Victor of Tucson-Chapter 44Book 10: : What Honor Demands

44 – What Honor Demands

Arona and Kynna stood atop the Mountwatch Spire, watching the wild battle taking place on the plain before the palace’s gates. Of course, Arona hated that she wasn’t helping—so did Bryn and all of the Queensguard. She knew they’d be able to help, but how much? Five of the thirteen Queensguard were nearly steel seekers, and, together, they could surely slay a few of the Khalidaysian champions, but then they’d be lost. It was the same story for Arona and Bryn. They served the queen better by staying alive—for now.

“It’s fortunate the wards make flight impossible above the palace,” Kynna observed, watching the champions flit about down below—many were winged or had other means of flight. However, if the enemy tried to fly over the walls, the powerful wards would rebuff them, likely causing them to crash. That hadn’t stopped them from trying—what was a fall from great heights to a steel seeker, after all? Still, the wards had held, and the wells of power beneath the palace were near depthless.

“Indeed. It gives us a chance—well, maybe not a chance, but it allows us to slow their progress. Arona pointed to the wall above the gates where Bryn patrolled with some of the other defenders, watching the battle. “We can retreat to rest and, as they return to assault the gates, resume attacks with fresh forces.”

“True. Yet, I can’t help feeling they toy with us.”

Arona looked at her sharply. “I don’t know. We’ve killed nine of their champions.”

“At what cost, Arona?” There wasn’t any need to respond; they’d already reviewed the numbers earlier that day. A hundred and seventeen of Kynna’s defenders had died to claim those nine kills. Nobody had to do the math for her—the ratio wasn’t sustainable. The fights had been waging, on and off, for six days now, and Arona didn’t think they’d last much more than another week. The queen sighed heavily. “I suppose it’s selfish of me to hold out so long. I should see that champion from Voth. I should tell him I’ll accept Bomar Lund’s offer.”

Arona turned her gaze to the courtyard inside the main gates. The strange champion, Resh A’kel, had moved his tent inside when the assault began. Still, he refused any hospitality and seemed to await Kynna’s decision patiently.

“Who’s this?” Kynna asked, bringing Arona’s attention back to the field. A solitary figure approached from the Khalidaysian encampment. When he stood on the edge of the battlefield, not a hundred yards from where the furious fight played out, he lifted his head to the sky and roared. It was a sound that woke the primal fears lurking in the depths of Arona’s mind—like thunder and a viper’s hiss combined.

“The dragon,” Arona murmured, relieved to find her voice didn’t quaver.

The battle calmed as the combatants looked toward the sound, and then the lone figure shouted something that didn’t reach Arona’s ears. The Khalidaysian attackers broke off, forming a tight formation as they retreated from the much larger cluster of Kynna’s defenders. Slowly, they fell back, and it seemed the defenders would let them—no doubt happy for the reprieve. Arona counted a dozen bodies on the grass, and she knew most or all of them would be Kynna’s people.

The dragon—tall and shaped much like a handsome Fae—stepped forward and deposited a large white box on the grass before him. Then, he straightened and shouted something at Kynna’s defenders before turning and following his troops back to the Khalidaysian encampment.

One of Kynna’s champions, a woman from a city called Rone, ran forward to collect the box. Arona watched as she gingerly pried the lid open, peered inside, and then closed it again. She said a few words to the other defenders before stretching out her magnificent crimson wings and launching herself into the air, soaring toward the tower where the queen and Arona stood. The wards wouldn’t bother her; they could discern between friend and foe, thanks to a simple drop of blood deposited into a brazier at the heart of the palace.

When the woman landed, bloody and heaving for breath, she gasped, “My Queen, the man left this for you. Forgive me for looking inside, but I had to ensure it wasn’t trickery.”

Kynna nodded, frowning. “Thank you, T’vajja. Give it here.”

“My Queen—” The woman looked around the rooftop from Kynna to Arona to the many Queensguard standing at their ready positions. “I fear it’s something terrible. Forgive me for bearing this to you. I—”

“T’vajja! This isn’t your fault. Hand it to me.”

The woman stepped forward. She was a tall, powerfully built woman, and beneath the dirt and blood, her armor gleamed like burnished platinum. She narrowed her feathery crimson eyebrows and said, “Better I should hold it. Just take the lid off, Your Majesty.”

