16. Archer
Archer
This isn’t meant to happen here. We were supposed to be gathering our numbers, preparing to march to Morzanmyre, our formations planned down to the last man—foot soldiers with swords, cavalry, archers.
the ranks filled with not only Azkari warriors from royal armies, but mercenaries, allied mortal soldiers, all united in defense of Lorevael.
But we get no chance to move forward, all together as one.
We have no moment to rally our units into an organized attack—
Enemy forces pour through the portals to the House of Reveries, beautiful forest breaking beneath their violent charge.
The noise is deafening—a cacophony of clashing of steel, the thundering hooves of horses and their terrified screams. For a second, arrows block out the sun like a deadly flock of birds, only to rain down—thudding into shields, embedding into flesh, shrieks of agony echoing in their wake.
Malevron has ambushed us, has used the very magic of the Azkari against us all. He’s sent his soldiers and beasts through the portals, corrupting them with his mirror magic.
And we are breaking.
I am only a foot soldier here, not privy to numbers from the command tents.
But I need no official report to see that we are vastly outnumbered.
The mortals have heart but not the speed and agility of the Azkari, and Malevron has Azkari and monsters on his side, while our own Azkari allies are fading.
“Hold the lines!” I shout, seeing the commander’s signal from the vanguard.
He leads the House of Reveries armies, though with the formations breaking all around us, I don’t know for how much longer.
We can barely hear him over the madness and his hesitation brokers little trust in our units.
Even though I’m hooded and masked—just a foot soldier in their eyes—the ranks of Azkari and human warriors look to me as my voice cuts through the chaos with the authority they desperately need in this moment.
“Hold the fucking lines!” the words rip from my throat again and it’s all I can do to contain my magic.
It’s like fighting with both hands tied behind my back, but wielding flame amidst this battle would be catastrophic on many counts.
No one knows who I am. No one can, because Malevron is here, somewhere on the edge of the battle, and I intend to find him. I intend to kill him.
The wet shuck of a blade through flesh sounds beside me as my friend, Bryneira runs a mirudyte through with her sword, wiping the sweat from her brow on the back of a gloved hand as it screeches through its last breath.
The creature slumps to the ground in a heap, where three more are piled high.
Through the corrupted portals, I can hear the distant roar of the valreth in Morzanmyre and I can’t help but shudder.
I turn in time to see the commander take an arrow to the shoulder—
“Go!” Bryn shouts at me. “I’ll see to the orders.”
“They need to bolster the right flank—”
“I wasn’t born yesterday,” she yells back. “I’ve got it covered. Take my horse, or he’ll get away.”
I clench my jaw as I spy him in the now fading light.
Malevron. Dressed in almost blindingly reflective armor, he rides towards his calvary atop a creature that might have once been a stallion.
Its silvery coat mirrors the battle unfolding around it, and its face is veined and vicious, baring its sharp fangs as it canters through the pandemonium.
“I said, take my fucking horse,” Bryn cries out, crushing the skull of an enemy solider with the pommel of her sword.
“I’m going!” I slash my blade across the stomach of a branded attacker, carving through leather armor and flesh, deep enough that his guts spill out onto the already blood-stained soil of the outer Eldergrove.
Mud splatters across the fresh brand on his neck—and I spit on him, unable to contain my hate for the fanaticism that the Silver-Tongued Deceiver has poisoned the lands with.
Every opponent I have cut down in these past few brutal hours has worn that brand with a sickening sense of pride.
The bastard makes them beg for it, as though it’s something to be revered and coveted, not a source of the Azkari’s greatest failure.
Cold wind whips my skin, and when it does, I realize I am soaked through with blood.
None of it mine. Brandishing my steel, I weave across the churning bloodbath, striking where I can, killing where the space allows, as the Azkari and mortal forces clash with Morzanmyre’s monsters.
Spying Bryn’s horse, I lunge for the saddle horn, swing myself up, and see the battlefield from a better vantage point.
It is the worst fight I’ve seen yet. Our dead are countless, with more of the enemy spilling through the portals as we falter beneath their might.
The putrid stench of death, of blood, vomit and shit, is everywhere, and it will take generations of Azkari to help this place recover, if at all.
All around me, our warriors are falling—one is shot through the eye with an arrow at the flank of Bryn’s horse, another one has his throat slit as he crawls through the mud to flee. We won’t last like this.
Snatching up the reins, I urge the poor beast onwards, trampling any rogue enemy soldiers in my path as I charge towards Malevron in all his mirrored glory.
The symphony of death and suffering fades around me as my mount’s hooves thunder against the bleeding earth.
I have been waiting for this moment for over a year, since the war started.
Saving my strength, hiding my magic, all so it could be unleashed on the tyrannical bastard too precious to get his own fucking hands dirty.
A roar escapes me as I carve through his outer guard, so many of them falling like sacks of grain at the tip of my sword.
I cut them down, one after the other, relishing their shrieks of pain, the spray of their innards as I inch closer to the true enemy.
I move towards him, and the rest of the battle fades away until it is just me and him.
We will end this how we started it then.
Malevron is waiting for me, still sitting atop that monstrosity of a creature, clad in armor far too clean and shiny for the likes of this cesspit. I swing my sword, assessing the time and distance between us, ready to deal the killing blow. But he lifts no weapon in response. He simply watches.
“You think I don’t know it’s you?” he says, his voice somehow drifting easily across the raging battle. “You think you could fool me?”
“You wanted me here.” I understand now, gripping my sword, biding my time.
