Chapter 41 Reasons
With a laugh, Rolan flipped backward over the wall of rubble and landed atop it, feeling as light as a cat, as agile as a grasshopper.
The Cryptic was focused on his master now, its headless tail lashing angrily.
Rolan ducked as it whipped over him, and sliced upward, taking off another section of tail.
But this was no good, and he knew it. They were hacking the thing apart bit by bit, only making it angrier. They needed to strike the center.
Rolan ran forward, making use of his newfound speed. The rubble and cobblestones flowed beneath him, his feet hardly touching the ground as he sped below the Cryptic’s belly. Aligning himself directly under it, he gazed at the dark swirl of the aleth over its core.
“Here goes,” he breathed.
Then he leaped upward, yelling, sword held aloft, no doubt looking fantastically awesome—
“Oof!” Rolan grunted as something heavy and thick caught him around the middle and flung him into the wall of a nearby hat shop.
He fell to the ground in a rain of bricks, glass, and crumpled hats.
Spitting out a mouthful of gravel, he stumbled to his feet and blearily tried to see what had hit him.
“What?” he moaned. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Twelve oily tentacles had sprouted from the monster’s belly and swirled around like it was a boxer preparing for a match. It had twelve limber fists ready to sucker punch Rolan under the chin.
“Luc! It’s growing new parts!” Rolan yelled.
Luc, hard pressed to defend against the Cryptic’s slavering jaws, shouted back, “Of course it is! It’s a Rank Seven!”
“Did you say Rank Seven? They only go up to five!”
“I haven’t taught you everything about Cryptics yet!”
“Great,” Rolan muttered. “Spectacular.”
So this was a thing Cryptics did, was it? Just sprout new body parts at will and evolve into ranks so big and horrible that they couldn’t even be written down in the Histories? Rolan did not like that one bit. It was blasted unfair, changing the rules of the game halfway through.
And why, of all things, did it have to be tentacles? He hated those more than claws, fangs, and biting tails all lumped together.
“What do I do?” he called out.
But Luc either couldn’t hear him, or was too busy fighting for his life to reply.
Gritting his teeth, Rolan yelled wildly and charged in, a glowing, sword-swinging maniac.
He chopped at everything that moved. He thought he might have gotten one tentacle—the meaty, fleshy squish of it sent a shiver of disgust down his spine—but he wondered what the point was.
It could just push out another to replace what it lost.
This thing could only be brought down by a single blow, and until that happened, nothing else mattered. They would fight until they dropped from sheer exhaustion, and it could dissect them at its leisure.
Rolan was just about to bring up his concerns to Luc when the Cryptic struck a nasty blow to the Arcanist’s chest.
Luc flew through the air and collided with a marble pillar. Cracks crackled out across the stone, and Rolan watched in horror as the pillar crumbled atop his master.
“LUC!” Racing across the cobblestones, Rolan skidded to a halt between the Arcanist and the advancing monster. The Arcanist groaned, the blue light fading from his eyes as his Arcana faded. Not even his tattoos glowed anymore. He was drained dry and his leg was pinned under the fallen column.
The Cryptic took a step toward them, webs of saliva dripping from its jowls, its blue eyes slits of pure hate, each tooth longer than Luc’s broadsword.
“No!” Rolan snarled, raising his glowing blue blade, wisps of Arcana hissing between his clenched teeth. “He’s mine! You will not hurt him!”
“Go,” whispered Luc weakly. “Rolan, run.”
“Not a chance,” Rolan replied. “You promised you’d never leave me. Well, I promise you the same!”
The Cryptic stretched its maw wide, no doubt planning to chomp them both into bits with a single bite.
Rolan braced himself, half terror, half fury, and all determination.
“COME ON, THEN!” he roared. “TRY ME!”
Instead the Cryptic shut its mouth and turned its head. It seemed to forget Rolan completely. Perhaps he looked more terrifying than he thought.
He blinked, unsure what to think as the Cryptic turned and scrabbled away, toward the palace on the hill.
Meanwhile Luc dug another relic from his pocket and cracked it with his sword.
The rush of Arcana burned in his veins, trails of blue fire beneath his skin.
With a grunt, Luc heaved the column off his leg.
By then the Cryptic was across the square. Its tail—shorter now thanks to Rolan’s efforts—swung into the duke’s statue as it passed, knocking it to the ground with a crash.
Rolan helped Luc up, the pair of them watching the creature scurry away, tearing through the wall that separated the square from the ducal estate.
