Blood Feast: A Fantasy Romance

The Relic Blade

The battlefield flickered aroundLio. He sat in Agata’s kitchen over a tray of apple tarts. Then across from Lucis in the solar while the king poured him a glass of wine.

Miranda’s life and the Collector’s secrets shuddered past each other until Lio fell through the cracks of her suffering mind. He landed on his hands and knees on a stone floor.

First, you must sire the witch’s heir.

Lio could still taste those words on his tongue. The command that had ruled his Grace’s mortal life. His belly heaved, and he emptied it, as if he could purge the Collector’s evil from his mind.

“And you think you have the stomach to challenge me,” Kallikrates mused.

Lio wiped his mouth and dragged himself to his feet to face the Collector. They were in the main hall of Paradum. At the head of the chamber, in Miranda’s father’s chair, sat Kallikrates.

Or at least a manifestation of him that he wanted Lio to see. He wore the black robe and pendant of the undertaker. Confident, elegant, he lounged there with his hooded face lost in shadow.

Miranda lay at his feet, insensate and bleeding. She had given him her love, her loyalty, her very Will. And this was all she was to him. Not a person. Merely another tool to be used until it broke.

Lio tested the fabric of the room. This was Kallikrates’ final foothold in her mind, but he held on here with an iron grasp. Lio would not be able to free her without a fight.

He would have to fight even harder to free himself.

“You are too deep in the game now, Deukalion. You will never be free.” Kallikrates stroked the crow that was eating out of his hand.

The bird had no heartbeat. Miranda’s familiar? Or something more? Lio had seen it flying free in the ripe orchard. Coming to life in her hands when she had discovered her power.

He looked down at the dagger in his hand. If this was Miranda’s chain, could the bird be her Will?

“Be careful,” the Collector said. “You will hurt yourself on that blade.”

“Your taunts no longer frighten me. You cannot make me doubt myself. You have suffered nothing but losses tonight, and I am not finished.”

“I have known many like you who were consumed by the craving for knowledge. Few can look into the sun without burning their eyes. We all know how weak Hesperines are to the sun.”

“Enough riddles. There is no genius in your plots. You have shaped and destroyed so many lives, and for what? Revenge. You are no better than any other petty man ruled by his rage.”

Kallikrates chuckled. “You should know better. I will indulge in some revenge, yes, but that is not enough to satisfy me. I want the same thing you do. The power of the Silvicultrix.”

Lio stalked forward. “You want her power for yourself. I want it for her.”

“I would have made her more powerful than you ever can. Miranda has such sincere faith in my game. She is a knight who imagines herself a queen. But Cassia…I would have built her a throne. She believed in nothing. A superbly selfish being. She would have become my perfect, ruthless diamond if you had not ruined her with your weak-minded Hesperine principles.”

“Those principles gave her the Will to refuse you. Ask yourself whose mind is weak.”

“There is one pair in all of history I hate more than Lucian and Ebah. You and Cassia have that distinction.”

“Lucian and Ebah were the complication in the previous round of the game, weren’t they? They stood against you during the Last War, when you destroyed civilization to begin another cycle of suffering for the shadowlands.”

Kallikrates laughed softly. “How innocent you are, to think the Last War was the destruction of civilization.”

He kept using words as weapons to make Lio feel small. But Lio had now glimpsed one of Kallikrates’s own memories, and that was the key for drawing the truth out of his lies.

Lio fortified his mental defenses and did the very thing he had been so angry at Cassia for doing. He kept Kallikrates talking. “How can this be? We’re living in the same round as the last epoch?”

Kallikrates fed the crow another bit of apple. “At the true end of a round, we only preserve sufficient survivors to repopulate the board. We burn their scrolls and destroy all evidence of what they built. We take away their memories of their own families and the names of their gods.”

“That was what you tried to do during the Last War,” Lio realized, “but you failed. It was supposed to be the end, but the shadowlands survived. Lucian and Ebah helped save them.”

“There is no saving the shadowlands. They belong to us, and so too will the Empire one day.”

Lio took another step forward, going closer and closer to the shadow itself. “Ebah preserved her power in that barrow, where it will survive for future generations. You can’t end this round unless you get inside to destroy the evidence.”

“One more brittle door. Then the legacy of Cassia’s ancestors will survive only in my mind. With that power, I will win the next round, too. This is already set in motion, and by the time you understand my strategy, there will be nowhere left on the board for you to move.”

Lio laughed at Kallikrates. “This is why you hate us so much. Cassia’s legacy will survive as long as she does, and I have made her immortal.”

