Victor of Tucson-Chapter 36Book 10: : Into the Fray

36 – Into the Fray

Victor strode purposefully down the corridors of his palace with Bryn and Arona hurrying to keep pace. He hadn’t explained anything yet. He knew better than to speak openly about Lohanse’s warning—not before he was under the protection of Kynna’s crown. There were plenty of devices to shield a person from scrying, but Kynna’s crown was special, crafted by her husband as he ascended to the status of veil walker. It had enchantments that Victor hoped even other veil walkers would struggle to pierce.

When he reached the wing where the queen had set up offices, the guards pounded their spears and halberds on the marble floors in salute, and one of Kynna’s aides hurried forward from his station. “Your Grace, how may I—”

“Where’s the queen?”

“In the garden study, milord, but—”

Victor strode past him, the rest of his words lost, dismissed by his subconscious as Victor’s mind raced through the implications of Lohanse’s visit. He was at war with himself with regard to his curse. Should he still try to resolve it? Should he wait and prepare as best he could for the—in his opinion—inevitable attack? The problem was that he had no idea of the timeframe. Lohanse was good to warn them, but how much warning did they have? Was the empress sending her killers even now, or did she wait, hoping her partisan veil walkers would take control?

His long legs and hurried strides didn’t allow for much contemplation time before he came to the study, and the guards outside snapped to attention. “I need to see her.”

“Of course, Your Grace. One moment,” one of the guards said, turning to open the door. “Your Majesty? The duke—”

Kynna’s voice rang out, silencing the guard, “Come in, Victor.” Victor walked into the room, scanning to see if the queen was alone; she was. He held the door for Arona and Bryn, then pushed it closed. “What is it, Victor? Are you unwell?”

He knew the queen asked that question because of his curse, but it still rankled. He hated having people doubt his health or readiness or… He shook the thoughts away. This wasn’t the time for self-pitying irritation. He approached the queen’s desk and beckoned for Arona and Bryn to come close. “My Queen, I’m well, thank you. Please activate your crown’s ability to protect our privacy.”

Kynna reached up and tapped the central spire of her tall, crystalline crown, and a chime rang out as the shimmering shell of the crown’s protection surrounded them. “What is it, Victor?” She looked from him to Arona and Bryn, who seemed as confused and concerned as she was.

“I was visited by Lohanse.”

“What?” Kynna’s eyes flew wide, and she leaned forward in her plush chair, uncrossing her legs as though she might leap up.

“He came with a warning…” Victor looked at Kynna and Arona. “This is not something you can repeat outside of Kynna’s protection.” He tapped his ear in illustration, and they both nodded. While they hung on his words, breathless, Victor recounted Lohanse’s warning about what was happening with the veil walkers of Ruhn.

As he finished, Kynna slumped into her seat, defeated. “So this is how it will end, then? Will they not at least give us the option to flee Ruhn? If Lohanse will lift his barrier—”

“We aren’t defeated yet,” Victor growled.

“How can we win, Victor? You are mighty, but the great houses have champions that can, at least, challenge you. How can you face ten or twenty? If Matessa rallies her allies, it will be more like fifty or a hundred. Can you face so many steel seekers?”

“I will stand with you, Victor,” Arona said, her raspy voice firm.

“As will I, of course!” Bryn sounded fierce, and Victor smiled, touched by her bravery. She wouldn’t last long in such a battle.

“I didn’t bring you here because I doubted your bravery, Bryn. Nor yours, Arona. I know you’ll do what you can to help.” He turned to Kynna. “You must rally the other champions you’ve gathered from our victories. You have to bring every person who might be able to fight for you to this palace. I don’t mean soldiers, I mean powerful Energy wielders like that cowardly asshole, Thorn, who betrayed you. More importantly, you have to bring everyone who means anything to you here. We must keep them close and protected; otherwise, Matessa will use them against you.”

Kynna’s pale, slightly gray flesh paled further. “She’d force me to surrender by threatening their lives.”

“Or she’d try to break you by impaling them outside your gates,” Arona said flatly. Victor wondered what horrors she’d seen in the wars Vesavo made her wage.

