Chapter Nineteen #2
With a narrowed gaze, Sikras flexed his fingers.
They couldn’t be, could they? Though they looked like tiny figurines across the expanse, he reached out with his mind, feeling, searching, crossing the gap that separated them.
He scavenged for that familiar warmth of a soul and felt naught but ice.
“Worse,” he whispered, stomach sinking. “They’re dead. ”
More bodies emerged from the tree line. Peasants.
Townsfolk. Skeletons of humans and animals alike.
Sikras counted fifty, sixty, seventy bodies.
How? How could Vessik, of all people, resurrect that many when even the most talented caster in Siaphara could manage ten to twelve at best before succumbing to thaumaturgic backlash?
It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense.
And he didn’t have the time to try to make sense of it as countless men, women, and children spewed from the trees, like fleas abandoning an animal carcass.
The wooden stakes and rusty blades they wielded didn’t exactly scream danger, but the sharpened steel and crossbows clutched in the hands of undead sentinels did.
And then, it appeared. A familiar silhouette that stepped from the trees. It would’ve been impossible to see his facial features from across the expanse, but Sikras knew precisely to whom that body belonged. Almost as if by a spell. Almost as if Vessik wanted him to know he was there, waiting.
Shit.
“Sikras.” With a grave tone, Benjamin faced him. “We have to do this now.”
“Now?” Sikras’s voice cracked, and he stepped backward. “I—I thought I’d have more time—”
“The folly of man. We always think there’s more time. We have maybe five minutes before they’re within swinging distance,” Ben said. “That’ll have to be enough.”
This. This, right here. This was one of many reasons why he loathed the gods.
Vile, omnipotent bastards with all the power in the world at their fingertips and they choose to cower in their individual planes, feeding off mankind’s prayers, while the very mortals who venerate them suffer.
Sikras’s vision clouded over, his gaze unfocused, his mind detaching out of habit and self-preservation.
It wasn’t until Benjamin gripped his shoulders when he returned to reality.
“Listen to me.” Benjamin’s bony fingers dug in deep. “No matter what happens, whether we succeed or we fail spectacularly in the blaze of glory, I am a lucky, lucky man to have called you my friend and a brother.”
The steadiness of Benjamin’s grip only made Sikras’s trembling shoulders more apparent. He struggled to find the sockets where Benjamin’s eyes used to be. “I’m afraid,” he whispered.
“Worst case scenario is death. That’s not so bad, is it? Not like you haven’t done it before.”
Sikras swallowed to wet his dry throat. “It would be particularly devastating to die the moment I decided to start living again.”
“My advice, then?” Benjamin gave him a reassuring pat. “Don’t die.”
A raspy inhale filled Sikras’s lungs, and he exhaled in a slow, steady stream. “If Dionus gets your soul before I do, tell him he’s a prick for me, would you?”
A grim chuckle echoed in Benjamin’s skull. “I’m not going to tell my god he’s a prick, but I’ll think it really loudly for you. Deal?”
“Deal.” The single word came out strained, tight, and as Benjamin shed his cuirass, cloak, and scarf, Sikras glimpsed the glowing thread between his ribs. Pinching the ethereal blue string between his fingers, he said, “Ready?”
“I’ve been ready,” Ben said. “Trust Helspira. Trust yourself. Good luck, pal.”
Choking back words he didn’t trust himself to say, Sikras winced, tugging the thread from the stone. It unraveled all too easily. The stone, Benjamin’s bones, and what little remained of Sikras’s sanity hit the ground with a rattle and clack.
With the spell severed, the full power of the Cat’s Eye returned to him.
Warmth spread from his chest to his arms. The muscle aches, the weakness, the chronic fatigue vanished.
He stared at his fingers, no longer stiff, arthritic things, and flexed them.
Gone was the hinderance of poor blood circulation, his hands regained their color.
All that remained was to soil them with Vessik’s blood.
Sparing himself the sight of Benjamin’s body, Sikras forced his eyes shut and turned away. As Rowan had so aptly put it, it was finally time to deal with the consequences of his inaction.
