by Matt Russell
Soulic glared, and Cassian sensed the violent anger within the man boiling up. "What would You have done?!" he snarled.
"Me? I would have used my mental powers to make the men feel a nauseating revulsion at what they were doing, and I would accomplish this without their knowing I was anywhere near them."
"I'm not a telepath.”
"Nor are you discrete, or really very thoughtful when it comes to these matters. For the time being, you are not permitted to traverse the capital streets at night."
For a moment, Soulic stared at him with a look of pure hatred, but then, remarkably, the expression shifted to that of a dark grin, and the Sansrit warrior chuckled. "For all your talk, you'd rather do it the way I did it, wouldn't you? I can see it in your eyes. They deserve what they got." He tapped his right temple with two fingers and said: "Why don't you take a look inside? I don't mind. You can see how good it felt to beat the shite out of those bullies—to see their cruel smiles turn to terror."
"A kind offer," Cassian said, rolling his eyes and rising. It was true that the notion of simply stopping the Nemesai by force had entered his thoughts many, many times over the years, but such action would draw sympathy for his enemies from the people—perhaps even garner them support. He would end the Nemesai reign in a way that left their order forever gone from the world, and that required patience and calculation.
“You can take my Elokien,” Soulic muttered as he slipped on his boots, “but if I see a man hurting a woman, I’m gonna hurt him. That’s the way it is, My Lord.”
“Hmm,” Cassian grunted. He had studied his companion’s mind enough to know that Soulic had a limitless hatred for men who put their hands on women. This was due to the assault on his mother, which Cassian—at least to an extent—could respect. He decided to drop the matter for the time being.
Cassian finished dressing in silence and then said: "Let us go and get some breakfast. There is a great deal to be done today." The two of them left his room and walked down the winding stone stairway and then down a long hall toward the castle's main dining hall. When he drew near to the vast chamber, he sensed something... wrong. Soulic too seemed to detect something, for his hand was on the hilt of his sword, and he was glaring at the thick wooden doors ahead of them. Cassian focused his senses and attempted to decipher the odd feeling.
This time of morning, the dining hall should have been bustling with people, but there was no great sea of thought and emotion through the doors. There was... coldness... It took Cassian a moment to associate the feeling, but when he did, he realized he was detecting the emperor's craith soldiers—many of them. Craith minds possessed no errant thought at all, but only an emotionless and mechanical drive to carry out orders. Cassian wondered why so many of them had been summoned to the mess hall, and then he sensed two additional minds within the room that he had felt before, years ago. They belonged to Bishop Cromlic, and Prince Arkas.
The doors flew open quite suddenly, and Cromlic stood at the center of the dining gall amidst a small ocean of armored craith. There was a dangerous eagerness on his face. Cassian stared back. He had not come into contact with the Bishop since that now infamous day nearly seven years ago when Cassian had defeated the Nemesai force in his village and laid a curse upon the man’s mind. Arkas stood to the side, his face pale and sweating. Unlike the bishop, Arkas's fractured mind could not wholly conceal its emotions from Cassian's perception, and it was emitting something like... excitement.
"Good morning, Lord Cassian," Cromlic shouted in a voice that radiated confidence.
"What is this?" Soulic whispered, glaring about at the dozens upon dozens of craith throughout the room.
"I wonder that myself," Cassian said. He stepped forward into the chamber, refusing to show fear. Craith served the emperor, not the church. The most likely reason they were here was to prevent a conflict erupting between the Bishop and himself. Why? Did the disgusting old man have some new atrocity to reveal—something he seemed bursting at the seams to say? Whatever it was, Cassian was not afraid to hear it.
Soulic moved into the dining hall along with him, driven by an irresistible compulsion to protect Cassian's life, yet as he did, he whispered in a low hiss: "You're out of your mind walking in here."
With a cordial smile, Cromlic gestured to two steaming plates on the table to the right of him. "We ordered the staff to make you eggs and bacon. I heard that was what you usually ask for."
"He has something dangerous planned," Soulic whispered.
Cassian glanced briefly around the room. The craith were positioned in a wide square around the two men, standing perfectly still and straight, arms at their sides. He could not read either of his opponents' minds—at least not immediately.
"You seem to have gone to a great deal of trouble for this meeting," Cassian said, gesturing around.
"It was no trouble for you," the Bishop said.
"We should leave," Soulic whispered.
"Why are you here?" Cassian said, drawing nearer to the table.
"So brisk and direct," Cromlic said, the sides of his mouth curling up and revealing yellowed, almost green teeth. He gestured to the bench across from him and said: "Won't you sit?"
"I cannot think of two people in all the world with whom I would find it so repugnant to eat," Cassian said, staring into Arkas's eyes, and then into the Bishop's. What were they hiding?