Kynna’s scowl deepened, but she didn’t argue. She reached forward and removed the stained white lid of the box. Of course, Arona was too short to see inside, but the queen didn’t leave the contents a mystery. “That’s Bomar Lund, if I’m not mistaken. So, then. They seek to break our spirit before they kill us.”

Arona’s small hand shot out and gripped the edge of the box, pulling down so she could see within. Sure enough, a perfectly preserved head sat on a yellow silk cushion. Bomar had been a handsome man, it seemed, with a well-defined jaw and cheekbones and a sharp, regal nose. “You’re certain?”

Kynna nodded. “I am, but take it to that champion below to confirm. Perhaps it will persuade him to join our cause.”

Arona shook her head. “Better I escort him out of the palace first. It might persuade him to join the other side if he learns his master is dead and still considers our cause doomed.”

Kynna shook her head in dismay. “Ancient Gods, Arona. I wouldn’t have thought that. I wasn’t made for this sort of thing.”

The feathered warrior’s eyes sprang wide, and she hissed, “Nonsense, My Queen! It’s what we love about you—you’re kind and good, not conniving and vile like the dogs who attack us! They’re spitting on thousands of years of tradition by attacking you! Surely, the veil council will come to your aid soon!”

Kynna smiled and stretched out her pale gray-hued fingers to touch the woman’s blood-smeared brow. “Your love is well received, T’vajja. Thank you. Now, give that box to Lady Arona and go tell our defenders to rest while they can.”

Arona took the box, sending it straight into a storage device, then watched as the woman bowed to the queen before leaping off the tower to glide down to the battlefield. “You’re sure you want me to tell him? We could still offer your hand in marriage. He doesn’t know the king’s dead. Maybe he’ll fight beside us while we send a false messenger.”

Kynna smiled almost sadly as she replied, “No, dear Arona. Take him outside the gate and show him the head of his king. We’ll see what his honor demands of him.”

###

When Victor opened his eyes on the spirit plane, he found himself sitting on the grass a hundred paces from the enormous, pulsing void construct that had earlier defeated him. He stood, glowering at the thing invading his spirit. It hadn’t noticed him yet, or, if it had, it didn’t care. It was busily taking bits of the spirit realm and hauling them into itself, very slowly but surely digging itself deeper into the fabric of the place. Was that metaphorical? Was that a symbol of its attacks on Victor’s spirit?

He knew it was assaulting his spirit, but he wasn’t so sure he should take the thing literally anymore—it looked like a monster, and it certainly seemed to be physically attacking the spirit plane—and him if he let it—but Victor knew there was more to it; this place wasn’t meant to be taken literally. He could alter his own appearance, could he not? He could walk ten steps and travel a thousand miles. No, the thing was a representation of the void Energy that was working its way into him, and Victor knew what to do with Energy.

He strode forward. Allowing his spirit-self to manifest the nature of his physical body, he expanded his size until his head was well above the great bulk of the void infestation. As he neared the thing, more inky tendrils sprouted from its quivering bulk, lashing out toward him. Victor ignored them as they wrapped around his mighty legs. They were just strands of void-attuned Energy, and he knew he could resist them. The curse was struggling to mar his flesh in the real world, was it not? Why should his spirit manifestation fear the Energy? This was but a thorn he had to pluck out and flick aside.

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Victor looked inward, to his brilliant Core space and the impossibly dense layers of his aura gathered around it. Looking at it, his titanic pride bristled. He’d built it up through labors and trials, treasures and boons. It was loaded with the dreadful fear that used to weigh on his heart, the rage he cultivated to keep his fear at bay, and the countless victories and deeds he’d accumulated along the way. He knew that his mythic class and the primordial essence of his bloodline were like multipliers applied to the aura he’d built—that it was a match for most veil walkers’ auras already.

Victor’s aura was further strengthened by his will, and, moreover, it was the vehicle that could deliver the commands of his will, imposing it on the world. With that understanding, Victor unleashed it, letting it ripple out of him like a tsunami of determination, fury, and dread, like a kaleidoscopic tidal wave of conquered foes and killing intent.

