TVisTV Book 3: Chapter 50 (RAW) (Patreon)

Chapter 50 - An End of Autumn

The fragrance of pear blossom clings to my hem, while the jade green in my eyes deepens into the muted gold of falling leaves.

- Attributed to Unknown.

The morning light filtered through the boughs overhead, slipping between leaves in pale, shifting bands that turned Seraphina’s face in parts to dappled cream. It touched her closed eyes, warm and insistent, until at last it roused her and informed her, with all the quiet authority of a new day, that the morning was well underway.

She woke with a small yawn, deeply relaxed, and only a heartbeat later remembered that she had told them to wake her at first light. Or had she? The thought came muddled, still half-tangled in sleep.

Shaking off the last of her drowsiness, she decided against taking offense. Instead, she reached for her helm at her side and settled it atop her head, leaving the visor open. Then she stretched, working the stiffness from her shoulders and spine, easing out the kinks earned by a most undignified night spent sleeping propped against a tree. For a moment, her armored fingers rose to brush her lips. There lingered the ghost of a memory, something sweet, though not in the manner of ice cream. She fancied she might have felt a touch in her sleep. After a moment, she dismissed it with a small inward shrug, blaming it on the unruly chemistry of puberty and an imagination far too willing to entertain nonsense.

Rolling her shoulders once more, she bent to gather her weapons and inspected each in turn, checking edge, grip, and balance with practiced care. They had endured well enough so far, though not perfectly. She decided one of her men would tend to their maintenance later.

“Good morning, Sera,” Desdemona said, punctuating the greeting with a delicate yawn, as though waking in the middle of the woods under uncertain circumstances were the most natural thing in the world.

Then again, for a girl like Desdemona de Savant, perhaps it was not so unnatural at all, Seraphina thought with no small degree of airy amusement.

“We were just speaking of the Dragon over Meridian. It seemed so hell-bent on attacking the city. Then there was the fire from the hills that made it go away,” Desdemona went on with disarming casualness, “and wondering who or what exactly was responsible for slaying it.”

Despite everything, Seraphina found herself smiling. “Good morning to you, too, Desdemona.”

“We were simply discussing who could possibly have done such a thing,” de Savant continued, almost blithely.

“One does not simply kill a Dragon, if such a feat is even possible,” Seraphina replied, her tone prim and measured. “I am sure it was merely distracted and flew off thanks to the ancient defenses of the capital. In the old tales, Dragons are said to have little interest in the affairs of men. Especially if it was so thoroughly discouraged. No doubt it found something more worthy of its attention...”

The young noblewoman knew perfectly well that the so-called Living Saint had been responsible, bringing an egg to Aran and setting the whole business in motion, but she kept that knowledge to herself. Not to mention that she had indeed brought the Dragon down herself, but explaining any further felt exhausting just to contemplate.

“I can hardly believe that, Seraphina. That explanation is far too simple,” Desdemona protested, drawing a faint moue as the hazel of her eyes flashed with feeling.

“That is precisely the thing, my dear Desdemona,” Seraphina returned. “It is very often by the simplest reasons that the world is explained.”

“You do not have a romantic bone in your body,” Desdemona muttered, flicking back her hair. “I was going to say that perhaps you had a hand in it...”

“Now then.” She clapped her hands once, sharp enough to command everyone’s attention and cut off any further questions. “Let us cross this little bridge, and then we may break our fast. I am quite sure some of us would benefit from an empty stomach,” she added, looking pointedly at Frest.

“Of course, Lady Seraphina,” Frest replied with a strained smile, his expression like that of a man who had just swallowed the most sour of plums. “But there must always be someone to manage the rear guard,” he suggested, covering cowardice with a thin veneer of duty.

It took no small effort for Seraphina not to roll her eyes. A petty corner of her mind wondered, not for the first time, why she alone always had to maintain standards. To keep up the image of unwavering strength. Would it not be easier to simply let go and play the part of the ‘weaker sex’? Yet that, she decided at once, that was what poor people did. And, it was why they remained poor.

The thought only strengthened as her gaze slid to her self-proclaimed rival, Desdemona. The girl’s dress, though still far from court-presentable, looked markedly improved now that she had repaired most of the tears and sword-slashes earned in the fighting at Aran’s court. Where she had found the time for that, Seraphina could not fathom. But, in that, at least, Desdemona possessed standards. More importantly, she imposed those standards upon the world.

“Gravens, you will go first as the vanguard,” the young noblewoman declared.

“I would, milady, of course,” he replied quickly, “but as Sir Frest said, my proper place is here with the rear guard.” His eyes did not quite meet hers.

