“I’m sure it is. He never was one to show gratitude.” He turned his eyes to the sword, speaking directly to it like he would speak to a man. His voice rang with authority and command, and just a hint of magic. “If you are Aeo, my student, trained and conditioned by my own hand, kill this woman and then yourself. Rid the world of that damned sword.”
Raeb watched the blood drain from Dragana’s face. She turned corpse-pale and started shaking, her eyes wide like she’d seen a ghost.
Each second lasted a lifetime. Raeb hardly dared to breathe. Could Aeo be compelled to destroy the Bok’Tarong? After all this time in the sword, they were one and the same. He’d fought beside the man in Saydee’s mind. He knew how much Aeo despised the Entana, how strongly the magic of the Bok’Tarong flowed in his veins. To obey the command of the Keeper of Secrets would be to go against his very nature.
The Bok’Tarong’s enchantment was the most powerful Raeb had ever seen.
But the Keeper of Secrets had a mage’s power, enhanced by the Entana possession, plus the power of the Entana themselves. Which magic would prevail?
Raeb’s heart hammered, his palms slick with sweat. Fear made his stomach hollow and his entire body tremble.
Come on, Aeo, you have to beat him.
The Mage General’s order reverberated in Aeo’s mind, stronger than any order he’d ever received. It tolled through his mind like a massive bell, chiming in rhythm like a heartbeat. It seeped deep into his essence, molding him, compelling him to obey. The urge, the need to obey, was more vital to him than the magic binding him to the Bok’Tarong.
This was the magic that had formed him into Aeo the assassin. He remembered its feel and the way it slithered through his mind. He fought against it, denying its call. He didn’t want to obey the Mage General. He hated the man. He’d gladly kill him, if given the chance. For all the tortures he’d put Aeo through, he’d earned a hundred deaths at Aeo’s hands.
The bell chimed.
His resistance was a summer breeze trying to knock down a mountain. This was the magic that had created him. It was useless to fight.
He wasn’t just Aeo anymore, though. He was the Bok’Tarong. Entana-slayer. His purpose was no longer to do the Mage General’s bidding. It was to defend humanity. His magic was what kept them safe. That was much bigger than the Mage General.
Waves of magic surged through him. He was the Bok’Tarong. But the Mage General’s magic could not be ignored.
The bell tolled on.
Aeo hated taking orders. They denied him his freedom. And the Mage General’s orders had changed him. What could he have been, if not for the Mage General? A soldier? A hunter? But now he was a killer. A weapon for the Mage General to point wherever he pleased. A weapon had no control over its actions. It did what it was created to do, as efficiently as possible. It killed. Whether it liked it or not.
The bell …
The command was his lifeblood. His entire reason for being was to obey that magic. Don’t resist. Obey. The woman needs to die. Aeo wanted to make his master happy.
He wanted to kill her.
He looked at her, gazing into those brown-and-crimson eyes.
The world stopped.
How could Aeo kill Dragana? The Mage General’s desires were nothing compared to a smile from her. Fighting beside her, sword and master, was ecstasy like he’d never known. Dragana had shown him purpose, life, nobility, sacrifice. The Mage General had forced him to be a weapon—Dragana had shown him how to be a man.
There was no power in existence that could make him hurt her.
The chiming surged through him. Aeo could feel the magic in it, compelling, calling to his training. But he was no longer the assassin. He was the Bok’Tarong. He would never raise a hand against Dragana.
He reached deep inside, to the power inside the sword—his power, now—and silenced the bell.
The commanding magic shattered like glass, becoming nothing more than the petty jealousy of a man who wanted to squash any power he couldn’t control.
The world resumed.
Dragana laughed, a sound that was joyous and somehow bone-chilling at once.
“You no longer have power over him,” she said. Her eyes burned with fury and her voice turned glacial. “Aeo is the Bok’Tarong, now, and his power is that which thwarts the Entana. He wants to tell you that he is through with you and your orders, and he’s more than happy to free you from your parasite.”
Ashwinn laughed. “That’s ironic, coming from a parasite in his own right.”
She looked down at the Bok’Tarong. “Aeo is not a parasite.”