"That is disappointing," Cromlic said, and he waved his hand. The table between them slid to the left clearing a path. He moved toward Cassian, his eyes blazing with dangerous confidence. "Food or no food, heretic, you and I have a matter of extreme importance to discuss."
Soulic slid his sword halfway out of its scabbard, and as soon as it did the Craith in the room moved closer, every one of them setting a hand on the hilt of his weapon.
"Calm down," Cassian said, pressing the back of his hand against Soulic's chest. The Sansrit warrior hesitated, but then lowered his sword back into its sheath. The craith remained perfectly still only a short distance away. Cassian looked at Cromlic and said: "If you have something to say to me, then out with it."
"As you wish," the Bishop said, his cruel smile growing. "Cassian Asango, I charge you with heresy against the gods! After all these years, I give you this one final chance to confess freely."
Cassian blinked. There had to be more to this meeting than another heresy charge. How could they enforce it? There was something he did not see yet. To find out, he played along and said: "Confess to what? What are my crimes?"
"The list is quite long. You have spoken direct blasphemy, incited resistance to the holy authority of the church, and defamed an acting bishop."
Cassian was unable to resist responding: "Yes, I did all of those things, and will continue to do so."
The Bishop’s sneering eyes grew more intense. "Well then, by divine right of Balthar, God of Justice, I arrest you. Seize him!"
At these words, every craith in the room rushed forward. Cassian was so shocked that he barely managed to hiss "Dasak!" A translucent sphere of energy whirled up around him an instant before the first pair of metal gauntlets moved to grab him. They struck against his shield and, when their limbs were knocked back, they yanked silver swords from their scabbards in near perfect unison and came again. To Cassian's left, Soulic was attacked by three craith at once, each slashing at him from a different angle. Soulic moved in a blur, contorting his body and dodging away while managing to hack through the neck of the nearest of his opponents. There was no spray of blood, and the creature gave no reaction to its wound, but only lunged at Soulic just as swiftly a second time. Cassian had only an instant to perceive all of this, for at least twenty of the silent killers ran at him at once from different directions, all with swords raised.
cated from Soulic. He willed the enchantments within both it and the one around his neck to activate, forming a mental picture of what he wished to project. A dozen different phantoms of himself appeared throughout the room while his own image became obfuscated within a cocoon of simulated transparency, essentially rendering him invisible.
The craith were not fooled. They stepped through his projections and continued to rush at him, stabbing at what should have been impossible to perceive. Cassian redoubled his protective spell while telepathically calling to his men, who were in the village outside:
Cassian willed his body to rise above the heads of his enemies, but the six craith closest to him leaped with preternatural speed and delivered a barrage of slashes into his shield. No sooner had the first wave begun to drop to the floor than a second leaped over their heads. Again, weapons slammed with preternatural strength into Cassian's barrier, causing him to strain to hold his defense. He could feel his power draining away by the second, and the craith kept coming.
In the midst of this impossible onslaught, Cassian glared up at the stone ceiling. If he could blast a hole and soar up through it—the instant this thought entered his mind, he felt an unearthly swell of energy below him. Six figures in black stood amongst the others holding perfectly still, their heads lowered, and their right hands raised in his direction. Six beams of silvery energy erupted from their palms in a hiss of power and bit into Cassian's shield. Their combined magic crackled against the cocoon, and though his barrier thwarted the beams from striking into his flesh, he felt their deathly magic pulling him back down to the floor.
Liches... There had long been stories of Starborn emperors of the past inducting fallen enemy sorcerers into the ranks of the craith, but Cassian had never believed such beings, after having so much of their humanity stripped away, could still wield magic. His assumptions had been quite wrong... The power coming off these undead creatures bit into his shield with shocking strength.
As Cassian’s feet were forced to the floor, blades struck his translucent shield over, and over, and over—sometimes three in a second. He was surrounded on all sides. In the midst of this, his eyes fell on Cromlic and Arkas, who were standing very near to one another and chanting. Cassian felt the tingle of electrical energy gathering around them. To his left, Soulic was fighting hard. Several heads and arms of craith lay around him, but the Sansrit warrior was also growing weaker and weaker. Cassian weighed all of this in his mind for an instant, and then he focused upon his two human opponents. Arkas was closer.
Instantly, the Sansrit warrior darted through the cluster of craith he had been fighting and sprang in front of the Bishop. His sword slashed, and Cromlic screamed "Dasak!" in terror. His shield came up just in time to save his head from being cleaved, but Soulic simply attacked again and again. Cassian turned his attention to Arkas, who had an orb of blazing orange light the size of a human head crackling in front of his right hand. There was so little time to act! The protective sphere around Cassian's form shimmered white in cascading ripples every time a craith blade struck it, and they were hitting now like raindrops in a storm.