“What’s it doing?” Rolan shouted, trying to be heard over the crash of rubble as the Cryptic hauled its body over the crumbling wall.
“It’s caught a scent,” Luc said. Sweat beaded his forehead and soaked his shirt, and blood stained his clothes in several places. All of it had to be his own. Cryptics did not bleed.
“A scent?” echoed Rolan. “Of what?”
“Remember what I told you, about what Cryptics do when they get big enough?”
They found their makers. Rolan remembered. He was about to open his mouth to say as much, when a stone struck him on the shoulder.
“What the—” Rolan whirled to see a man clutching a rock in his fist. He vaguely recognized the red beard, and he realized it was the man who’d spat at Luc last time they’d been in Crisanth.
“You brought it here, Arcanist!” the man roared, hefting another rock.
Luc gave a frustrated growl deep in his throat. “We don’t have time for this.”
Other city folk joined Red Beard, picking up their own bits of rock and rubble, eyeing Luc and Rolan angrily. With a jolt, Rolan recognized one of the faces.
Hoff.
His face mostly hidden by his hood, the former guard captain was slinking away from the crowd, a murderous glint to his eye. Was he going to get Rolan’s pa and his gang? Would they wait until Luc was busy fighting the Cryptic, then strike at his back?
Rolan gritted his teeth. He would not let that happen.
“He steals our secrets and spills them for all to hear!” Red Beard roared, emboldened by the gathering crowd. “Then lures his monsters here to destroy us!”
“No!” Rolan called. “You’re wrong!”
Red Beard hurled his rock. Luc batted it aside with his sword.
But more followed, flung by the people drawing near.
Some fled, probably fearing Luc’s wrath, while others hid behind ruined walls and threw whatever they could reach.
A hail of rocks and bricks battered Luc, who put himself in front of Rolan, shielding him with his broad form.
“Go!” Luc said.
“But—”
“Go!”
Rolan ran and heard his master’s heavy steps behind him. They raced around the duke’s fallen statue and took shelter behind it.
One hand braced on the duke’s granite nose, the other still around his sword, Rolan seethed. “What are they thinking! Can’t they see we’re fighting the blasted thing to keep them safe?”
“This is what it means to be an Arcanist,” Luc sighed.
“It’s stupid! Why don’t we just go home then, and let them deal with the Cryptic? We’ll see how they feel without us between them and its claws!”
“This is the life I lead, Rolan,” Luc said, his hard mask of battle slipping just enough for Rolan to see the sadness behind it.
A stone pinged off the statue, taking a chunk out of the duke’s left ear. Red Beard’s mob hadn’t given up, but they didn’t seem willing to give chase.
“You will rarely be thanked,” Luc said. “You will seldom be liked. You will have few allies and even fewer friends. You’ll be alone most of the time, suffering pain you cannot imagine, carrying other people’s secrets like wounds in your soul.
Bearing the cost of their darkest sins, so they don’t have to.
This is what it means to be an Arcanist. This is the miserable and thankless life I would give you, if you stay with me. ”
A band of iron seemed to tighten around Rolan’s chest. Luc’s blazing, Arcana-filled eyes bored into him, otherworldly and fierce.
“Then why do you do it?” Rolan asked.
Luc blinked, as if the question surprised him. “I… do it for my family.”
“To get justice for them? Or because you’re punishing yourself?”
Luc’s lips parted, a startled look in his eyes. “What?”
“You are, aren’t you?” Rolan demanded. “It wasn’t just that you wanted to find the person who killed them. You blame yourself for their deaths. And you kill monster after monster, hoping to somehow set it all right again. As if all this pain could erase that one.”
Luc said nothing. He shut his mouth and looked away, as haunted as Rolan had ever seen him. It reminded him of the first night he’d seen his master return from hunting Cryptics, when he’d been injured and weak. Vulnerable.
“At least I have a reason for fighting,” Luc grumbled. “Why do you do it?”
“Easy.” Rolan smiled. “I do it for the cool swords.”
Twirling his blade, Rolan stood and sidestepped as a stone came sailing from the mob across the square. Irritated, he spun to face the thrower. “Will you pack of weasels SHUT UP ALREADY?”
The people seemed startled by his shout. Even Red Beard hesitated, slightly lowering the brick in his hand.
“Let’s go,” Luc growled, scrambling to his feet. His eyes were on the Cryptic. “We’re wasting time here.”
The monster was clawing its way up the hill now, ripping out huge gouges of earth and flinging them up in a dark spray in its rush to the palace.
