Chapter 42 #2
“We’re looking for a keystone,” Everest told her. “Do you know what that is? It’s tall and carved with the three faces of Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn. Something has–”
“Why are you telling her any of this?” I asked hollowly, my fingers cold where they gripped Bastian’s sword.
I should have called out to him, gone after him…but he was better off that I hadn’t.
“Because you’re done, aren’t you? So be done. I’m not giving up though. My word means something,” Everest spat, taking her blade from Septa’s throat and letting her step away so that she was no longer in immediate danger of death.
Septa blinked back the terrified tears which still pooled in her eyes, her hand touching her throat as though to make certain it hadn’t been cut.
“Look…I know this is fucking horrible from your point of view,” Everest said, waving a hand in the vague direction of Septa’s mutilated husband.
“But…umm…he deserved it. And we didn’t come here to hurt anyone else.
There really is a threat to all of us which we are trying to end.
If you know anything that could help me find the keystone–”
“You won’t be able to do shit to it even if you can find it,” I muttered.
“Then stop being a selfish cunt and come with me,” she replied forcefully.
The vial of blood which still hung from my neck heated sharply, making me hiss in pain as I snatched it away from my skin, the haze I’d been losing myself to clearing a little.
I frowned at the necklace. Were they mad at me too? Did they want me to keep my word?
“There’s something wrong with it – the keystone,” Septa said, forcing my focus to move to her and I frowned.
“You know of it?” I asked, my fingers tight around the vial which was cooling as rapidly as it had warmed.
She flinched at the question as though a mere word from my lips was as good as a strike. But she answered all the same. “It’s a place of worship in the deepest part of the castle but…I don’t know how to describe it. I’ve never liked going there. Something about it isn’t right.”
“We came here to fix it. It’s important that we do that – for you as well as us, even if I can’t explain it to you now. Can you show us where it is?” Everest asked.
Septa’s lips opened and closed, her eyes moving from me to Cayde who still clung to the last tendrils of life at my feet.
“If I take you to it, then you must swear not to kill a single Stonebreaker while you are here. You see the keystone and you leave,” she said.
“Are you including your…um…husband in that?” Everest asked. “Because yeah, we won’t hurt anyone else, but I don’t think he’s going to make it either way–”
“I can petition the Reapers,” Septa said in a shaky voice. “I will beg them to–”
“If you’re that desperate to fuck him, I can assure you it is not worth the anticipation,” I sneered. “Besides, I already rendered him incapable of the act in a far more permanent way than any fucking ‘ruin’ might have managed. So you’re out of luck.”
“Gross,” Everest muttered, glancing at the bloody stains surrounding the dagger embedded in Cayde’s groin.
Septa looked like she was going to vomit as she forced herself to look at the man who clung to life at my feet, then back to Everest who was definitely the safest choice for her focus.
“It isn’t his body I want. He…”
“Oh,” I said, realisation striking me as I caught the flavour of her desires.
“It’s those secrets he has locked up inside his head, isn’t it?
You’ve all been desperately trying to bypass my curse and loosen his lips, and it doesn’t even fucking matter anymore.
You want his secret? Fine. He was with me and my sisters when we entered a chamber filled with archways secreted away below Never Keep,” I said, weighing the sword in my grip as I prepared for what I knew I needed to do.
It was too simple, too easy, but I wanted it over.
I needed it over. “He saw these archways being activated – it was utterly incredible magic and insanely dangerous in the wrong hands. When activated, the archways could be used to step from one land to another in a matter of seconds. We could travel from the Keep to Stormfell or Pyros or Avanis in less than a heartbeat.”
“But…if that is true, then whoever knows of these archways would be able to send armies across the world in seconds. They would be able to wage war without any chance of the opposing nation being able to prepare or–”
“Which is why Prince Dragor destroyed every last one of them. So Cayde’s secrets are fucking useless to you anyway.
And any other little titbits he might have tucked away in his mind about Stormfell are likely useless to you too.
Dragor is king now. Everything has changed in the months since this bastard killed the only people I ever loved over a worthless secret.
We all know he’s a traitor too, so any knowledge he had of the movements of our armies or anything else has been altered so that the information he holds is now worthless.
He doesn’t know anything of use to you anymore.
And even if he did…you’ll never find out. ”
I drove my sword straight into Cayde’s heart as I finished it, his eyes flying open as a final cry escaped him, accusation and hatred burning through his gaze as it locked with mine.
Septa stifled a cry, staggering back against the wall, terror clinging to her, but I had no interest in taking her life too.
Relief found me in the moment of his death, and I dropped to my knees as the last of my energy failed me, tears sliding down my cheeks freely as I wept for all I’d lost.
It was done. He was gone, vengeance sought and claimed. But it didn’t bring them back.
My grief closed in on me so potently that I felt like I was being crushed beneath the weight of it.
I’d only kept moving to complete this task for them and gain this vengeance.
It had become all I was, all that I lived for.
And now that it was done, I felt so fucking empty that it was a burden to even drag air down into my wretched lungs.
“It should have been me,” I told them, tears scalding my cheeks.
They were worth a thousand of me, yet they’d offered themselves up in my place, stepped between me and death and taken the only goodness in me with them.
I didn’t know how to go on without them, I didn’t know how to be worthy of any kind of existence at all.
I’d pushed away the man who had offered me something else because I knew I didn’t deserve his affection.
I didn’t deserve him. And he and everyone else would be better off if I just let death have me now the way I’d intended.
I thought of the vow I’d given Bastian, of the promise I’d made to let him end my life.
I’d dreamed of the sweet release I might feel as his hands tightened around my throat, of how my death would be well deserved.
But now I knew in my heart that he would never claim it from me.
He saw something in me which I didn’t believe existed.
And in payment for the spark of hope and joy he’d gifted me I’d sent him running from me too.
I was alone. Just as I always should have been. And the pain of that was going to tear me in two no matter how much I wished it wouldn’t.
I pulled Bastian’s sword free of Cayde’s broken body and turned it in my grip so that the point rested against my heart, relief spilling into me at the thought of simply letting myself fall onto it now, letting it all end.
A hand landed on my shoulder as the seconds dragged on, and I forced my eyes up to meet with Everest’s as I found some small measure of my pain in her expression too.
“They wouldn’t want you to die, Vesper,” she breathed, and the vial of blood I still clung to warmed in my fist again.
I ached for the release of death but still I lingered on the wrong side of it, looking into the eyes of a woman who should have been my enemy while some fractured piece of my soul clung to the hope that she might give me a reason to keep going.
“But I bet they’d fucking love it if you saved the whole damn world in their honour. ”
“They hated this fucking world,” I said with a laugh which was half a sob, Bastian’s sword falling from my hands to clatter against the stone.
Perhaps death wasn’t ready for me yet, or perhaps I needed to admit that I wasn’t ready for it.
“But fine, you win, kitty-cat. I’ll do my best to save it anyway. ”
“She sees sense at last,” a low voice rumbled, and my gaze snapped beyond Everest to Bastian as he stepped back into the room, his expression shuttered and jaw tight.
“Bastian,” I breathed, the relief of seeing him helping to patch up some of the bleeding hurt in my soul. “I’m sorry…I–”
“There isn’t time for this now,” he said, offering me his hand, and I let him pull me to my feet. “I’m just glad you finally realised what you are.”
“And what’s that?” I asked, my eyes moving to the mutilated corpse of the bastard who had wronged me.
Bastian caught my chin and returned my gaze to his.
“Entirely unstoppable.”