Chapter Thirteen #2
“We may outgrow the ability to ask for help, but we never outgrow needing it. He and Vessik had a pact to go wherever the godless go in death. After everything that’s happened .
..” He shook his head. “If I’m gone, Sikras is here, alone.
Even in death, he’s doomed to be alone.” His hold tightened, and despite having no vocal cords, his voice came out strained.
“He’s so scared to be alone, Hels. So fucking scared, and I can’t help him, can’t take him with me.
Gods, I’d do anything to take him with me. ”
As Ben broke down before her, Helspira parted her lips, thoughts slow to transform into words. “Ben, I ...”
“Please. I’m not afraid to die. But I am terrified to leave him here by himself.”
Somewhere in the distance, a bird screeched. Even with her sensitive hearing, it barely processed as a recognizable sound. Shallow breaths shook her chest, until finally she uttered, “I promise.”
What was another promise in a sea of them she couldn’t keep?
A promise to the queen that she would get Sikras to aid the kingdom.
A promise to Sikras that she would keep Ben safe from the Red Sentinel.
A promise to Banneret Rowan that she would acquire the scroll and send Ben to his potential second death with a fake.
And a promise to Ben that she would be there for the very man she was responsible for breaking if Ben didn’t make it back.
A short clatter rang out as Ben laid a hand over his ribcage. “Thank you. From the bottom of my long-since-rotted heart.”
Helspira managed a nod and wondered if it looked more convincing than it felt.
Why had she promised him that? Simultaneously, how could she not have?
How could she ever leave Sikras to languish?
Dammit all, she liked him. Adored him. Thoughts of him winking at her back in Everferd made her stomach roll, and the letter he had given her after he had sought Frank in Enos made her heart thrum, and the way he had stuffed a freaking poltergeist into a cat’s corpse at the risk of pissing off a powerful wizard just because that wizard had dared to slight her character . ..
Gods above, below, and in between. She may very well have liked Sikras far more than she cared to admit.
“Here.” Ben’s voice ripped her to reality as he reached into his parted jaws and retrieved the tiny scroll.
“On the off-chance Theodore does come for us, I’d like you to hang on to this.
You can use it to escape if things turn grim.
Obviously, let’s hope I can use it to do the ole stabby-stab on Vessik, but humor me by taking it now, yeah? ”
Despite the scroll’s lightness, the weight of it in Helspira’s palm felt like an anchor.
The dull glow of Ben’s thread, his lifeline, pulsed through the neck hole in his cuirass.
Even with the armor surrounding it, the stone and thread seemed so fragile nestled between his ribs.
She gently tucked the scroll into her satchel.
“I may not have a god or goddess, Ben, but when the moment comes, I will pray to any deity who will listen that you find whatever ending you most desire. You may be dead, but it’s still your life.
You deserve to do with it whatever you see fit. ”
“Thanks, Hels.” Immense gratitude lived in those two whispered words. “That means a lot.”
When the sound of crunching, frost-covered grass signaled Sikras’s approach, both Helspira and Ben shot into straighter positions.
“There we are.” Sikras slicked back his silver-gray hair, little good though it did him.
The unruly locks bounced right back to where they had laid moments prior.
Sweat glistened on his pale forehead, and a limp he tried to disguise slowed his gait.
“As luck would have it, I found a few fresh corpses to resurrect as our sentries. What was growing on and near those fresh corpses, you ask? Mushrooms.”
Helspira winced. “I can’t help but feel like my loss of appetite is a reoccurring theme come evening time.”
“Oh, these aren’t for eating. Not unless you want searing stomach cramps and hallucinations.
” With a relieved exhale, Sikras dropped to his knees and spread the fungi in the grass.
Small gray-blue blobs of gills and fleshy stalks, they looked every bit as unappealing as Helspira predicted.
But a faint blue glow emitted from the mushrooms, much like that in Ben’s chest cavity.
“They’re lamperino mushrooms,” Sikras explained. “Bioluminescent. The illumination is faint, but I remember the spell to increase their potency.”
“Do you really remember it?” Ben’s voice chimed. “Or do you just think you remember it? I may not have a brain, but I recall what happened the last time you thought you remembered a spell.”
“You’re never going to let that go, are you?” Sikras lifted his gaze to Helspira and whispered, “You might want to stand back just in case Ben’s right that I have no idea what I’m doing.”
