CHAPTER FIVE
CAMBION
Mortal Realm
“Dragan,” Eilish starts as she turns from Baron and faces the barbarian.
Dragan staunchly shakes his head and refuses to look at her.
“Baron,” I begin but the vampire interrupts me.
“Revenant,” he hisses. “My name is Revenant.”
Fuck calling him Revenant. He’s Baron, just as much as he always was.
Dragan spears Baron with the weight of his stare. “The agreement was that once Cambion restored your memories, you’d leave.”
“No, Dragan,” Eilish says, her tone of voice bordering on panicked. “He needs us as much as we need him.”
“Revenant is weak after experiencing the stone,” I say in a low, yet strong voice as I face the immense gargoyle. “It wouldn’t be right to set him on his own at this point.” I don’t tell him that we need Baron because I figure that avenue of argument won’t get far.
Baron has somehow upset the proud barbarian and I have a feeling that upset has everything to do with the girl. Fucking fools—both of them.
“I don’t give a fuck,” Dragan says as he faces me.
“Well, I don’t believe your not giving a fuck matters much,” I answer with a simple shrug. “It would seem you’ve been outvoted, old chap,” I finish with a smug smile.
Dragan inhales deeply and there’s a pronounced reddish hue overcoming his cheeks. Well, fuck him! Clearly he’s forgotten the fact that I’m now in charge and for good reason. I don’t allow my fucking jealousy to get in the way of what needs to be done.
“I need to speak with Eilish alone,” Baron says again.
Flumph pipes up, “Secrets don’t make friends,” he half mocks before clumsily tipping his stew, its hot contents falling across his lap. “Christ on a corndog!” he cries an’ then flies upward and begins circling, all the while doing a strange dance midair.
“Flumph is right,” I say, before wincing at the indignity of aligning myself with the imbecile sprite. “If we’re to beat Variant, it’s important we all be open and honest with one another.”
Dragan and Baron exchange a look; I see Eilish shrink into herself. I wonder at their expressions and begin to believe the three of them have a secret of their own…
“I’se gotta secret,” the sprite confides. He looks guiltily into his lap. “Earlier when me and Gar-boil was collecting firewood, I took me a nap instead.”
“We know, Flumph,” say Eilish and Dragan in unison. Eilish blushes.
The sprite looks relieved after his confession.
I don’t have time for this crap.
“It’s… important I speak with Eilish,” Baron says again.
Dragan and I exchange looks, but this will be my call. “Very well,” I say as I flash Dragan a look that warns him not to argue. He glares at me but turns and trudges into the forest, wandering away, perhaps to regurgitate the slop he calls stew.
“Be quick,” I say to Baron as I prepare to depart and allow the two of them their supposed privacy. Truth is, I have every intention of spying on them. In times of war, privacy is not a right. It’s a luxury.
Baron nods and I depart, marching along the crunchy sticks and leaves that litter the forest floor as Eilish and Baron’s conversation begins. I can hear the low hums of their voices carry across the empty tree branches, but before I can listen for specific words, my hearing is obscured by the loud flapping of Flumph’s wings.
“Whatcha think they’re talkin’ ‘bout, all secret-like?” he asks, annoying the bloody fuck out of me.
“I don’t know,” I say, swatting at the sound of his wings hovering close to my ear. He doesn’t take the hint, just as I knew he wouldn’t. If my owl, Trym, were present, I should order him to eat the bloody thing with immediacy. Luckily for Flumph, he’s not.
“Think they’s talkin’ ‘bout bein’ in looooove?”
“No,” I respond coldly. I’ll need my focus in order to cast a scrying spell, which means the sprite needs to bugger off. I begin looking for something I can use as my focus—in general, scrying spells require a mirror, or a fountain filled with water. Yes, I could create either with my Transmutation Magic but doing so is time-consuming and quite frankly, I don’t believe I have the time. In a pinch, I can use the fluorite crystal in my ring, but I don’t wish to be sloppy. Baron will know someone is listening if I’m not careful.
“Or maybees they workin’ for Variant now. That stone changed their ‘legiances!” Flumph continues.