With Arcana enhancing his vision, Rolan could see the guards stationed across the once-lush grounds, holding crossbows and gaping in shock at the abomination racing toward them.
“So it’s we now, is it?” Rolan snorted. “Not going to send me away to hide again?”
Luc glared at him out of the corner of his eye. “I would, if I thought it would do any good.”
“It’s your own fault you didn’t choose a better apprentice,” Rolan said, grinning. “Race you there, old man! Last one to kill the Cryptic has to muck out Apple’s stall!”
Luc overtook him, but only by a hair. Side by side, they leaped over the ruined wall and pursued the Cryptic uphill, bare blades flashing, threads of Arcana streaming off the steel.
They caught up to the monster where the ground leveled off onto the grassy lawn in front of the palace. It wrecked a fountain, knocked over a few ornamental trees.
“FIRE!” cried a voice. “FIRE, YOU FOOLS!”
The duke stood on a balcony three floors up, screaming at his guards below. He leaned on the balustrade, his face pale.
At the sound of his voice, the Cryptic’s head lifted.
It looked straight at the duke.
And roared.
The cacophony of sound—like screeching bats, falling rock, cracking thunder, all at once—burst windows on the lower floor of the grand building. Shards of glass sparkled in the air. The duke cried out and flung himself backward, vanishing through the double doors behind him.
“It’s his,” Rolan whispered. “It really did come home to its maker. The Cryptic is the duke’s secret.”
He glanced at Luc and saw the Arcanist’s knuckles blanch as his grip tightened around his sword hilt. A look came into his eyes that made Rolan’s heart skip a beat. Luc looked suddenly like a stranger, the way he had that first day Rolan had seen him in Verity Square.
As dark and wrathful as a nightmare made flesh.
“Yes,” Luc murmured. “I believe you’re right.”
As ordered, the guards began firing off their crossbows. The bolts did little damage, most deflecting off the Cryptic’s scaled armor. But one man, either a rare shot or exceptionally lucky, managed to strike the creature in its eye.
That got its attention.
It roared again, this time at the guards. Several cut and fled, flinging their crossbows—and likely their jobs—to the ground. The rest at least made an effort to stand firm.
“Now!” Luc roared at Rolan. “Together!”
Taking advantage of the monster’s distraction, master and apprentice scurried beneath the Cryptic’s tentacled belly and began cutting their way to the center.
Luc’s great sword proved much more effective than Rolan’s shorter blade, scything through the tentacles, clearing a path to the critical core.
“Now!” Luc shouted.
He swung his sword in a mighty arc, lobbing off tentacles as quickly as they sprouted. Darting under his arm, Rolan positioned himself beneath the dark spiral of the Cryptic’s core.
“STRIKE THE CORE!” Luc ordered. He held out his large palm, and Rolan placed his foot squarely upon it. Then the Arcanist flung Rolan upward, his Arcanic strength launching the boy like a stone from a slingshot.
Rolan flipped once in the air, then plunged his sword into the aleth at the center of the Cryptic’s belly, all the way to the hilt.
At first, nothing happened.
Rolan’s heart stopped. The world stopped. He hung there, triumph giving way to horror.
But then, slowly… cracks appeared, webbing out from the epicenter of the Cryptic’s aleth and Rolan’s buried blade.
Cracks… splinters… a groaning sound like a shifting glacier…
And then all at once, blue light erupted from the wound, as if the monster were spouting magic.
Rolan ripped his sword free and dropped to land on his feet.
Then Luc barreled into him, knocking them both clear of the Cryptic as it crashed to the ground. Earth sprayed, the ground trembled. The monster’s maw gave one final, jagged roar, the sound making Rolan’s ears ring. It clawed at the dirt, still trying to fight, still thirsty for violence.
But then, its roar fading to a whine, it fell still.
Rolan looked back to see the monster dissolving into dust, its spindly legs and tentacles first, then the great heavy head and scaled body. All its monstrous bulk crumbled and flaked away, as if it had never been.
The silence that followed felt unreal, as if the world were afraid to move again, wary the monster might return.
But gradually the birds began to sing. The wind stirred. And Rolan’s heart resumed beating.
“It’s done,” Rolan panted. “We… we did it. Guess you have to muck Apple’s stall now, old man.”
He turned to his master, grinning with triumph, only to see Luc stone eyed, his face as cold as death as he looked around, searching the ground with a terrible, icy blue gaze.
“The relic,” growled Luc. “Where is it? Where is it?”