Spear of Destiny: Chapter 13

A.N: There might be a bit of a delay between this chapter and Ch. 14, as we progressively edit the manuscript :)

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I lost track of the room around me, my body, and the sounds and smells of the present. Mentally, sensorily, I was back in the desert, mouthing off to Baldr, sending Karalti off, then realizing that the man in front of me wasn't Baldr at all. It was just Ororgael. I listened with growing horror as he explained Baldr's fate, then initiated the fight. There was a dream-like quality to the whole thing, the feeling of watching the battle like a movie. I was taken aback to see that Ororgael's hand-to-hand skills were surprisingly sloppy, and all things considered, past-me was able to keep up with him. My excitement built as I landed what had to be a critical hit, the kind of heart strike that Archemi always ruled as an insta-kill... but then the Heart of Memory's feed blurred, and the next moment-

"Wait." Suri's voice broke through the feed. "Can you roll it back? What was THAT?"

I concentrated as the video dissolved into a bright flash of light, and scrolled it back to look at what Suri had spotted. The Heart of Memory recorded my vision as it existed in Archemi. I had about 210 degrees of peripheral vision thanks to the Trial of Marantha, and sure enough, my eyes had glimpsed something weird. While I had my vampire claw buried in his heart, a shimmering half-seen figure had come up on me from the side. It was transparent, like heat haze, but it hauled me off Ororgael and sent me flying. Even with the blow, I'd managed to dash around Ororgael's next strike.

“That must be the ‘invisible bodyguard’ Rutha told us about in Taltos,” I said.

“Yeah, right on.  Let’s keep going. See what else he does.”

As I came out of the Shadow Dance, I saw the same shimmering figure merged into his body - and as it did, his whole demeanor changed. In a few seconds, he went from flustered to stone-faced. His entire expression shut down before his eyes and mouth flew open and he tracked me with what could only be described as a concentrated nuclear blast. From his face.

"Jesus Christ," Suri whispered.

"Welp. Guess we know what killed me." But to my surprise, the feed continued.

I crashed onto Withering Rose's back and rolled away, my armor melted and blasted beyond recognition. The fighting went to ground, but with my distant perspective on the battle, I knew I was about to lose. The air around Ororgael glitched and shivered, as if reality was trying to reject his very presence. He grasped my wrist - my left wrist - and I watched nervously as he leaned in toward me with wild, solid black eyes as his face fluxed.

“It’s time for the cure, Park. Don’t worry about your friends, or the queen. Once I rid the world of squalor and bring order back into the system, every one of those idiots will thank me for it.” Ororgael's hand liquified into a silvery goo that crawled up my arm and over my scarred shoulder, toward my face.

Increasingly apprehensive, I watched myself briefly panic, then leverage Archemi’s quick-consume feature to drink most of the liquid mana in my inventory. There was no pain, remembered or otherwise: just light, and a whirling, spinning blur as the Heart of Memory was flung away by the detonation. When the blaze cleared, all that was left of me was a star-shaped smudge of charcoal on the back of the Warsinger. But the Heart was still there, recording a much narrower and blurrier field of vision, and so was Ororgael.

"Hah..." Swaying on his feet, Ororgael slowly picked himself up from the epicenter. His feathery hair was burned away, his mirrored silver plate soot-covered and smoking. He almost seemed to be drunk, or half asleep, until the ghostly figure merged out of him. As it did, his form solidified again. He shook his head, as if awakening from hypnosis.

"Of course I can hear you," he muttered. “Always the same shit, the same lies. But I’m not afraid of you any more.”

He dropped his sword, then stumbled to the left a few steps. There, he planted his feet and held out his arms, craning his neck to stare up at something we couldn't see.

The sky darkened, and a great winged shadow fell over Withering Rose.

"It’s right underneath me!" Ororgael shouted. "Get it out of there! Now!"

A mournful, bass keen boomed from overhead. Sand slithered, picking up into a cyclonic wind that picked up around the Warsinger's body. Withering Rose began to tremble, rumbling like an earthquake and a thunderstorm all in one.

Ororgael left the spot he'd been standing, walking over to the Spear of Nine Spheres. We watched him scoop it off the ground and hold it up close to his face, as if examining the blade. Then he screamed, dropping the weapon as the Pearl of Glorious Dawn wrenched itself free from his forehead and snapped into its socket. The Spear clattered to the Warsinger’s back, then vanished as he clutched at the wound, blood pouring through his fingers.