“He leeches life from you to survive. That, my dear, is the very definition of a parasite.” He took a step toward Dragana, not even flinching when she raised the Bok’Tarong to his throat. “You made a poor choice, rejecting the Entana and taking up the sword. The Bok’Tarong is far more destructive. The Entana take only emotion, not life. How can you reject this concept yet accept one that’s even worse?”
Raeb could see the rage and turmoil on Dragana’s face. She was trembling. But why wasn’t she attacking? Why was she listening to him?
“How old were you when you first started this mission?” Ashwinn paused, as if waiting for an answer everyone knew wouldn’t come. “And how old do you think you are now?”
“Go to hell,” Dragana said.
“The Entana have allowed me to live a dozen lifetimes, while the Bok’Tarong cuts yours short. It seems to me one of these is a much better deal than the other.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Raeb said. “I’d gladly trade the lifetimes I’ve lived for just one, even if it was a brief one.”
“A fool’s sentiment.”
“Better to be a fool and die an honest man than to give away your humanity for greed.”
“You’d rethink that idea if you truly accepted the gift of the Entana.” He turned to look at Raeb and Dragana in turn. “It’s not too late, for either of you. The Entana can always use people of skill and initiative like you. We are willing to forgive, if you stop resisting.”
Raeb looked to Dragana. The fear, the turmoil she’d showed while Ashwinn had been speaking, was gone. Her crimson-brown eyes blazed with fury.
They raised their swords together.
Ashwinn looked at them once more. “So this is how you want to play,” he said. His voice had dropped, and his body started to grow. Within a few seconds, it was clear this man was no longer human at all.
Raeb grew weak and watery with terror. Dear gods, what had he become?
Ashwinn’s skin boiled as the monster inside surfaced. Entana tendrils as thick as Raeb’s waist framed each of Ashwinn’s limbs. His skin was streaked with oily black rot, and his eyes—feline, peridot-colored pupils on a field of inky black—were freakishly large. He grinned down on them from a height of at least eight feet.
“All right. Let’s play.”
Aeo had never dreamed of such a massive, vile tangle of Entana. The Mage General—Keeper of Secrets, whatever you wanted to call him—was more Entana than man. He looked like a storm to Aeo’s spirit eyes, complete with tendril lightning and rain made of disgust and darkness.
His hatred of the man burned even hotter than his hatred of the monster. He’d tortured Aeo for years, forced him to become a killer, slave to the whims of a weakling king and a power-hungry mage. And now he’d ordered Aeo to kill Dragana and destroy the Bok’Tarong. He couldn’t think of anything worse in the entire world.
The man-sized tendrils leeching from his body made Aeo’s rage flare, and the insane joy in his Entana eyes made it explode like a fireball.
Aeo’s first instinct was to quail before this monstrosity. His second was to destroy it.
He listened to the second.
The Mage General met their attack before Aeo’s blades could get close. He whipped out one of his tentacles and batted the sword away like a fly. Dragana spun, barely keeping on her feet. A small hiss of pain was the only reward they got
from the Entana’s contact with the Bok’Tarong.
Dragana regained her footing and launched herself back at him. She slashed at tendrils that passed close to her and inched ever closer to the mage’s body. Aeo kept his eyes open for spirit attacks like he’d witnessed before, but the Mage General didn’t seem interested in wounding her spirit. From the way his tendrils lashed around, it looked like he preferred to bludgeon Dragana to death.
The Mage General roared, a sound too deep to be human, as Raeb stabbed him from behind. His sword looked like a needle stuck a few inches into the Entana-beast’s side. Not a mortal wound, but Aeo hoped it would at least slow the creature down.
No such luck. As soon as Raeb pulled out his blade, the wound started closing. A few heartbeats later, the flesh was seamless.
The Mage General cackled as he turned toward Raeb. A whirlwind of lashing tendrils descended upon him. Raeb tried to parry, but he had no chance against the massive Entana-beast. He struck at one while two others breached his defenses. He scored another hit and the Entana scored three. Blood oozed down the side of his head and stained his pant leg. Raeb overextended on a defense and the Entana threw him across the room with an almost contemptuous hit. He hit the wall hard. He wasn’t knocked out, but he would be too dazed to move for a few minutes.
