Faerie Knight 160

160 - The Dragon in the Ruins

I have determined not to order the gate sealed until after I have been able to learn more of its origins.  I have sent my sister back to Etalus, to see whether any record may be found in the imperial archives.

• The Journal of Decimus Avitus

☀

17th Day of High Summer’s Moon, AC 297

Trist ducked into a ruined building, then scooted low to the ground with his back up against what was left of a crumbling stone wall.  “It is here,” he whispered, and Acrasia appeared at his side, leaning into his shoulder.

“You can’t fight that thing, Trist,” she said.  “It’s a match for Auberon.”

“I do not have to defeat it,” he said.  “I have to distract it.  Make it work hard enough that the monster loses control of whatever it is doing with the sun.  If I can do that, I can help everyone else.  And the longer I keep it here, the safer everyone else is.  The greater chance they have to win their own battles.”

“You still have to destroy the gate,” Acrasia insisted.  “And you can bet where that monster will go.  Right where we need to be.”

“All the better,” Trist said.  “We know where it is, and we can choose when to fight it.  I have only two Tithes saved, Acrasia.  I would say now is the time to use them, but I do not believe that we have enough.” 

“No,” Acrasia confirmed.  “You no longer have even a single red thread, and strengthening anything to yellow would take at least four Tithes.  Something like Fae Blooded is even more difficult - a blue strand would be the equal of anything the King of Shadows has, but there is a reason for that.  It takes an incredible amount of power - each step requires double the Tithes of the one before.”

“Sixteen,” Trist said, after a moment of doing the math.

“Aye,” the faerie said.

“We must harvest all that we can from the weakened daemons roaming the city,” Trist reasoned, feeling that taking a risk was the only decision he could make.  “I would have preferred a sure Boon, now, before we go into this fight, then to take a chance on being unprepared, but we do not have the option.  We hunt.”

He let his senses, the more than mortal vision that he’d spent day after day training with the faerie queen, expand.  In a fight, it was easier for him to stay focused on a small area so that he did not get distracted, but now he needed to see all of Vellatesia.

The great black monster had folded its wings and landed near the center of the city, shouldering its way into a complex of ruins that must once have been quite grand.  The Sun Eater was telling Trist exactly where the Gate of Horn was, but he put that aside for now and searched out the cores of fleeing lesser daemons.

There.  A core of entwined, withered red threads, at the center of a hulking, shaggy beast.  It’s back hunched, and it walked forward as much on its long arms, knuckles to the ground, as on its rear legs.  “Gusion, the Great Ape,” Trist repeated Acrasia’s words from earlier, and the daemon paused, head tilting to the side, as if it had heard.  

On nearly the opposite side of the ruins, a great wildcat prowled.  That would be Bael, he thought, and this time refrained from saying the name aloud.  No need to risk drawing any more attention.  Acrasia had mentioned Balan, some kind of serpent daemon, as well, but two would do to begin with.  Trist threw out the orange thread of the Hunter’s Boon, fixing it to Gusion, then ducked out of the ruined building and set off running.  He had an idea, and two more Tithes might just be enough to make it happen.

Trist flew around the corner of an ancient city street, sending chips of stone flying in every direction from the force of his boots pushing off the ground.  The shaggy monster spun, throwing out a massive arm in a swipe that would easily crumple an armored destrier.  However, the ravages of time and starvation had not been kind to the daemon.

Gusion’s swing, though quick enough to catch any mortal man off guard, was to Trist so slow that it might as well have been the swing of a clumsy child.  He ducked low beneath the great furred arm, and then he was past the daemon’s bulk, spinning to slice out its hamstrings.  When the Great Ape fell forward, Trist leapt atop its broad back and thrust the tip of his sword into its dwindled red core.

“That makes three for you,” Acrasia pointed out.  “One more and we can work with it.”

“Bael,” Trist said, hoping that it called the attention of the feline daemon.  He had seen it going the opposite direction of Gusion’s attempted flight, and the Sun Eater would be between Trist and his prey.  Therefore, instead of running, he tugged an orange thread loose from his heart and ripped open a portal as close to the Cat that Hunts in the Clouds as he could place it.

The daemon yowled and leapt backward, its spine arched and fangs bared, as Trist emerged from a sparking circle of orange fire.  “Who are you, mortal?” the cat roared in a surprisingly human voice.  “Which Angelus do you serve?”

“None,” Trist told it, stalking forward and raising his sword into High Guard.  “I am Exarch to the Lady Acrasia, in service to Auberon, King of Shadows.”

“If even Auberon has taken a side, much has changed while I have slept,” Bael observed.  “But I have no intention of being Tithed to the faerie king.  Find me again some other time, Exarch - if you can.”  The daemon leapt up into the air, and its clawed feet pushed off as if it leapt from a fallen log or a boulder - but there was nothing.  Bound after bound, it ascended into the sky.

“The Cat that Hunts Across the Clouds,” Acrasia repeated, and Trist sighed.

“I thought it was poetic,” he complained, and tore open another portal, up in the air above the ascending daemon.  Then, he leapt through.

Bael’s yellow eyes widened in shock as Trist fell on him from above, sending both their bodies tumbling down to the ground.  Though the daemon’s claws scrabbled at him, and its fangs bit, Trist held on, trusting to his armor to protect him from the worst of it.  