“Why don’t you go spy on them and see what you can find out?” I ask in an attempt to rid myself of the infuriating thing.
“Me?” he asks.
“Of course!” I fake urge him back the way we came.
“I isn’t very sneaky,” he hedges.
“You may surprise yourself,” I reply, already distracted. I focus my energy on the stone in my ring, hoping Baron’s exhaustion will cause his guard to slip.
As soon as Flumph’s wings flutter away, back in the direction in which we just came, I close my eyes as I press the ring to my forehead and channel my energy into the fluorite. Immediately the crystal begins to heat and I instruct it to act as my ears.
At first the sounds of Baron and Eilish’s conversation meets my ears in a blur but slowly the words begin to take legible shape. I deepen my concentration and fairly soon I can hear Baron as clearly as if he were standing beside me.
“… destroyed by the last of the Succubus,” Baron finishes.“But deep down Dragan knows you aren’t the same as Lamia and her sisters. If he actually believed you were, he wouldn’t still care about you.”
“And why do you even think he does?” Eilish’s clear voice rings out, startling me out of the lull of Baron’s deep bass. I’m immediately waylaid by my own confusion.
“It’s obvious in the way he looks at you, and the way he dislikes me.”
“But what does it mean?” Eilish continues. “So what if I’m part Succubus? I’m still me . I haven’t changed. Dragan can’t hate an entire race of people just because he was manipulated by three.”
What the fucking fuck? I rail against myself as shock launches a bomb inside my stomach. The bloody angel is a fucking Succubus?! How is it even possible? The last of the Succubae died when Dragan sacrificed Lamia and her daughters!
“I think Dragan can and does,” Baron says.
“It’s… it’s so unfair.”
“Such is the way of the world,” he responds with a snicker. I’m still so fucking floored, I find it difficult to continue paying attention to their conversation.
“I’m not those women,” Eilish says stubbornly.
“Aren’t you, though?” Baron asks.
If she’s Succubus, she’s demon. There’s nothing more to be said on the subject.
It’s a moment before I can detach my focus enough to process what they’re saying. The events of the last few days begin to make so much more sense. In fact, everything makes so much more sense.
Dragan’s sudden cold attitude towards her…
My attraction to her, my distrust of her from the outset…
She isn’t the creature of light I thought she was.
Eilish being Succubus changes everything.
My confusion doesn’t stay long. Soon it’s replaced with a boiling fury as something else occurs to me.
They lied to me! They fucking lied to me!
All three of them—Baron, Dragan, and Eilish.
They knew what she was and they kept it a secret. Why? Aren’t we all on the same team? Dragan wants my help with his suicide pact, and he still can’t even manage to give me a modicum of fucking truth!
My rage is enough to make my focus fail, and there’s a small shift in the air as I hurry to correct my mistake.
“Shhh,” Baron says urgently, “someone’s listening.”
I freeze, certain I’ve been caught.
“There he is!” Eilish shouts. I whip around, but I’m still out of sight from both of them, thus I realize she can’t be referring to me.
Then, I hear it, Flumph’s tinny voice joins the scene.
Relief washes over me, but it’s not long before my anger returns. I open my eyes and detach my focus from the ring, taking long strides toward the vicinity in which I saw Dragan heading.
The forest is empty, the dawn of a new day casts its eerie blue over the still trees. Dragan is nowhere to be seen. I use Locate Creature to sniff him out and my attention is directed nearby, up the branch of a tree not ten yards from me.
Sitting on the lowest branch, so still he could be a statue, is Dragan.
“I have a fucking bone to pick with you!” I say. I feel like sucker-punching him but I know better. Punching Dragan is like trying to punch a grizzly bear.
With an impressive leap, he lands in front of me, rattling the forest.
“What’s up your butt?” he asks before stalking off deeper into the forest. I follow him.
“Maybe it has something to do with the fact that everyone is fucking lying to me.”
He scoffs. “Lying to you?”
“About the angel,” I continue. “If we can even call her that anymore.”
“You know, then?” He stops in his tracks and turns to face me.