“How much time do we have?” Kynna asked. Before Victor could answer, she added, “Truly, though, if they’d let us surrender, many lives could be spared—”

“Kynna,” Victor said with a heavy sigh, “they’ll want to make an example of you. Do you think they’d let you live? Do you think they could break every law of this world and let those they betrayed live to spread the tale? How could they pretend to have an egalitarian system when those meant to protect you orchestrated your downfall?”

“You’re speaking of the veil walkers.” Kynna’s eyes unfocused as she made the connections. “If they allow Matessa to do this, they won’t let me or mine live to tell the tale.”

Victor folded his arms, nodding, swallowing a wince of pain as he pressed his arms against the curse. “It’s a matter of survival now, Kynna. There isn’t an option where we can walk away without a fight. Lohanse believes he can hold the Khalidaysian veil walkers to a stalemate, keeping them out of the fight. If we win—if we destroy the empress and her champions, they’ll have nothing to fight for. With luck, they’ll flee, and Lohanse can rebuild the veil walker council.” Victor was making things up, but he didn’t care; as far as he could reason, that was what Lohanse hoped for.

“How long?” Arona asked.

“No idea. We have to hurry. Kynna, you must order everyone you care about, everyone who can fight, to come here. Arona and Bryn will help you prepare.”

“And you, Victor?” Kynna stood, moving around her enormous desk to stand closer to him.

“I’m going to have a spirit walk. I have to be at my strongest, and that means removing this curse.”

“I agree. You must rid yourself of it,” Arona said, some metal entering her raspy voice. “Go, Victor. Let Bryn and I advise the queen. They will not find this palace an easy stone to crack.”

Victor looked at Arona, saw the determined set of her brows, then turned to Bryn. She was trying to look brave, but he could see in her eyes that she was spooked. She was crumbling inside. She was being asked to stand against the most dangerous fighters on the planet, people she’d celebrated and revered as a child—great champions and families whose names echoed with gravity in the history books of her world. She must be thinking her end was at hand.

“I’m not going to let them destroy what we’ve built,” he said, trying to sound confident. To help, he cast Imbue Spirit on Bryn, sending her a shard of his spirit laced with courage-attuned Energy. Her eyes lit up with golden Energy, and her back straightened as her fear fell away, replaced by determination. “Do you feel that?”

She clenched her fists and nodded.

“That’s how I feel. That’s how certain I am that we can win. Remember that feeling when you have doubt. Remember it when the men and women you command begin to falter in their resolve. I’m going to be here, and you can believe me when I say those mother fuckers haven’t yet had a taste of what I can bring to a fight.”

“I will be ready!” she said through her clenched, determined jaw.

Victor nodded, turning back to Kynna. “Listen to Arona, Kynna. She’s fought wars.”

“I was trained by one of the most devious and vile military minds ever to exist,” Arona added. “I’m not proud of what he made me do, but we’ll use that experience.” She turned to glare at Victor. “Go! Let us prepare. The sooner you face your curse, the sooner you’ll be ready to fight.”

Victor nodded, inwardly quite pleased that she was taking charge. Without another word, and despite Kynna’s intake of breath as though she might want to say something more, he strode out of the study. He figured he’d leave his imbue spirit active on Bryn until the last minute, but he’d need to cancel it before he spirit walked. He’d need every ounce of his strength.

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When he returned to his chambers, he paused before entering his cultivation chamber. He’d caught a glimpse of Iron Mountain through his balcony windows and stepped outside to view the enormous peak more clearly. The sun was bright, and the sky clear; it was easy to forget the executioner’s axe hanging over Gloria. He pondered the great mountain, its shoulders high among the clouds, its peak scraping the firmament of Ruhn. It was a sight to behold, even for someone who’d traveled to several fantastical worlds.

It was easy to believe a primordial titan had settled down to rest there under that mountain. He wondered if he should have gone to Azforath for advice. Dar had cautioned him not to seek help, but he didn’t know that Victor was, literally, on the doorstep of a being like Azforath, nor that the ancient titan was at least inclined to be friendly. Even so, Dar’s advice about conquering this problem for himself held true. This was something Victor ought to face and defeat on his own.