“Hesperines die a little more slowly than humans, but you still die.”

“We didn’t. We survived. As bravely as Lucian and Ebah resisted you, they alone could not have stopped you from finishing the round. There was another, even greater obstacle, wasn’t there? Hesperines. We escaped and gathered the best of this epoch behind our Sanctuary wards. As long as Orthros stands, this round will never end.”

“We can afford to be patient.”

“You are not patient. All six of you are furious at being robbed of the conclusion of your game. And you most of all, Kallikrates. You relish this round, when the rules dictate you play with subtlety and secrecy. You were winning, weren’t you? Until your playing pieces took their fates into their own hands and robbed you of victory.”

There was a smile in Kallikrates’s voice. “I am still winning.”

“Not this time. This will be the last round. We will make sure of that.”

Lio was only a pace away from Miranda now. He paused, holding so much latent thelemancy ready that his thought-form wavered. But the Collector made no move to stop him.

This was a trap. But Lio didn’t know what would spring it, or what the consequences would be.

Miranda stirred, groaning. “Master?”

Kallikrates said nothing. She opened her eyes, and her gaze fixed on Lio standing over here with her relic dagger. Her chest rose and fell with a panicked breath.

For the first time, Miranda begged. “Please, Master. Any fate but this. Break me a thousand times more and let me earn my way back to you. Let me pay with my flesh. My magic. My pain. But don’t let him destroy me.”

“Stand and fight him, my champion. Show me you are still my greatest Overseer.”

Miranda pushed herself up on her trembling arms. Blood still dripped down her chin. She got her legs under her, only for her knees to buckle. Her strength was gone.

Kallikrates had to know that. He was manipulating her. This was as much a trap for her as it was for Lio. But why?

“Stand!” Kallikrates’s command echoed through the hall. “Defeat him, and you will have your reward. I will let you torture Cassia in front of him before you kill him for me, just as you have dreamed.”

The crow fluttered as Miranda tried again to stand.

“My power is still with you, Miranda,” the Collector crooned. “You are greater than Cassia will ever be. One night soon, she will be broken and humiliated before you and finally understand how powerful you truly are. I will listen with pleasure while she begs you for mercy, just as she did the night you took her magic. The way she wept as we hollowed her…I want to hear that again, don’t you?”

Those taunts were designed to goad both Miranda and Lio into a rage. Why was Kallikrates pitting them against each other, when he could throw all his power at Lio through his Overseer?

There was only one explanation: he couldn’t. Their bond was failing. Miranda was burning out. She had turned from a weapon into a weakness, one Lio had already exploited to steal Cassia’s magic and the Collector’s secrets.

Kallikrates wanted Lio to kill her for him and destroy his own link to the Collector’s memories. And he believed Lio would do it.

Lio had tortured seven mages for the sake of slaughtered strangers, and the Collector knew it. He expected Lio to do even worse to Miranda because of how she had hurt Cassia. There were long nights when Lio had wanted to.

But once again, a Hesperine was about to defy the Collector’s expectations.

Miranda lifted her head, glaring up at Lio through her ragged hair. Behind her, Kallikrates tightened his hand around the flapping crow. Lio adjusted his hold on her relic blade.

Miranda let out the battle cry and threw herself at Lio. The colors leached from the room as she drew on the last of her strength, aiming for the dagger.

Lio threw the blade, putting all the force of his mind magic behind the attack.

Miranda barreled into him. He caught her, holding her despite her feeble struggles. The relic blade flew true and landed in the Collector’s heart.

His howl became a wind that blew the stone walls into smoke. The bird sprang free of his hand with a cry.

Miranda sagged against Lio. He scooped her up in his arms as the floor dissolved, and they fell together into the void.

Lio gathered the fragments of her thoughts into another mindscape. He dropped lightly to his feet before the Ritual Sanctuary of Hagia Boreia. The dome rose above them, whole and beautiful against the starry sky. Through the open doors, the great statue of Hespera smiled at them from among incense and shadows.

Lio laid Miranda’s still form down on the threshold of the Goddess’s Sanctuary. There was no blood on her now, and her armor was gone. In the simple dress of an impoverished lady, she looked so young. So vulnerable.

The crow swooped down to nestle on her chest. She woke gently this time with a soft sound of question. She reached up to stroke the bird, so carefully, as if she feared it would fly away.

“Hespera gives us as many chances as we need,” Lio said. “Here is your next one. Use it well.”

And then he released her mind. She faded before his eyes in a swirl of black feathers.

