His grasp tightened slightly and he nodded. “I lost my tribe as well. I know what that’s like when you do not live near the kingdom.” He sighed and shook his head. “When you feel you have nowhere else to go and that everything has been lost. I had hoped to grow into a warrior who could help others to never feel the way I had. I have failed in that hope.”
Asla looked into the water and saw their reflections—his regret and her sadness. “But you continue,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “Why?”
Freki looked at her and she met his gaze as he said, “Because when I fail and others are in pain, I help no one by hiding in my failure. If I did that, how can I help them? How can I tell them things get better when I do nothing but wallow in my misery and theirs? If I can save even one, that is a place to start.”
“How do I—” Tears welled and she used the back of her other hand to wipe her eyes as the tears rolled down her cheeks. “How do I do the same? How do I leave it all behind?”
His hand left her shoulder and he embraced her. “You cannot, not all of it, but you don’t have to let that consume you and keep you from living.” He released her but moved his hands to her shoulders as he looked at her. “You can keep moving forward step by step. And you can start by making a promise to yourself, one you will always strive to stay true to.”
Asla nodded and used her hair to obscure her eyes. “And what promise is that?”
The wolf wildkin gave her another small hug. “I cannot tell you that, youngling. You have to find it for yourself and once you do, it will help you on your path back to life.”
The darkness surrounding her did not disappear that day but it was no longer as suffocating. Each day since, she had walked a path farther away from it, even if it was slowly.
“Hey, over here.” A voice intruded and she felt a burst of mana that snapped her out of her memories. She turned as two female magi appeared on the other side of the pond. They must have blinked in and both seemed as surprised to see her as she was them.
“What’s she doing here?” the dryad asked and Asla recognized her as Calipsi, one of the ambassadors Jazai had pointed out, which must make the human woman with her Mara. “I didn’t sense an anima nearby.”
“It must have been obscured by the cobalt,” Mara suggested and tapped her staff against one of the nodes. “Or she’s simply very good at hiding it.”
Asla pushed to her feet and stared at them. “Are you here to fight?”
“We were looking for a break, to be honest,” the woman replied, rested her staff against her shoulder, and folded her arms. “But out of curiosity, do you mind showing us your signet, my dear?” The wildkin narrowed her eyes but took her signet from her pocket and held it up to them. Both peered closely at it and smiled. “The silver star—isn’t that yours, Calipsi?”
The dryad nodded and produced a wand. “Indeed it is,” she confirmed. “It looks like we found a diamond in the rough.”
Mara shook her head. “Come now, let’s be reasonable. Look at this little thing. I don’t think she can handle both of us.”
“She made it this far,” her partner reminded her. “But what are you suggesting?”
The woman held a hand out. “Why don’t you toss it over here, little one?” she said and gestured with her hand. “We can settle this nice and easy. There’s no need for things to get dirty.”
Asla glared at them as she put the signet away. “Why are you at these trials?” she asked and stretched her arms as her anima began to flow around her.
The ambassadors did the same, Calipsi’s a shade of light-green and Mara’s one of dark-blue. “We’re here on behalf of our respective kingdoms,” the dryad replied and pointed her wand at her. “Despite letting the Council run these trials as they see fit, each kingdom still has a vested interest in it, so we are here to do our part and make sure only those truly qualified obtain a mark.”
“You are young so you have time,” Mara continued and held her staff in both hands. “Let’s not make this messy.”
“Is that it? This is nothing more than a job for you?” Asla growled and dropped to all fours as the stone in her majestic glowed and her feline anima appeared around her. Its sudden manifestation shocked the ambassadors. “This is the next step on my path. I promised myself to keep fighting and to make a new life for myself!” She hissed as her eyes burned with her orange mana. “To never be made to feel alone again!” she roared as she leapt at the elder magi and swiped a large claw of mana.
