53. Archer #2
It’s about time, brother, he seems to taunt, brandishing his own blade; a mighty sword made of mirror shards.
The rest of the battlefield fades away. It’s just me and him, and I’m ready to give my all to end this madness. Is he?
We don’t circle one another.
We don’t feint.
We charge.
I close the distance in a matter of seconds, raising my sword for an overhead strike—black fire clashes with blinding steel, sparks shooting from our blades upon impact.
Malevron parries as I strike again, seizing the offensive.
I throw a high, horizontal hew from my strong side, to Malevron’s weak—it’s been the same since we were boys, and I advance, letting him lead me deeper into his forces.
My soldiers surge forward, battling his, keeping them off my back while I fight their leader, but I won’t leave them unguarded.
I send a wave of fire chasing after the enemy lines, surrounding my men in a protective circle as I advance once again on Malevron.
“You think this is how it ends, Archeron?” Malevron calls, his voice laced with cruelty. “Just you and me on the battlefield? You should know better than that.”
Before I can react, a flood of icy water cascades from my brother’s hands, sweeping me off my feet and sending me sprawling back, along with my Azkari comrades.
Some are washed away entirely, and I glance back to see the trenches already overflowing.
But it’s just the first part of the attack.
The water stills unnaturally fast, until it is but a glassy surface covering the blood-soaked ground.
A mirror.
“Don’t look at it!” I shout, hauling myself to my feet, my drenched clothes and armor weighting me down. “Don’t—”
But it’s too late.
Screams ring out across our forces as our soldiers look down into the mirror-like surface and see nightmares within their own reflections. Some drop to their knees, others run themselves through with their own swords, others throw themselves in front of the charging enemy horses—
I unleash my fire.
Malevron’s water crashes against it, waves hitting the flames with a hiss and drowning them. Water fills my throat and I choke against it, all the while stumbling forward in the mud, dragging myself towards my brother. I have to end this. I have to end him.
I search the reservoir of power within and strike out, the black flames roaring back to life around me.
I don’t stop. Even as water pummels me, even as Malevron tries to fill my lungs.
A vortex of onyx fire tears across the already scorched battlefield.
It pours from me like blood from a wound and as I gaze upon the enemy I once knew.
“I would have given it to you, brother,” I call out to him over the roar of the flames. “The House of Desires—”
“It was never yours to give,” he says, sending another wave of water across my forces.
“I never wanted it!” I shout, staggering towards him, the drain on my power hitting me suddenly. “I never wanted to take your birthright; I never wanted to be anything but your brother—”
There is a blur of silver.
His sword flies towards my face and I block with my own steel and black flames, but not fast enough to avoid the images in the shards of mirror.
It’s us.
As boys. Running around the clifftops of Anwyn, hiding from our younger brothers, playing pranks on our parents, stealing treats from the kitchens. A kaleidoscope of childhood memories, when we were friends… when he was the older brother I idolized.
“Caelyth,” I pant. “Stop.”
“No.”
“You don’t need to do this—” I can feel myself buckling beneath his power. He is stronger than me, he always has been. I don’t know why I ever thought I could defeat him—
“I never wanted this,” I rasp, as realization dawns on me. The last time I bested him, was when I became the Black Flame, when I turned all my power inward rather than burn our own forces alive at his command.
This time… this time I have to let it out.
In the breath between Malevron’s water assaults, and swinging blade, I erupt. Every ounce of power within me explodes outward, decimating anything in its path, breaking the ground apart beneath us.
We are falling through a crater of my making.
There is no control, no precision, just black fire engulfing us both.
We hit the basin so hard, the air is knocked from my lungs and my teeth sing, but I kick up onto my feet, brandishing my steel, ready to end this. The crater is our arena, and I intend to emerge as champion.
I lunge, my sword striking against Malevron’s mirrored armor as he feigns right and blocks my attack. Nightmares and warped truths gleam in his breastplate, his gauntlets and there is only one thing I can do to prevent myself being pulled in.
I close my eyes.
In the darkness, I find the melody of violence, dancing around me like a current, ready to sweep me up in its movement. Malevron is breathing hard, and I can hear his sword cleaving through the smoke.
Blocking his strike on instinct, I parry, the heat of my flames kissing my skin as I swing my sword.
Malevron hisses in pain as my blade slices through metal and flesh, but I don’t open my eyes; peering into the mirror magic of his armor will destroy me before I can land the killing blow. And I plan to kill the bastard.
With the hilt of my blade, I strike his head. With the sharp steel edge, I slice a vein in his wrist. If it’s death by a million cuts that he wants, then that’s what I’ll give him before I burn him to ash.
I listen to my flames, I listen to the whispers in the wind like Daemos taught me, and I fight. I rain down assault after assault, barely feeling the sear of the wounds opening my own flesh.
We are relentless. Azkari through and through.
I don’t need open eyes to understand Malevron’s ethos, the same as the gods of old: we were made for war.
My hand grows slick with sweat inside my glove, but I block Malevron’s blade as it comes down with the force of a strong, two-handed blow. And then, I sweep my leg out, kicking Malevron’s feet out from under him. With all my fire and strength, I thrust my blade down towards his heart—
“Brother!” It’s Caelyth’s voice I hear, the brother I remember, the brother I loved.
He comes back to me in fragments. A long-limbed, dark-haired youth who taught me how to catch fish with my bare hands during long summer days.
The Azkari who tended my wounds after a duel I lost for a female’s attention.
The brother who gave me my first tankard of ale after our parents told me no.
Loved by so many. Generous with his magic.
A confidant, a friend, a force to be reckoned with.
My blade stills as his throat. “Caelyth?” I open my eyes and peer through the flames, looking for my older brother.
“Archeron.”
I hesitate.
But the sound of my name is cloaked in magic, and something silver glimmers before me—armor, mirrors, pain.
Malevron—not Caelyth’s voice echoes through the darkness, “You should have killed me when you had the chance, brother.”
A fraction of a second.
That’s all it takes for my gaze to make contact with Malevron’s armor.
My own blood-streaked face stares back at me in the shards of mirror on his gauntlet, dragging me in like a riptide.
A fraction of a second.
That’s all he needs to latch onto me and my thread to the Weave, the only tether he needs to rip my reflection from me, binding me to the mirrors in the cesspit known as Gravereach. He siphons me from my own form, a curse made just for me, a mind with no body but for the one he deigns to lord over.
My magic courses through the threads of the Weave, drawn from me like blood from a vein.
I am screaming. A roar that echoes through the great crater and the Wailing Wilds beyond. The sound is tormented and endless, but I am not alone. It is not only my bellows that penetrates the dark.
Malevron howls before me on his knees.
Rasping for air, I blink against the whirlpool of black smoke and golden threads, and the great Weave that drifts above.
Malevron’s curse travels between us, along a shared thread.
Brother in blood, commander by right, even king if you’d lay claim...
By lineage or loyalty that once was, we are connected by a common cord, knotted deep into the Weave. The curse that rips me from my body, rips Malevron from his, and I watch, helpless, as our essences return to the great loom of all life.
And then, I am torn from the world, from myself.
A moment’s hesitation. An eternity of regret.
As I am swept away from everything I hold dear, I know in my heart that the force of Azkari assigned to me are gone, burned to ash somewhere beyond my flames.
Ke-Vor.
Dark shield.
But all I brought them was death.
I failed them all.