As he turned, closed the door, and walked to his cultivation chamber, a voice in the corner of Victor’s mind told him that line of thinking was bullshit. What if he’d been level twenty or even fifty when Loss Chenasta cursed him? He’d be dead. What if he’d been a steel seeker? The curse probably wouldn’t have taken hold. So, why was it so crucial that Victor face it alone, now? Was it simply because he’d been cursed at the right time—a challenge he could face? “Bah,” he shook his head, throwing the philosophizing to the side. He had enough to worry about.

Inside his cultivation chamber, Victor summoned his Terror-scale Boots. The supple black leather and glistening scales gleamed in the faint glow of the amber ore as he pulled them on. He wasn’t sure they’d help him with this particular voyage onto the spirit plane, but he figured any little advantage was worth exploring.

Then, he summoned Lifedrinker and the potion Arona had purchased for him. He set the axe before him on the platform as he sat cross-legged on the unyielding surface. “Sorry, Bryn,” he muttered, severing the connections to Imbue Spirit and Shape Self. His Energy came back to him in a rush as he surged in size, and the bits of himself he’d sent into Lifedrinker and Bryn returned. He stretched out a hand, lightly stroking the axe. “I’m sorry to call my spirit home. I need it to fight this curse.”

“War-heart, I yearn for your touch, but I know you must conquer a most vicious foe. Bring me! Together, we cannot fail!”

Victor smiled and lifted the axe, something he would have struggled with a year prior, and laid her gently across his knees. “Of course you’re coming.” She radiated excitement and pleasure. “You’re never afraid, are you, chica?”

“Never when I’m in your hands, blood-mate!”

Victor smiled, then ripped the cork out of Arona’s potion. He tilted it to his lips and drained the bottle in two gulps. Warm tingles infused his spine and skull, and when nothing else happened, he looked at his attributes:

Strength:

680 (780)

Vitality:

957

Dexterity:

280 (445)

Agility:

303 (468)

Intelligence:

412

Will:

699 (769)

It seemed the potion was boosting his will by about ten percent. “Not bad,” he grunted. Then, clutching Lifedrinker, he built the pattern for Spirit Walk and, bracing himself for anything, filled it with Energy. As always, the world shifted to shades of twilight, and the material forms of his cultivation and even his palace fell away, replaced by grassy plains and, in the distance, an enormous, gloomy forest that stretched up the sides of a mountain that reached into the stars.

Victor was dumbstruck by the sight of Iron Mountain on the spirit plane, amazed by its majesty and the clarity of the twilight sky that revealed the firmament more clearly and, much closer to hand, moons and other structures that floated above the world, narrowly missing the tremendous peak. His fascination was cut short, though, when something cold and biting snaked around his neck and began dragging him backwards over the grass.

Victor gasped and tightened his grip on Lifedrinker’s spirit form. She was glossy black but filled with light like that you’d see shining down from a moon. When he rolled onto a shoulder, swinging her around in an arc at whatever gripped his throat, she whistled through the air like the wind itself and bit into the thick rope of inky blackness. Victor gasped, and, though his body was a construct of his spirit and mind, he felt the need to heave his chest for air as the constriction faded.

As his head cleared and he gained his feet, he saw what had come for him, and horror filled his mind. A swirling blob of nothingness as big as a house squatted on the grassy plain, half embedded in the earth and half exposed. The exposed half writhed in the air, waving hundreds or thousands of tentacles like the one that had seized his neck. They wriggled out and down, snatching up bits of twilit grass and soil, pulling them into the blob where they were destroyed or absorbed—Victor couldn’t tell.

“Chingado,” he hissed, stepping back. He held Lifedrinker ready as more of the tentacles snaked through the air toward him. Was this the representation of the curse on the spirit plane? He wondered why it wasn’t attached to him, but he found his answer as he tried to dodge back and felt everything get…thicker. He was bound to the monstrosity. His image, his projection of himself, looked like his physical form on the material plane, but he was more than that. He’d entered this part of the spirit plane from his body, and that was where the curse and he were anchored.

As he tried to move away, the air felt like water, then it felt solid, and he simply couldn’t move more than a hundred yards from the blob. Even the ground sucked at his feet. “Okay, then. Let’s fuck this thing up, chica.”