The warmth of Helspira’s hand on the side of his face quieted the surfacing doubts. Sikras placed his atop hers.
“I have him,” she whispered. “I have him, and I promise that nothing will touch him.”
His fingers curled around hers, and he pulled her hand to his lips to kiss her knuckles. “Thank you.”
She blew out a nervous breath. “Are ... Are you afraid to die?”
“Terrified. I know death shouldn’t be feared given that it typically comes with the promise of eternal peace and everything.” He regarded her with a flippant smirk. “But I’d hate to die after having finally fallen in love with dancing again.”
She favored him with a smile, but it failed to reach her eyes. “Eight hours isn’t long. Be swift.”
“I’ll have it done in less than two. But before I go”—he reached into his pocket and placed a note in her palm—“take this. You won’t need it, but just in case, would you give it to our queen?”
The note crinkled under the pressure of her grasp, and she nodded. “Be careful.”
“It’ll take more than an undead army of highly trained soldiers and not-so-trained townsfolk to keep me from returning to you.”
The warmth of her breath on his face ignited something inside him.
He soaked in the sight of her eyes—the glassy, emotionless prosthetic and the shimmering red orb nestled in a black sclera.
How selfish, how cruel it would’ve been to seize the moment, to brush his lips against hers, to lose himself in her body when they had so little time and no knowledge of whether he would make it back.
And he had grown awfully tired of being selfish.
Instead, he placed a soft kiss on the inside of her wrist and dashed to meet Vessik’s undead head on.
He would need an army of his own if he intended to put up a fight, and while he had no doubts Helspira could handle herself, comfort came in knowing she had aid.
The tingle of corpses below ground tickled his senses, and he clenched his hands into fists. “An’stisei tus necrouz.”
The ground rumbled like an earthquake. Bodies of woodland beasts that had died years, decades, centuries, millenia prior crawled from the hard soil and crested from the snow-covered terrain.
Mostly animal but a few human skeletons, both ancient and modern, formed a bizarre, historical army.
With the power of the Cat’s Eye, the recoil from a spell that would’ve surely killed him in his previous state snapped in his veins like nothing more than a bug bite.
Half of the resurrected followed after Sikras.
The other half lingered by Helspira on orders from their puppet master.
They were no bouquet of roses, but it was the closest thing to a romantic gesture he could manage given the circumstances.
Arrows pierced the ground as Sikras ran headlong toward his opponent. Why Vessik had abandoned the sanctuary of Stow’s Peak, with all its arcane protection, was anyone’s guess. Maybe Sikras would find out why before he killed him.
It was strange to run without a burning sensation in his legs, strange to feel no fatigue as he cut his way through townsfolk and undead sentinels. Sikras dodged a swinging sword, laughing, throwing his hands skyward. “The Cat’s Eye is back, old friend! You’ll have to try harder than—”
An arrow through his forehead silenced him instantly.
Sikras’s vision immediately shifted from snow-covered terrain to the nebulous plane of Enos, with its sprawling garden that stretched on for eternity.
Misty ambiguous shapes of once-living beings, reduced to nothing more than essence, floated weightlessly through the wafting, shifting colors, and the ghostly illusion of Sikras’s physical body frowned when Death appeared before him.
She held up seven skeletal fingers. “One down, seven to go.”
“Blood and bone,” Sikras muttered, unimpressed. “I thought time would be my only enemy.”
“You’re surrounded by a sea of adversaries, and you thought time would be your only obstacle?” came Death’s calm, echoing voice.
Sikras rolled the illusion of his eyes. “Point taken. I’ll probably see you more times than I care to admit before this is over.”
“Yes.” Death nodded. “You will.”
Refocusing on the mortal plane, Sikras blinked out of Enos and back into his body.
The Cat’s Eye took over, dominating his mind, and ripped the arrow shaft from his forehead before sealing the wound.
Restored to his former glory, the presence of the Cat’s Eye faded to the background, relinquishing control to Sikras once more.
“Okay,” he said, dusting himself off. “Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
Flanked by enemies on all sides, he gritted his teeth.
Easier said than done.