The Once King

by Rachel Aaron

A thick-muscled arm snaked around her neck, squeezing into the space between her armor’s protective collar and her chin to clamp down on her throat. At the same time, his other arm came up under her armpit, locking his forearm across her chest and grabbing his other wrist to cinch the choke. Scrambling, Tina beat at his arms with her fists, but he was stronger and bigger and had all the leverage. She could have held out, but she still hadn’t gotten back the breath he’d knocked out of her when he’d thrown her down. Add in the choke, and her vision was already starting to dim, her movements growing smaller and weaker with every hit.

  “This is it, girl,” Cinco huffed in her ear, “Say good night, ‘cause you ain’t ever waking up.”

  Too short on breath to curse him back, Tina ignored him and focused on getting free. Unfortunately, her options were very limited in this position. Her shield was useless with Cinco behind and on top of her, and her sword was lying in the dust several feet away. Even if she could have reached it, Cinco’s hold under her armpit locked her sword arm at a useless angle. She could only bend it at the elbow, and not with any strength. Her shield arm was free, though, and she raised it frantically, swinging it behind her in an attempt to bash his head with the metal edge. But Cinco’s giant shoulder plates—the ones covered in skulls—actually did their job as armor and blocked the hits, leaving her exhausted and still unable to breathe.

  Unwilling to give up, Tina gritted her teeth and pushed with her legs. Cinco had her arms on lockdown, but he’d left her her feet, and while she wasn’t as strong as he was, her epic armor’s stats still made her superhuman. Keeping hunched over to balance him on her back, Tina stood up in a rush, lifting the Berserker off the ground. The huge man kicked and scrambled with his feet, but though he was only able to touch the ground with a tiptoe, he still didn’t let go.

  This was bad. Her lungs were screaming for air now, and the strength in her knees was fading fast. Tina stumbled to the right as the Berserker grew heavier, then she stumbled again as the ground under her feet crumbled, sending a slide of rocks clattering down into the gorge below.

  Great, she thought, staggering away from the cliff. Not only was she about to lose consciousness, she was on the edge of the ravine. Even if she jumped, Cinco could simply let go of her to save himself. The sides weren’t that steep. All he’d have to do was catch hold of rock and climb back up while she fell to her death.

  Tina’s vision was going in and out now, causing her panic to rise again. Cursing, Tina shoved it back down and forced herself to think. Cinco was choking her out, but that was air, not HP. She still had almost all of her health pool, and she was way more armored than he was. Shuffling her feet on the loose soil, Tina looked down into the ravine. She couldn’t see the bottom through the deep shadow of the mountains above them, but she knew it was a long fall. Way too long for someone who put all his stats into strength rather than health.

  A smile spread over Tina’s darkening face. Couldn’t tank, huh? A frail little girl, was she? She’d fucking show him how weak she was.

  With all her remaining strength, Tina lifted her right foot and brought it down hard to activate her Ground Stomp ability. The wide-area taunt smashed the edge of the gorge to powder, sending golden lines of energy spidering across the dirt for twenty feet in all directions. Massive cracks followed, exploding through the rock, and then Tina felt the blessed rush of air in her lungs as Cinco’s grasp vanished.

  “You crazy ho!” he cried, wheeling his arms for balance as he tried to jump away, but it was too late. Tina’s Ground Stomp had completely destabilized the already-crumbling cliff, causing the whole edge to tip sideways. Then, with a final thunderous crack, a good forty feet of old, weathered stone broke free and began to slide, taking them both over the edge in an avalanche of rocks and dust.

  Tina pulled her shield over her face as the ground vanished from below her feet. Somewhere to her left, she heard Cinco screaming as the landslide swallowed him. She wanted to scream too, but she was too busy gasping in all the air she could. Light vanished as the river of rocks and dirt engulfed her, carrying her down into the darkness of the ravine like a leaf over a waterfall. Her armor groaned and shook as boulders the size of car engines slammed into her, but terrifying as it was, Tina still had her ace. Earthen Fortitude, baby! she thought with a grin, activating the big damage-stopping ability that was going to save her from being crushed to death.

  Nothing happened.

