.”
I glanced back at the rift. “Did you…?”
Ash grabbed my wrist and yanked me roughly away from the rift. A cold chill passed over me as he pulled me to him. The spectral light of the rift twisted in his eyes as he looked down at me. “Nobody walks away from me.”
I twisted in his grip, fighting to get away. “I don’t want anything to do with you. Not anymore. You’re not the Ash I remembered.”
“No,” he said through his teeth. “I’m better.”
He finally let me go and I fell to the ground in a heap.
Ash closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, and lifted both hands, slowly spreading them apart. As his hands moved, so did the rift. It opened wider, the black shadow of death it cast over the ground spreading to where Ash stood.
“I did not come back to this world to slave away and die making other men rich,” he shouted into the rift. “And I didn’t survive the impossible to die as some forgotten coward, afraid of spiders. Even then, I knew what had to be done. We talked about it, Ember. Building a more just world, a place where the strong protected the weak. A new nation under one god: me. And this journey to Black Mountain was to be my pilgrimage. They’d write songs about me, the orphan boy who slew a dragon, ate its heart, and united the twelve kingdoms under one banner.”
He closed his hands into fists and the rift exploded with an ear-splitting shriek, just as the other one had. I put my hands over my ears.
Ash turned his back to the green crystals of magicite falling from the sky to extend a hand to me. “And you will be by my side, Ember.”
I scooted away from his outstretched hand and rose to my feet. “Not on your life. Not for all the antigen or cure in the world. I would rather die.”
Slowly, he lowered his hand. “Unfortunately, I can’t accept that answer. Now that I’ve found you, I can’t just let you walk away. That would ruin everything.” He took a step toward me.
I drew my sword, intending to use it to scare him off. But as soon as the blade was free, something bit into my palm and I swore I could feel roots growing under my skin. The sensation was so surprising that I hesitated and gave Ash all the time he needed to backhand me.
The world spun upside down. I was on my ass in dead grass, blinking away stinging tears. The coppery taste of fresh blood filled my mouth. I touched my lip with shaky hands and watched my fingers come away red.
Something in Ash’s face changed. He recoiled. “God, Ember! I’m sorry. Please, I never meant…” Ash was closing in on where I had fallen, but the sword was still in my hand.
Do it, urged a throaty voice in my mind. Cut him down now! While you still can.
Of all the times for me to start hearing voices! I shifted my grip on the sword and waited for Ash to come closer. “You’re sorry? You’re just proving I’m right. Ash would never hurt me.”
He halted. A dark shadow passed over his face. “You’re not leaving me a choice, though, are you? There are rules.” He reached down to grab a handful of hair, intending to yank me to my feet.
I jammed the pommel of my sword into his sternum, knocking all the hot air out of him.
Ash immediately doubled over and staggered backward, wheezing and gasping like a fish out of water.
I scrambled to my feet and ran for the horse, getting up into the saddle just as the rain started. Long before he recovered, I was galloping back toward camp. It’d take a while for him to catch up on foot, even if he could open and close rifts. Wouldn’t help him much this time.
Just in case, I pushed the horse faster.
Back at camp, everything had died down. Dex, Ike, and the others had taken their drinking into the tents to avoid the rain, and there was no sign of Zia. A few of Ash’s people rushed from the center of camp back to their tents, pulling their cloaks over their heads to shield them from the rain. None of them knew.
Or maybe they did. Zia and the other people who had come with Ash, did they know who he really was? Dex and Ike had tried to tell me and I hadn’t listened.
I should warn them, I thought, dismounting. But there wasn’t time. I needed to be gone before Ash made it back to camp.
Mud splashed around my ankles as I ran for my tent. I didn’t care when I tracked it inside. I didn’t have time to care. I just started grabbing everything I had and jamming it into a pack small enough to fit on my back. The tent and its trappings wouldn’t fit, nor would most of the food, but I could hunt for what I needed and sleep on the ground.
My fingers curled around the tiny glass vial, my last dose of antigen. I lifted it and watched the dark liquid swirl inside. Without the money from this job, I didn’t know how I’d get another dose, and I was already spreading them out as it was. How long before I was as insane as Ash?
As long as possible. I jammed the antigen into my pack and exited the tent.
I only took two steps before invisible claws raked through the air in front of me, opening a rift. It widened enough for Ash to step through it.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!” I turned and tried to run, but Ash’s fingers latched onto my backpack.
He yanked me back and wrapped an arm around the front of me, pressing my back against his front. “And just where do you think you’re going?”
“Away from you.” I tried to elbow him, but he grabbed my arm and held it, fingers pressing in hard enough to leave bruises.
“Take one step outside of this camp without my permission and I will have the vampires hunt you down.”
“Maybe I’d prefer that to spending another minute here.”
“Maybe. But if you leave, I also can’t guarantee the safety of your guild friends. They might make excellent dragon bait.”
I spun around so angry that I was surprised the rain didn’t boil. A minute ago, I’d been ready to leave them. After all, both Dex and Ike had lied to me. But that was when I thought the worst thing that could happen to them would be getting shorted on payment. If he set those vampires lose on the camp…
Scratching, clawing, pacing, waiting. Vampires are patient. They can see in complete darkness and smell blood a half mile away. Death by vampire is slow, painful, the worst way to go
.
I squeezed my eyes closed and swallowed, pushing away the memory of that day in Macon. He knew I hated vampires, knew I wouldn’t have let anyone die in a vampire’s claws if I could help it. The bastard knew, and he’d exploited it.
Tents opened and several people stepped out, murmuring. It must’ve been a confusing sight, seeing me and Ash standing there in front of an open rift. A cry went up to retrieve a rope and tie it off to a tree.
“No need,” Ash said, still locking eyes with me. He stretched a hand behind him and made a fist.
The crowd flinched as the rift exploded, showering the tents and wagons with tiny green crystals.
“I’ll be an elf’s uncle,” Foggy grunted. “Did I just see what I thought I saw?”
“Ember?” Dex was closer, almost within arm’s reach. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s great.” It was a lot of effort to say that believably.
Zia came out of her tent, her hair a mess, eyes bleary.
Ash let go of my arm. He adjusted his cloak and scanned the crowd of curious onlookers. “There’s no reason to be alarmed. The danger has passed. You can all return to your tents.”
“Not without an explanation. It looks like you just closed that rift. How the hell did you do that?” Ike crossed his arms and waited while others mumbled their agreement.
I swallowed and took two steps back. The floor’s all yours. Let’s see how you spin this one.
Ash put on his best sheepish smile. “I suppose there’s no keeping it a secret now, is there? We all have our gifts, Commander Tolliver. You can turn rocks into golems. Ember can wield a blade expertly and I… I can close rifts.”
Ike didn’t seem satisfied. “And one just randomly opened in the center of camp so you could demonstrate that for us?”
