Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God

by Scott Duff

  “’Anon’? This guy comes out spouting from Shakespeare and I’m gone,” I whispered to Peter.

  He snickered and added, “Go where?” I just pointed right vaguely.

  When the man stumbled out of his tent, he was wearing a long, stained nightshirt and dirty pants, pushing back sleep-mussed hair with a hand but failing miserably to tame it. Kieran spoke to the man briefly in several languages until they found one in common. Then they went back and forth in questions and answers. The rest of us just stood around looking stupid and Shrank flitted around in the grass doing whatever pixies do in the grass. The man disappeared back into his tent and Kieran walked away with us in tow. It was hard to know when a conversation closed when you didn’t know the language.

  “It was a mistake, coming here,” Kieran said. “We need too much to be here and we know too little, even though most of our answers are here. And I fear our diminutive friend may be right. We may not be able to avoid conflict here.”

  “You mean combat. There is little chance of us avoiding conflict,” I said, wryly. “Everyone who sees me wants a part of me lately.”

  “Let’s see what we can do about that,” said Kieran, patting me on the shoulders as we walked. I felt Peter come up on my right protectively and Ethan took up position behind us. “The man said that everybody was at the Arena jockeying for position for the opening ceremonies, basically. MacNamara will announce the main competitions, which will include much posturing and parading of talent. Then there will be the individual challenges and duels. Then the main event, the open challenges, will begin around midnight. These are the most dangerous to us. We must remain together for the rest of our time here. Peter, Shrank, am I clear on this? Stay together.”

  “We’re gonna have to. I don’t speak anything I’ve heard so far,” muttered Peter.

  “Join the club,” I said.

  Kieran laughed. “We’ll see what we can do about that at the Arena. I’m sure there are translation spells available there. Until then, Shrank?”

  The pixie flew up from the grass a few feet forward of us. “Yes, Lord?”

  “Would you be so kind as to provide translation for Seth and Peter when you are able?” he asked.

  “Certainly, Lord,” said the pixie and he dropped back down to the grass.

  “So what are we doing now?” I asked.

  “Our goal hasn’t changed. We’re going to find your grandfather,” Kieran said. “Now, we’re looking for him in a large mass of people, most of whom are belligerent and dangerous.”

  “So what we’ve done is remove a lot of innocent bystanders,” I said. “This still seems like a win situation.”

  “No. Now we have nowhere to hide,” Ethan muttered behind me.

  “Also, Seth, you should keep your new tools put away for awhile if at all possible. Shrank has a point in what he says. The fewer that know the better, especially here. Yet another reason to stick together.” Kieran squeezed me into him in a kind of sideways hug. It was both comfortable and comforting. I was surprised when I looked over and saw him in his full glory. I mean I saw his aura then as we walked quickly down this weird circus-like avenue. Looking directly at him like this still hurt a bit—he was so bright. I understood Ethan’s awe of him. But I still saw the flaws that made him a man and I could live with that. And I saw the cracks in whatever it was that he was becoming. Kir du’Ahn, I supposed.

  “Ethan, does Kieran appear any different to you right now?” I asked calmly, not wanting to break the moment but knowing I had no choice.

  “No, does he to you?” he responded in kind.

  “Yes, actually,” I said, turning to Peter. “You?” He took a step past us as Kieran stopped in the middle of the road.

  “No, same as usual in flat space. What are you seeing?” he asked.

  “All of him, just like I see all of you,” I said. “I don’t know how else to explain it. I always assumed it was the same as seeing someone’s aura.”

  “Wait. This happened a few moments ago?” asked Kieran, a smile beginning to form on his face.

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding.

  “Little Brother,” he said, the smile grew to full size and he pressed his hand into the center of my chest firmly. The world shook at the word that, somehow, I translated. I saw the cool release of pleasure bloom throughout his aura as he saw me again. And the fires of curiosity swept across it. I was gonna have to find some blinkers, like for a horse or something if I kept seeing this. It was hypnotic.

