Six Sacred Swords

by Andrew Rowe

  “C’mon, go on in. We’re almost done.”

  I groaned. I took a step into the doorway.

  Reika’s voice called after me. “Hey, wait a sec, something’s wr—”

  I heard her and twisted a moment too late.

  The world around me had changed, and Reika and Dawn were nowhere to be found.

  Chapter XI – A Link to the Future

  When I turned around at the sound of Reika’s voice, my vision blurred, and I saw a different world around me. One that was familiar, but in the way that looking in a broken mirror might be.

  The city of Velthryn had only been my home for about two years, but it had lasting significance for me. It was the first place I’d gone where I could wear my sword openly and see respect and admiration, rather than fear and disgust.

  In truth, the reverence that Velthryn treated me with wasn’t to my tastes, either. I would have rather not had any undue attention at all, and certainly not attention I hadn’t personally earned.

  But when I could avoid the feeling that I hadn’t done anything to deserve the interest that I attracted, Velthryn had proven to be an eminently friendly place. Three different species — humans, rethri, and a smattering of delaren — lived in the city in relative harmony. The differences between them were seen as a benefit, with each offering unique contributions to the society.

  It was a sharp contrast to the area near Selyr, where I’d grown up. There were both humans and rethri there, but they tended to live apart, and rarely intermingled. I grew up with a rethri family, and I always felt out of place, both because my eyes were different and because my family worshipped a different set of deities than most of the locals.

  My eyes weren’t an issue to the other children, but rethri adults generally looked at me with suspicion, and sometimes outright scorn. There were a number of times when I’m certain that parents kept their sons and daughters from interacting with me, fearing what a human influence might do to their children.

  The religion issue was even worse. My parents taught me at a young age not to tell anyone about who they followed. Following the Tae’os Pantheon wasn’t strictly illegal, but it would have been immensely destructive to their social lives if people found out, and very likely their careers as well.

  I learned to say the prayers to Vaelien at the same time I learned the ones my parents actually wanted me to believe in, because I had to be convincing.

  It should probably be of little surprise that I didn’t end up believing in the latter set of prayers, either, when I was taught at such a young age that prayers could just be words uttered for social convenience.

  Velthryn was different. They worshipped the Tae’os Pantheon predominantly, so carrying a sacred weapon of the pantheon there meant that I was something of a celebrity, rather than an outcast. Most of my memories of Velthryn were bright. I would have gladly fought to keep the tranquility and acceptance of the place safe.

  When I stepped through that door, I was in Velthryn again. And Velthryn was burning.

  I stood in the midst of a street littered with bodies. A thick haze of smoke choked the air, wind carrying it from the blazing buildings all around me.

  The smell of the smoke was dangerous, but it was the scent of the decaying bodies that bothered me more. I passed the Sae’kes into my right hand and raised my left arm to cover my face, but that proved inadequate. I knelt down after that — the smoke wasn’t as thick closer to the ground — and belted the Sae’kes back on. After that, I tore off a section of my shirt to fashion a crude scarf to cover my face.

  It didn’t accomplish much, if I’m being honest, but it was better than nothing.

  After that, I tried to orient myself.

  Looks like I’m in the East End, about three blocks from the gates of the citadel.

  That wasn’t likely to be a coincidence; the Citadel of Blades was where I’d lived during my time in the city.

  While the smoke made it difficult to make out any details, the area looked impressively real. I’d been faced with a lot of illusions over the years, including the ones in the forest, but this was a degree of sophistication far beyond what I’d previously encountered. Most illusions only targeted one or two senses — generally sight and sound. The scent of bodies and flames lent a degree of credibility to the area that I’d never encountered.

  And I was confident it was an illusion or a trick of some kind, of course. The chances that some random door in a shrine would transport me to near my home were impossibly low. There didn’t seem to be any point to that.

  Maybe I’m asleep. A dream would be able to mimic all of my senses accurately.

