The Beginning After The End

Chapter 506: People of Alacrya

Caera Denoir

I gave the young man a pat on the back, then stepped away. His smile was grateful but weary, and more than a little sick. Still, he did smile. It was something. When he stepped up to the tempus warp, housed within the cavernous lobby of Cargidan’s central library, the mousy-haired mage who was to conduct this last transmission spoke soft, encouraging words.

The young man had little to go home to. It was why he’d been comfortable waiting so long—to be the very last of the refugees to return to his people. No one would be waiting for him. The war had taken them all.

Our volunteer attendant, a member of the Kaenig blood, flinched as she activated the tempus warp device. Her mana was fluttering and inconsistent. Within its tug, though, the tempus warp activated, and the young man was pulled away in a rippling of space and mana. With it done, she sat down on the platform’s edge and wiped her brow.

“Thank you,” I said, forcing myself to stand straight despite the aching of my back and the lingering pain behind my eyes. “Tell your highlord that his assistance will not be forgotten.”

The Kaenig mage gave a little snort. “For whatever good it’ll do. Still, I suppose these folk deserve to die in the comfort of their own homes.”

I withheld my bitter retort, only repeating my thanks before turning and striding with purpose toward the library exit. The truth was, the purpose was a facade, not for the benefit of the other mages who lingered in the library but for myself. I didn’t quite know what to do now. I had spent entirely too much time in the small office I’d claimed upstairs, and I was loath to intrude on Seris; she already knew the last of the refugees were scheduled to go home today.

But Cargidan itself offered little for me. Although home, such as it was, wasn’t that far away, I’d chosen to stay at the library itself up until now. It was our base of operations, where Seris and Cylrit had so far chosen to remain, and I had been needed nearly every hour of the day.

Outside, I stopped and turned my face toward the late afternoon sun. My fingers went to my sternum, pressing into my skin. Beneath flesh and muscle and bone, my core ached.

The first wave of mana had been bad. Like a tsunami from a distant sea, it had washed over us, and when it rolled away again, it had taken our mana away with it. Every single mage was affected, but the stronger suffered more.

The second had been far worse.

I started walking again, my purpose unclear for the first time in weeks. After the first pulse, Corbett and Lenora had retreated into the Relictombs with most of the other highbloods. Now the first two levels of the Relictombs were in danger of overcrowding. With so many ranking ascenders involved in Seris’s rebellion, their organization had quickly collapsed, and the ranking bloods in each city were limiting access to the Relictombs where they could. It was another disaster in the making.

As I pondered the last couple of weeks and tried to turn my thoughts toward the next couple, my feet began to carry me toward the Denoir estate. Only whatever guards and servants hadn’t already fled the city were still there, but I had made a point to check in every few days. It would also be pleasant to sleep somewhere more comfortable than the cot in my office.

Already weak from battle and imprisonment, the shock of Agrona’s defeat, and the first mana pulse, the second one drove like a spear into the core of every mage in Cargidan. Time and foresight had allowed us to prepare a number of elixirs for those most in danger from the backlash—namely, the strongest and weakest of us—which provided Seris and Cylrit a way to counter the worst of the effects. At the very least, it kept them alive. But even rationing elixirs for only those in danger of permanent injury or death, the city was already running out.

I’d petitioned multiple times for Seris to take shelter in Relictombs, but she’d resisted so far. “Once I’m well enough to travel, I’ll return to my estate in Sehz-Clar. What’s left of it anyway,” she’d said with a distant smile. “Besides, I need to be here when Alaric returns. We’re still working out the details of broadcasting whatever proof he finds. Agrona’s broadcasting networks are in shambles.”

Quietly, I knew that Seris’s estate wouldn’t be far enough. Early reports after the second pulse indicated it reached almost the entire continent. Only the southernmost reaches of Sehz-Clar had been safe.

Which meant a third such pulse would almost certainly hit every single mage still in Alacrya. My skin prickled at the thought.

Still, most of those who couldn’t reach the Relictombs were fleeing south. The rivers were clogged with sailing vessels, the roads with carts, and it was almost impossible to access a tempus warp with so many mages sick and exhausted.

Seris knew this as well as I did, so this talk about returning to her estate was an obfuscation. I had experienced on many occasions just how prideful she could be. The rest of Alacrya’s leadership was dead or in hiding. She herself could have gone to the Relictombs or even to Dicathen, but she remained in Cargidan, ground zero for whatever these attacks were.

Sometimes, when she didn’t realize anyone was watching, a strange, focused expression would come over her features, like a miner burrowing through rock or a scholar absorbed in a difficult text. She was thinking, theorizing, planning. To her, plotting from the safety of the Relictombs while those less fortunate continue to suffer here was weakness, not wisdom.