With a great crash, the Exarch and the daemon fell directly onto a stone wall, which broke apart under their combined weight.  In a shower of dust and shattered rock, they hit the ground, and Trist lost his breath.  A sharp pain in his side stabbed at him, but he kept a single gauntlet wrapped around Bael’s hind leg.  The daemon kicked at him with its other leg, the claws on the tip of its paws catching beneath Trist’s left pauldron and digging past the chain rings beneath, into his flesh.

Unable to breathe, Trist swung his blade with one arm, directly into Bael’s core.  With a jolt, a serpentine rush of fire jagged up his arm and into his heart, and Trist collapsed in the rubble, desperately trying to catch his breath.

“Here,” Acrasia said, removing his wine-skin from his belt and holding it out to him.  “Use the Graal Boon, before you pass out.”

Trist touched the wine-skin with a tendril of orange fire, then pulled the cork stopper and put the skin to his lips.  He drank what was left down to the dregs, and the warmth of the Graal’s power spread through his torso, easing his pains until he could breathe again.

“I don’t know how you expect to fight the Sun Eater if you’re already injured,” Acrasia chided him.

“Is that concern for my well being?” he croaked back, sitting up.  “Aren’t you free if I die?”

“Concern that you do what you promised,” Acrasia shot back.  “Let me distract Sammāʾēl, while you destroy the gate.”

Trist shook his head.  “You are not a warrior, Acrasia,” he said.  “That thing will destroy you.”

“I said distract, not fight,” the faerie told him.  “I have an idea.  Now, you have four Tithes.  What do you want me to use them on?  The Graal Boon for healing?”

“No.”  Trist corked the empty wineskin and secured it to his belt.  If he survived this, there might yet be a chance to fill it.  “The Gates.  Empower the Gates further.”

“As you wish.”  Acrasia reached into his chest, pulled an orange thread forth from his core, and half-closed her eyes.  Power sparked through Trist, flooding his senses with a yellow haze as the magic he’d stolen from the daemon Bathin grew yet stronger.  Finally, when his limbs stopped twitching and returned his own control, Trist rolled onto his hands and knees and stood.

“There is still at least one daemon out there,” Acrasia warned him.  “Balan, the Three Headed Serpent.”

“It has probably already fled,” Trist pointed out, “while we were occupied.  After this is all over, Cern can hunt it down.  You are certain you can distract the Sun Eater?”

Acrasia nodded.  “You will hear it when I do.  Until then, stay here.  You’re going to use a portal to get to the Gate of Horn?”

“Aye,” Trist confirmed.  The faerie maid turned her back to him and set off through the ruins, making her way toward the center, where they had seen the massive form of Sammāʾēl land.  “Acrasia,” he called after her, and she paused, turning to glance over her shoulder.  “Be careful,” Trist said, and then there was nothing to do but wait.

He paced back and forth, rolling his shoulders to loosen himself up.  The Graal Boon had done its work, but Trist was still bruised from the fall, and he could feel a few scabbed and only partially healed tears from the claws of the daemon Bael.  Perhaps strengthening the Graal Boon would have been the better choice - but it was too late now.

A roar loud enough to hurt Trist’s ears even half a city away shook Vellatesia.  Stones crumbled, falling from the top of ancient walls, and dust blew back toward the outskirts of the old Etalan ruins.  Acrasia seemed to have caught the Sun Eater’s attention well enough.

“The Gate of Horn,” Trist muttered under his breath, and cast out the strand of the Hunter’s Boon.  The crackling line caught, and held.  He could have run to his target, with or without the ability to see, but what he wanted to try was something different.

Holding the power of one Boon in his mind, Trist teased out the yellow thread Acrasia had just finished strengthening.  Using the Hunter’s Boon as a guide, he tore open a portal in the air, then stepped through. 

The Gate of Horn stood at the bottom of a devastation of stone.  Broken bricks, pillars and statues lay scattered to every side, along with half an ancient staircase, still clinging to the side of what must have been a subterranean crypt or vault.  The stars were high overhead, only partially visible through the remains of some multi-level structure, and Trist was certain he was well beneath the ground.  If it had not been for Auberon’s Boon, allowing him to see in darkness as easily as light, and the way that Trist no longer needed to rely upon mortal sight, he would have been lost in the lightless murk.

The Gate of Horn was roughly circular in shape, with a base of white stone, perhaps marble, resting on the ground.  The edges of the stone reached up in gentle curves to either side, cradling a circular hoop or ring.  The substance of the Gate itself was not one color, but, like the horns of a hart laid low by the hunters in Trist’s youth, striated and shaded, as if it were a thing grown, not built.

Above him, and above the Gate, the Sun Eater’s wings spread, and its serpentine neck lashed, jaws wide.  Trist could not see Acrasia, but he could tell exactly what she had done to get Sammāʾēl’s attention.

Moons past, when Trist had gone into the Ardenwood to brave the Chapelle de Camiel, where Acrasia had fled after killing his brother, he had fought his own shadow, animated by the faerie’s magic.  Now, a shadow equally as massive as the daemon itself stretched its own dark wings, facing down Sammāʾēl.  Trist had overcome such a trick once before, and he had no illusion that the Sun Eater would lose, but all he needed was a moment.

Trist turned back to the Gate, raised his longsword above his head, and then brought it down.  The Gate of Horn cracked, parted beneath his swing, and then exploded in a blast of blue flame.