  I glanced at a nearby building to see if I could read the sign — it read “The Perfect Stranger”. It was a popular tavern, one I’d visited a few times. Being able to read a sign wasn’t proof that I was awake — I’d been able to read inside dreams before — but it did make it feel somewhat less likely that I was sleeping.

  I didn’t feel the same disorientation that I had in the Whispering Woods before I encountered the nightmare spirit, either. Even more importantly, I could sense that the stone beneath me was a different type from the interior of the Shrine of Bravery, and the heat from the flames around me felt like actual fire.

  That was enough to tell me that the environment was real enough that I needed to be immensely cautious. There would be no easy way to simply shake off an effect on my mind and end the test prematurely.

  I couldn’t spend much more time on testing. The air was choking me, and given the dire situation Velthryn seemed to be in, I suspected the test might be timed. I had to push forward and determine whatever sort of test this was supposed to be, even if I found it frustrating and distasteful.

  I rushed toward the Citadel of Blades. If this was meant to be a scenario where my home was under attack, saving my friends (illusions or not) was my highest priority.

  As I passed, I scanned the bodies for any signs of life, but the first ones that I passed were far beyond my abilities to save. Whatever had killed those people in this scenario had been horrifically thorough. Large portions of their bodies were just gone. I’ll spare you any further grisly details, but seeing people in that state was not a pleasant experience.

  I pressed on, passing one street after the next. I found no signs of life, but I did find signs of battle. The first were bits of weapons, splintered into pieces and scattered as if they’d burst apart.

  Further on, I found a line of armored soldiers. They’d fallen clustered together in a shield wall formation. Something had sliced through their shields, armor, and bodies all at once.

  My jaw tightened at the sight, and I moved on.

  I reached the gates of the citadel. They were closed, but a large section had been cut out of them.

  A handful of figures in the armor and tabards of the Paladins of Tae’os were laid nearby, strewn haphazardly like puppets with severed strings.

  A single body rested against the gates. The redness across her stomach was brighter even than her hair.

  Lydia.

  My heart skipped a beat and I broke into a run.

  Her eyes were open, but her gaze was distant, at least until I came within a few steps of her. Then her vision seemed to focus, and she tilted her head up toward me. She coughed, and blood dribbled down her lips.

  “No...further...”

  “It’s okay.” I rushed forward and knelt in front of her. “It’s me. It’s going to be okay.”

  She coughed again, then reached for a sword at her hip that wasn’t there.

  “Hold still, I’ll help you.”

  Her gaze shifted again, this time to the right. Her eyes fluttered, nearly closing. “Dyson...is he...”

  Her brother’s name. “Don’t worry. I’ll find him next. Stay with me.”

  I followed her gaze belatedly, finding another familiar figure lying on the ground not far away. His two swords had been cut in twain. Both of them were stained with blood, and it didn’t look like his.
/>
  He’d put up a fight, at least.

  But there was a reason I hadn’t recognized him immediately. There...wasn’t a lot left to recognize.

  It was easier to confirm his identity when I saw the blonde-haired woman lying next to him. She was face down, but her hand was outstretched toward Dyson’s.

  She’d been trying to reach him, but she hadn’t quite made it.

  Kestrel Makar. Inches apart from Dyson, even in death.

  I tightened my fist and turned back to Lydia, reaching into the pouch at my side and retrieving the potion that I’d found.

  I still wasn’t certain it was a healing potion, but Lydia was dying, and some chance of saving her was better than none.

  I pulled open the stopper and pushed it toward her. “Drink this. It’ll help.”

  She shook her head. “It’s too late for me. Someone needs to stop him. Please.”

  “You can help me. I don’t even know who I’m looking for.” I pushed the potion at her again. “Now drink.”

  I knew it was a waste to expend a possible life-saving healing potion on an illusion, but I wasn’t going to fail any iteration of Lydia if I could avoid it, illusory or otherwise.