I kicked a stone off the walkway. It bounced into an alley and startled a small scavenger mana beast, which screeched angrily and bolted away.

The streets were nearly empty. I passed the occasional guard or unadorned servant running messages or errands for their bed-ridden masters, but it was a stark contrast to Cargidan’s usual bustle.

That will be a problem soon as well, I acknowledge as I passed by an empty, shuttered grocer’s. Businesses were closed, industry ground to a halt. The distant farms that fed millions of city-dwelling Alacryans couldn’t reach us, or were hoarding their resources for their own small communities. The Relictombs was more insular, with enough industry on the first level to support its normal population. However, with so many escaping the pulses there, their resources would soon run thin as well, and they’d be forced to return to Alacrya or brave the deeper zones in search of resources.

My thoughts continued to churn, cycling through the same worn channels, until I reached the Denoir estate. It was still standing, unchanged—well, perhaps a bit overgrown and unkempt, like a noble gone just a bit too long since their last haircut. As I stood at the unguarded front gate looking at it, though, I realized the truth: I didn’t want to be there.

Corbett and Lenora had left. Lauden was gone. The blood was divided, shattered, at war with itself. “Just like the rest of Alacrya,” I muttered into the breeze.

Instead of resting as I’d intended, I continued down the street, deciding to make a circuit of the city and dislodge my circuitous thoughts.

My legs and brain were both tired when I finally ended up right back at the library, three hours later.

After the chaos of organizing all the refugees and soldiers who returned from Dicathen, the handful of attendants and operatives under Seris’s command made the library feel even less alive than if it’d been empty. They paid me little mind as I marched tiredly through the library to the second-floor office I’d taken over.

I unlocked the door, did a quick scan to ensure nothing was out of order, and then fell into the worn leather chair behind my borrowed desk. There, I sat for several minutes staring at nothing. My thoughts were finally, blessedly quiet.

But the stillness didn’t last long. Anxiety—a subtle but invasive urge to do something—crept in like worms beneath my skin. Unlocking my desk, I reached for a certain scroll. I checked it several times a day, but it had been some time since it had last changed to show me anything except old messages.

My pulse spiked as I saw new words scrawled across the surface.

Excitement dulled to disappointment as I read the message Lyra Dreide had penned, which was then transmitted from her two-way scroll to my own across the vast distance between continents. Still no response from Arthur in Epheotus. It seemed unlikely that Arthur would be returning any time soon. We couldn’t even be certain he’d received our message, which had gone with the half-asura, Chul.

That itself was an unnecessary, borderline foolish risk that I wouldn’t have taken, I caught myself thinking. I shook the thought off and continued reading.

According to the note, tentative approval had been given for a small number of Alacryans to return to Dicathen, if we so wished. This was, Lyra made very clear, thanks to the work of Tessia Eralith. The Beast Corps, Dicathen’s new arsenal of mana-beast infused machines, was being relocated to Elenoir to set up additional long-ranged teleportation artifacts and oversee the process.

I set down the scroll, letting it roll back up partially. This news was unexpected, and the timing was poor. There would likely be many Alacryans willing to return to the villages established between Dicathen’s Beast Glades and Elenoir, but we’d only just finished helping people leave Cargidan. For the moment, I was uncertain where to even start with this offer to relocate people yet again.

“A lottery, perhaps. It sounds like we have some time to think about it, at least…” My voice was hollow and tired even to my own ears.

My door suddenly opened, no knock proceeding it.

“Talking to yourself now, girl?” a gruff voice said. “Not hearing voices in your head, I hope.”

Alaric slumped in, looking as if he’d been blown in on the wind. Seris, holding the door, drifted into the office behind him. My mentor wore a simple, comfortable black dress that floated just off the floor, giving the impression that she herself hovered over the polished floorboards. No sign of her fatigue or distress showed in her mannerisms or features.

I stood. “Alaric. You’re back.” My eyes jumped to Seris’s. “Were you successful?”

“In a manner of speaking,” the aged ascender grumbled, dropping into a chair across the desk.

Seris eased herself into a chair as well, perhaps the only sign of weakness she showed. “We have the key to the recording.” She slid the small piece of carved crystal across the desk to me. “We haven’t watched it yet.” Her gaze went pointedly toward a projection artifact sitting on my desk.

My pulse raced as I loaded up the storage crystal and activated the projection. Alaric reached out and let his mana flow in a series of pulses that I recognized as a mana key.

As we waited for the projection to display, I asked, “And what about the Instiller?”

“Dead. Heart failure, poor bastard.” Alaric’s accompanying grunt didn’t exactly express a deep sense of sorrow. “At least he managed to give me the mana key sequence before he bit it.”

I frowned but said nothing.

