Book Three - Chapter Five (Patreon)

The creature charging toward them was nowhere near the largest fiend Alarion had ever faced. Still, its bloated frame swallowed most of the tunnel ahead. It was a hunter breed: lean, vicious, and unnaturally fast, with flaying claws as long as Alarion’s forearm. Its skin, slick with thick purple mucus, hinted that it was a newborn—one birthed from the spawning chamber in response to their intrusion.

“Spirits of fire, Dance.”

Anastacia’s incantation fell from her lips and seemed to pause there, wholly ignored by the fiend barreling toward her with murder in its eyes.

Alarion stepped between them on instinct, heart still and arms ready, bracing his oversized mace for a blow that never came.

The air ahead erupted in a cacophony of light and sound. For a moment, Alarion was blinded and vulnerable, but he recovered quickly and searched for his attacker.

The largest part was splattered across the left side of the corridor. 

The rest went everywhere else.

“A little warning would be nice,” Alarion complained, rubbing his eyes with one hand to clear the last of the stars. “That was summoning magic, yes?”

Anastacia seemed genuinely surprised by the question, blinking as though she hadn’t thought him capable of asking it. “It is. How could you tell?”

“I dabble in the field. And I have seen something similar,” he answered, his gaze following a few blue and violet embers as they swirled away from the crackling ruin that was a fiend only moments ago. He couldn’t see the simple thoughtforms the way Bergman could with [Sympathetic Sight], but his own [Unraveller’s Sense] let him feel the strangely gentle flow of Sympathy that made up the little creatures. “From a Vitrian, actually.”

“Sierra Feln.” 

Alarion flinched at the words. The ghost of Sierra haunted him in numerous and profound ways, but strangely, he couldn’t recall the last time he’d actually heard her name spoken aloud. Even when she was spoken of, it was always abstract: Nessa talking about ‘The Original’ or Lily mentioning ‘Syrus’s daughter’.

“Mm.” He nodded, then turned away before dabbing a knuckle at the corner of one eye. “She had several different summoned creatures. Did you know her?”

“In passing. We attended Secta in the same years, but we were never close, and my induction was earlier than most,” Anastacia admitted. “I believe we shared a tutor, which would explain the similarities.”

Alarion said nothing, his shoulders remaining taut as he moved toward the remnants of the fiend Anastacia had obliterated. Part of the meat was twitching.

“She was nice,” Anastacia added quietly, as though speaking the words too loudly might summon something awful. “I was sad to hear what happened to her.”

His answer was a mirthless laugh. Not dismissive or cruel, but bitter. A question danced on the tip of his tongue, as it too often did. 

Which version of what happened to her? 

There were so many stories—with so many intertwined lies and half-truths—that sometimes even Alarion mixed up the details. He remembered killing her, but he’d heard the rumor that he’d done so at the behest of Ashadi rebels often enough that he could picture the false memory if he tried. Just as he could vividly remember hiding in a cellar waiting for the screaming to stop.

Once, in the aftermath of the massacre, Alarion had feared that someone would come to silence him. But there was never a need for that. He could have shouted it in Anastacia’s face or screamed it at a gaggle of reporters, and it would not have moved the needle. A thousand lies had infested the truth and replaced it one word and moment at a time. 

“Most were,” Alarion said at last, slamming the head of his mace down upon the twitching clump of fiendish meat. It spasmed a few more times, then fell limp following the audible crack of its core. “Sad and frightened.”

“That is an understatement,” Anastacia agreed, following his gaze to the bodyguards who lingered not far behind. “I think they would relax a little more if they felt you were taking this seriously.”

The white-haired young soldier paused in his futile efforts to scrape the dead flesh from his mace, turning his head toward her with a slight cant of confusion. “I am taking this seriously.”

“Your file says your main weapon is an Imperial Greatsword.”

“I have Echo if I need her,” Alarion said, glancing briefly at the weapon sheathed on his [Blackstone Bracer]. “I do not expect to.”

“That is arrogant.”

“It is honest.”

“You could have killed that last fiend rather than—”

“The point of the exercise is for you to get your feet wet with subjugation work,” he reminded her. “If you feel you have done enough, you can wait here, and I will kill my way to the True Heart within the hour.”

