ARC 7: CHAPTER 29: MURDER

Lias held up the scroll, the thing this had all been for, as though offering it to me.

The Volumen of Zos. The key to Hell’s gates.

It didn’t look like much. Heavy, though not so large he couldn’t balance it in one hand. Its roll was iron, decorated in what looked from a distance like ivory, with a sharp spike protruding from either end. I ignored it and kept my attention on the wizard, pacing to one side as I studied him. There was a stream running through the center of the cavern, forming a barrier between us. The water seemed ordinary, trickling out of a spring in the wall to my right.

“What is this place?” I asked.

Lias canted his hooded head to one side. “My mentor once lived here. It is where I became Magi.”

That revelation made me pause for a moment before continuing. “You’re binding demons now. Those things in the mirror were your creatures.”

“You’ve been traveling with a practitioner of the Goetic Arts,” Lias accused me. “You think Delphine Roch hasn’t called up demons? That she hasn’t circumvented the Choir’s laws a thousand times in a thousand ways? Don’t play the judge with me, Alken, that is not why you’re here.”

“And what do you know of why I’m here?” I shot back at him, feeling the anger surging up. “You had this stage set for me, I can tell. That wall in your study…” He’d scratched a very small A into it, pointing it out to me. I hadn’t told Vicar or Delphine that. “Those spirits in your mirror were supposed to get a rise out of me,” I continued, “so I’d end up breaking it and finding you here. You relied on me being an angry idiot. That stings, Li.”

He shrugged. “I had very little time to leave my bread crumbs, if it’s any consolation.”

I drew up to the edge of the water. It looked deeper than it should have.

“Looking for a trap?” Lias asked me. “Some beast I’ve hidden?”

“The last time you and I spoke, you tried to kill me with your most powerful phantasm. I’m not putting anything past you.”

“That—” Lias paused a moment. “I did do that, didn’t I?” He almost seemed surprised at the reminder.

“You did.” I let out a long breath. I’d already done my grieving for that, in that tower chamber when Rosanna and I had comforted one another for the loss. “But that’s not why I’m here. This isn’t about revenge.”

“Shame.” Lias’s voice hardened. “That would have been easier for both of us, I expect.”

I studied the water, made a decision, then leapt over it. Grasping things burst from the stream, but I slashed out and sent them writhing back into the depths. I landed heavily on the other side in a rattle of armor and flurry of red cloth. It sent a hundred lances of agony through my half healed injuries, but I grit my teeth and straightened to face the wizard.

Lias flinched, taking a step back and tightening a gloved hand on his staff. His other hand, the one holding the Zoscian, lowered to his side. “Stay back!” He snarled. “This is my place of power, executioner.”

Whatever had been in the water stretched for my ankles, but did little more than brush the metal there with grassy digits. There didn’t seem to be much power in them.

I calmly lifted my Aureate sword and kept walking. “Give me the scroll, Lias.”

“I will not. That will be good as giving it to them, and they have enough control over our souls as it is.” He watched me with the wary, shadowed gaze of an exhausted animal. His false eye gleamed red as a devil’s. I’d have to watch that, in case he’d hidden magic in it.

“You have no idea how much trouble you’ve caused, do you?” I asked him as I moved forward. “Or do you know, but just don’t care? That’s always been your problem, Li. No concern with consequence, just whatever you can get away with and damn the people you hurt.” ŕάƝÔᛒЁꞩ

“So says the man who cut off a high priest’s head and instigated riots in Urn’s largest city!” Lias laughed harshly. “You don’t care about consequences either, Alken, just about how hard it is to justify their necessity.”

That made me pause a beat. “You think I don’t care about consequence? You really don’t know me at all, do you?”

“I recall a warrior,” Lias said bitterly. “You returned to me as a beaten down shadow of yourself. I regret finding you last winter. It would have been better to let you fade away, I think.”

“Perhaps. But I didn’t come here to philosophize with you, Magi.” I started walking again. Ga-chank, ga-chank went my armor. My Briar cloak stretched around me, eager to taste blood.

“You’re injured,” Lias warned me. “Weak. You think you can beat me?”