  Panicking, Tina tried again, her mind shoving at the reflexive ability that usually felt as natural as moving her fingers, but it didn’t come. There was no embrace of the Bedrock Kings, no comforting mountain rising up from the deep earth to save her. Her body remained stubbornly soft and fleshy as the rockslide knocked her around like a pinball. It wasn’t until the weight of stone crashed down on top of her, though, that Tina realized why.

  The Bedrock Kings couldn’t save her because she was no longer theirs to save. Earthen Fortitude was a stonekin-only ability. Human Knights had their own big damage cooldown, but she hadn’t thought to learn it from Frank during the hour of prep time Cinco had given her—a seemingly fatal miscalculation as she slid farther and farther into the dark.

  Curling into a ball behind the wall of her shield, Tina gave herself up for buried. The only luck she had was that she landed on her back. Above her, the landslide was still going, entombing her body beneath who knew how much dirt and stone. Years of tanking reflex had kept her shield in position in front of her, creating a pocket of air between her body and the rocks above, but the weight pushing down on her was so intense, the only part of her body she could actually move was her head.

  As the thunder of the landslide finally began to quiet, Tina took a moment to assess her position. Her god-forged armor and shield had kept her from being crushed, but she was trapped, buried alive under tons of rock no amount of strength could have moved. She must have hit her head on the way down, because she could feel warm wetness running down her scalp into her armor. A lot of wetness, which would have been more frightening if she hadn’t been convinced the lack of air would kill her first. Thanks to the faint glow of her armor, Tina could see the pocket her shield had created between the rocks and her body, but that was it. There were no cracks she could see, no daylight coming down through the wall of rocks and dirt above her. Once the oxygen she’d trapped in with herself was gone, that was it. She was dead.

  Breathing as shallowly as she could, Tina closed her eyes and tried to come to terms with that. It was easier than she’d anticipated. She’d nearly bitten the dust so many times now, facing the real thing felt strangely anticlimactic. Her greatest regret was that she was leaving her guild to face the Once King without a tank. At least she’d run him out of mana before she’d gone down. As she’d learned from Raffestain, NPCs with giant mana pools couldn’t recover any more quickly than players. No mana meant no Million Damage Blast, which meant the Roughnecks still had a chance even without One For All.

  Even without her.

  Tina’s lip began to quiver. No, she ordered, squeezing her eyes tighter. She was not going to cry. She would die with dignity, dammit. It was the least she could do after getting carried away and killing both herself and Cinco. Dammit, she was supposed to win and get that idiot under control so they could stick to the plan! Now everything was ruined, and it was all her fault, as usual. She couldn’t even give someone else her armor since it was buried with her under a million tons of rock.

  Her regrets felt even heavier than the landslide. So many mistakes, so many things she should have done differently. Done better. As she heaved for more useless air, Tina almost thought she smelled the scent of the sky. That had to be a hallucination, but at least it reminded her of SilentBlayde. Alone in the crushing dark that was soon to be her tomb, Tina could admit she regretted not getting a kiss before she went. Sure, she was still mad at him, but there’d been a brief hour there when she’d been her and he’d been him, the only hour in seven years of longing where they’d overlapped. N
ot that a kiss would have changed the whole “dying pointlessly in a rockslide” thing, but it would have been nice to have one less regret.

  At least I get to die with my pride.

  It didn’t feel worth it. She knew she’d been right, but Tina still felt bad about how she’d ended things with SB back in Bastion. More specifically, she regretted the extreme way she’d blown up. The reckoning had been a long time coming, but she wanted to believe that if things had come to a head under less extreme circumstances, she would have been kinder, used better words instead of throwing everything in his face. Maybe, if life had been more peaceful, they could have sorted it out, and then she’d have had a final wonderful memory to keep her warm in this grave of her own making.

  Thoroughly depressed, Tina breathed in deep, because really, what was the point of saving air when there was no hope of rescue? She was only delaying the inevitable and apparently buying more time to make herself miserable. When she breathed in deep again, though, the smell of the sky was still there, sweet and bright and full of life, like a puff of summer wind against her ear.