An image of dense, endless stretch of forest was splashed onto a bare patch of wall. The angle of the recording artifact changed slightly as the small animated artifact adjusted its position. For a few seconds, nothing happened. An outside force caused a distortion in the visualized recording, and the bird-like artifact panned left.

Several figures came into view, flying rapidly over the treetops. The distortion intensified, then the image normalized. The figures, eight in all, flashed past. The recording artifact leapt from its perch and followed. Four of the people appeared conscious, two flying ahead, two behind. The other four were horizontal, prone in the air, their bodies drifting on the wind between the others. I thought I recognized the four prone forms, but the angle was poor.

“Well, this isn’t worth a shit,” Alaric grumped.

“Quiet,” Seris ordered. Her voice was soft, but the tone of command was absolute.

We watched the recording play out for a couple more minutes. The artifact banked up, taking a steeper angle to get above the small group, who were slowing down as they reached a place where the forest was all torn up. I recognized the broken pieces of a few devices similar to those Seris had used to freeze the Relictombs portals.

It was then that we finally got a good look at each of the eight people.

Prone between four asuras were Arthur, Sylvie, Cecilia—who we already knew had reverted to Tessia Eralith—and Agrona himself. The High Sovereign was unconscious, his head lolling even in this magically supported state. Seeing him like this made me deeply uncomfortable, and goosebumps roughened the skin of my arms.

“Vritra’s hairy backside, it’s actually him,” Alaric said, his voice barely a moan under his breath.

“Is that…?”

“Kezess Indrath himself, yes,” Seris said in answer to my unfinished question. “With him are Charon Indrath, leader of the dragon forces previously occupying Dicathen; Windsom Indrath, his eyes and voice in our world; and this fourth dragon, the woman, must be Kezess’s wife, Myre, although I can’t confirm that with one hundred percent confidence.”

As the recorded image continued, I focused on Kezess. He was much younger in appearance than I would have guessed, his features sharp and smooth. Bright blond hair hung down past his shoulders, tossed by the wind of their flight, and he was draped in rich white and gold cloth. I didn’t know what I’d expected, given the myth of his existence, but this…relatively ordinary man wasn’t it.

A shimmering, distorted cleft appeared in the recording.

“The opening to Epheotus,” Seris explained. “The artifact couldn’t capture it properly.”

Kezess and Myre turned to look back at the land behind them. They exchanged a few words, but there was no sound, and the recording artifact was flying too high to even try to read their lips. Then they turned back around and floated forward, vanishing into the portal we couldn’t properly see. One by one, the rest of the group followed.

The recording artifact flew several circles around the site, then banked and sped off in a different direction, likely to some predetermined extraction site.

“Is it enough?” I asked, turning to my mentor. “It seems pretty clear to me. Kezess has Agrona. The other Sovereigns are all dead or missing, as are the Scythes. And the Wraiths have vanished. Alacrya is free of the Vritra clan.”

“Enough to what?” Seris asked, although the words weren’t directed at me. Instead, she spoke into the air, then looked around as if hoping it might answer back. “Those capable of believing but holding out for proof will be convinced. There are others who will not be convinced by any evidence.” She shook her head as if clearing cobwebs. “Still, with more of the population assured that Agrona won’t be returning, we can take more concrete steps.”

I knew what she meant. The Dominions were rudderless, broken apart into hundreds of small factions little better than city-states run by the ranking highbloods. Organization and leadership were needed now more than ever. Not for the first time, I found myself wishing that Seris would step up and claim the mantle. And yet, no matter how much I respected my mentor, I also knew that what Alacrya needed was to escape the old structure of governance, not replace one Vritra with another.

Seris deactivated the projection and took out the storage crystal. After turning it over in her hand, she passed it off to Alaric. “See that everyone is made ready for the emergency broadcast. We won’t reach everywhere, not with the mess things are in, but we’ve prepared as best we can.”

Alaric nodded as he stood. I caught the way his gaze lingered in one corner of the office. He hitched, freezing for a moment before clearing his throat. “On it. Everyone’s ready.”

The old ascender shot me a tired wink, then left us. I watched him go with both curiosity and concern, but whatever demons he was battling were his own.

Seris and I sat in silence for a minute, maybe two. It was difficult to think about time when the rest of my brain was so bloated with thoughts, some relevant, others far less so.

It was my mentor who broke the silence. “You’ve done well, Caera. If I haven’t already said it, I want you to know. You’ve handled this transition, these people, as well as could be done.”

I bit my cheek as I looked up from the desk to meet her eyes. She had one elbow leaning on the armrest of her chair, her cheek resting in her hand. She seemed… smaller, somehow. Not diminished, exactly, but more normal than usual. More real, I acknowledged to myself. I used to look up to her as something other, but we’ve been too much together for me to still see her as some kind of deity. Aloud, I said only, “Thank you, Lady Seris.”