Chapter Forty-Two
“A slashed neck and severed tendons,” Koli muttered as he inspected one of the three bodies on the ground. He looked at another. “A stab to the heart—the wound is about the right size so it certainly seems to be Zed’s handiwork,”
He stood and folded his arms. The bodies were all close together so they likely had no time to retreat or escape. They probably weren’t pushovers so a quick ambush would be the only explanation. He shifted his focus to one of the walls where an arm reached out, lifeless but stuck there, and several feet down, a female magi seemed half-submerged in the ground. Her eyes were lifeless and blood dripped from her mouth. Everything below the stomach was probably crushed and appeared to be the work of a transmuter, probably his squama friend.
The assassin walked forward and made sure to note all the shadows along the path, but he didn’t have to go far to find an entrance to a large room. The inside was completely dark and he smirked. My, he was certainly making it obvious, wasn’t he? He could feel mana emanating from within—two essences, in fact, and he could faintly detect Zed’s. It seemed he had chosen the arena for their real reunion and he hoped it would be interesting.
Koli ripped one of the torches off the wall and walked inside. He’d no sooner done so when mana surged in the room and the entrance began to close. Unperturbed, he turned slowly to see the earth beginning to stretch out, first as dust and sand before it reformed into stone lined with a shimmer of mana. He chuckled, tossed the torch out into the middle of the chamber, and noticed that several pillars stretched from the roof about three stories above. Three platforms were formed out of rock on the west, east, and south side and he easily detected a presence hiding behind a boulder on the eastern platform—the transmuter, most likely.
But that was not who he was there for. One dark boot stepped into the light of the torch before the entire form appeared and coalesced into Zed. Koli folded his arms and smiled at the merc, who glowered at him in return. Silence swallowed the room save for the crackling of the flames.
“So, will your friend be joining us?” the assassin asked and glanced at the platform where the squama hid. A quick jolt in his essence was no doubt due to his surprise that he had been detected so easily. It faded quickly as he tried to hide and moved from the western platform to the one in the back of the chamber. It made Koli giggle.
Zed shook his head. “I told Tiso to keep to himself. I merely brought him to prepare your gravesite.” He gestured to the chamber around them. “And to make sure you couldn’t run away.”
Koli’s smile turned to a frown. “Me? You honestly think I would run away?” He pointed at the merc. “Last time we fought, it wasn’t me who ran, Zed.” He expected this comment to be met with more angry shouting but instead, the man did the opposite. He exhaled a long breath, sucked in another, and tilted his head back and laughed. His hand coiled around his malefic blade where it rested against his chest as he continued his hysterics before he shook his head and focused on the assassin.
“It was maybe not my finest moment there,” he admitted and spat on the ground at the memory. “That humiliation was another thing added to the list in my head—all the cuts I intend to leave on you.” He held his Ebon Jackal up and the dagger reflected the fire in its blade. “For every single wrong you did to me and my company.”
“You are making this entirely one-sided.” Koli pouted. “I lost some interesting comrades that day and over such a trifle too.” Despite the seemingly unconcerned demeanor
Zed presented, this comment made his eye twitch. “I have to say, I am disappointed that you seem so dead set on killing me.” He stroked his chin as his smile returned. “That moment in the cave against that flayer showed that we can still work quite well together, even after all this time.”
The statement made the merc look at him with a bewildered expression. “Are you seriously suggesting you want to come back to the company?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” he said with a wave of his hand. “But I could use a few more contacts currently. I’m rather low on friends and helpful associates.”
Zed’s hand tightened around his malefic. “I wonder why, you traitorous rat!”
Koli nodded and sighed. “I wonder that myself.”
The merc flipped his blade and pointed the blade at him. “I told you then, now that I have you in my sights, I won’t let you get away from me again.”
“There you go with the fantasy history again.” The assassin sighed and ran a hand through his hair. After his run-in with the Mad Count’s guard, Zed, and the kids, he had begun to realize that he’d probably left more people alive than he’d intended to. It was certainly something he needed to correct going forward because it seemed these avengers all seem to have the same mindset and by the Astrals, was it tiring.