He laughs. “Always so concerned with what people want, when it’s your own desires that rule you. My want had nothing to do with this. It was yours. You couldn’t help yourself. You never can.”
“Fight me,” I say, feeling the flames within rush to my fingertips, ready to unleash. “Fight me, you fucking coward.”
“But I already am.”
I falter, drawing the reins up short with a choked noise escaping me. It’s too late. I know better than this. I know fucking better than to look at Malevron and his fucking mirrors—
Images swirl in the reflection of his armor and my heart lodges in my throat. Fire. Orange fire blazes through everything, with me at its heart. I burn it all. Azkari, human, monster, it doesn’t matter. It’s all ash to the kiss of my flames—
“The true you,” Malevron drawls. “I know you see it. I know the potential runs through your veins as surely as your blood does. Do it. I have seen what you become. You have seen it. And the day is now.”
I’m panting, perspiration pouring from my brow as he tries to warp my understanding of myself, as he tries to bend my flames against my will.
He wants to turn me into a weapon, his weapon.
With his power and mine, he could flatten this battlefield in a matter of moments.
He could silence the screams until there was nothing but the remnants of smoke in the wind.
“Fuck you,” I grind out between my clenched teeth.
“Your fate is sealed. Surrender to it. Your magic is begging to be freed; I can feel it—everyone can… Think of it as a cleansing. A new beginning for all of Lorevael.” As he speaks, the reflections in his armor dance before my eyes, beautiful and bewitching, like a spell cast upon me.
He’s grown stronger. Much stronger than the last time I faced him.
Flames erupt at my fingertips against my will, but I fight it. Gods, do I fight it. Trying to contain the rush of power, I fall from the saddle, writhing in the mud as my own magic turns on me.
“That’s it,” Malevron coaxes. “On your feet, soldier. You have armies to burn.”
To my horror, my body bends to his command, and I find myself standing, my boots sinking into the mud, my flames clawing back at me, beyond my control.
“Burn them,” Malevron commands. “Burn them all.”
I fight it. I fight it with everything I have, but the very thing that makes me who I am, betrays me.
Fire bursts from my fingertips, coaxed by the enemy’s words of malice and shrieks of agony echo in their wake.
For the first time in my life, I am powerless in my own body, violated as it moves against my will.
I need to get out of my own skin, I need to—
“You can do better than that,” Malevron taunts. “Set the whole forest and everyone in it ablaze.”
“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” I hiss through my teeth as I strain against his hold on me. Through the smoke, I can barely see the battle, but I can hear it raging on. I can hear people dying while I am leashed to this monster, while he threatens to make me one too.
“Stop fighting it,” he says, with a note of amusement. “Think of how good it will feel to let all of it go, to wipe the slate clean. Isn’t that what you want?”
“The only thing I want is to end you—” and as the words leave my lips, I do the only thing I can to stop myself from turning what remains of the Eldergrove into an inferno.
I turn my magic inward.
Let it take me instead.
Let it kill me, rather than spend one more fucking second at the violent whims of the Silver-Tongued Deceiver. Rather than let him turn me into his weapon.
Today is a day for pushing limits. Still fighting against Malevron’s vise-like hold on my mind, on my own image, I release my power with a shout, but this time when I do, the flames erupt internally.
Pain like nothing I’ve ever felt ignites in my veins, in my very bones.
The wet, soft earth beneath my knees tells me I’ve fallen, but I have no memory of collapsing.
All I feel is the shredding agony of the flames as they course through me, and I writhe in the mud as darkness closes in all around.
It soon spreads across my entire body. I feel weak, sweat covering every inch of skin, my hands trembling out of control, each passing moment sees it intensify.
What if it never stops? Searing sensations consume my insides.
My magic swallows me whole and drags me to the underworld. Let it be over, I beg, to no one in particular. I am as godless as they say, even in the throes of death itself. But fuck, let it be done.
Only the world isn’t finished with me yet.
The power inside me shifts, morphing into a new strength, with new intensity as each orange flame flickers in response to something ancient, something darker.
I lift my head, my eyes streaming from the smoke and pain, the metallic taste of blood on my tongue.
But I stand, bracing myself on my knee, getting to my feet as I survey Malevron through the carnage.
Behind his mask, his eyes are wide, his hand finally deigning to reach for the sword still sheathed at his belt—
I don’t hesitate.
Fire surges around me, from me, and it rushes for Malevron at my command.
Gods it feels good to have control again, to purify my magic after the enemy’s breach.
I close my eyes as the power pours from me in waves, relishing the sear this time.
When I blink the world back into focus, heat devours the empty space around us and shoots straight for him.
But what leaves me now are not flames of orange and gold, but a blaze of onyx, a whirlwind of obsidian.
“Retreat!” I hear the enemy cry over the roar of fire. “Retreat!”
I send my dark fire after them all. I burn every foe I can, sending them to graves of ash and dust. I relish their screams as the fire pours out of me. I don’t try to tame it. The loss of control feels good, the frenzy of flame and fear is a balm to my raging soul.
When I come back to myself, amidst the smoke and burning flesh of the fallen, I realize the Silver-Tongued Deceiver has escaped our clutches, and the retribution I intended for him.
But for once since the war started, it doesn’t seem to matter.
Warriors are cheering for our victory, for me.
Looking around at the blood-streaked faces, I understand.
After so much loss and despair, the allied forces have something to celebrate. They may have seen the death of the foot soldier…
But they have witnessed the birth of the Black Flame.
And I might just be the one to burn Malevron to fucking ash.