“Fuck!” He roared. “Ugh! Motherfuck! Hyperion! Now!”

The red sand of the Bashir Desert rose around him like a curtain, howling as the unnatural darkness around him deepened. There was an intense warping sound - and then a pure beam of absolute blackness flashed down from the sky, drawing the remaining light of day with it in an incandescent flash. The narrow beam pierced Withering Rose like an arrow from heaven, throwing up a cloud of filthy smoke. It obscured everything.

The recording cut.

“FUCK!” Suri banged her fist on her knee, rising to her feet in agitation. “He trashed the fuckin’ Warsinger! That absolute cunt! ”

“We don’t know for sure. We have to go back and see what happened. As soon as Karalti gets back, we’ll gear up and go.” Stomach twisting anxiously, I rolled the footage back to the point where Ororgael mentioned OUROS, and paused. Listened to it again. “What does ‘squalor’ mean? I’ve heard the word before, but I flunked English at school.”

“Uhh…” Suri stopped pacing and looked back at me. “I dunno. I never even went to school.”

“Your Majesty: ‘squalor’ means the state of being extremely dirty and unpleasant, especially as a result of poverty or neglect.” A voice as dry as dead leaves crackled through the still air of the Ducal Suite.

Suri and I both looked up to the front door. As a Greater Shade, Mehkhet the Illuminator resembled the man he'd been in life. Bald, clean-shaven, with a thin beaky face and lips pursed as tight as a cat's butthole.  He was made entirely of frigid shadows, a darkness so cold and pure that his robes trailed a cloud of frost as he hovered over to stand in front of us.

“Oh.” I gave him a little wave. “Hi, Mehkhet.”

“Good afternoon, Master.” He gave me a stiff little bow, before refocusing on Suri. “My lady. I shall have to instruct you on your dictation and comprehension if you are ever to rule as your ancestress did, your Majesty. Such scholarly deprivation cannot stand.”

"Fuck dictation and comprehension," she snapped. “How long have you been here, sticky-beaking around?”

"Not long," he replied hollowly. "I’ve been haunting – so to speak – the ruins of the castle library since you returned. But I felt something stir the air just before, as if the name of some terrible evil had been uttered inside this tower. Capital-N Name, that is. I came to check on you out of an abundance of caution."

“Everything’s fine.” Her eyes were stormy with mingled anger and worry as she resumed pacing. “No demons, no nothing. Just one busted Warsinger and a fuckin’ crazy idiot of an Architect. Baldr, or Ororgael or whatever he calls himself: he knows that the Drachan’ll kill him too, right? If we can’t stop them?”

“I… don’t think he does,” I said. “Judging from what we just heard, he’s batshit insane and is living in some alternate reality where he’s the hero and I’m some kind of evil virus.”

“Tyrants are apt to create their own realities and their own version of the truth,” Mehkhet replied, sourly. “I am glad all is well.”

“Withering Rose isn’t ‘well’. She’s fucked.” Suri got to her feet. “We have to go see how much damage Ororgael did to her, Hector. Where’s Karalti?”

I closed my eyes and concentrated, sensing out along the Bond. “Karalti? You manage to find something to eat? We need you back here.”

“Sure did!” She chirped. “Why? Is something wrong?”

“We just watched the footage from the fight with Bal… Ororgael,” I said. “It’s not good. He called some kind of fucking orbital strike on Withering Rose. We need to go scout her out ASAP.”

There was a pause. “What if Ororgael’s still there?”

“After four days? I doubt it.” I shook my head. “Either he cheated and found a way to magically move eighteen-hundred tons of metal to Ilia already, or its still there and we're in a race with Ilia's navy to retrieve it.”

“Right. Well, I can teleport twice more today, but after that I’m going to be really tired,” Karalti said. “My stamina is bleh after Lahati’s Tomb. Meet me out in the courtyard when you’re ready. Oh! And don’t forget! Today’s potion day.”

“I know. I haven’t had time to check with the Masterhealer and see if she has any more King’s Grass,” I replied. “Give us fifteen. We’ll be out and ready to fly.”

“Okay!”

My eyes flickered open, and I looked up to see Suri waiting expectantly.

“She’s back,” I said, getting to my feet. “Let me go see if I can scrounge some better armor from Captain Vilmos. As soon as I’m geared up, we can go back to the Bashir and see what Ororgael left for us.”