Aeo and Dragana had sliced open a few of the tendrils while the Mage General was distracted, but it hadn’t seemed to affect him. Now, though, he turned his full attention back to them and glared at Dragana with a mad gleam in his Entana eyes.
He attacked with several limbs at once—too many for them to counter. Dragana managed a ringing strike against the Mage General’s sword and a deep gash in one of his tendrils, but the beast bulled forward. He broke through their defense as if it was paper.
Dragana whimpered as the creature’s thick Entana tendrils wrapped around her waist, then her throat. “I’ll keep you for later,” the abomination said. “I’ll take great pleasure in breaking you.”
Oh hell no.
Aeo’s battle cry ripped through his soul. He reached out of the blades and pulled himself free of the Bok’Tarong. Arms, head, torso. But he didn’t stop there. He pushed himself farther, fighting the agony. The sword didn’t want him to go. It pulled him into the blade like quicksand. But Aeo fought and pulled. One leg.
Then he stepped free of the sword. It was like he’d peeled the skin off his very bones. There was pain, and weariness, but the most amazing sense of freedom he’d felt in … well, ever. He felt alive. He was giddy and lightheaded even as strength poured through his ghostly muscles. His spirit was free, if only for a moment, but it was more intoxicating than the most fiery liquor.
His thoughts were quiet.
He turned to Dragana, feeling the hole in his mind where her thoughts had been. The look on her face … she could see him. Joy surged through him as she stared, open-mouthed, her eyes roaming his spirit-body. He didn’t need her thoughts to know what she was thinking with that expression: How did you do that?
He winked at her.
Then he turned back to the abomination and threw himself into battle.
Gods, he’d missed this! Each step, every thrust, the thrill of facing down an opponent with nothing but wits and steel—he’d lived for this before, and he lived for it now. He flew through the battle, sometimes dodging and leaping tendrils like an acrobat, other times striking and charging like a warrior. His spirit body responded to each command as if he’d spent every moment of his life training for this.
Entana flesh sizzled and boiled where his blades struck. At first the Mage General had brushed off the wounds as he had Raeb’s, but the Entana couldn’t heal the spirit blades’ wounds. Where the Bok’Tarong struck, flesh and nerves died.
The creature lashed out even more wildly. Aeo danced to the far side of the lab, half a step ahead of the Entana, leading the mage away from Raeb and Saydee. His friends were both awake, both sitting up, but neither were in any position to defend themselves from the thrashing Entana. They were staring at him with vague, addled expressions.
Aeo reversed suddenly, threw himself back at the Mage General, and swept his blades in a wide arc. The beast was caught off-guard. Aeo hit the tendril holding Dragana with such force it was half severed, hanging from a few strips of ragged flesh. The Mage General dropped Dragana, who rolled away to safety. Aeo smiled at her. Then it was back to the battle.
Aeo leapt onto a table and ran along its length, his spirit-body just substantial enough to send paperwork flying out behind him. The Mage General turned, keeping the spirit in front of him. When he’d gotten the mage’s entire attention back to him, Aeo stopped and fought him man to … whatever this thing was.
It wasn’t the brightest of plans, even by Aeo’s standards. He was already tiring, and one on one wasn’t exactly a fair fight here. More like four to one, with all these tendrils. Aeo fought to the best of his abilities—which were considerable—but he couldn’t block every strike, let alone land many of his own. There were just too many dangerous parts to watch for. The flailing tendrils hit his spirit body as if it were flesh and blood—Aeo could feel the bruises and cuts like they were real. But until his friends recovered enough to rejoin the fight, he was their only defense. He had to keep going.
He beat back two tendrils and the Mage General’s broadsword, but he didn’t see a third tendril sneak around him. The tentacle wrapped itself around his body, squeezing just enough to prevent Aeo from drawing a breath. He swung the Bok’Tarong, but the Entana-beast shook him and he dropped the blades.
