49. Archer #2
Daemos’s blade is a blur of silver alongside my black flames as he too fights them back.
It’s what we were made for. Meanwhile, Saige, with Yevna and Raven on either side of her, advance—Yevna is brandishing her walking stick, Raven swings her fire poker and Saige picks up a rotting plank of timber and slams a mirudyte in the head with a determined shout.
“Thanks, but I think Archer and I have it covered,” my brother says with a grimace. “Saige, you shouldn’t be here in the first place.”
More screeching nearly has me dropping my sword to cover my ears. I hate how the horrific sound of them brings old memories flooding back and the taste of bile to my throat.
“Have you met her?” I snap, jerking my chin towards Saige. “She was never going to leave her friends behind.”
Another four mirudytes appear from the rear of the alley and I edge towards them. However they’re getting in, I need to shut it down.
But anger flashes across my brother’s face as he swings his blades and more blood splatters across the fallen leaves. “You’re telling me the Black fucking Flame couldn’t stop a mere mortal woman?”
“I’m telling you I didn’t want to.”
Daemos wipes the gore from his face with the sleeve of his shirt. “You’re going to regret that.”
“I know,” I tell him, dragging my blade across another mirudyte’s throat and wrenching its windpipe out with my bare hand.
Dropping it to the ground before calling to my fire.
This little display from Malevron has gone on long enough.
No longer am I in his clutches, no longer do I bend to his will.
I am no dog to be leashed, no servant to be summoned.
The Silver-Tongued Deceiver cannot contain me, not anymore. I taste smoke on my lips as I rise from the ashes of what was. Black flames erupt from my fingertips and a roar rips from my throat as waves of obsidian barrel through the alleyway.
I decimate the remaining swarm of monsters with a blazing fire. Monstrous shrieks of agony are cut off as I burn them all into oblivion from the inside out. On and on my flames burn, the heat singeing my skin and weathering the storm within.
How long has it been since I truly unleashed myself? How long have I been carrying this weight of fury? Too long. Now, a worthy target for my rage is before me, and I can’t stop. I burn and burn, flames devouring the monsters where they stood. It feels good to burn, to surrender to the fire—
“Archer.” It’s Saige’s voice that calls me back, Saige’s voice that I follow out of the raging darkness.
Slowly, I emerge from the haze of my power and look around. All that’s left are smoldering scorch marks upon the earth. A moment captured in time. The extinguishing of one life after another—if one could call them that.
“Archer.” It’s a command this time, and my head snaps to the mortal woman who has captured me so thoroughly. Only this time, she’s not looking at me. With a trembling finger, she’s pointing back across the street, to the bindery, where something moves inside the shop.
“How?” she rasps, taking a step towards her beloved bindery.
“Those fucking bastards,” I snarl. “Thorne and Reid—they must have planted a something there. They’re working for Malevron, still.”
“Archer. The Confluence is inside.”
Fire turns to ice in my veins as the aura dancing through the high street shifts, surging with power. Power I know all too well.
Swinging my sword, I rush across to the bindery, throwing the door open, my gaze instantly snagging on the portal that has materialized from a handheld mirror amidst papers on the counter.
I’m just in time to see the massive, spiked steel gloves emerge from the other side of the gateway, grasping the frame, slowly revealing tarnished and twisted gauntlets and plate mail, with mirror fragments embedded throughout—
“Is that…?” Saige breathes, now behind me.
I call my flames back to my blade as a mirror-forged mask peers out into the bindery. The eye sockets are hollow, showing a glimpse of empty darkness.
“A souldren elite,” I murmur, hearing my brother enter the shop after us.
Daemos’ voice is panicked. “We need to get to the mountain. We need to get the Confluence as far away from these creatures as possible—”
I’m already shaking my head. “Daemos—”
“The time for secrets is over,” he says fiercely. “There are far bigger forces at play now.”
“I said I’d never go back,” I mutter.
A rasping noise escapes the souldren as it pulls itself fully into the bindery and stands to its full height. It’s over eight feet tall, and from its rotting regalia and armor, gray corpse-like appendages emerge and writhe.
“Get it out,” Saige whispers. “Get this monster out of my shop.”
From the portal behind the souldren, I can hear the thunderous roar of the valreth back in Morzanmyre, the vicious sound echoing through space and time, rattling the foundations of the Awl & Cradle, while the souldren glides forward, its chainmail rattling and groaning around its mist-wreathed form.
But there’s something different about this creature.
In the mirror shards of its armor, is another presence, lingering beneath the surface. I falter, just for a second, forcing the others behind me.
“Saige,” I murmur. “Get the Confluence.”
“I have it.”
“Don’t let it go, not for anything,” I warn, the black flames swallowing the steel of my blade, begging to be set free upon the enemy.
“Archer.”
But the reflection in the souldren’s armor is taunting me.
Blessed is the one house, blessed is the one family… blessed is the mirror. We were made for war…
“You can’t take it alone, brother,” Daemos cautions at my side as the souldren emerges fully from the mirror.