Cassian willed his body forward, not bothering to waste precious time forming a spell but raising his right hand and willing raw magic into a tremendous invisible blade in the air. He whipped his arm and sliced through at least twenty craith in an eye-blink, cutting through their swords, armor, flesh, and bones. He lurched over the dismembered chunks as they hit the floor and came at his true victim.
Arkas shrieked, and his clumsy control over whatever offensive spell he was forming fumbled. Cassian mentally wrestled control of it and willed it back into the little fool’s hand. The flashing cloud rebounded, engulfing and burning away outstretched fingers. Arkas let loose an ear-splitting scream and jerked back a charred, smoking stump.
There was a crackle in the air, and Cassian felt offensive magic coming at him from six different directions at once. His mind shifted to defense instantly, abandoning the long belated killing of Arkas, for the moment. He whirled to face the liches, who held up gauntleted hands in front of their chests. White beams from each of them struck once more into Cassian's protective cocoon with power that had a cold, macabre resonance to it.
As he glared at them, he saw more and more craith charging in through the doorways. There were hundreds! Most of them bore swords, but a few here and there raised their hands and joined their lich brothers, sending terrible, unending beams of power to collide with Cassian's dwindling barrier, and he became aware then of how much of his strength he had used, and how little was left.
His soldiers were coming, but at that moment he made a calculation: a massive armed force attempting to enter the imperial palace could not save him. If the Emperor were on the side of Cromlic, which he seemed to be, Cassian’s personal guard would be cut down by the palace archers well before they managed to break in. They would just be throwing their lives away…
To hell with it then! The stubborn, defiant part of Cassian’s mind cried out. He had only seconds to live, but in those seconds, much could be done. He closed his eyes and whispered: "Arathelmos Kiavass Sorokai!" invoking the names of the darkest and most powerful spectral entities he knew. Years ago, he had invented a spell that would be considered forbidden by any school of magic in the world. Self-sacrifice—the exchange of his life for one brilliant instant of destructive power. If he had to die, then his end could at least be spent killing Cromlic and the little wretch Arkas. He had always known it might end like this…
Thalice's face flashed through his mind as he felt the awesome swell of energy begin. It was good to have been loved. A smile crossed his face as he put his hands together.
Cassian hesitated, and the spell, held together only by his will, faltered. He opened his eyes and watched the golden corona of energy between his hands vanish along with the last of his strength, and then the silver blades of the craith finally pierced through his barrier.
They did not kill him. A hundred swords returned to their scabbards as soon as Cassian dropped to his knees, and instead cold, powerful hands took hold of every limb of his body and lifted him to a standing position. One craith stepped in front of him from the sea of black cloth and silver armor with two iron manacles in his hands, each with a deep hole in the side. Cassian knew instantly what these were. He stared without words as the craith clapped the first one and then the other. A second dark figure stepped forward and pulled a black pouch from its belt that moved and twisted. The craith inserted gloved fingers and drew out a hissing, squirming Amanthian leech and brought it to Cassian's right manacle. Almost immediately, he felt its cold, slimy form latch onto his skin, and then the tiny flickers of magic still left inside him began to drain away. When the craith drew another leech and put it on his left manacle, this drain syphoning became even more pronounced.
"This was always your destiny," Cromlic cackled. Cassian shifted his eyes to the old bishop. The man was drunk with victory after so many years. His grin was sickening. He leaned in very close to Cassian's face and hissed: "Are you confused, Starborn? Do you wonder why the craith would attack you upon my order?"
Cassian said no
thing. He was trying to feel for his men, but his psychic senses were painfully dulled. Somewhere behind him, he could hear Arkas sobbing in pain on the floor.
The Bishop’s smile broadened, revealing his hideous teeth once again. "As I am certain you know, it was Emperor Coronitus who invented the process by which a man can be turned into a craith." Cromlic cast a sweeping gesture at the black figures that surrounded the two of them, and then he reached forward and grabbed a handful of the hair above Cassian's brow. "Despite all his power, Coronitus was a devout servant of the gods, unlike you!" He shook Cassian's head. Cassian continued to stare into the bloodshot eyes as some of the old man's spittle hit his cheek. "Being wise,” Cromlic went on, “the great emperor knew he was a mortal and might die at any time or even become incapacitated, and so he gave his craith a secondary directive in their hierarchy of obedience." Cromlic leaned in very close to Cassian’s face as he hissed: "So long as the orders did not directly counteract the emperor's own, the bishops of the church were granted power to command the craith." Cromlic leaned in still closer so that Cassian was forced to endure his hot breath. "Coronitus did not grant the authority to command his army to the other Starborn, for he understood that such power belongs rightfully to those who have dedicated their LIVES to the CHURCH!" he gave Cassian’s head a furious jerk," and not simply to men born with POWER—men who might have no RESPECT for moral responsibility at all."
"Kill him!" Arkas screamed from behind. The little bastard was whimpering in pain as he stumbled into view, clutching the hideous new stump to his chest. "Kill him now!"