The Mage General cackled as he turned back to Aeo’s friends. He bypassed Dragana’s defense and grabbed her with a tendril, then knocked aside Raeb’s desperate parry and wrapped him up, too. The creature held the three warriors up to his face, grinning and gloating.
“How will you continue to sting me now?” he mocked. “Your bravery was admirable, though it reveals your stupidity. One should know better than to battle the Entana.” He peered at each of them with his gigantic Entana eyes. Then he straightened and looked around the room. “But where is my dear little Saydee?”
An arm shot out from behind him, wrapping itself around his throat. Before the next heartbeat an overlarge dagger, vaguely leaf-shaped, came around the other side and plunged into the creature’s eye.
Saydee yanked him backwards, leaning over him as he screamed. “I’m right here, Ashwinn.”
She pulled out the dagger and slit his throat from ear to ear.
The -taken mage tried to scream, but all that came out was a gurgle of blood. He dropped Aeo and the others, and Saydee tumbled down with them. The mage thrashed on the floor, bleeding out fast but not dying. Not even the full power of the Entana could block that kind of pain.
Aeo and Dragana looked at each other and nodded. It was time for them to do what they did best.
Aeo retrieved his fallen sword and stepped beside Dragana. They raised their blades. Two Bok’Tarongs—one physical, one spiritual—bore down on the Entana-beast.
The Entana squealed like a slaughtered pig. The sound shattered the remaining glass in the room and deafened everyone within. Aeo kept his blade moving, hacking through tendrils and severing any connection he could find between the creature and the man.
Blood oozed on the floor, some parts of it bright human red, others more like the blackened sludge one finds at the bottom of a tavern’s cooking pot. Severed tendrils smoked and dissolved, leaving little more than ash behind. The mage’s body smelled like a sewer in the middle of a bloody battlefield.
Ashwinn stopped writhing. The Entana was silenced. The Mage General, the Keeper of Secrets, was finally dead.
Aeo looked up from the body to find his friends staring not at Ashwinn, but at him. “What?” he asked. The sound of his own physical voice startled everyone—including him.
“Only the true Master of the Bok’Tarong can remove himself from the blades,” Raeb whispered. His voice sounded reverent, which made Aeo uncomfortable.
/> He looked to Dragana for support, but she had the same look of awe on her face. Even Saydee, who knew as little about Bok’Tarong legend as he did, looked astonished.
“Come on, guys, it’s just me,” he said. “Well, most of me, anyway,” he added, looking down at his shimmering spirit-body.
“Exactly,” Dragana whispered. “It’s you.”
“Well … yeah.”
Dragana took a step toward him, shaking her head. “You don’t understand. It’s part of the prophecy of the Bok’Tarong. ‘The Master of the Bok’Tarong can create a body from his spirit when he leaves the blades.’ Like I said the first time, this isn’t something just any spirit could do, Aeo.”
“The first time,” Raeb repeated. “You mean, Aeo’s done this before?”
“Once,” Aeo replied. “But I didn’t come all the way out like this.”
Raeb wasn’t listening to him. He and Dragana were staring at each other, as if unable to believe what was happening. Aeo shifted from foot to ghostly foot.
“It’s ironic,” Raeb said. “The Master of the Bok’Tarong isn’t even Taronese.”
“I’m not the master of anything,” he said.
“You managed to merge with the Bok’Tarong even though you had no training to do so,” Raeb said, ticking his point off on a finger. “You kept your entire essence, personality and all. You can pull your spirit out of the blades at will. I’d say that’s enough to prove you are.”
Aeo wanted to continue arguing, but no words would come. The idea that he was the Master of the Bok’Tarong didn’t sound quite so ridiculous anymore. After all, he’d found a home in the blades. He’d become a man he never thought he could be, the man he’d always wished he could be, and a purpose far beyond anything he could have ever dreamed. Maybe, just maybe, his meeting with Raeb and discovering the Bok’Tarong wasn’t just a coincidence.
“I don’t suppose this prophecy says anything about us defeating the Entana?”
Raeb shook his head.
“Not even a hint that we’ll succeed?”
“Prophecy might have said you’d come, but it doesn’t dictate your actions.”
Soul of the Blade Page 27