Unable to stop a soft smile from forming, Helspira took a polite step backward.
Sikras bowed his head, fingers shifting into a pattern. “Diafotizo.”
In an instant, the dim azure glow brightened. It was not the obvious overwhelming blaze of fire in the night, but a soft, subdued illumination that cast a sapphire haze within several feet of the mushroom’s radius.
“Huh.” A clacking noise rattled the air as Ben gave a slow clap. “Look at that, nobody’s on fire, and you both have your eyebrows. I’m beginning to think you do know more than just how to raise a corpse and a shadow blade.”
A weak laugh sounded in the night, and Sikras gathered the mushrooms before offering one to Helspira. “I might know a bit more than I let on. I don’t want to brag, but during my interim as a failing apprentice, I also learned how to curse in not one, not two, but three dead languages.”
Somehow Helspira’s worries faded when she accepted the proffered fungus.
The soft glow accentuated the fatigue in Sikras’s now bloodshot eyes, the dark circles beneath them, his hollowed cheeks—but it also emphasized the life in his smile.
The way his faint green irises flickered with mischievousness when he said something clever.
Her gaze lingered on him, and she knew she should look away, sever eye contact, but she remained frozen, fixated, a captive to the gravitational pull of his aura.
It wasn’t until Ben coughed into his skeletal fist that her gaze snapped from Sikras and toward the undead musician.
“Well, now that I’ve erected my fortress,” Ben said, “I think I’ll turn in early again.”
Sikras cocked his head. “Three nights in a row? I’m starting to think I’ve offended you somehow.”
“As if you could say anything that would offend me. I just need to process the future. We have the scroll. Dionus willing, we’ll rendezvous with Rowan shortly, and I’ll be tasked with wrapping up what we should’ve finished four years ago. It’s a lot to take in.”
Sikras lifted a hand in surrender. “Of course. Please, take all the time you need. I’m here if you need an ear or a lesson in ancient cursing. I hear it can be very therapeutic.”
“I can always count on you, Sikras. And Helspira?”
She blinked, back straight, as she faced Ben.
“Thank you. I may not be able to sleep,” he said, “but I’ll rest a lot easier now.”
Warmth surged through her chest, radiating down her arms and to her fingers. “Any time, Ben.”
The stillness became all too loud the moment Ben disappeared into the tent’s flap. Helspira regarded Sikras with a nervous smile.
With the aid of his scythe, he eased onto the ground, resting the long weapon across his lap. “Sounds like you two had an interesting conversation while I was gone.”
She pulled her knees to her chest. “You could say that.”
“No surprise there. Benjamin is full of interesting conversations.”
“Which is not something every dead man can say.”
A short laugh rasped in Sikras’s throat. “Eloquently put. And you? How are you fairing? Not everyone enjoys the erratic highs and lows that sharing company with a washed-up necromancer and his undead brother-in-law brings. Holding fast to that mental stability of yours?”
Helspira shared in his quiet chuckle and looked down. “So far.”
“Well, that makes one of us.”
They sat in the forest’s cacophony of piercing crescendos that the night’s most vocal creatures offered.
Soft chittering, melodious chirping, and the rustling of dry, wind-blown leaves amplified the ambiance.
Siaphara became a different world at night.
It would have been easy to lose herself in the sights and sounds, as she did every evening, but Sikras’s labored breathing clashed with the singing insects.
In the bioluminescent glow, she caught the shimmer of sweat on his brow, and her stomach tightened when he pressed a finger into his temple. “Are you all right?”
“Finer than double-milled flour,” came his reply.
If his statement wasn’t coupled with the sight of him visibly wincing, she may have believed him. “It’s the sentries, isn’t it? How many did you resurrect?”
“Enough to feel a little safer.”
Helspira’s thoughts drifted to the conversation they had shared in Everferd when Sikras spoke of Dionus’s efforts to reclaim Ben’s soul.
He had looked so tired then. He looked tired now.
“Aren’t you afraid of overdoing it? Casting beyond your body’s ability and giving Dionus the chance to swoop in and take Ben to his afterlife? ”
Sikras grinned an eerie grin. “I have countless safeguards in place. Time-released spells that sustain him when I’m sleeping or slip into brief states of unconsciousness, but .
.. one day Dionus will win. It’s inevitable.
That bastard better hope it’s only because I died too, lest he wants me desecrating his temples across Siaphara. ”