Chapter 40 Pretending
As he ran toward the square, the crowed thinned.
Nobody wanted to be close to this place, nobody but fools with swords who fancied themselves warriors.
The buildings around the square were on fire, the light of the flames suffusing the clouds above with an eerie, bloodstained red.
Ashes and dying sparks drifted all around, as gentle as snow, gathering in powdery gray heaps in the gutters.
Rolan slowed to a walk, shifting his sword to his left hand so as to wipe his sweaty palm on his trousers. Then he unclasped his cloak, letting it flutter to the ground. If he needed to swing that sword, it would only get in the way.
Every bone in his body screamed at him to run, to get as far from the city as he could. With every step he took, the dread gripped him tighter, like rising water. He fought against its current, forcing his feet to keep moving.
Pretend, Anaya’s voice whispered in his memory. Pretend you are brave until you are.
He pretended. He pretended harder than he ever had in his life. He pretended his courage was stronger than his fear. He pretended and he prayed to the goddess of truth that somehow he and Luc and Anaya and Evaine would all survive this day.
He pretended he was brave until he was.
And then the wall to his left exploded, throwing Rolan off his feet.
With a cry, he hurtled through the air in a billowing cloud of dust and debris, landing hard on a cart of cabbages. Spitting out green leaves—ugh, he hated cabbage—he rolled to his feet and whirled to face the Cryptic that had just sent him flying.
Anaya had not exaggerated. The thing was big.
The monster was as tall as a tree, armored in thick scale plates with a sharp ridge of spikes running down its back.
A thick, muscled neck swung about, supporting a hoglike head with tusks as big as logs jutting from its lower jaw.
Its legs were long and wiry, each leg with five joints that Rolan could see, and there were eight of them.
Most charming of all was the snakelike tail with an actual mouth and fangs at its end.
It was like two Cryptics fused together.
He didn’t think he could imagine something more horrible if he tried.
Beside it, Rolan felt no larger than a gnat.
Rolan squinted and found the monster’s center, a dark spiraling aleth on the creature’s scaled belly. It was so tall that the belly scraped over the roofs of the houses as it circled them. How in truth were they supposed to even reach it, much less pierce the armor?
Down the street, soul crushingly small against the monstrous colossus, stood Luc, his mighty sword clenched in both hands.
He backed up warily, his eyes locked with the Cryptic’s.
Blue mist streamed from the corners of his eyes and from between his clenched teeth, and the tattoos on his neck glowed bright with activated Arcana.
Rolan’s hopes of this fight redeeming Luc in the eyes of the people faded at the sight of the Arcanist. The man barely looked human.
Luc spared only one swift glance as Rolan jogged over, before snapping his gaze back to the monster looming over them. “Took you long enough to show up.”
“Sorry,” said Rolan. “We stopped and had lunch. Leek and potato pie. It was delicious.” His voice pitched upward, cracking at a high, panicked octave. “Where are the guards? Shouldn’t there be guards around, helping?”
And where was the duke? What was the use of employing a small army if you didn’t show up when the actual battle was happening?
Surely Rolan wasn’t the only backup.
“Find shelter and stay there,” Luc commanded. “I’ll deal with this.”
“Got it,” Rolan said. “You take out the head, I take out the tail.”
The beast’s tail was nearly as thick as its neck, doing enormous damage to everything around it.
“What?” Luc hissed. “That’s not what I said!”
“Oh, old man.” Rolan shook his head pityingly. “Don’t you remember? I’m a terrible listener.”
Luc cursed as Rolan sprinted away, following the long, wicked line of the Cryptic’s body, his sword held out wide as he leaped over rubble.
He knew he wouldn’t be much help against the monster. At most he’d be an annoyance to it. But maybe, just maybe, he could be annoying enough to distract it for a moment, giving Luc an opportunity to finish it off.
If there was one thing Rolan was naturally gifted at, it was irritating the snot out of things bigger than him.
He ran down a side street, searching for the serpentine tail while Luc drew its attention to himself. There was rubble piled everywhere and fires licking in the shattered windows.