I didn’t respond. Relaxing every muscle in my body as I strode forward, I let my mind go blank. I became pure reflex, gave myself completely to instinct and muscle memory. It was the only way I’d be quick enough.

Lias’s green eye narrowed. He lifted his staff. Black lightning flickered around the nail in its head. His ruby eye flashed with inner fire.

I quickened my step from a languid stride to a run. My left hand slipped into the folds of my cloak, which helpfully twisted to hide the motion. My sword’s tip glinted like a nonexistent ray of sunlight had caught it.

Lias cast his Art in the same moment I reached him. It was a serpent of black lightning, fanged and spitting electric venom. It struck. I dodged, barely, my cloak flaring out in the instant it appeared and taking the brunt of the strike. I could feel the living garment’s agony, but it saved me.

I brought out the remnants of Faen Orgis as I drew up beside the wizard, using it to block his crackling staff as he swung it like a club. Sparks bit at my skin, threatening to blind me, but I ignored it. His eyes widened.

My sword licked out, catching the scroll in his other hand and taking it from him along with the ends of two fingers. The digits tumbled through the air in parallel arcs of blood as the iron-capped volumen clattered against the cavern floor. It produced a sound completely at odds with its size, like a hammer blow against an anvil inside the echoing confines of the cavern. Like it was much heavier than it looked.

Lias fell to his knees, barely catching himself with his staff. He gasped for breath, sweating. His hood had come off, revealing unkempt black hair streaked with gray. He looked years older than when I’d last seen him. He held his maimed hand close to his chest, droplets of his blood pattering against the floor.

There was more blood than just from his hand. Our quick-draw had opened up some other injury hidden beneath his clothes. “You’re hurt,” I said.

He glared up at me through the mop of his dirty hair. “Is that sympathy, Headsman? You have me. Now do what you came here for.”

He was still dangerous. One word, one flex of muscle, and he could kill me. I lifted my sword in a salute, letting the cavern’s unnatural light gleam off its amber edge. The golden ivy encircling the hilt shone brighter than before, as though invigorated by this deed. It made the Sacred Mark stand out against the metal.

It wasn’t an executioner’s blade. I’d have to strike hard and accurately, to make sure there was no pain.

He’s earned this.

You’re bound. There’s no choice.

There’s always a choice. What did they promise you in the first place? Salvation? Forgiveness? Forgiveness for what? You slew the demon, you didn’t heed it, so why all this punishment? They called it your penance of blood, but what are you repenting for? What’s this guilt that’s been eating at you all this time?

We could have lived in a dream.

Keep your oaths then, and see if they warm you!

In your heart, you betrayed them all long ago. Have you read the book I gave you?

Why did he give me that book? He’d made it seem like it was to help me protect myself, or find some closure. It hadn’t done either, just filled me with more questions and doubt.

Lias stared up at me with his mismatched eyes, and made no move to defend himself.

“I have to kill you,” I said hoarsely. “I have to.”

“I know.” He tilted his head to one side, exposing his neck. “Best swing fast, Hewer. God blessed you with that strong right for a reason, and I’ve earned my tenure in Hell.”

He looked and sounded just like when we were young then. In that moment, the graying man before me fell away and became the Herdhold’s fey magician again.

“What was all this for?” I glanced at the Zoscian. “Why haven’t you used it?”

“Who says I haven’t?” He lifted a black eyebrow. “What, did they tell you I was going to unleash Hell upon the earth? I considered it. Oh, I considered it! But no, I don’t actually believe it all needs to be wiped clean. I am not Reynard.” His face hardened. “I will not be.”

In the corner of my eye, I saw Delphine move into the cavern entrance. Her eyes widened at the scene, but she was too far away to stop this.

“Then what was all of this for?” I demanded again.

Lias just shook his head. “Will anything I say now change what they’ve demanded of you?”

He was right. I wanted answers, but… every answer would make it harder to do what I had to. Nothing he said could change this. Or perhaps I feared what he said could change my mind, and that made the decision. I tensed, levered the sword back, went in for the swing—

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Paused. The handle of Faen Orgis in my left hand, little more than a twisted branch of oak with some shards of metal still embedded in it, was trembling.