“Yes, I fucking know! And you know what else I know? This whole fucking thing is now a doomed mission!”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“It doesn’t matter what you would or wouldn’t say, you cock! Look at the fucking facts!”
“Calm down.”
“Calm yourself down!” I glare back at him. “The three of you fucking lied to my face while trying to sell me on this team shit, that using the power of the angel we could defeat Variant. What a load of fucking shit!” I spit at his feet and when I look up, there’s fire in his eyes.
“We had no other choice.”
“Fuck no other choice!”
“Revenant and I haven’t known long,” he asserts. “We found out right before we crossed the River of Souls.”
“So why the fuck didn’t you tell me then?”
“Because… it was complicated.”
“Fuck complicated!” I pause to take a breath. “You owed it to me to tell me.”
“And give you even more reason to hate her?”
“I would have every right to hate her! She’s a fucking demon! A manipulative, powerful demon who’s probably been draining every one of us this whole time! Fucking fuck, Dragan! I shouldn’t have to explain that to you, of all fucking people!” I inhale deeply and notice he hasn’t responded. “How could you possibly still trust her after learning she’s fucking Succubus ?”
“I don’t trust her,” he tells me. His voice is low, a growl. I know I’m entering dangerous territory, but I can’t stop myself. Fury is consuming me.
“Don’t fucking lie to me, you piece of shit.”
“I’m not lying to you.” He takes a breath as his hands fist and his jaw grows even tighter. “I don’t trust her.”
“But you’re fighting it,” I insist while I study him. “You’re still as attached to her as the day you came to me in Geldingstock, asking for my help to get her off the Atacomite .”
“We’re all fighting it. You just won’t fucking admit it,” he rails back at me.
“You led me down this fucking path once before and I won’t go down it again,” I spit at him. “I won’t risk my life a second time to watch you fuck it all up for some… for some… demon whore!”
“I won’t make the same mistake again!” Dragan yells back at me. “And you’re forgetting that even if Eilish is part Succubus, she’s also still part angel!” I glare at him, but when he speaks again, his voice is softer. “I know it’s my fault we lost the war, Cambion. I know that. I was charmed by one of those… things. Lamia took over my mind and I didn’t even know it was happening. But I promise you, I’m stronger now. I won’t make the same mistake twice.”
“You already have.”
“How?” he demands.
I roll my eyes. “Because you’re fucking in love with her, you stupid asshole!”
“Bullshit.” He shakes his head resolutely and his eyes burn. “That’s fucking bullshit!”
“Tell me you wouldn’t cave to her will in an instant if given the chance,” I press before I start shaking my head. “You’d cave, just like you did with Lamia. And no one would be able to blame you, because that’s what they do—they charm you, and then they manipulate you. You’ve already been compromised. I trust you as little as I do her.”
“It’s not like that this time,” he growls.
“And I’m supposed to believe you? After what you did when Lamia was manipulating you?”
“Then don’t fucking believe me, I don’t care.” He takes a breath. “Regardless, what do we do now?”
“I want the Succubus gone.”
“Gone? What the fuck do you mean?” he asks with the expression of a bad taste in his mouth.
“Gone as in we leave her somewhere.”
“Where?”
I throw up my hands in anger. “Leave her in the forest to die, for fuck’s sake! I don’t fucking care! The sooner we get rid of her, the better as far as I’m concerned.”
“She won’t be safe on her own.”
“And we care why?” I demand.
“Because she’s still angel which means Variant will still be after her.”
“Unless she’s been working for Variant all along and we were just too fucking stupid to realize it until now.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“But you also can’t deny it with any certainty. The point is, we don’t know what we’re fucking dealing with.”
“I can’t argue that, but I also can’t agree to leaving Eilish to her doom.”
He forgets I was there, all those years ago. Our attack plan was ready; we’d united our allies against the false king. We were prepared. And then Lamia, queen of the Succubae, entered the scene. She convinced Dragan she wanted to fight with us, she and her daughters. Not long after, she seduced Dragan, manipulated him into believing that he, alone, could defeat Variant. And he turned his back on our plan and on us.
He turned his back on me.
When it was finally revealed that Lamia was a minion of Variant all along, it was too late to do anything to stop what was already in motion.