As Miranda advanced onLio’s body, Cassia stepped in front of him. Blood ran fresh inside Hespera’s Rose, circling his still form. She fed the libations of past heretics to the Lustra and conjured black roses around her Grace.

“I will—” Kallikrates declared again. But his deep, commanding tone faded into Miranda’s own voice.

“I will—” she said. “I…will…”

Her relic dagger fell from her hand. The ancient stone artifact struck the floor and shattered into pieces.

The strength seemed to drain from her limbs. She stumbled forward into the Ritual circle and fell against Cassia.

Stunned, Cassia caught Miranda in her arms and eased her to the ground. Hoarse gasps wracked Miranda’s body. She looked up at Cassia with fear and wonder and a question in her eyes. Just as on the day her necromancy had awoken and she had turned to Cassia to help her understand.

Her aura was pure. In that moment, she felt like the friend Cassia had once cherished. Cassia unclenched her hands from around her foci.

Lio had saved them both.

“What”—Miranda panted—“is happening—to me?”

Mak and Lyros drew near, their weapons at the ready, the hounds growling at their sides.

“It’s all right,” Cassia told them all. She stroked Miranda’s hair. “You’re going to be all right.”

Cassia didn’t know if that was true. Miranda’s mortal body was covered in wounds only an Overseer could withstand. Had Lio restored her mind, only for the injuries of their physical battle to end her?

But if that was to be Miranda’s fate, she would die free.

Cassia rocked her friend in her arms. She hoped her words would finally reach Miranda’s heart, now that the Collector no longer ruled it. “I’m so sorry I betrayed you. I want you to know how much remorse I feel. I wish I could change our past. But I’m here for you now. I won’t leave you.”

Miranda clung to her. “Cassia…?”

She hadn’t heard Miranda say her name like that in ten years.

The blood in the Ritual circle stirred. Mak sucked in a breath.

Lyros took a step back. “Cassia, is that your magic?”

“No. Could it be…?”

The circle pulsed with a myriad of magic left behind by all who had cast spells in defense of Hagia Boreia. Lio’s thelemancy. Apollon’s stone magic. And the healing affinity of Anastasios, their martyred foregiver.

As blood soaked into Miranda’s necromancer robes, her wounds eased away. She drew one last deep breath, like a drowning girl breaking the surface at last.

Then a shock passed through her. Her gaze darted between Cassia, Mak, and Lyros. Recognition lit Miranda’s eyes, then fear. She began to struggle.

Cassia released her, holding up her hands in a reassuring gesture. “You’re free. Go somewhere safe where you can heal. Please, Miranda. Stay safe. Be well.”

Miranda backed away, a lifetime of emotions reanimating her aura. A caw sounded from the sky, and her crow swooped down into her arms. With her familiar nestled against her chest, she disappeared.

“She traversed,” Lyros said in astonishment. “She still has her magic.”

Lio didn’t merely save people. He made them whole. Cassia leaned over her Grace and took his face in her hands.

Lio? It’s over. You won. It’s safe to come back to us now.

Cassia! His arcane call sent a chill through her blood and pulled her in the depths of his mind.

The temple of Lio’smind shook. A pillar came crashing down, sending pain reverberating through his being. No. This shouldn’t be happening.

Fire crackled behind him. He spun to see smoke billowing through the complex. The flames of the Last War flickered closer to him. He had to get out.

When a hooded figure in a black robe strode up the steps toward him, he knew who was taking control of the vision.

There was a tear in the chest of Kallikrates’s robe. The relic blade hung from his hand. “You should have heeded my warnings about the dagger.”

Cassia! Lio called.

I’m here.

Pull me back to you. Open our Grace Union with all your might.

Cassia’s presence filled the Sanctuary behind Lio. Roses of every color flowed up from the ground and caught the falling pieces of the temple in their branches. Her vines embraced him and pulled him toward safety.

Lio hurled thelemancy at Kallikrates. The floor at his feet split open, and the air around him tore to reveal an endless sky. Lio looked into the seams of his own mind.

No. How was this possible? They were not in Miranda’s thoughts anymore. Somehow, the Collector had exploited their link and followed Lio back into his own mind.

I’m holding you. Cassia echoed his own vow back to him. No one touches your mind but me.

Her power swept him back into the Ritual Sanctuary. The double doors slammed shut. Her roses twined up the Goddess’s statue to close the skylight in the dome overhead.

The relic blade sliced through the vines above, and they both screamed. Lio clutched his head, crumpling to the floor, and met the Collector’s unblunted power.

