Chapter 57 Heart of the Veil #2
“It was working rather well until that little whore came along and unshackled your mind.” Wyran scoffed.
Trembling, Asterious spat, blood and power raging beneath his skin as the Shadows around them wailed. “You think Sinevia will reward you? She’ll dispose of you as soon as you’ve outlived your usefulness.”
“Like you did? The moment I turned on your little witch, I became nothing to you.” Wryan closed the last bit of distance between them and swung, only to be met with sparks from Asterious’ onyx blade.
“You were already working against me. All this time, long before I met Caramyn.” Through clashing metal, the prince bared his teeth.
“That’s why you hated her. Because you knew she’d show me what I could not see.
Because she would be able to lead me here before you could help Sinevia steal the Veil’s power.
” Asterious tightened his grip on the hilt, the crossed blades locked in place as he held his ground against Wyran. “All I want to know is…why?”
Wyran deflected, pushing him away with the edge of his blade.
“Someone has to improve upon what your father started,” he hissed, coiling back like a viper waiting to strike.
“And despite all the setbacks, I’d say the plan is still not totally ruined.
You played right into it. You just led me right to the only thing capable of destroying you…
and of opening the Veil.” Wyran gestured to the great wall of unearthly shadow power behind him, as its smoky essence coiled and curled like a void of ghostly serpents.
“And as an added bonus, you even brought leverage.”
Asterious circled the glade opposite Wyran, every step measured, every muscle set for the next attack. “If you so much as think of touching Caramyn, I’ll—”
“You’ll what? Kill me? And therefore yourself? Then what?” Wyran’s gaze hardened like the steel in his hand.
“I…I don’t understand why you want any of this.” Asterious squeezed his sword’s hilt, his muscles taut with restraint. He wanted nothing more than to split Wyran in two and turn the snow crimson with his blood. “Why would you of all people want to open the Veil? What is it you’re after?”
“Your Highness, with all due respect, I’m astonished that after all this time you still have not figured me out.
” Wyran sneered, cutting into Asterious with each word.
“The Veil is not only a prison—it is a weapon. A sealed power so vast that even your father feared to name what lay beyond it. To squander it as a cage for magickind filth is weakness. Sinevia’s power is just a means to an end.
She’ll raise me an army of the dead that she believes she controls.
She will reduce you to a slave, no different from the rest of your kind.
And with your Blade, I will have the power to unchain the Lightborn of my choosing from the Veil—not as citizens, not as allies, but as property.
And in due time, alongside you and your sister, they will serve…
or they will rot—at the feet of an Iron King.
” Wyran’s voice crawled out like the haunting smoke of the Veil behind him.
Asterious faltered for words that wouldn’t come, still unraveling everything, his feet seemingly frozen in place by invisible weights.
Wyran stood before him now, merely a few feet away, within a blade’s reach.
“And thanks to that delightful ticking clock that is that heartbeat of yours, it’s all entirely inevitable. It’s simply a matter of time.”
“You will never be King, you lying, fucking bastard,” he growled, raw fury seething in his bones.
“Me? The bastard?” Wyran let out a cruel, wicked laugh as he closed the distance between them. “Poor Asterious…so starved and desperate for the acceptance of a father, that you overlooked all the warnings right in front of you.” Wyran clicked his tongue. “You foolish, pathetic boy.”
Something in Asterious snapped, and he surged forward, something far greater than rage rising in his veins.
He swung the blade, and Wyran parried it with ease, that sinister smile still plastered on his face.
Asterious called on that sliver of beastly power and shoved him backwards, swiping at him with the sword again before Wyran caught it in a cross-block.
“There it is. That brutish temper. Go ahead and let it take control.” Wryan pulled back his blade with a chilling sound.
“Make it so easy for Sinevia to make you her puppet, by killing me and becoming a mindless monster forever, leaving the fate of the kingdom—and your whore—in her hands. Whatever you choose to do, you lose.”
Asterious lunged. A flurry of steel and sparks filled the darkness around them.
The Woods echoed with the sound of cold clanging metal as their blades danced.
Asterious knew he could kill Wyran easily with one stealthy dodge and a swift strike across the throat—and it took everything in him to keep reminding himself that Wyran wouldn’t be worth the price.
Instead, he’d make him feel every bit of pain he’d caused him. Every bit of the torture he’d inflicted on his mind and body through the years. Every scar he’d convinced Asterious to take, he’d give him back.
His Light magic pulsed with each step, each breath. With invisible speed, he landed a well-placed slice across the side of his face. Wryan recoiled for a step as he wiped away the thin line of blood he seemed shocked to see, and then dove back in.
Asterious struck Wyran’s sword, twisting his wrist so that he forced his arm back with it.
Wyran yelped, and before he could even think to counter it, Asterious’ blade was forcing his back again, scraping steel.
He drove forward, his blade dipping down and across the back of Wyran’s calf, drawing a stream of dark blood down his leg and a grisly cry from his lips.
“Pain is a tool.” Asterious stated, recalling every time Wyran had spouted the words to him. “A necessary teacher.”
He allowed Wyran the false hope of a block or two as he watched him limp toward him, playing on his desperation to hold him off here until Sinevia arrived.
He whirled around, flashing his sword up Wyran’s ribs, flaying open the thin skin to expose the white stripes of bone. “Discipline—isn’t that what you called it?”
Wyran howled in agony, but stubbornly tried to get in another hit, his movements crooked and crippled.
Asterious leapt back, and in the same breath, thrust his sword up into Wyran’s outstretched arm, driving the blade through the flesh of his forearm like a spear.
His blood sprayed. He screamed out once more as his sword dropped to the snow, cold metal on frozen ground.
Asterious pulled him toward him before he could drop to his knees, and as he looked into the man’s amber eyes, his mind flooded with echoes of every twisted command, every degradation in the name of making him stronger that he’d ever wielded like a weapon over him.
And he yanked him forward, bringing his face close to his.
“Whatever happens to me, it will be at my choosing. I want you to understand that you no longer have any power over me.”
And with one last, unrestrained punch across his jaw, he tossed the bleeding, battered man against the trunk of the great tree that guarded the Veil.
And then he glanced down, smearing away the blood on the hilt of his sword. He focused on the markings, realizing they weren’t just some decorative pattern. In the center of the carvings, there it was, with the same intricacy and delicate design—the exact same runic symbol Caramyn bore on her skin.