  You can call that hopeless idealism if you’d like, but there was no part of me that would ever accept a friend dying without doing everything in my power to stop it.

  Lydia still didn’t take the potion, and I could tell she was fading fast, so I acted. I reached forward and poured a good portion of the liquid across her wound. The site of the injury began to bubble and shift, and as I watched, it began to close.

  Lydia groaned and winced. I reached forward and opened her mouth, pouring more liquid into it. She coughed and gagged, but I shut her mouth and forced her to choke the liquid down. I knew she likely had internal injuries that simply pouring the potion across her visible wound wouldn’t fix, but feeding her the liquid might.

  She turned her eyes up toward me, then they widened, seeming to recognize me for the first time. “You...”

  “Yes, it’s me, Lydia. I’m here.” I offered her the bottle. “Sorry for forcing your mouth open. Please drink the rest of this, it’ll help.”

  She swung a hand at it. Not to grab it, but in an effort to knock it out of my hand. She was slow and clumsy, though, and I managed to pull the bottle aside in spite of my surprise.

  Then she reached for the sword on my hip. She got it out an inch before I grabbed her wrist with my free hand.

  Lydia growled, grabbing my shoulder with her other hand. “Sleep.”

  I felt a wave of vertigo wash over me, but I’d experienced her spell enough times to know how to fight it off. I’d trained with her for that exact purpose.

  And so, I shifted the mana in my body to burn away the spell, then pulled free of her grip. She’d never been close to as strong as I was, and she was still injured, even if the potion had fixed some of the damage.

  I shoved my sword back into the scabbard, then stood up and backed away. “What are you doing?”

  Lydia grunted and tightened her jaw, bracing against the gate behind her, and then slowly pushed herself to her feet.

  I backed away further. I still had the healing potion in one hand, but I’d lost the stopper for it when she’d grabbed me. I took a few steps back and then set it down. “What are you doing?”

  “Defending my people. To my very last breath.” Lydia stared at me, then shifted into an unarmed fighting stance. “Comprehensive barrier.”

  A flickering shield of essence surrounded her. A hint of confusion crossed her face, but she quickly regained her focus. “I may not be able to beat you,” she took a step toward me, her eyes shifting to survey the battlefield as she moved, “But I can slow you down until someone who can stop you arrives.”

  I wanted to ask her why she was moving against me, but her actions and my surroundings had made the scenario clear enough.

  I glanced from side-to-side at the bodies with entire sections disintegrated, the weapons clearly cut into halves. “You’re saying that I’m the one responsible for this.”

  “You don’t remember?” Lydia maneuvered to near Dyson’s side. She spared her brother only a glance before kneeling down and grabbing the hilt of one of his broken swords. “Perhaps you’re feigning, or perhaps you’ve truly regained control over yourself. It doesn’t matter. I’ve seen your true self. You’re a monster, far worse than any other I’ve faced. I was a fool to ever believe otherwise.”

  I shivered.

  I knew it wasn’t real. None of it was real.

  But sometimes there’s often a difference between knowing something intellectually and internalizing it completely.

  I knew that the woman glaring at me with hatred in her eyes wasn’t the Lydia that I knew and...it didn’t matter. I felt shame at the people who had fallen around me. The friends that I’d failed.

  Understanding the scenario better, I nodded to her. “Very well. If your objective is to keep me from the citadel, I won’t enter. Can I persuade you to drink the rest of the healing potion?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I won’t be tricked by you. Not again.”

  “I don’t know what you remember me doing, but the potion—”

  She reached into a pouch at her side, then hurled something at me. A handful of dust.

  Resh!

  I stomped the ground, channeling stone mana and using one of the most recent tricks I’d practiced.

  Wall!

  The ground in front of me rose in the shape of a wall, blocking most of the dust.

  I fell backward to avoid the rest, then she was beside me, already swinging. She’d teleported.

  I wasn’t quick enough to draw and parry the strike, so I simply moved to avoid it as best I could.