The agony of Miranda’s attack in Hierax Temple had been nothing. Now Kallikrates cut through Lio’s mental defenses with his own hands. His limbs seized, and his back arched off the floor. The mindscape around them wavered, flickering to blackness, then burning bright as fire.

Stay with me. Cassia filled his mind, and everywhere she touched, her presence dulled the pain of the Collector’s attack. You’re not alone. We can defeat him together.

Lio dragged himself to his feet. Smoke was pouring down through the skylight to fill the Sanctuary. From the billowing clouds before Lio, the Collector appeared.

Lio hurled another blast of his power at Kallikrates. The spell buffeted the Old Master’s robes, and for an instant, his grimace was visible inside his hood. His gray lips stretched around his bared teeth, an image from the death throes of everyone he had sent to their graves.

His hand shot out, shrouded in black with long, sharp nails. Lio tried to dodge, but his own mind and body warped, throwing him into the Collector’s grasp. Kallikrates grasped him by the hair and dug claws into Lio’s skull.

Cassia’s roses lashed out at Kallikrates. A spiral of vines closed around him like a shroud. But her thorns passed through his spectral form.

He forced Lio to his knees at Hespera’s feet. “I am here to collect my price.”

Lio’s mind, his greatest strength, was fragmenting. The immutable pieces of himself shuddered and broke and rearranged. He reached for each certainty inside himself, only to find new voids where parts of him had been torn away.

He had never been so afraid.

Cassia!he called out to his Grace in desperation.

She was right there inside him, where she always was. He hadn’t lost her yet.

He confessed the horror creeping into his every remaining thought. I’m not sure I can stop him.

Her love was in the void, filling the chasms in his fracturing mind. I will stop him.

I don’t want you to go through this with me.

I know. But I will never leave you.

His Grace appeared before Hespera, her fangs bared in a snarl of fury. Her white avowal robes fluttered around her, untouched by the smoke. She held Rosethorn, dripping with blood over their chalice, and her pendant glowed on her chest.

She hurled her dagger at Kallikrates. Her power sailed through the landscape of Lio’s mind toward the Collector’s heart.

Kallikrates, faster than thought, drove the relic blade into Lio’s throat. The statue of Hespera shattered into countless shards as Lio watched his own mind break.

Lio’s cry of paindied on the Collector’s blade, but Cassia screamed for him. His jaw hung open. He lifted his hands to his neck, catching his own blood.

Words, thoughts, everything Cassia was ceased. She became her Grace’s pain.

The Collector staggered away from Lio, his hands around the hilt of Rosethorn. He tried uselessly to pull her blade from his heart. A hole was growing from the wound, eating away his form to reveal a starry sky.

“You are no thelemancer, Cassia,” Kallikrates hissed. “You have no power in his mind.”

“I am the power in his mind.”

The walls, the air, the sky above were a part of him and of her. Fractures were spreading across these manifestations of his tortured mind, and the dome above cracked a warning. But she was present in his every thought, and she would not let his innermost Sanctuary fall.

At her summons, the fragments of the Goddess’s body spun around her. She hurled them all at Kallikrates.

A flurry of sacred stone shredded him. More bright stars shone through his wounds. His groan of shock echoed to the dome of the Sanctuary.

He had finally met a magic he could never collect. Grace Union was more powerful than him.

Cassia moved in front of Lio, pouring the strength of their bond into her dagger. Her black roses snaked out from the blade embedded in the Collector’s chest. This time, they took hold of him.

As he opened his mouth to speak more poison, she wrapped her vines around his neck and squeezed. The voice from their nightmares halted in his throat.

Cassia raised a whorl of blood from the chalice. “I will cast you out. I will hunt you down, and when I find you, the price I collect will make you wish for the fleeting existence of a forgotten mortal.”

She flung the blood at him. It splattered across his thelemantic form. Tiny cracks sounded, like frost eating at glass.

The Collector shattered. Shards of frozen blood scattered across the Sanctuary. As the smoke began to clear, the moons shone down through the skylight, making the crimson slivers glitter.

Cassia fell to her knees beside Lio and eased him onto his back. The relic blade was gone, banished with is creator. She pressed one hand to her Grace’s bleeding wound and held her wrist to his mouth.

“Stay with me!”

His eyes slid shut. The walls of the Sanctuary disappeared, and they were kneeling in a vast expanse of stars.

“No! Hold on!”

She wrapped him in their bond. His heart beat with hers. But his mind faded beyond her reach.