  “You’ve grown considerably since I saw you last,” Kieran said with wide eyes.

  “Grown how? Like a tumor?” I asked, only half-joking.

  “I mean from candle to bonfire. You were bright before, and now…?” Kieran grimaced in disbelief, telling me he didn’t know what to make of me.

  “But why am I seeing you now?”

  “You finally accepted me. You’re seeing the familial bonds,” he said and started us walking again, his arm again across my shoulders. Peter and Ethan were following the conversation closely.

  “But I did that days ago, before we went to Atlanta,” I said, a touch stridently.

  “Stop being defensive, Seth,” he said with a chuckle. “You’ve done nothing wrong and I think you’ve helped move us closer to the answer of why our auras are hidden here.”

  There was noise coming from ahead, around the bend of the row of tents. Men and women talked loudly. We tensed but continued. A small blurry line in the grass shot towards us, suddenly changing course a yard out, almost straight up. Shrank whirled around and shrieked to a halt on Kieran’s shoulder between us. He didn’t leave any kind of a trail now and he’d been almost completely invisible. I was gaining a new respect for the little guy today.

  “Eight men, three women, all human, at the crossroads ahead,” he huffed, out of breath. “Drinking, but not drunk. I couldn’t tell why they’re there.”

  “Thank you, Shrank,” said Kieran. I watched the pixie jump off Kieran’s shoulder again like he was jumping off the high dive into a swimming pool, holding his nose even. Shrank was playing and having fun with this. He disappeared before he got even waist high. As I watched him fall, I realized he wasn’t veiling himself with magic. His magic was changing his actual coloration, like a chameleon but far more thoroughly and more quickly. He was an amazing creature to be taken so lightly in the world.

  We rounded the bend in the road and the group came into view. Kieran dropped his arm from my shoulder and took a slightly longer stride to take a leading position. We took up a line behind him with Ethan on his left and Peter and I on his right as we approached the crossroads. The men were spread out in the middle of the road, ostensibly practicing bladed weapons fighting with either sheathed knives or wooden short swords. They all wore paramilitary style clothing, dirty and worn. It was a very rough practice as two of them had freely flowing blood on their arms. Two of the women were on the sidelines, laughing heartily at the more luckless men on the ground. The third woman was playing with an unsheathed eight-inch knife, bouncing it by the hilt between her hand and her biceps repeatedly. It was an unhealthy scene. We walked through it like we didn’t have a care in the world and they ignored us completely.

  The road bent again and the noise drifted away to quiet again. The Arena came into view for the first time, its stone walls peeking over the tops of the tents as the banners wafted in the breeze. From this distance, the place looked huge. We heard more noise ahead just as I saw the telltale signs of Shrank zooming in on us. He didn’t land this time, hovering a few feet out at shoulder level.

  “Twenty-seven men with naked steel, Lord,” he squeaked out quickly. He bobbed up over our heads and added, “And a little over two hours to dusk. We must hurry, Lord.”

  As we rounded the bend, the noise level grew again, much louder than the last time. All men, this time and much bigger and meaner looking, like the men from the restaurant. I even recognized a few of them from there. The Stone and the Day sword hummed threateningly in
my mind, so I brushed them with calming thoughts, imploring them to stay hidden for now. The men were circled around two others fighting in the center of the crossroads, blocking the way. Bare-chested and sweating profusely, they each had blood running from fresh cuts where the other had scored. A strong shield, glowing a bright yellow in the falling sun, fenced them in. They’d obviously gotten around the peace-bond somehow, possibly claiming this as practice, I guess. The other men around them were shouting encouragements and disparagements at the fighters while swilling from bottles of honest-to-God Southern corn sour mash whiskey. I even knew the label, cheap as it was.

  We slowed as we neared. Kieran surveyed the crowd, looking for safe passage through like the previous carousers, but it was clear we’d have to move some people to get past them. I glanced at the tents to see if we could just jump the lines around them and walk through, but they all had wards that ran to the roadway. Not that we couldn’t break the wards, but then we would have looked like thieves and I wasn’t sure that would be a good idea at all. These guys might be the local constables, after all. I felt the Stone shift again and I pressed my mind down to console it and got a small surprise.