  Tina froze. That wasn’t a hallucination. There really was air moving against the skin of her left ear. It happened again a second later, a slight flutter, almost like someone was blowing on her earlobe. Jerking in surprise, Tina tried to roll over, but the weight pushing down on her was too heavy. The best she could manage was to turn her head, tilting her chin up as she breathed in through her nose.

  There was no mistaking it this time. That was definitely the smell of the high clouds. When the next puff of it hit her in the face, Tina saw them. Lips. In the darkness just above her, a pair of masculine, elven lips emerged from the shadows to blow a long breath of sky-scented air into her tiny pocket. They vanished back into the Lightless Realm a second later, and Tina closed her eyes with a sob.

  Fuck, Blayde.

  How was she supposed to stay mad at him when he did things like this!? Here she was, lost beneath tons of rubble, practically dead, and he still hadn’t given up. She had no idea how he’d found her or what he’d put himself through to do it, but his lips appeared again a few moments later, blowing another life-giving breath into her stone tomb.

  Tears running down her face, Tina turned herself sideways with the last of her strength. A trail of dirt landed in her eyes for her trouble, stinging bitterly, but she ignored it, tilting her neck back until it felt like it was going to crack. It was a painful position, but Tina didn’t care. She had to be ready, because she might not get another chance, so she braced her body and waited. Then, when his lips appeared again from the tiny shadow in the dirt above her head, Tina pushed up to meet them with her own.

  He froze when she made contact, his lips hard as the stone that was crushing her. Then they softened, melting into hers as SilentBlayde kissed her back. They held the kiss for as long as they could, then SB breathed his air into her lungs and vanished, leaving her gasping and flushed. He reappeared a minute later, but even she couldn’t manage a repeat of that position. Instead, Tina satisfied herself by inhaling as he exhaled.

  Minutes crept by as they kept up that pattern. Exhale and inhale, his breath to hers. Tina counted the seconds between his visits so she’d know when he’d be back, which was how she noticed that the gaps were getting longer. He always reappeared, but his breaths got more ragged each time, chilling her to the bone. Was there air in the Lightless Realm underground? Probably not. Also, how was he reaching her? The Lightless Realm let you move from shadow to shadow, not through solid ground. She was at the bottom of a ravine with what had to be tons of rock on top of her. How was he getting through?

  Horror sank in as Tina realized the truth. He was using his speed. Even in a rockslide there were gaps, and down in the dark ravine, there were plenty of shadows. He must have been dashing between them, moving so quickly his body was never in one place long enough to be crushed. Tina shook her head in wonder. It was damn clever and hard as hell, the sort of feat only someone who’d mastered the Lightless Realm could pull off. It was also going to get him killed. They’d already seen what happened when he pushed his speed too far. If he kept this up, he’d die from hypoxia again. Would he kill himself trying to save her?

  Tina was shocked by how well she knew the answer. SilentBlayde would absolutely die for her. There was no doubt in her mind, and the next gap confirmed it. It was thirty seconds, his longest yet. The air was getting dangerously thin by the time she felt his presence again, and Tina steeled herself to make it his last.

  “Stop,” she said.

  “No,” SB replied.

  Tina shook her head. “I’m not letting you go down with me.”

  “That’s my choice.”

  “No more, Blayde,” she ordered, voice shaking. “Please don’t make me beg.”

  The pause that followed was so long that Tina thought he’d obeyed. Then his soft voice whispered in the dark.

  “You can call me Haruto if you want.”

  Tina sniffed as his presence vanished. Damn it. She’d ordered him to go, but she hadn’t wanted it to end like this. The proof of how much he still cared was worse than dying thinking she’d ruined everything. At least before she’d had closure. Now she was sitting in the dark counting seconds, torn between hoping he’d come back and praying he’d stay away. Not that she had control, of course. She’d already made her grave, but that didn’t stop her from counting as the seconds crept by.

  Forty-five.

  Fifty.

  One minute.

  Tina imagined SB dead in the Lightless Realm, trapped under rocks with her because he was too stubborn to let her go.

  A minute thirty.

  Maybe someone had stopped him? She hoped so. He needed to live. She needed him to live. Not even death could save her from the guilt if she got him killed.