“I yearn to taste it again!”

Grinning, Victor stepped forward. He summoned his Banner of the Champion, blasting the landscape with brilliant golden light, and then he cast Iron Berserk, expanding in size and flooding his pathways with the blazing heat of his rage. Stomping forward, he unleashed his aura, letting it flow outward as he approached the blackness of the void that was feasting on his spirit, among other things.

Tendrils of blackness snaked out as he approached, eager despite his heavy, rage-filled aura. He swatted them with Lifedrinker, and she sheared them to bits with every swipe. In his full, titanic glory, Victor stood even with the top of the blob, but it was vast, its mass enormous. He wasn’t sure cutting pieces off was the strategy to employ, but it was what he did best, what his instinct demanded when he began a fight, so he leaped into the work with a vengeance.

Tentacles snaked out and tried to ensnare him, but he ripped them apart with his movements; his titanic figure was unstoppable. Lifedrinker cut and cleaved, ripping great hunks of the blob apart. Victor was surprised; he’d expected the blackness to be void-attuned Energy. He’d expected that it might hurt Lifedrinker to cut into it, but she didn’t recoil or seem harmed.

He hacked her in great, sweeping arcs, biting deep into the gelatinous meat of the blob, but even as he did so, the cuts filled in, and the bits he shaved off rolled and slithered over the grass to join with their mother. “Fucking hell!” he roared. “How do I hurt this pinché son of a bitch?”

The harder he fought, the more futile the effort seemed. And Victor backed off, hoping to conserve some strength. Several long tentacles of ropy blackness followed after him, but he slashed them, and they retreated. Growling, his rage magnified by his frustration, Victor concentrated and, with an effort of will, canceled his Iron Berserk.

Lifedrinker’s blade wasn’t enough to kill the blob, and he wasn’t willing to risk her by leaving her embedded in the mass of…stuff to attempt to drain it. That meant he needed a new tactic. As soon as he felt his Core regenerating, and after cleaving another seven or eight probing tentacles, Victor built the pattern for Volcanic Fury. The magma- and rage-attuned Energies flooded his pathways, and he surged in size, roaring his awful madness into the air.

Peering with sepia-toned vision toward the mound of quivering hateful sludge, Victor felt his fury multiply. He screamed his passion, stalking toward it, and, as soon as he was within a dozen strides, he gathered his breath, filling his lungs and opening the pathways to his Breath Core. Hot magma licked his lips as he exhaled, sending a gout of the fiery, steaming Energy to splash against the quivering mass of tentacles.

The sound of the lava impacting the curse was like an egg hitting an overheated frying pan. It sizzled and popped, and hot gases burst from the impact. As the matter that made up the blob absorbed the heat, it bubbled and quivered, solidifying under the lava as it, too, cooled to basalt. Victor roared out that breath as long as he could, the longest blast he’d ever given without the aid of his ancestor’s fire.

When he stopped, his vision clouded by steam and smoke, gasping for air, he was thrilled to see a great section of the blob had fallen still, its tentacles all burned to stubs. “Hah!” Victor howled in victory. He lifted Lifedrinker and stalked toward the hardened, dead section of the blob, intent on smashing it apart, exposing more fresh innards for him to burn with his next blast.

He was one step away, axe held high, when the solidified part of the blob shivered and sank, wholly absorbed by the thing. Fresh, glistening black jelly appeared, and new tentacles grew out. Worst of all, the blob seemed larger. Victor, maddened by his Volcanic Fury, knew something was wrong, but he only felt rage and a renewed determination to slaughter the thing before him. So, he went at it, screaming and spitting his madness as he hacked Lifedrinker into the blob again.

He focused on a single thought like a terrier outside a rat hole: maybe something was hiding from him in there. Maybe he could carve his way to the center and kill whatever it was. Roaring, cursing, spitting fire, he hacked, kicked, and burned his way into the blob. Despite the fury that had overridden much of his logic, a small part of himself managed to wonder if he was being foolish, but he wasn’t ready to listen to that tiny voice. He was a titan, and this damn thing needed to feel his wrath!