“Damn it,” Viggo spat.
For a few moments, his curse hung in empty silence. His companions, still picking themselves up from the fight, said nothing at first, still dazed from the chaos moments before.
“What the fuck just happened?” Sira, still sitting with her leg propped up on a stone, looked wildly around, as if one of them might have the slightest idea.
“I... Have no idea,” Marcus said, shaking his head. He walked over to the space were Vanen stood with Annet only seconds ago, waving his hand through the air as if he might stir something.
“Strange, it’s warm.”
“Strange is an understatement,” Rykker muttered. “Who was that man? What... What did he do? And why did he take Annet? And how did he know so much about Sev...”
The engineer trailed off, and he turned to his companion, who sat as still as a stone by the remains of the fire, eyes wavering with a faint glow. Sev looked up to Rykker, expression unchanging. “I am... an Aeonnar?”
Rykker, still shaking his head in bewilderment, placed his hand on the Aeonnar’s stoney shoulder. “I mean, it seems impossible, but it would explain a lot.”
“Did you understand what he said?” Marcus asked.
“Sort of,” Rykker hedged, rubbing the back of his neck. “I know a little of the time before the dark age, before the falling of the world, from bits of old text I’ve picked up here and there. But not much. And I never could have conceived that Sev could be that old... that must have been, what, thousands of years ago?”
“How is that even possible?” Sira adjusted her position to face the Aeonnar.
“I have no idea.”
Viggo climbed to his feet, finally, wiping his hands on his pants. He sighed deeply, and felt the heavy weight of resignation set upon his shoulders. A deep ache, one that he had buried far down inside long ago, crept to the pit of his stomach.
“I can’t explain everything that just happened,” he said. ” But I think there is something I should tell all of you. Something that might hold great importance to what we have just witnessed.”
They turned their attention from Sev in unison, shock painted clearly on their faces.
“Well, I haven’t always been a medic in the royal army. Or a blacksmith.”
He walked back to the circle and sat down, rubbing his chin vigorously. After all this time, he would finally break his promise. Unleash a secret that would surely mean his death and the destruction of the life he had built so carefully for himself over the years. One that he had come to like, maybe even love, in its own right. He had at least been saving lives. All of this had almost all come undone once before, and he had managed to avoid it then. But now? He had no choice. Not after Valla. Vanen. Annet. It was too much.
“Look, what I’m about to tell you, it’s something that I’ve never told anyone. Ever. You have to swear on the gods above, should they exist, not to tell a single soul what I am about to tell you.”
They each nodded in turn.
He must have given something away on his face.
“You’ve seen something like this before, haven’t you?”, said Marcus.
Viggo ignored the direct question. “A lifetime ago, I was an acolyte of the Church of the Triumvirate. I was an orphan, left on their doorstep as a baby. I grew up there. Lived my entire childhood within the walls of the holy city. It was my home. Every friend, enemy, mentor, teacher, family, I ever had was in that place. My entire world ended at the city gates. Then, one day, I saw something. Something that challenged the very nature of my reality.
“I saw Magic. Real, true, magic. I wasn’t supposed to see it, and not only did it fundamentally change my understanding of the world, it destroyed it. They banished me from the church and threatened that if I should ever reveal what I had seen, to anyone, they would kill me. What I saw today, what Vanen did, what it felt like, was exactly what it felt like the last time, all those years ago. Vanen, somehow, I don’t know, was using the old Magic. The Magic that was lost millennia ago.”
For a moment, they sat in stunned silence. Marcus looked troubled. Rykker stared inquisitively at Viggo with a newfound interest.
Sira broke the silence. She spoke softly. “Viggo, I’m so sorry that happened to you. I can’t even imagine what that must have been like.”
“It’s okay. It was a long time ago,” Viggo said. “Feels like another life.”
“But why Annet?” Rykker asked.
“I think I might know.” Wincing, Sira leaned forward to stand up.
“You’re leg—” Viggo began.
“It’s okay,” she made a placating gesture, and straightened her leg, still wrapped in a splint. “It feels much better.”
“But how—”
She picked at the wrappings and unraveled them, loop by loop until the splint fell away. “It’s stiff, but I should be able to walk on it.”
“But your leg was shattered,” Viggo cried, incredulous. “It was going to take months to heal, and there was a good chance you wouldn’t be able to walk on it ever again.”
“After everything we’ve seen today, this is what shocks you?” she asked. “Annet was always special.”
“Of course,” he said, understanding dawning on him. Just like the woman he had seen all those years ago. Annet was just like her. Just like Vanen.
Sira nodded.
Marcus glanced at Rykker, then Sira. “What? What is it?”
“Ever since she was a little girl, Annet could do things. Inexplicable things,” Sira explained. “We called it her Gift. Every bird or small creature that would wander into the Prioriem’s courtyard, injured, she would take care of them. No matter how hurt, she would have them good as new in mere hours. At first, Gareth wasn’t sure what to make of it, but when her gifts started to manifest further, he started secluding her away. And when her Mother died, well. I’m surprised she had as many friends as she did.