What is it now? I thought at the broken weapon. Are you telling me to bind him? What good will that do now?

It kept quivering in my hand, giving no other answer.

“Well?” Lias spat angrily. “What are you waiting for!?”

I noticed my own shadow just then. It stretched towards the Zoscian. Had it been that long a moment ago?

“Alken!” Delphine called out. “Wait!” She was trying to get closer to us, but the cavern’s treacherous ground slowed her.

I barely heard her, my eyes on my own shadow. When embers began to dart out of it, and its shape changed, I understood. A trick. I’d always been meant to come here, to have this confrontation.

A distraction, for me and Lias.

Vicar burst out of my shadow where he’d been hiding. He was in his hellhound shape. He swarmed around the Zoscian, almost liquid, and in a flash he faced me with the object in his jaws. His burning eyes flared bright in the gloom.

I moved on reflex, turning the strike I’d intended to cleave Lias’s head from his shoulders into a slash at the crowfriar. Vicar was fast, however, and blurred out of my reach with cinderous speed. He changed again as he darted back, his form becoming a bubbling mass of tar before reforming into his devil monk shape, burnt and covered in soot-stained robes. His eyes, like twin burning coals, glared at me.

“Alken!” Delphine had come up to the water’s edge. She saw Vicar and stopped.

Vicar tilted his head to one side. “You should have expected this. I never lied about my intentions.”

I pointed the gilded sword at him. “Give that to me. Now.”

“I will not. In all honesty, I considered killing you out in the forest. I had so many opportunities… but I needed you to get close to Lias for me, and for both of you to be distracted. I did not expect him to simply open this sanctum’s doors to you, but then you’re both sentimental fools, aren’t you?”

I took a step towards him. “You’ll regret sparing me. I can still fight.”

Vicar shook his head. “As the wizard said, Alder Knight, you are weak. This won’t go like last time. I am fresh and strong, and I have this.” His eyes lowered to the scroll.

Lias was breathing heavily at my side. He’d made no move to escape or attack me. I wasn’t even certain he could move. He’d die from blood loss if nothing was done.

“Let me guess,” Vicar continued. “You were ordered to kill the wizard and claim this fragment of my lord. The Choir is full of such hypocrites.”

“Better it’s in their hands than yours,” I said.

“What do you expect they’ll do with it?” He asked me.

I bared my teeth. “Shut the door to this land in your lying faces, I expect.”

“So naive. That door can’t be closed anymore. This can open others, though… let me show you.”

Lias coughed beneath me. “No, stop him!”

I was already moving, but I couldn’t run faster than Vicar could move a few fingers. The monk flexed his hands, caressing the thing almost lovingly as his fingers flexed in a strange configuration, not unlike in a ritual prayer. The iron cornua of the scroll unlocked like latches on a chest, spinning and growing more segments. Vicar didn’t so much as wince when metal teeth bit into his hands.

I felt a surge in the air, like a brush of hot wind, then a fist of wind struck me and I went flying back. I caught a brief glimpse of Vicar’s dark robes flapping as the Zoscian glowed with a crimson light in his hands.

I landed behind Lias, my sword falling out of my grasp to clatter across the cavern floor. I rolled over, got a knee under me, let out a low groan as my injuries complained at the abuse.

“Damn,” Lias muttered nearby. “Damn it all.”

I stood shakily, and realized that the four of us were no longer the only ones in the cave. Shadows were peeling themselves off walls that suddenly spat out a rain of ash. The air reeked of sulfur and burnt flesh, and whispering voices filled my ears.

Vicar’s ragged robes writhed around him like a mantle of serpents, torn edges glowing with fresh embers. Cinders danced in the air around the devil monk.

“As promised.” His voice hissed out of his raised hood. “I have retrieved that which was stolen.”

“You’re so full of shit,” I told him. “You were never apostate at all, were you?”