  One minute forty-five.

  Tina had just about given up when she felt another puff of air. Delighted and furious at the same time, she rolled over to yell at him only to pause halfway. This air didn’t smell like the sky. It smelled like cat breath. Wrinkling her nose, Tina breathed it in anyway, holding the fishy, meaty air in her lungs as long as she could, but she didn’t actually need to. Once they started, the cat-breath puffs came at regular intervals, keeping her from the brink of death. Then, five minutes of fish-air later, she heard the sound of rocks moving above her, followed by a deafening crack. Golden light streamed around the edges of her shield, and then sweet, fresh, dusty air flooded into her tomb. Tina was gulping when an excited shout sounded over her head.

  “We’ve found her!”

  Tina blinked in wonder. That was James’s voice, and he wasn’t alone.

  “Get that rock, muscle boy!” NekoBaby ordered. “We’re almost OOM!”

  Metal boots crunched next to her head, and then the crushing weight pinning her down vanished as Killbox and Frank heaved a massive rock off her shield. Hands appeared next, grabbing her arms and shoulders as her friends hauled her up and out of the Tina-shaped hole she’d made in the ground. Nearby, Anders stood with his staff held high, bathing the bottom of the rocky gorge in golden, healing light. A moment later, ZeroDarkness stepped out of the shadows and gave her a feline smirk.

  “Where’s SilentBlayde?” were the first words out of Tina’s mouth when she could speak. Considering the guildwide effort to save her, it really should have been “Thank you,” but Tina had to know if SB was collapsed somewhere in the Lightless Realm so they could save him. She was about to ask again when Neko grinned and pointed up the gorge.

  “Over there.”

  Wiping the gritty tears out of her eyes, Tina whirled and saw SB. He was alive, panting on the ground next to a furious Zen. But while the nurse was definitely angry, even her scowl looked relieved. They all did, and Tina lowered her head in shame.

  “Thanks, guys,” she said, leaning on her shield. “I really screwed the pooch this time. Sorry you had to excavate me.”

  “’S cool,” NekoBaby said with a cocky fanged
smile. “We invented some wicked sick earth-bending magic to find—Whoa!”

  The cat girl was nearly knocked over as James burst through, throwing his arms around his sister so hard it was practically a tackle. “I’m so glad you’re alive!” her brother cried, his damp whiskers tickling her cheeks.

  “I’m fine, thanks to you all,” she said, patting him on the back.

  James sobbed against her, and then he jerked back and grabbed her shoulders, glaring at her in fury. “Never do that again!”

  “Not planning on it,” Tina promised, then she gave him a smile. “But weren’t you the one who said you were confident I’d figure out a way to beat Cinco?”

  “I didn’t think you’d do it with a landslide!” James shouted. “Seriously, what were you thinking?”

  She’d been thinking about how to win, a determination that now felt a little silly and selfish as she looked around at the stricken faces of her friends.

  “Thank you,” she said again, her chest tight. “Thank you all for saving me.”

  “Don’t you worry about it,” Frank said, tugging at his mustache. “We knew you’d win.”

  James released her as more Roughnecks crowded in. As they took turns slapping her on the back, Tina noticed there were no Red Sands at the bottom of the ravine.

  “Wait,” she said, looking around. “What happened to Cinco? Is he dead?”

  NekoBaby rolled her slitted cat eyes. “Nah. Garrond saved him, the big softy.”

  “What?!” Tina cried. Not that she’d actually wanted to kill Cinco. Her plan had always been to beat him and then use that victory as a leash to keep him in line. Things had just gotten out of hand, as duels to the death were wont to do. She was mostly pissed that the paladin had decided to save the idiot Berserker and not her.

  “He was actually trying to save you both,” Anders explained when she mentioned it. “Garrond has an area-of-effect version of Raise Ally. It operates on a fixed distance, so it skips the typical line-of-sight restrictions. More importantly, it causes a massive pillar of holy light to fly up at each target. He cast it so we could find your bodies under the landslide, but it only worked on Cinco because he was the only one who was dead. When we didn’t see your flash, we knew you were still alive, which was good and bad, since it meant we had to find you the hard way and fast.”