Was that nervousness? Seraphina wondered. The boy had never shown much fear of her before. He had always struck her as competent and reliable.

“So that is how it is,” Seraphina said with a disdainful sniff. “Ladies first, then. Very well. I shall go first and show you all how it is done.”

Ibn, who by the Seraphina’s estimations had grown into the taciturn, strong-and-silent type, offered nothing at all on the matter. Good, the blonde girl thought. Silence was preferable to useless prattle.

With no help to be had from any of them, she gathered herself with another faint sniff. Primly, she checked that each of her weapons was fastened securely. It would be unseemly to have anything snag while crossing. Thus, it seemed, Seraphina herself would be the first to brave the rope bridge.

She stepped toward it, twigs and dry leaves crunching beneath her armored sabatons, and laid a hand upon one of the weathered wooden posts. Then she glanced down. Far below, the river Aran roared through Gall’s Chasm in a ribbon of white violence. The stone walls flanking it were pale and powdery-looking. Chalk, Seraphina guessed, or something close enough to it.

On a whim, and because curiosity pricked at her sharply and urged by caution, she cast Identify.

Wooden Rope Bridge 

Durability 72/200

Well, the bridge had certainly seen better days, but Seraphina was reasonably sure it would survive her party’s crossing. Her Luck would hold, she just knew it.

Gritting her teeth, she refused to give any name to the tightness in her chest. Anxiety was for lesser people. Fear, even more so. So she stepped forward and began the crossing.

The rope bridge swayed at once beneath her, creaking in long, complaining groans, yet it held her armored weight. She kept both hands on the side ropes and tested each slat before trusting it, setting her feet down firmly but with care. For all the caution in her movements, there was still a kind of grace to it. She moved with a dancer’s balance and a saint’s self-absorbed certainty, crossing in a state that bordered on zen.

The ropes’ warnings did not matter. The wind, which had chosen that moment to rise and worry at the bridge, did not matter. The missing slats did not matter either. There was only the crossing. Only the far side.

Then, as with all ordeals, it was suddenly over.

The crossing itself had not truly been the challenge. The challenge had been making it appear effortless. On that score, Seraphina felt rather pleased with herself.

She raised an armored gauntlet to shield her eyes from the light and waved across the chasm. On the far side, Desdemona, unwilling to be outdone by her rival, looked almost eager to launch herself onto the bridge. And, as though determined to turn Seraphina’s careful success into something ordinary, the girl’s crossing was anything but cautious. She all but skipped across.

Seraphina had borne the risk of going first, and here was the proof that second movers so often enjoyed the advantage. Not that this was a competition, of course. Certainly not in Seraphina’s mind. Even so, the blonde girl felt faintly outmaneuvered.

“Frest, will you hurry up?” the young noblewoman called the moment Desdemona reached her side, wearing an infuriatingly insouciant smile.

Sir Frest did not answer. The former bandit’s silence was his answer that stretched into a long minute. He stood at the lip of the bridge staring down into the racing water below, throat working as he swallowed. His gloved hands curled into fists so tight the leather creaked. Once, he shook his head as if he might simply refuse the whole affair, but then he dug deep for a reserve of courage he had never suspected he possessed. It was not noble courage, nor knightly valor. It was the older, harsher sort, born hand in hand with the instinct to survive. And that same instinct told him, with perfect clarity, that displeasing his lady would do very little for his long-term prospects.

And, this was not the sort of trial a man could conquer by shutting his eyes and blundering through. Nor could he overcome it by pretending it was not there. This was a challenge that could not be overcome through simply ignoring it through force of will. It needed acknowledgment, and then it needed to be overcome. The bridge demanded to be seen. Every swaying plank, every frayed rope, every gap where a slat ought to have been, insisted upon itself. Insisted on caution. 

Sir Ferdiad Frest, it seemed, would have to look directly at one of his most visceral fears and walk across it step by miserable step. And, it was that, or face consequences at Lady Seraphina’s hands, that promised to be even more visceral.

He gritted his teeth until his jaw ached. Sweat gathered on his brow despite the morning chill, beading there before slipping down and vanishing into the padded gambeson beneath his armor. Then, at last, he stepped onto the bridge.

It groaned under him at once.

Each step became its own private battle. He had to look down enough to place his boots carefully, yet not so far down that the sight of the churning river below stole the strength from his legs with its hypnotic pull. The waters of the Aran foamed white between the pale jaws of the chasm, rushing far beneath him with the merciless force of something eager to smash a man to ruin against stone. To manage the crossing at all required a frantic kind of compartmentalization: one part of him measuring planks and rope, the other desperately refusing to imagine his own body broken on the rocks below. It was the kind of mental division that might have impressed even the most jaded of politicians.