He ignored me, keeping his head bowed over the scroll. I directed my attention to the others. There had to be more than thirty of the ashen figures. The Credo Ferrum — all of them, if my guess was right — had answered their Vicar’s call. I saw Krile standing near the entrance, and not far away was Melmoth. He inclined his head to me and smiled pleasantly, waggling his fingers in a mock greeting. Dis Myrddin was there, a stunted figure in a mantle of black furs.

Delphine had crossed the stream before the crowfriars appeared and helped me get steady on my feet. Lias was using a strip of his own cloak to wrap up the stumps of his missing fingers.

“I am very confused,” Delphine admitted to me. “I thought they all wanted Renuart’s head?”

“Vicar was never on the outs with the rest of you, was he?” I directed this at Krile.

The female devil smiled thinly. “Oh, he was. Trust me, if he had failed to recover our sacred relic, then his repeated failures would have earned him the wrath of the Tribunal in its fullness. My mentor is not a fool, and he knows our masters have long arms. I am glad to see he made the right choice, in the end.”

Choice? I glanced at Vicar, who remained silent. That must have been what they were talking about in the dungeons before I found them. A more complete picture of the situation started to form in my mind. “Was the Keeper in on all of this?”

“That question has little relevance now,” Krile said. “You won’t be escaping this place alive, Alken Hewer.”

“You’d assassinate an official representative of the Choir of Onsolem?” I asked the she-devil.

Krile’s smirk faded. “Onsolem is lost, and Urn’s Choir is a faded relic. It has been proven time and time again that it is not worthy of ruling this land. Your people need firmer leadership, which we can offer. I’d make you an offer, Headsman, but my understanding is that you are stubborn, flighty, and at turns treacherous. Much safer to kill you and let the Choir believe your traitorous former comrade did it.”

I glanced at Vicar again, who still wasn’t looking at me. His attention remained downcast, fixed on the scroll.

I’d expected something like this, started to dread almost this exact thing towards the end, and even still… it stung. We’d fought side by side. He’d saved my life and soul more than once during our journey from the north. I didn’t like him, but that held water with me.

“Faithless cur,” I said to him. “You belong to Hell.”

He still wouldn’t say anything. I turned back to Krile. “I see you brought numbers with you. Do you think you’ll be able to take me with all this chaff?”

Her smile held not a hint of worry in it. “Please. I can see you are half dead, and the Magi little better. This will be easy. Even still, I am not one to take chances or fall on the blade of pride. I will not duel you, Headsman. No, that’s why I brought him.”

She stepped aside, and in the darkness of the deeper cavern I heard the squealing echo of tortured metal. Sabatons struck stone, each step producing a rain of sparks that illuminated brief flashes of legs encased in black iron.

I understood, and felt despair.

In a moment of dread, I thought that it was Jon Orley who stepped forth out of the darkness. It was not, but that proved little comfort. The warrior who emerged to stand next to Krile stood nearly eight feet tall, clad in black plate twisted and fused together by extreme heat. Their mask was a skull face crowned in pit-marked antlers. Toxic looking fumes spilled out of the helm’s clenched teeth. Embers danced around the spiked warhammer clutched in the clawed fingers of their left gauntlet, and their kite shield had a wheel with nine spokes emblazoned on its face. Barbed chains were wrapped around their arms, ready to be used to drag the damned down into darkness. Every inch of the towering thing’s armor was inscribed with blasphemous script and images of souls in torment.

The strength employed by Hell always matches the need, Vicar had told me. What need for a renegade wizard? What need for the Headsman of Seydis? The answer should have been obvious.

A Scorchknight of Orkael strode forth to challenge us. Not alone, either; there were bestial shapes lurking in the deeper cavern behind him. Fetterfiends.

“Kill him,” Krile ordered the Scorchknight. “And the wizard.”

“What of the scholar?” Melmoth asked the other crowfriar.

Krile glanced to Delphine and considered a moment. “She carries the scent of forbidden knowledge, and has consorted with abgrüdai. It will be the hook and the brand for her when all of this is done. As an apostate from her own clergy, the Choir cannot protest.”

Delphine’s face paled. I recalled a segment of Lias’s research in which an alchemist had run afoul of Hell’s laws. His fate had been nightmarish.