Variant had won the war and the only weapon he’d needed was a woman.
“I won’t fail again, Dragan,” I say.
***
BARON
It was with great reluctance that I returned to the mortal plane after my time with the Transmutation Stone . I’d expected the visions to come at once, for my memories to fill in and for the roaming questions I’d entertained for the better part of a century to be answered.
Such was not the case. Instead, I’d received an eclectic mix of visions that made little sense.
It was as though I were falling into a dream—one I had no way of controlling. There was no rhyme nor reason to the images the stone revealed; they were erratic and disjointed. It was like glimpsing someone’s life from the view of their open doorway. Yet, it was addicting.
If knowledge is poison, it is one for which I have no immunity.
Perhaps it was due to the fact that I didn’t feel as though the events were happening to me, but I felt no real attachment to the individual, Baron. I found the scenes of his coronation, along with his death, to be two-dimensional and boring. Never did I feel as though it were myself I was viewing. This Baron person was foreign and unknown to me. He still remains as such.
I’m not Baron.
I’m Revenant, such that I was when I was pulled back to life and forced to claw my way out of my own grave.
Of all the memories and images the stone revealed, what fascinated me most were those of Variant. I was given a window into my enemy that allowed me to better understand him. Never before had I seen this side of Variant and now after having witnessed it, I feel better prepared to unseat him. Knowing thy enemy is commandment number one in the art of war.
Whatever score Baron had to settle with Variant before his murder, I would settle it for him. But such is the extent of my allegiance to him. As far as I’m concerned, Baron died the day Variant stabbed him. And though I was reborn for reasons still unknown, I was reborn as someone entirely different.
Regardless of what I once was, I am no king now.
I’m an assassin, but armed with a king’s knowledge, I can and will take down the High Angel, once and for all.
“I need to understand how you hear the Midnight Queen’s voice,” I say to Eilish as I study her. Even though I’ve resigned myself to a lifetime dedicated only to revenge against Variant, I want her. And I’ve wanted her since I saw her. Of course, I attribute this need to the fact that she’s Succubus, and as such, desirable to all men.
Even telling myself as much does little to curb my hunger.
“I don’t know how I’m able to hear her,” she admits.
“How often does she visit you?”
She cocks her head to the side. “Usually in moments when I’m in danger, I hear her voice guiding me or advising me what to do.” She pauses and appears introspective for a moment or two. “I haven’t heard from her recently.”
“Neither have I,” I admit with concern.
“When was the last time,” she begins but I interrupt her.
“I haven’t heard the Midnight Queen’s voice since I was roused from my grave,” I admit. “I’m still unsure of the reason why she brought me back.”
“To defeat Variant?” Eilish asks with a shrug, as though the answer is obvious.
“Perhaps.”
“And maybe that’s the same reason she guides me?” she asks. “Maybe we’re both meant to help defeat Variant?”
I’m not convinced such is the case but I say nothing. Eilish is full of naieve hope and optimism. I am not.
“You were able to see a vision of the moment I was reborn,” I say as I face her.
She nods and appears confused as to why I’ve brought this subject up.
“Why do you suppose that is?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
“Do you feel something between us?” I continue, prying to try to get beneath the layers. I’m not convinced she knows more than she appears to. Unlike Dragan, I trust her. I believe she’s as confused and frustrated as she appears to be.
“Something?”
“A connection? Something that exists beyond the vail that’s united us in a common… journey, shall we say?” I ask.
She inhales deeply and then swallows hard. “Yes,” she answers with a quick nod. “I feel the same feelings towards all of you,” she ads.
“I don’t feel a connection towards Dragan or Cambion. And I feel no connection to Baron.”
“Even though he is you and you’re him?” she asks, surprised.
“Baron was me in another life,” I inform her. “But we’re no longer one and the same.”
She nods. “When I had the vision of your coronation, it struck me that Baron was quite different to you now.”
I’m not surprised. “Regardless, I feel compelled to help you though I can’t say why.”
“Then are you going to stay with us?” she asks and sounds hopeful.
“Dragan seems intent on sending me away,” I admit.