It all felt unreal, a nightmare world that he would surely wake from.
Crisanth was his home, and that home was smashed into pieces.
Shops he’d passed every day of his life were gutted ruins.
Goods were spilled across the road. He passed a few people picking through the destruction or stumbling around in a daze.
“Get out of here!” he shouted at them. “Make for the gates—you’ll be safer there!”
Rolan strode on, burning for action, terrified he’d find it. He fell back into pretending, imagining himself braver than he was, trying to trick himself into motion.
“Where is it, you overgrown lizard?” he muttered. “Where’s that ugly tail of yours?”
Then he saw it—hurtling through the air toward him like a falling tree. He didn’t even have time to scream.
It slammed into his back, knocking him flat and punching the air from his lungs. With a groan, he rolled over and blinked at the smoke-clogged sky.
Get up, he told himself. Get up!
Somehow, his ribs aching, he found his feet.
His eyes focused on the tail swishing toward him.
It seemed to arc in slow motion, giving him time to study the split of its mouth, the shine of its fangs.
No eyes to speak of, but it seemed to know where he was all the same. A tail that could bite. How delightful.
He swung his sword as the tail came swinging for him. And missed.
The tail caught him across his stomach, slamming him into a brick wall. He coughed, dazed, sucking for breath. When the tail swung away, releasing him, he dropped to his knees. Then his hands. He couldn’t shake the stars from his vision.
“That was… not fair…!” he gasped.
He couldn’t force himself to get up. His entire body trembled, his limbs useless.
Fear and pain immobilized him, scattering his thoughts like bulls stampeding through chaff.
He couldn’t even pretend anymore that he was brave or strong or anything but small and weak and impossibly outmatched by the horror towering above.
“I… can’t…,” he groaned. “I can’t do it…”
He should have listened to Luc. Should have found shelter and hidden until this was all over.
Then he heard the scream.
His head whipped up, and he spotted her at once, crouched in an alley one block away.
Anaya.
She was trying to free a man trapped under rubble, but the Cryptic had spotted them. It raised its tail high, preparing to bring it crashing down on the girl. Even knowing this, she still tried to free the man, pulling at the bricks piled atop his lower half.
“ANAYA!” Rolan yelled. “RUN!”
Either she didn’t hear him or didn’t want to listen. Either way, Rolan had to do something.
With a roar, he surged upright, forcing his legs to move, ruthlessly bullying his own body into motion. Pain? Ignore it. Fear? Get over it.
Anaya needed him.
Howling like a wolf, Rolan threw himself forward, raising his sword high and gritting his teeth. But he wouldn’t reach her in time.
“Rolan—” Anaya began.
“JELLY BONES!” he roared back.
Anaya immediately went limp, sliding to the ground and melting into a boneless heap as the tail smashed through the air where her head had been. Rolan didn’t even have time to exhale in relief, because the tail’s rebound was headed directly for him.
As the tail swiped at his midsection for the third time, Rolan leaped. Flipping up and over the tail, he swung the sword in a silvery arc and yelled with all his might.
The blade cut clean through the tip, severing the evil mouth. It melted into smoke even before it hit the ground.
“Ha!” Rolan crowed, landing on his feet. “I—I did it…!”
He turned to stare at Anaya, who was staring back at him in shock.
“Th-thank you,” she stammered.
Rolan rushed to help her free the trapped man, ripping away bricks until Anaya could drag him out.
“Get him to the city gates!” Rolan said. “And stay clear of this mess!”
She nodded, still staring at him as if he were a stranger.
“GO!” he shouted.
“I don’t know—I don’t know if I can,” she said, her eyes wide with fear.
Gripping her arm, Rolan pressed his forehead to hers, his eyes burning into hers. “Then you pretend. You pretend you can do it until you do it.”
She nodded, blinking, and he saw her strength in the way her mouth pressed into a hard line. Her eyes flashed. “Rolan Strider, don’t you dare die.”