“There was one summer,” Sira said, and a slow smile crept on to her face as she did, “when that girl got so sick of being stuffed indoors, that she ran away from home. Gareth had the guards in a frenzy. He was furious. They searched the city, high and low, to no avail. Eventually, they found her trudging through the forest outside the city, three days worth of food in a pack and nothing else. She was trying to walk to Achenar to find some wizard she read about in a storybook to help her control her powers.”
Her smile faded, and her eyes slid to Gareth’s corpse that still lay collapsed on the stone floor. Her brow furrowed, and suddenly she looked very tired. “He did love her, in his own way. Maybe not the right way, but he did his best.”
“What’s going to happen to her?” Rykker said. “What do we do now?”
“I don’t know,” Viggo said. “I don’t know what we should do. But we have to do something.”
“I think I can get us back to Fastaar’s camp from here,” offered Marcus.
“What are the odds they haven’t packed up and left by now?”
“Rykker has a point,” said Viggo. “Whether Fastaar made it to Valla in time or not, they likely have broken camp at this point. And with Valla gone...”
“To Senna, then?” Sira asked.
Marcus shrugged. “It is the closest city. Any survivors from Valla will probably end up there. Fastaar and the rest of the army, too. From there, we can regroup, rejoin the army if possible. After that, I’m not sure.”
The rest of the party agreed to the plan, and decided to leave at first light. Sleep did not come to Viggo that night, and so he spent the hours before dawn keeping watch over the camp, peering into the smoldering embers of the dying fire.
—
The way to Senna was not particularly difficult, but was made more-so by their avoidance of any well-traveled roads. Marcus thought it was for the best, in case the Antuzans employed scouts along main paths to look for survivors of the siege. So they stayed deep within the forest, Marcus’ expert tracking preventing their course from straying.
On the third day, they intersected with a small group of refugees, heading in the same direction. Citizens of Valla. Dirt-covered and weary though they were, they offered bright smiles to Viggo and his companions. Even though they had just lost their entire world, he thought, they still keep their heads high. The people of the southern province were hard to break.
Over the next few days, they crossed paths with more Vallan survivors, and with each encounter their cluster grew. Before long, just shy of a hundred folk walked together through the trees.
It seemed that more had made it out of the city than they initially realized. Perhaps Fastaar had come through after all, staving off the enemy long enough for some to escape fate at the hands of the Empire.
On the sixth day since the fall of Valla, their division of refugees arrived at city of Senna.
Senna, the twin-sister city of Valla, looked much the same from the exterior, with tall gray-beige walls, round turrets evenly dispersed in either direction. They came to one of the gates, a tall wood-iron arch, where a small garrison of guards stood watch atop a parapet.
As they approached, Sev pulled the hood of his cloak over his head, covering most of his features in shadow. It took Marcus a moment to realize that he was hiding himself. Over the past few weeks, he had grown accustomed to the Aeonnar’s look and size. Even the refugees from Valla had not taken much notice at first—though they had more pressing concerns, to be fair—and by the end of their journey to Senna barely gave him a passing glance. Still, he supposed it always payed to be cautious around strangers. Likely it was standard practice for Rykker and Sev wherever they went.
Marcus pushed his way to the front of the crowd and called up at them. “Hello there! My name is Captain Marcus Wyr of the Royal Army. With me are refugees from Valla. The Antuzan Empire has invaded Ilris, and Valla has fallen. You must open your gates to any and all survivors. They have no where else to go.”
A few of the guards ducked out of view in response, and for a few moments there was no response.
“Please,” Marcus shouted. “Many of them are tired, and haven’t eaten in days. There are only—”
His words were cut off by a series of metallic clanks. The doors of the gate slowly opened.
On the other side, Marcus was met by the steady gaze of a guard who held up a hand. “Halt. You may go no further until such time that you are searched and deemed safe for entry into the city.”
Marcus raised his hands in a placating gesture. “Of course. We don’t want any trouble. Many of these people are unarmed. They seek only food and shelter.”
He took a few steps back, gesturing for his companions to step to the side.
“Let’s wait here,” he said. “I want to make sure that everyone gets into the city safely.”
The entire process took less than an hour. Once everyone was inside, Marcus breathed a sigh as he and his companions watched the Vallan refugees shuffle into the city. After all the destruction and death they had surely seen less than a week ago, they still held together. He marveled at their resilience.
“Where will they go?” Rykker asked.
Sira tore her eyes from the procession, and Marcus caught a look of sadness or anger, or perhaps both. “Some of them may have family here to stay with, or kept enough coin on them to pay their way. For those that have neither, the guard will set up refugee camps. It won’t be much, but it’ll be enough. For them.”
Marcus felt a pang of sympathy for her. In the midst of all that had happened to them, he’d forgotten that she was Vallan. Her people—friends, family, loved ones—had just lost everything.
He placed a hand on her shoulder. One corner of her mouth twitched up in a half-hearted smile, acknowledging the gesture of good will.
“I mean it,” she said. Muscles tensed in her jaw and her eyes went dark. “It will be enough. We Vallans are not so easily broken. The Antuzans will get what they are owed. That much I can promise.”