The tendrils of the void infestation recoiled, releasing his trunk-like legs and withdrawing, but Victor wasn’t simply trying to defend himself. He sent his aura out, willing it to surround the enormous, building-sized blob. It washed over the pulsating, quivering thing, and everywhere it went, the thing’s tentacles snapped home until it was just a smooth, quivering mass of gelatinous Energy that strained against the pressure of Victor’s aura.

As he applied pressure, dragging against the gigantic thing, pulling it toward him out of the hole it had dug in the spirit realm, it erupted in a frenetic attack, battling against the grip of his aura. Ten thousand tentacles smashed outward, stretching his aura thin, trying to punch through. Victor stumbled back, his mental grasp slipping as his will began to unravel. Growling, Victor straightened up and poured his hope-attuned Energy into his pathways.

The very nature of his hope, a near polar opposite to his fear, born out of his need to resist the empty void in his heart, bolstered him, and Victor stood straight again. With the crushing force of his will, he pressed his aura back down, smashing the tentacles into nothingness as he regained his firm grasp on the infestation. “Come on, you pinché fucker!”

Focusing everything he had on the effort, he held the infestation tightly, dragging it back, step by step, ripping it from the hole it had dug into the spirit plane. It struggled and thrashed, but Victor was relentless. He brought it, quivering and pulsing, out of the ground and dragged it onto the grass. With the thing ripped free and at his mercy, he pulled it further and further from the hole, ensuring there was no chance it could pull itself back in if it broke free from his grasp.

There was no need for his caution, however. As the infestation was excised, Victor felt his will surge. His aura grew harder and denser, and he roared as he squeezed it down, crushing the void Energy into a globe half its original size. As he toiled, growling and grimacing, smashing harder and harder, he saw the top layer of the inky void-attuned Energy begin to shimmer and shift toward gray. He was breaking it of its affinity, but is that what he wanted?

Victor had a Spirit Core—the void Energy was useless to it. If he crushed it into unattuned Energy, he could cultivate it. Something made him pause, though; something in him hungered for that dark, hungry Energy. Victor took a minute to look inward, to contemplate the hunger, and then he realized what it was: his Elder Breath Core was pulsing, throbbing, eager to take it in. Could that be? His current affinities were for magma and blue ice—elements. Was his Breath Core not elementally aligned? He’d assumed so, but perhaps that wasn’t how Breath Cores worked, at least not elder ones.

“Okay, then,” Victor growled, using the crushing force of his will, his utter dominance over the void infestation, to draw it out, crushing down, while he pulled a long streamer of it toward him. He felt it thrashing and panicking, and he grinned, some of his rage slipping into his pathways as he savored the struggle. When the tendril of void was close enough, he emptied his lungs and then inhaled, drawing the thread of void into him.

When the void entered his mouth and throat, he could feel it struggling against his aura, but he’d made himself a fortress with his will, as Chantico had once advised him to do. The Energy slid off his flesh and into his lungs, and there, Victor’s Breath Core drew it in. With his inner eye, Victor watched as his two orbs of Energy—smoldering magma and steaming, crackling blue ice—flared brightly. They wanted it! That was when he saw the flickering, sparkling, difficult-to-define Energy motes lingering on the outer edges of his Breath Core space—remnants of the potential from the royal jelly.

He'd thought he’d be forming a new orb in his Breath Core, one composed of the void, but that wasn’t the case; his hunger—some latent instinct awakened by the jelly—was guiding him, and he knew what to do. Victor split the tendril of void-attuned Energy into twin threads and let his other Energies draw them in—one to his magma and one to his blue ice. It seemed incongruous to him; shouldn’t the void consume the other Energies? Was he being foolish by listening to the hunger in his chest?

As he watched, though, the magma and blue ice didn’t fade, consumed by the inky black void. Instead, their nature began to shift as more and more of the void flowed into him. The magma, always glowering and angry, stayed so, but it took on a darker aspect—a depthless quality that made it seem like a smoldering window into an endless abyss. Meanwhile, the blue ice lost its shimmering, brilliant luster, becoming pale and flat, with strange fractals beneath the surface that reminded Victor of things lurking beneath the ice on a frozen lake, half-seen and waiting.