Her eyes tightened in annoyance behind a few strands of loose hair. “I do not appreciate your tone, Master Sergeant.”

Alarion’s jaw clenched, his posture going rigid as he drew himself up to the fullest height his diminished stature could allow. Down the corridor, Anastacia’s bodyguards stirred into motion, then stopped as she raised a warding hand. If they were going to have a problem, better to let it blossom now.

“I understand that this is a momentous day for you.” Alarion’s words were clipped and formal, his tone as neutral as he could manage—though he failed to smother the anger simmering beneath. “This is your first subjugation. I remember my first, as I am sure every Martyr does. You will dream about this place. Those whispers you hear in the back of your mind? They will come back to you at the strangest times.”

Anastacia flinched, her lips pressing into a tight line—but not from the substance of what Alarion had said.

This far out from its cloister, the voice of the True Heart was mostly gibberish—a mix of unrelated sentence fragments and discordant noises. Alarion found it annoying, but he knew that it could be deeply distressing to the uninitiated. Especially that oft-repeated demand.

Be of me!

“I will have forgotten about this by the end of the week. You will not. I mean no offense, but this is routine. It is not challenging, and I am treating it with the seriousness it deserves.”

She looked ready to slap him, and Alarion decided he would let her—once. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that. She held his eyes—searching for mockery or deceit—then heaved a tremendous sigh through her nose as she found neither.

Anastacia shifted her attention toward the splatter of fiend on the wall, swallowing as she gathered herself. When she looked back, there was a glimmer of something unfamiliar in her eyes.

“I can kill more of them than you can.”

“Excuse me?”

“The fiends,” she clarified, as if that were the part he misunderstood. There was a certain boldness to her voice now, the formality of her position dropping away with each word. “No spells or active skills. No boosting skills or anything with a cost other than HP, MP, or Stamina. Whichever of us has the most kill notifications by the time we reach the cloister wins.”

Alarion shifted his posture, as though observing her at a seventy-degree angle would somehow make things clear. “Wins what, exactly?”

“What do you want?”

For you to resign.

“A half-day for everyone accompanying us. They lost their morning in Ashad-Vitri preparing for your arrival,” Alarion said instead.

Anastacia considered the request for half a breath. 

“You give me a formal introduction when we arrive at Ilvan-Trai—”

“A full day.”

“—without making a face. Or a thinly veiled remark.”

The deal was getting worse by the moment. He’d learn nothing new about her abilities from swordplay alone, and she’d get credit for giving the time off, even if he won. Alarion had enough issues keeping the Martyrs from gambling during their off hours; he’d never hear the end of it if he admitted to a wager like this.

“Do not expect me to smile,” he warned.

“Fair. Emmy, I need another sword, please.”

“Yes, Miss. Yes, Miss!”

For a few seconds, Alarion didn’t even register the strangeness of what he was seeing. There was a familiarity to it, and such a strong sense of nostalgia that his mind skipped off the details like a stone bouncing along the surface of still water. 

The moment it clicked, his stomach lurched as though he were in free fall.

“Emmy?” he wondered aloud, staring at the strange yet familiar creature.

The odd bug-like creature bobbed in the air only a few feet away. Its dragonfly-like wings beat half a hundred times a second, keeping it aloft against the weight of the saber in its pincers. It looked like Kotone’s mutant cousin—the smaller crescent-shaped insect born of the same distant lineage. Its scales were emerald green with an iridescent sheen; its head was larger and with a pronounced set of pincers. 

Strangest of all was its voice. Though Emmy was barely half Kotone’s size, its voice was so deeply masculine that it left Alarion with a pang of envy to go along with his existential crisis.

“A shared tutor,” Alarion murmured under his breath. It was the obvious explanation. Rote classes and skills were common for a reason: they worked. He might not like the fact that his familiar sometimes gave him sass or didn’t know how to shut up, but it was hard to argue that she’d been anything but a boon over the years. It was only natural that others gravitated toward similar ends.

Unfortunately, in the half minute it took Alarion to process what he’d seen and the emotions behind it, Anastacia had gained quite the lead.