The merc lifted a boot and stamped it onto the torch. The flame burst apart and began to dim as pieces scattered on the ground. The man began to fade into the shadows. “By your bored expression, you look like you could use some entertainment, Koli.”
The trickster smiled and produced a throwing knife. “I was about to say something to that effect. I didn’t realize you could read minds now, Zed.”
The merc snickered, his face the only thing still visible, but the darkness consumed that rapidly as well. “You are merely that easy to read, Koli, which will make this a short fight but so very sweet.” His threat was punctuated by the disappearance of his entire form into the darkness as the fire from the torch finally died.
Calmly, the assassin pointed two fingers into the air. “Illuminate,” he invoked. Two orbs of light appeared and a bright glow enveloped the chamber, although there were still numerous shadows around him. A cracking sound around him drew his attention to some nearby stalagmites that grew in stature while their pointed heads sharpened.
He glanced to where Tiso was hiding and threw his knife at the wall near his head, only a few inches away. “Now, now. Your boss said you would be a good boy while we have our little dance,” he reminded him as he took two more knives from his belt. “Remember, you are not needed here,” he warned before he whispered something and faded out of sight to leave the squama the only one visible in the cavern.
The wait was terrifying for him as he had to remain to maintain the enhancements on the stone that prevented Koli from breaking out or blinking through the chamber. But the assassin knew where he hid, even after he’d moved from his previous position. He placed a hand on the ground and formed a dome of rock around him to protect him from any sudden attacks and left only a few small holes for air, but this only worsened the silence in the chamber.
He had hoped Zed would kill him quickly like he had the other magi he had eliminated while looking for a good place to set up. It seemed like the merc wanted to take his time with Koli. At the thought of one cut for every sin on his list, he honestly hoped Zed was simply exaggerating.
Perhaps he should consider himself lucky that it was simply his personal list. If it was a list of all of Koli’s sins, he would be trapped there for years—or, at least, that was what he had been led to believe by the boss’ stories. But there was no way one person could be that bad, right? He’d have to be some kind of dark lord from fairy tales or something like that.
But as the silence continued and Tiso waited for one of them—either one as he did not care at this point—he began to realize that he might have allowed himself to get caught in a very deadly situation. The clanging of metal and sudden appearances of mana startled him before silence returned. This, he thought morosely, would be a game of shadows.
Chapter Forty-Three
Devol and Ramah had made good progress through the caverns on the way to Zed, at least by the wildkin’s best estimation. The boy could feel fights happening throughout the caves. With this much mana flaring and the typography of the subterranean system, it was hard to detect exact locations but there seemed to be enough magi remaining that he still needed to be on guard.
His companion did not seem as concerned. He had been quiet for the most part since they had initially departed and he would occasionally close his eyes, probably to better focus on finding his leader. More than once, the swordsman was concerned that he would collide with something at the high speed at which they were traveling.
“Tell me something, youngling,” he began after minutes of silence. “That sword of yours—it is a majestic, is it not?”
“Is it easy to tell?” he responded. At this point, he knew he wasn’t a good enough liar to make something up. Not even the highest-level exotics teemed with as much power as Achroma or had such a unique look.
Ramah took a moment to study the sword before he looked ahead. “Is it an heirloom?”
“Something like that,” he conceded and looked curiously at the mercenary. “What makes you think that, though?”
“I believe I have seen it before,” the wildkin admitted and almost made Devol topple as he tried to stop himself in his tracks. His companion halted and caught him by the back of his jacket to steady him. “Is something wrong?”
“You’ve seen it before?” he asked, wonder and excitement in his voice. “When? Where?”