He crossed in a state of barely contained panic. More than once, the bridge lurched, and Frest flung out an arm and cried out in a womanly way, which only set the whole rickety thing swaying harder. The ropes rasped, the planks clattered, and every awkward recovery fed the next surge of fear. It took a considerable effort on the girls’ part not to laugh outright at the spectacle. Yet, even Seraphina, for all her disdain, felt the faintest and most inconvenient flicker of admiration. Pathetic though he looked, the man was still crossing.

When at last he stumbled onto solid ground, the fight seemed to leave him all at once. Frest dropped to the thin, scraggly grass on the far side with a string of heartfelt curses, half collapse and half prayer. He lay there for a moment huffing and puffing, letting the enormity of the last few minutes finally catch up to him. Only now, with earth under him and the bridge behind, did the reality of what he had just done truly arrive. He had overcome one of his fears, at least temporarily.

Seraphina just clocked it up to her inspirational management style.

It was then, in that fleeting instant of small and hard-won victory, that everything shattered.

A glint of steel. A white-hot rush like lightning given edge and purpose. Violence came upon them with the awful force of inevitability, striking at the precise moment when their guard had begun, at last, to loosen.

The song of clashing blades rang out across the chasm as a golden-haired boy, no, not a boy any longer, but a young man, came on in a blur of speed and flashing silver. Velens’ blade crashed against the curved arc of Ibn’s Ardent Moon with a shriek of metal that bit into the air itself.

Seraphina cried out at once and reached for her weapons, already moving to rush back across the bridge to aid her men.

She never made it a step.

All at once, from the narrow seams of her armor and the vulnerable spaces between plates, green life erupted in a hideous rush from the countless small seeds that had found their way onto her. Vines burst forth thick as cords, writhing tendrils coiling over her arms, her waist, her throat, her legs. Leaves unfurled in her face. Stems twisted and tightened with unnatural speed, binding her in a living prison. They caught her limbs, crushed against her breastplate, dragged at her balance, and for one terrible instant even her prodigious Strength seemed to vanish inside that suffocating emerald snare.

“My lady!” Frest shouted.

To his credit, there was no hesitation in him now. He tore free his dagger and threw himself at the growth, sawing and hacking at the vines that pinned Seraphina where she stood. There was a strange clarity to him in that moment, a desperate sharpness that had been absent on the bridge. Desdemona joined him almost at once, hands clawing and ripping at the magical green with a ferocity that stripped away any pretense of delicacy.

Even as she fought against the tightening mass around her, Seraphina could still see the battle raging on the far side of the chasm.

Velens was all speed, precision, and terrible force, the weight of accumulated lives and borrowed mastery living in every stroke. Ibn met him without yielding an inch. His entire being had long since been narrowed to the perfect governance of blade and body, and in that domain, he was every bit Velens’ equal. Metal rang against metal in a brutal, glittering rhythm. Gravens darted in where he could, desperate to create the single opening Ibn needed. The struggle had already moved beyond mere skill. It would be decided by will, by endurance, by who broke first.

And still Seraphina saw the weakness in Velens.

The body the Hero wore was not yet ready for the burden placed upon it. It was still too raw, too young, too unseasoned for the violence being demanded of it. The strain showed in tiny ways: a fractional lag, a minute drag between thought and action, the smallest betrayal of flesh laboring to keep pace with a destiny written long ago. Across the distance, she could see the effort written plain upon his face. More than effort. Struggle. Resistance.

He did not wholly wish to become what he was meant to be. He wished, some part of him still wished, to remain Velens.

And to Seraphina’s disgust, that knowledge stirred something protective in her heart. Even now, she wanted to save him from himself. Even after betrayal piled atop betrayal. The heart was an irrational organ. It swelled with feelings that were hers and not hers, noble and humiliating all at once. Logic, she knew, was never the master. It was only the servant called afterward to justify what emotion had already decided.

But stronger than pity was rage.

Rage at the court. Rage at the humiliation. Rage at being hunted, cornered, handled, and made a piece in other people’s games. Rage burned hot in her chest and flooded her limbs with strength as she strained against the living cage of leaves and tendrils. The vines creaked. Stems snapped. With Frest cutting and Desdemona tearing beside her, Seraphina at last ripped free, wrenching the final coils from her body with a violence that left torn greenery hanging from her armor.