“You and I never can have a real conversation without some drama playing around it, can we?” Lias was trying to stand, but let out a hiss of pain and fell back to his knees. He’d barely been on his feet even when I’d stepped into the cave, probably kept just enough strength to pretend while he made a show of fighting me. He could be prideful, and probably hadn’t wanted to die badly.

“Shut up,” I said. “I’m still probably going to cut your head off when I’m done with this bastard.”

Despite my bravado, I felt true terror as the infernal knight stomped forward. I hadn’t been able to beat Jon Orley in a fair fight. This wasn’t a damned soul in the same vein as Vicar or his fellow crowfriars, but a true devil, a dread champion of the Great Sheol. I could feel its power blazing off it like heat off a furnace. It was easily strong as any Alder Knight at the height of the Table’s glory.

And I was barely half of one.

The branch in my left hand continued to tremble. Little good it would do me now. I needed time to summon the Malison Oak, time and a lot of energy, neither of which I had. Could I keep him busy long enough for Delphine to escape? Definitely not him and thirty other devils. Or did I go for Vicar, try and get the Zoscian and use it for leverage?

Save Delphine. No reason for everyone here to die. She survived Seydis, and you dragged her here in a fit of pique. I couldn’t take back the last twelve years, but maybe I could spare her the eternal pain these monsters had in store for her.

She didn’t deserve that, not for a foolish love.

Just as I was about to step forward and try to die well, the branch twisted in my hand and grew. I nearly lost hold of it, then I did lose hold of it as it became a snapping, whipping thing twice as tall as a man. It slapped the Scorchknight hard enough to make it reel to one side. The devil let out a deep, resonant grunt, but did little more than slow a step.

It was strong. That blow would have killed an ordinary man. But the animated tree that’d been my axe’s handle continued to grow and split, branches like clawed fingers bursting from its body. They became hands, and those hands grabbed me, Lias, and Delphine like we were children. Some dug into the ground like it were damp soil rather than solid stone, and fast growing trees started to erupt across the cavern. Crowfriars let out shouts of alarm.

Krile started to say something, yellow flame glowing inside her throat. I felt her gathering power for some infernal sorcery, but just then a swarm of bees began to flood out of the fell tree. Their numbers grew with shocking speed. Vicar, unwilling to let go of the Zoscian, dodged some of the grasping tendrils as he made his way back towards the cavern exit.

“What’s happening!?” Lias shouted. “What did you do!?”

“This isn’t me.” I stared at the creature of gnarled bark and bleeding shoots that held us, trying to understand. Then a hollow in the thing’s body widened to reveal a glaring eye.

An eye with a slitted golden iris.

That scheming hag, I thought. When had she prepared this? During the battle with the Gorelion, when she’d stopped me from helping Chamael?

No, earlier. In Lyda's cathedral, she’d picked up my axe and done something to it.

Krile saw the golden eye at the same time I did, and bared iron teeth in a furious snarl. “Hypocrite!” She screamed. “Old fool! You are not supposed to interfere!”

The tree thing giggled, the whole body shivering with the laugh like a mischievous child. Bees swarmed around us like a cloud of biting, stinging, droning smoke, so thick in the air I could barely see the chaos happening all around. The air continued to thicken, and I could hear the sound of rushing water beneath us. The tree had planted its roots, and dark liquid bubbled up from what had been solid rock.

Delphine shouted something, but I couldn’t hear it. Lias was cursing and struggling. The Scorchknight stepped forward, heedless of the biting insects clinging to him so thickly he seemed a humanoid mass of buzzing wings and noise.

The devil flared with fire and the entire swarm attached to him turned to ash. He lifted up his hammer, revealing an infernal symbol stamped to the flat head. He stepped forward with a thunderous, hollow grunt and swung—

Lias spoke a word, and the cavern floor beneath the Scorchknight’s armored feet turned to gray mud. It fouled the thing’s swing, causing the hammer to slam into the floor and crack it. The whole cave shuddered, and magma began to bubble up from the bludgeon’s point of impact.

The devil knight lurched forward, fighting against the sucking tar he’d fallen ankle deep into. But it was too late. We were pulled down into black water and away from that shrieking horde of the damned.

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