He grinned, projecting confidence he absolutely did not feel. “I won’t if you don’t!”
Anaya burst into motion, helping the injured man stumble down the road, away from the Cryptic. Rolan watched her go, his chest heaving, his hand trembling around his sword hilt. Only when she turned a corner and was safely out of sight did he turn back to the monster.
The battle was not over by a long shot. The Cryptic’s body arched away over the rooftops, and rather than take the long way round by the roads, Rolan climbed up the face of the nearest building instead.
It wasn’t hard to do, given that half the building had been crushed by the Cryptic, the rubble creating a kind of jagged staircase.
In moments he stood on the rooftop, blinking at the bird’s-eye view of the monster’s destruction. Entire city blocks lay in smoking ruin.
There was the head, and there was Luc dodging and slicing. He’d managed to sever one of its front legs, but the seven backups were proving more difficult for the Arcanist to reach.
“Right,” Rolan muttered. “Pretend you can do it until you do it. Time to take my own advice.”
He twirled his sword and hurled himself off the roof, landing hard on the Cryptic’s scaled back. He rolled twice before he managed to jab a dagger into the creature’s tough skin, stopping himself just before he tumbled off the other side.
Grinding his teeth together, he hauled on the dagger, pulling himself to his feet. The motion of the Cryptic as it moved made him dizzy, and he tottered back and forth for a moment before he found his balance and could start swinging his sword.
“Nobody should have this many legs,” he declared. “Let’s fix that.”
He managed to hack his sword halfway through one grisly thigh before the Cryptic caught on to him.
Presumably it did not enjoy boys scrabbling about on its back, chopping off its legs, especially when it was down by one already, thanks to Luc.
Rolan stood frozen on the center of its back as its enormous head turned completely around, like an owl’s, and roared in his face.
Massive, gooey globs of spit splashed across Rolan, clinging stickily to his clothes and hair, reeking like barrels of months-old fish.
“Yuck,” he gasped, pulling off ropes of goop. “I am so tired of that happening!”
“Rolan!” Luc roared. “Get down!”
The head wasn’t the only part of the creature that could rotate, apparently.
The legs turned around too and slashed at Rolan from all sides, while the belly crashed to the ground.
Or was it the back now? He was beyond confused about the way the creature fit together.
But suddenly the Cryptic seemed to be upside down, and it had made it its personal mission to smash Rolan into bits.
Yelping, Rolan rolled off the Cryptic’s back or belly or whatever it was and sprinted for cover.
It adapted again, legs rotating, neck turning.
Now its back was its front and its top was its bottom and it was chasing Rolan like a cat chasing a spider.
But the alley he was running for, one in which he’d escaped from Hoff many times before—simply was not there.
Instead he faced a wall of smoking rubble.
His chest heaved with exertion, his old stitches tearing open. He was cornered by the biggest Cryptic anyone in Crisanth had ever seen, and it was intent on taking his head as a souvenir.
“Rolan!” Luc came sprinting toward him, his eyes glowing blue. “Your sword, Rolan! Use the blasted sword!”
“Huh?” Rolan had been using the sword. Did Luc not see that the creature’s viper of a tail had been shorn off? Pretty spectacularly, too. It was just Rolan’s luck that Luc had been too busy to see it.
“Use the Arcana!” Luc roared, swinging for the Cryptic’s leg.
Oh. Right. What had Luc said? Something about the sword already being imbued with power?
Rolan breathed in, reaching for the Hollow Path, then flinched as Arcana flowed up his arm in a brilliant blue flash of light.
Cords of steel braided over his skeleton, while fire pulsed in his muscles. Traces of blue lightning shivered over his skin to the ends of his hair. Time slowed as his senses drank in every sound, smell, and flicker of movement around him, charting maps in his brain.
He breathed out, a cool blue mist curling off his lips.
Whatever this was, it wasn’t like the power he’d drawn from those small Cryptics hunted down in alleyways. This was more like the power from the large one in the cave.
Oh. This changed everything.
Rolan grinned.