  The Stone wasn’t insisting on being used; it was insisting on being useful. Like a child’s blocks with letters on them, the Stone had pushed tiny bricks forward on its surface on the foundation below the Pact, spelling out, well, a spell. As I looked at the letters, I spooled a tiny amount of faint blue energy out of my battery and formed the line into the pattern of the letters and the structure of the words. Then, simultaneously looking at the ring of men in front of me in reality and in the astral, I pushed the energy out and said the words. Immediately a short staircase of blue energy leading to a ramp appeared in front of Kieran. The ramp jumped over the circle of men to the road on the other side. I’d just performed my first bit of real magic. It was exhilarating, let me tell you.

  Kieran took the steps at a run and kept going over the ramp. We followed single file. Most of the men were staring up at us, mouths agape. Even the fight stopped. Apparently, we weren’t supposed to do that. Once we were all on solid ground, the ramp dissolved back into the atmosphere, but we were long past the next bend in the road. It completely disappeared behind us. Kieran stopped suddenly, panting. He was angry with me.

  “I told you to keep that hidden, Seth!” he said, seething.

  “I did that, not the Stone,” I said, defensively. “It only showed me how.”

  “Oh,” he said. Relief slowly flowed into him. He had felt the push from me, after all. “Oh,” he said again. “That’s… interesting. I didn’t feel you draw power.”

  “Big batteries, remember?” I said, feeling my heart rate slow a little from the short run. “Let’s go. Short on time, right?”

  Kieran turned and started walking again. His aura was getting difficult to read now as he shifted into complex patterns. I’d given him a lot to think about apparently and his emotions were running a gamut. Anger flowed out slowly while concern was taking a higher precedent and curiosity was vying for control. Peter seemed okay, just confused and very curious and still scared. Couldn’t blame him on the last. And Ethan was Ethan.

  The next crossroads came more quickly. The tents were darker in color along the road, too. I didn’t know if it really meant anything, but it gave the area a sense of foreboding, a murkier feel. Lanterns were already burning in a few tents, where hooded figures gathered power in short spurts. I didn’t look too hard at what they were doing, thinking I probably wouldn’t understand it anyway. I already didn’t understand wearing cowls in the tents. Who’d they think they were hiding from? Anything that could see into the tent could see under the cowl. Something to ponder another day. The Arena looked much closer from here, but our problem was at the crossroads again.

  “I thought they were here to do that at the Arena,” I mumbled when we stopped behind the group of about fifty men and women. “Why are they fighting in the parking lot?”

  “The ultimate in tailgate parties?” Peter snorted out a laugh.

  “There might be a broken down Chevy in one of these tents,” offered Ethan.

  Kieran looked back at us, puzzled. “Redneck humor,” I said. “It’s cultural. It’ll take a long time to explain.” I smiled then we all snickered. Kieran just shook his head and looked back at the blocked corner.

  “Ethan, could you burrow through the wards?” Kieran asked quietly.

  “Once. Then MacNamara would be on top of us,” Ethan said, soberly. “I would prefer that we use that in desperation. I would not be able to fend off MacNamara and create another exit.”

  Kieran nodded in agreement. We couldn’t see the fight directly from here. There were too many people in the way, too much movement. The fight was encircled by shields, like the last, but this one involved destructive magics and the shielding was shooting these magicks straight up into the air. Going over it meant possibly getting hit by something, intentionally or otherwise. Kieran pulled us all in close, tapping his shoulder for Shrank to land, and tugged power from around him. Rolling his eyes, he pushed a golden flow out over the three of us. Peter snickered.

  “An Apprentice Loop?” he asked, snickering again.

  “Well,” Kieran drew the word out plaintively. “We’re gonna have to push through them and we need to stay close and we are saying you three are apprentices.”