The battle across the chasm had lost none of its frantic pace. Fighting against a man of equal skill was a challenge; fighting against two was insanity. But, Velens did not fight alone, for he commanded the Benevolent Green. The very ground was rife with growths that attacked, adding their thorns and branches to the struggle and forcing Ibn and Gravens to hack away at the emerald assault..

Then, just as Seraphina surged forward, she locked eyes with Sir Gravens, and for a single suspended moment, the world seemed to narrow to that look.

There was something in his face that had no business being there. Guilt. Regret. The hard, sick tension of a man already condemning himself for what he was about to do. It pinched his mouth into something that might, at a glance, have resembled determination. It was the last thing Seraphina expected, but it was the last thing Gravens needed to do. To do his duty.

He broke away from Velens in a sudden movement, Ibn sweeping wide with warding cuts to cover him, each motion promising death to any mistimed advance. For one heartbeat, Gravens stood at the bridgehead, sword in hand, while Seraphina lunged toward the other side.

Then he struck, and his blade bit into the rope with a savage, hacking snap. The sound was dreadful—a loud, but intimate declaration as fibers parted with a dry, splitting crack. The whole bridge gave a violent lurch, then sagged away. Seraphina had just set her foot upon the first plank when the world started to drop beneath her. Instinct alone saved her. She sprang backward in a desperate, graceless hop as the bridge shuddered, swung, and collapsed down to clatter against the sides of the chasm.

Gravens looked back at them only once. It was not defiance in his eyes. Nor triumph. It was something far worse. Something mournful and longing and already beyond recall. Then he turned away, stepped back into the storm of steel, and added his blade once more to the contest.

But Seraphina was not wholly without recourse. She still had her invisible assassins. She had the Fae, Tia, and Kiwi, her black-winged, three-eyed mount. Even now, she could feel them near, like the pressure of a hand just before it closes. She imagined them skewering Velens from behind. 

Then her companions forced the truth upon her. They made her look at the reality that was unfolding. 

“We must go, Sera,” Desdemona said. There was no panic in her voice now. Only a hard, terrible resolve, as she glanced toward the far side, where Sir Gravens fought beside Ibn.

One more blade, even an invisible one, would make little difference in the struggle unfolding. It would do nothing more but assign another life to the butcher’s bill.

“No. They are fighting for me,” Seraphina shot back, her voice rising sharp with fury. “I will not leave them behind.” Her gaze darted wildly, searching the broken chasm for some answer, some hidden path, some miracle that would spare her from the choice before her.

Sir Frest, with a courage that bordered on suicidal, laid a hand on her arm.

“Lady de Savant is right, milady,” he said, and his voice trembled despite the effort he made to steady it. “We must not let their sacrifice be wasted. We need to move. Now.”

“Very well, then we go around,” Seraphina said at once, fast and breathless, as though saying it firmly enough might make it possible. “We run if we must. We find another crossing. You said there was another crossing, Sir Frest…”

“No, milady.” Frest shook his head. “We cannot do that. You know we cannot. Every second we remain here is another piece of the time they bought for us thrown away. We must go.” The last of his recent terror still clung to his words, raw and unhidden.

“But—” Seraphina began, already gathering the excuses, the arguments, the impossible demands she could hurl at the world in place of surrender.

Then pain cracked across her cheek. Her head turned with it. For a stunned instant, she could only feel the sting, bright and hot, before rage surged up from her belly like fire.

How dare anyone.

Her eyes snapped toward Desdemona.

“Frest is right, Sera,” Desdemona said, her hand still half-raised, her face pale and fierce. “We need to go. Don’t you think I want to go over there?” Her voice broke, just once, before she forced it steady again. “We need to go now.”

Seraphina’s hand twitched upward, instinctively balling into a plated fist, as though to strike her back. Then she saw the look on Desdemona’s face. Not fear. Not triumph. Pain. Pain, and the iron strength it had taken to stand against her. And worse still, she was right.

That stupid de Savant girl was right.

And that was what wounded Seraphina most of all.

“Very well,” she said at last, the words feeling like failure.

The words felt like blood drawn from the body. She turned sharply away before anyone could see too much in her face. Behind her, the swords still rang across the chasm. She could hear it even now, the clash and scrape of it, the distant violence of men spending their lives by the heartbeat For her. She walked with her head high and her jaw locked, shaking her as though that alone could stop the tears that threatened to fall.

Behind her, Desdemona let a single tear slip free, clear and bright.

Seraphina allowed what remained of her entourage to lead her away at a brisk pace. The brisk walk became a jog. The jog became a run. She told herself she was not fleeing. She was not running away. She was running toward necessity, toward survival, toward the only path left open to her. It was a lie, but it was one she needed.

And so the journey north began in earnest.