  The blade sliced across my left arm, and the wound I felt was real.

  More importantly, so was the metal.

  I didn’t have a chance to consider why the illusion was using a real sword. I acted in the instant the metal broke through my skin.

  Reshape.

  As Lydia’s swing continued, my command took effect. The half-broken blade fell right off her hilt.

  I stepped forward and grabbed her hand, twisting it. Not hard enough to break the wrist, but enough to be painful.

  She gritted her teeth and shoved her other palm into my chest. “Eru volar—”

  A white glow was building around a ring on her hand. I knew what that meant. I recognized her incantation — a spell that would unleash a torrent of blue fire from her ring, far stronger than any flame sorcery I could use or counter.

  I kicked her in the bad leg. The one that had been broken just a couple years before, and never completely healed.

  Lydia screamed, losing her focus on the spell and falling to her knees.

  I stepped behind her, grabbed her arms, and twisted them both behind her. She tried to slam her head backward into me, but I twisted aside and she just brushed my shoulder.

  I pinned her to the ground. She struggled, but I was far ahead of her in raw physical strength.

  Once she was down, I restrained both of her arms briefly with one of mine, then used the other hand to slip the still-glowing ring off her finger and into the pouch at my side. Even if it was just an illusion of a magic ring, it was intensely dangerous to me in the current situation.

  A moment later, she’d vanished.

  I sprung to my feet, searching the area.

  Another teleportation spell.

  She hadn’t gotten far. She was down next to Dyson again, picking up his other sword.

  I turned toward her. “Please, Lydia. Stop. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  She shook her head at me. “It’s too late for that.”

  “It’s never too late. We can stop fighting and figure this out together.”

  Lydia raised her sword and pointed at me. “You misunderstand. I meant it’s too late because you’ll never have a chance to hurt me, or anyone else again. You’ve already lost. Shen taris.”
/>   I realized too late how badly I’d been outplayed.

  Inside my bag, her ring was still glowing.

  And with the last two words of her spell incantation, it activated.

  No.

  I didn’t have time to tear the bag off my belt before it exploded in a burst of blue-white fire.

  My instincts were strong enough to command the flames to turn aside, but my power was weaker than the ring’s. I diminished the power of the explosion, but I couldn’t stop it entirely.

  Fire surged across my body. The force of the explosion hurled me to the ground.

  I rolled on the ground in agony, flames spreading further.

  I heard a thump nearby, followed by Lydia’s voice. “You’re late.”

  I didn’t have the ability to process what was happening at first, I was in too much pain. I’d lost my ability to command the fire, and though I’d weakened it, I couldn’t diminish it any further with flame sorcery alone.

  “A shame. But at least it seems you’ve managed well enough on your own.”

  I knew that voice, too, but I couldn’t process it. If I didn’t act, I was about to die. And so, I drew upon the last power within me with the ability to save my life.

  Eradicate fire.

  Destructive power rippled outward from my body, obliterating the flames and stone around me. The remnants of my pack were annihilated as well, save for my mask and the door handle, which had been hurled far away by the explosion. Lydia was far enough away that she wasn’t harmed.

  I dropped a few feet in the aftermath, since I’d made a hole in the ground beneath me, and then shuddered and pushed myself to my feet.

  My skin was cracked and bleeding from serious burns. My left arm was still bleeding from Lydia’s cut, with the flames having done nothing to cauterize the injury. And my back was still aching from when I’d been injured earlier.

  But in that moment, the pain had been pushed away and replaced.

  “My, my,” the newcomer spoke, staring at me. “Looks like I’m not too late, after all.”

  Velas Jaldin cracked her neck, raising her own artifact weapon — The Heartlance, a spear that inflicted wounds that never properly healed — in my direction. She looked just as I’d remembered. Nearly my height, with her blonde hair pulled back into a tail. She was wearing nearly a full suit of plate armor, with only her head and the top of her neck exposed, but she moved like it was feather-light.