“I don’t understand why.”
“Because he’s jealous and he’s threatened by me.”
“Why?” she asks and then realizes her response could be construed as rude. I’m not offended. “I didn’t…” she starts.
I hold up my hand and silence her. “I know,” I say. “He’s jealous and threatened by the connection you and I share.”
“But he hates me now.”
“He only believes he hates you,” I explain.
“I don’t understand why,” she says as her lip begins to quiver. I’m not a man who can handle a woman’s tears. Thus, I am quick to divert her attention.
“Dragan was nearly destroyed by the last of the Succubus,” I say and explain the brief story of Lamia, as the stone portrayed it to me. “But deep down Dragan knows you aren’t the same as Lamia and her sisters. If he actually believed you were, he wouldn’t still care about you.”
“And why do you even think he does?”
“It’s obvious in the way he looks at you, the way he dislikes me.”
“But what does it mean?” Eilish continues. “So what if I’m part Succubus? I’m still me . I haven’t changed. Dragan can’t hate an entire race of people just because he was manipulated by three.”
“I think Dragan can and does.”
“It’s… it’s so unfair.”
“Such is the way of the world,” I respond.
“I’m not those women,” she says stubbornly.
“Aren’t you though?” I ask. “In as much as you share their lineage?”
“How can that be if Succubae are extinct?”
“I don’t have an answer for you, Eilish.”
She nods and then looks at me with hopeful longing in her eyes. “It won’t be much longer before I’m able to hold the stone and it will return all my memories to me.”
“And then you’ll unlock many of the questions you have… many of the questions we all have,” I add.
“I’m afraid a little,” she says and the innocence of the angel within her reaches the surface. How Dragan or Cambion can doubt her is beyond me. It’s as obvious as my fangs that the girl has no idea who or what she is.
“Just remain strong,” I advise her. “And remember, whatever the stone shows you, you can handle it.”
It’s at that moment that I hear a noise and realize someone is eavesdropping on our conversation. I’m not surprised as Cambion and Dragan are not what I would consider noble. A few seconds later, the culprit reveals himself to be the sprite. Eilish reprimands him and then departs with him to discuss whatever it is he overheard.
I find my way back to the stone. I’m tired and weak, but a few moments away from the stone have revived me somewhat.
The truth is, I could feel my energy reserves draining while I was under the stone’s influence. I knew if I remained with it for much longer, my physical body would be irreparably damaged, thus I broke away from the stone’s thrall.
Even now, I feel less than revived.
Regardless, I find myself unable to resist the stone’s pull. There’s still so much about myself I don’t know. So much I need to understand. So many answers that still await me. I desire nothing more than to fill in the gaps of a memory that’s been vacant for so long.
I understand more about my companions now, yes, but I still lack useful information about my resurrector—Morrigan, the Midnight Queen. Why was I resurrected? Who is this Morrigan? Why did I hear her voice only upon my resurrection and haven’t since? And why does Morrigan speak to the angel?
Light returns to the forest. Time is now of the essence.
My body suffered twice the damage while I was under the stone’s enchantment, because I allowed myself to be exposed to the sun. Such was a massive oversight and I scold myself for my negligence. I notice with grim acceptance, as I sort through my bag of poisons and tinctures, there’s only one vial left of Essence of Nightshade .
Logic tells me it would be more prudent to seek cover from the sun and rest. Yet a driving inner voice advises otherwise—it desperately yearns to know more.
The soft orange glow of the stone is intoxicating, beckoning. Yellow flecks of light shimmer and dance around its surface. Staring at the glimmering face of the rock, I can delineate images.
As someone who’s been deprived of answers, the stone provides a satiation I could have never found on my own.
Looking closer at the stone, I see him, the man whose face has haunted every dark corner of my mind since my resurrection.
Variant.
He appears younger now, not the man I recognize from my genuine memories. I reach out to wipe away the sparks and see the vision more clearly, but before I can, it’s as though the stone pulls me back.
I know it’s impossible, but soon, I’m tumbling down the rabbit hole of surreal images and vivid colors. Lost in the ecstasy of knowing.