For a moment, standing in her armor, blue cloak of Valla, now tarnished with mud from the road, trailing behind her, Sira looked as if she would take on the legions of Antuza by herself. Then she deflated with a sigh. “I suppose it can wait, though. After everything, a hot meal and a warm bed sounds better than revenge right now.”
The streets of Senna were more narrow than the wide two-lane roads of Valla. Buildings along either side of the main thoroughfare clustered tightly together—some sharing walls, others leaving even narrower, dark alleyways.
It was nearly sundown, and the occasional two-story building cast long shadows across the street, leaving strips of golden sunlight between them. It would be dark soon, so Marcus led them deeper into the city in search of an inn for the night. What little change they had left between them would not afford them much.
It was not long before he sensed it.
Years of trekking the Northern wilds and being in the army had honed this particular sense of his. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and he felt a prickling sensation behind his ears.
They were being followed.
Not this again.
Without looking back, he spoke in a quiet tone, just barely audible enough to be heard by the rest of the group. “We’re being followed.”
Rykker groaned, making no attempt to hide his surprise.
“Shh!” exclaimed Viggo, nearly as quiet as Marcus. “Not so loud. What’s you’re move?”
What should they do? Marcus feared that if their stalker was anything like Vanen, there wasn’t much they could do. Run and hide? Stand and fight? Neither option seemed like it had a winning chance. The streets at this time of the evening were bustling. What if innocent bystanders got hurt? Or saw something they shouldn’t see? Marcus had no way of knowing how secretive Vanen, and others like him—if there were others like him, were prone to being. If word got out that the Antuzans had allies that could create portals and crush your windpipe with their bare hands... he shuddered to think of the consequences.
“Just keep walking, then follow my lead.”
He led them a few more blocks down the main street, waiting for the crowds to thin at least a little bit. Then, without warning, he moved. He pivoted on his heel and dashed down one of the narrow alleys.
The walls here were claustrophobic, less than an arm span. It was also dark—the light from the setting sun did not make it’s way to the dark recesses between the buildings. Marcus ran deeper into the alley, and only when he came to a stop did he turn. His party was fast on his heels, but their would-be assailant was no where to be seen.
“Did we lose them?” puffed Rykker between ragged breaths. Cleary the engineer did not have much in the way of athletic ability.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“How can you be sure?” asked Viggo.
Without giving an answer, Marcus pushed past them, taking a few steps closer back towards the main road. He could still feel them. He didn’t know how, but he could. He always could.
Enough games. This ends now.
“Come on!” he shouted. “I know you’re there, just around the corner. We’re not afraid of you!”
A dry, feminine laugh rattled down the alley.
A short figure, cloaked in flat gray robes, stepped from around the corner. Their face was obscured by a wide hood. As they stepped closer, delicate hands reached up to remove the hood, revealing a pale face, round as the moon, framed by thick black curls of hair, tumbling down to her shoulders. Her eyes, a bright amber, seemed to pierce into Marcus’ very soul. There was an otherworldly look about her—something that he could not place. It was as if she had all the wisdom of a battle-hardened marshal behind those eyes, but she could not have been more then twenty-five.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said with a smile. “I did not mean to startle you. To be frank, I’m surprised you noticed me at all.”
“We’ve been through too much already to deal with more of these games,” Marcus spat. “Who the hell are you?”
At this, her pencil-thin eyebrows threatened to jump off her head. “My, I don’t know what I did that would warrant such hostility.”
“It’s not what you did, it’s what your partner, ally, or whoever did,” Viggo growled from behind Marcus.
The woman frowned, looking down as if suddenly distracted by something. When she swept her gaze yet again over the group, her frown deepened into a scowl. “Wait, where is the girl?”
She’s talking about Annet.
“Or the Lord Governor, for that matter,” she continued, more to herself than to Marcus. “I don’t understand how this could have happened. You were supposed to escort them out of Valla safely.”
“Yeah, well, clearly that didn’t happen,” Marcus said flatly.
Something was different about this woman. Around Vanen, Marcus had felt almost sick, as if looking at the man--creature, or whatever he was—was enough to give one vertigo. She, on the other hand, had no such effect. Clearly she had some of the same knowledge that Vanen did, but he got the impression that she was genuinely surprised that Annet and Lord Gareth were not with them, which meant she did not know that Vanen had taken Annet.
“They’re gone,” Viggo said. Evidently the medic had the same intuition about trusting her that Marcus did. “A man that went by the name of Vanen killed the Lord Governor and took Annet.”
Pure rage and disgust played across the woman’s face. She turned away, pinching the bridge of her nose. “By the old gods above, that’s the worst news I’ve heard all week. This doesn’t make any sense...”
“Who are you, exactly?” asked Marcus.
After a moment she looked up, and her face was placid again, the anger wiped away in an instant.
“My name is Silmendara,” she said. “But you can call me Mara.”
“Well, Mara, how did you know we were going to bring the Lord Governor and his daughter to Senna?”
She bit her lip in thought. “There is much I need to explain, I think. This turn of events changes things a great deal, and to be honest I’m not quite sure how to proceed—which if you knew me well at all, is terribly out of character.”
“I think I speak for all of us in saying that we would very much like some answers,” Marcus said.