“On a job in Osira a couple of years ago,” he explained, surprised by the young magi’s enthusiastic reaction. “I didn’t get a good look at the wielder, but he had slaughtered an enchanted beast I and a group of twenty others had been sent out to kill. We arrived in a cave system similar to this one to find bodies strewn everywhere. When we found the main den, the beast had been felled and the wielder simply turned toward us, nodded, and disappeared in a flash of light. It was honestly one of the easiest missions I think any of us ever claimed.”
Devol looked to the side for a moment, his face a mixture of questions and surprise. “So he does still return to our realm and has done so recently, but he doesn’t come to see—” He paused for a moment and sighed as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to stop us.”
“No need. I can see it means much to you,” Ramah replied and folded his arms. “I would guess that this means the wielder is someone who—Zed?” He turned away to stare deeper into the passage. “He’s close. We need to go.”
“Right.” The boy prepared to rush off with him, only for a familiar essence to reach out and touch his. “Jazai?”
“Hmm?” The wildkin looked at him. “Are you coming?”
“Go on ahead. I need to check on something,” Devol said quickly and rushed down another path. Ramah considered following him but another flare of Zed’s mana made him realize he was in combat. He could feel wrath in that burst of mana that made him realize that the merc might have found his quarry.
He pushed forward again, leaving Devol to his path. Perhaps they would meet again before this was all over, and he hoped it would not come to blows. He seemed a good kid with a promising future. But that all came down to whether Zed’s bloodlust was sated or if he was even alive for it to be a concern.
Devol wanted to call out to his friend. Although he was sure he felt the scholar’s mana somewhere close by, it didn’t feel like he was calling to him or trying to make a connection. It felt more erratic, which suggested that he might be in a fight. He held Achroma in his hand and when he felt a stronger connection to the other boy, he tried to send out a small pulse of his mana for him to connect to but received no response.
He found a small opening on the side of the passage that dropped into a tiny chamber. Cautiously, he peered inside. He felt strongly that this was
where Jazai was, but when he recalled the interaction with the illusionary miner, he wondered if it was nothing more than a trick.
“Jazai,” he said and tried to keep it muffled. When he received no reply, he decided to take his chances, climbed through the hole in the wall, and fell into the small chamber. He noticed an old lantern in the corner and a group of large rocks, which he crept behind with his sword at the ready. There, he found Jazai on his knees with his hands on his head as he muttered in a low tone. He felt both relieved and concerned at the sight and stretched forward to touch his shoulder as he kept his sword at the ready. A part of him almost expected his friend to turn with the face of a monster.
When the diviner felt the touch on his shoulder, he whipped around and pointed his hand at Devol as one of his rings lit up. The swordsman fell back as a mana bolt streaked past a couple of inches in front of his face and pierced the rocky ceiling above them before it vanished. “Jazai, it’s me!” he said in alarm and held out a hand to stop him.
“Devol?” the boy asked. His voice indicated that he was either in pain or at the very least disgruntled.
“Are you all right?” he asked as his friend clutched his head again. “What’s wrong? Did you bang your head?”
“In a sense,” Jazai muttered as he shifted to sit and lean against the rock. “I guess you could say I’m learning that just because you can technically do something, you shouldn’t without considering the consequences.”
He sat beside him and placed his sword on his lap. “What happened?”
The diviner fumbled in a pocket in his robes, fished a signet out, and showed it to him. “This is my sister signet. I took it off that hunter I told you about.”
“Yule?” Devol recalled. “You eliminated him?”
Jazai shook his head and winced as he put the signet away. “Not in the way you are probably thinking…ah, by the hells, it hurts to think.” He let his hands fall and placed his head against the rock behind him. “I used diviner magic, which one would think would have little repercussions given that it is my best school of magic. But even with that, it’s a little trickier when you’re dealing with someone who is above you in skill, along with the fact that I haven’t used it in practice in quite some time.” He looked at his ringed hand. “No wonder Zier didn’t want me to get used to these.”
The Oblivion Trials (The Astral Wanderer Book 3) Page 23