  “Just remember I made it out of nursery school,” Peter said, smiling at Kieran.

  Once again, I was left in the dark as Kieran started pushing through the crowd politely. I followed closely behind him, with Peter right behind me, and then Ethan in the rear. I could see the golden line Kieran had dropped to us, but I didn’t know what it was for. Until I lagged a little too far back and it jerked me forward like a rubber band. Peter chuckled behind me and sped up so he wasn’t jerked forward, too. Okay, that’s annoying, especially since I wasn’t that far behind. We made it through one side without losing anybody. The other corner looked trickier; there was already traffic coming from the other direction. We would have to fight the flow.

  We moved in close on the corner, studying the flow on the other side. We might have a chance in a few moments. A brief pause in the flow was coming and we could slip through, if we were quick.

  “’Ello, Pup,” I heard a deep rumble from behind me. “Fancy meeting you here.” The Day Sword and the Stone were beating out the 1812 Overture in my head. I turned while I was trying to calm them and froze. It was the guy from the restaurant. And his friends. He grabbed me by the shoulders with both hands and tossed me over his head and back, clearing ten feet easily. I landed on my back, knocking the air from my lungs and my head on the ground. Tiny blue sparkles like the dust of a thousand pixies swam through my vision. The Day Sword was still clamoring for attention and I was still muttering, “Can’t be seen,” under my breath.

  I heard heavy footsteps approaching and while the sparkles were fading, I still couldn’t catch my breath. The Day Sword came to the same conclusion the Stone had earlier: can’t be used, then be useful. I felt its weight shift down my arm and lock in place just above my elbow. I rolled quickly to the right, just as a boot slammed down where my head was. The Sword rolled me again, backward and up to my feet. Finally, I could breathe and the sparkles were gone.

  I took in the scene as my awareness flooded in fully. One of his friends had broken the Apprentice Loop and had wrapped it repeatedly around Kieran and Peter. Neither of them was showing much interest in the entanglement, though. They were both building offensive magic of their own. Ethan was starting a portal out, it looked.

  “Ehran, no!” I shouted. “Please, don’t break the peace-bond.”

  I moved quickly into the first defensive form Kieran and Ethan taught us. This satisfied the Day Sword as well. It is a very simple form, basically you’re just aware of your environment and ready to move in any direction. Your weight is forward on the balls of your feet, arms loose but up to protect your head and face, and your awarenes
s is both physical and astral, watching for magical attacks. A boxer’s stance, more or less.

  He stalked around me so I moved to keep him in front of me. Another circle formed around us as chants of “Fight!” started from the crowd. I felt another shield come into place around us as we circled each other.

  “Aren’t you a bit old for a day care leash, boy?” he snarled at me. “Or have you just been weaned from the teat? Mamma just let you go?” His smile showed toothless gaps and made his dark eyes darker.

  “No. I was being punished for whooping up on you so bad. Master felt it was unsportsman-like,” I taunted back. Two could play at this and he wore his emotions on his shoulders for all the world to see. The chorus of laughter from his friends stirred the embers of his anger to a blaze and he rushed me. So I pulled a similar trick to the one I’d done to him before, only backward. I fell to the ground, reaching out with kinetic magic, pulling down on his neck and up on his hips and letting his own forward momentum carry him head over heels over me to slam hard onto the ground. I hip-checked him, basically. I was back up in less than a second, watching him on the ground.

  I took the opportunity to check on my group. They’d stopped collecting power and forcing the spells into place, but they hadn’t released them. I guess that’s the best I could hope for. I glanced back at the sun to see we had less than an hour before dusk. I had to finish this very soon.

  The man got back to his feet but stayed crouching, close to the ground. I felt the draw of power from him. He was about to get nasty. The Night Sword hit against the foundation and hummed in my head. The vibrations carried through my body creating odd disruption patterns in the ambient fields around me, especially near my hands and feet. It was kind of like multiple tuning forks in a body of water. It distracted me for a split second so I missed it when the man started moving toward me.