“I realize that I’m not exactly good with people,” Seris continued. Her gaze shifted, focusing on the middle distance. “I see problems and solutions. Life is a series of actions taken to result in a specific outcome. People become tasks, or obstacles. Tools to be used.”

A frown darkened my face as I tried to understand what she was telling me, and why. “People rarely like being used as tools.”

“No they do not.” Her gaze remained unfocused, but her brows pinched together, a fine line appearing between them. Her lips pressed together into a pale line. “You are different. You see the needs of the individual within the larger picture. The trees within the forest, so to speak.”

“I…” I hesitated, swallowing and fidgeting with the half-rolled scroll on my desk. “Thank you?” I repeated, not meaning for the words to come out as a question.

Seris nodded slightly, not looking at me. “Alacrya is in more danger now than it has yet been. For all their faults, our asuran leaders, the remnants of the Vritra clan of basilisks, protected us from others, if not from themselves. Now we are fractured and exposed. Our mages are weak, our populace terrified.”

I leaned back, crossing my arms over my chest.

“Which is why you should be in the Relictombs, regaining your strength and avoiding the continued mana-draining pulses.”

“You assume there will be more.”

I gave my mentor a wry smile. “Don’t play coy with me. With that much mana being drawn? Something that requires an incredible amount of power has been activated in the Basilisk Fang Mountains, probably in Taegrin Caelum itself. The terrified populace you mentioned has been turned into a battery. Do you know what it is for?”

I didn’t really mean to ask this final question. I always expected Seris to know more than she told me. To compartmentalize and obfuscate was her way. It had allowed her to make it this far and kept her—and by extension those like myself who followed her—alive this long. I was confident she had some deeper understanding of these pulses, and I wouldn’t normally have pushed for more than she wanted to tell me.

But I was tired. And I was afraid.

She looked me in the eyes and held my gaze, suddenly steel again, no longer small but like a star blazing before me. “No, but I do know other things. Agrona is thousands of years old, maybe tens of thousands. He has the sharpest, most devious mind of any living being I’ve ever met. I’ve never witnessed him put himself in danger.”

I understood what she couldn’t bring herself to say out loud. Agrona’s defeat was so sudden and complete, without even a fight, really. It’s difficult for an old soldier like Seris to accept.

I stood and walked to the window behind my desk, looking down on the western lawn of the library. It was empty, and where it wasn’t overgrown the landscape had been crushed beneath tents and sleeping cots, or churned by the hundreds of refugees who had passed through it over these last days.

I had to wet my lips to speak, and it took conscious effort to keep my voice from quivering. “Arthur gave us this chance. Even if he can’t be here now, he’s defending us from Epheotus, I have no doubt of that. We can’t cling to the fear of our own past. We have to look toward a future that we get to create.”

Seris’s smile was almost audible, making me turn around to face her. “Like I said, you are different. We will need—”

The door opened without a knock, and Alaric stumped back in. “All set. It’ll go out to the entire continent, much as is reachable anyway, right now. Tomorrow, it’ll replay at a different time, and then every day after that as is needed. Won’t be without pushback, I’m sure, but…” He shrugged, then flopped back into the open chair.

I reactivated the projection device. It would immediately pick up the emergency broadcast when it started.

It didn’t take long. The image shifted, showing the forests of the Beast Glades. The image was frozen and distorted.

A voice issued through the telepathic field created by the projection artifact. ‘People of Alacrya. High Sovereign Agrona Vritra has been defeated. Alacrya is free.’ That was it. A simple message to startle and draw attention. A different one would be issued on the following day, with the message to be updated and become more involved and complex as time went on, adjusting the message to the response. We’d been prepared for this step before we even knew what the recording would show.

Again, I watched as Agrona, Arthur, and the others were drawn along by Kezess and his dragons. The image seemed to slow and focus on Agrona when he first appeared, making it easier to tell it was him. The recording artifact took flight and followed, the sequence sped up to reach the final destination more quickly.

Then it slowed again when the perspective allowed a better look at Agrona. There was no escaping that Arthur was a part of the picture, but his presence would be explained in further messaging.

The distortion of the rift rippled through the picture, and Kezess and Myre melted away into it. Agrona’s body approached, and—

The image froze. I flinched as a static humming issued directly into my head through the telepathic field. The distortion of the unrecordable portal began to spread across the image, like a piece of parchment on fire, turning black in the middle. Soon the entire picture was black and empty.

“Damned, what have those idiots—” Alaric’s words were cut off as another voice entered our minds.

My eyes widened, and I turned sharply toward Seris. Her hands were steepled in front of her lips, her nostrils flared, pupils dilated.

“My people of Alacrya,” the unctuous baritone said from the darkness.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om