Seeing that he wasn’t destroying his Breath Core with the impulsive decision to cultivate the void, Victor redoubled his efforts. He stepped closer to the infestation, still crushing it down with his will, but widening the tendril he was pulling toward himself. He inhaled deeply, again and again, drawing torrent after torrent of the stuff into his Breath Core. He did so dozens of times, and then, much like he’d experienced with his Spirit Core, he felt his Breath Core break through a plateau, and the orbs of potent Energy within grew denser, heavy with the weight of what he’d cultivated.

More than that, his breath pathway widened and grew sturdier, and when he drew his next torrent of void-attuned Energy, it was more than double the amount he’d drawn before. His Breath Core had been at the ninth stage of “advanced,” so he assumed he’d just broken through to epic. Meanwhile, his grasp on the infestation grew firmer and firmer as it shrank and Victor drained it of its essential Energy.

Victor worked on that vast collection of void Energy for a long time, swelling the orbs of Energy in his Core to the point where they broke through three more times, and then, with a final inhalation, he drew the last of it. Victor stepped over the grass toward the tiny ball of shimmering light that he held fast with his aura.

He picked it up, releasing the force of his will, and watched as the tiny, flickering shard of Loss Chenasta’s spirit—a manifestation of his will—evaporated into wisps of steam that faded into nothingness. He’d done it. He’d destroyed the curse. Relief washed over him as a weight of worry, one he’d grown so accustomed to that he’d forgotten it existed, melted away. Standing tall, he turned, scanning the landscape until his eyes fell on Lifedrinker’s haft standing proudly in the air.

Victor jogged over to her and grabbed hold of her, lifting her out. She was cold at first, but then the wonderous material of her haft warmed under his touch, and her voice came to him, clear but dreamy. “Is that you, heart-mate? Have you come for me, at last? Your touch is familiar but not…”

“It’s me, chica. God, I’m so sorry I let you get hurt. Are you okay?”

“I’ve slept long and long, dreaming bloody dreams. I was hurt, but no longer. Now that you hold me again, with such mighty hands, can we bring terror to your foes? Can we drive them, bloody and broken, from your lands? Can we punish them for the insolence of thinking they could stand before you?”

“There she is,” Victor said gently, stroking her haft as he lifted her enormously heavy head to his shoulder. “What foes, though, chica?”

“The ones I dreamed of. The ones who threaten your home and make your women fearful.” frёeweɓηovel.coɱ

“What?”

“I think they spoke near my body. Many times, I heard them as they lamented your absence. My spirit dreamed of them; I saw their long faces, their fear-filled eyes. Long have I watched as your enemies tormented them with their presence. Come, battle-king, let us save your women!”

Victor’s heart was pounding as he listened, and he had no arguments for her. “Let’s go.” Even as he spoke, he cut the thread of his Spirit Walk spell, and his eyes flew open on the material plane. As he stood, he read through several new System messages:

***Congratulations! Your Elder Class Breath Core has evolved to: Primordial Class.***

***Your Magma affinity has been mutated to: Abyssal Magma.***

***Your Blue Ice affinity has been mutated to: Nullfrost.***

*** Congratulations! Your Breath Core has advanced: Epic 4.***

***Congratulations! You have earned a new feat: Void-Forged.***

***Void-Forged: You have been reforged and tempered by the void itself. Rather than be destroyed by the void, you have conquered it and made it a part of you. As the void is now a part of you, you will have a natural resistance to void-type attacks. Moreover, when you channel your breath weapons, nearby enemies will feel the weight of the end. Their morale will suffer, and they may flee or freeze.***

Despite his urgency and worry at Lifedrinker’s words, Victor’s lips split into a grin, and he quickly glanced at the Breath Core values on his status sheet:

Breath Core:

Primordial Class - Epic 4

Breath Core Affinity:

Abyssal Magma - 9, Nullfrost - 9

Breath Core Energy:

67000/67000

Seeing the new value for his Energy, Victor’s chest rumbled with a low chuckle. “All that fucker managed to do was make me stronger.” Slamming a fist into his palm, Victor stepped forward and twisted the key to his vault—it was time to pick up Lifedrinker and see how bad things were. As a torrent of hot, steamy air hissed out, he pushed the door wide and, for the first time in months, felt the touch of the sun on his face.