Chapter 32
Every Godforged needs human life for something. The Corpsebinders use their bodies as material to create Abominations and their life force to animate them. The Chained use their blood and life force to forge their armor and weapons. Every human life lost fuels our enemies.
~Rhaskar Thorne, Book Four of the Priests
Fiona
I swing onto the ledge where Rhaskar Thorne stands, an entire bag of what I expect to be my Infusions sitting at his feet.
He doesn’t even turn to me, his eyes still peering at the bridge.
Inni and Vyran fly in complicated patterns over it.
Between them, a much smaller figure zips around them.
Azric. He’s the only person they’d allow to be that close.
“You brought the Infusions?” I ask.
He nods to me. “Ainslee said that you needed a significant amount of them, so I did my best to make sure you wouldn’t run out. I put in extras of even the rare ones because she seemed to think you were using them faster than expected.”
Anger tries to work its way out of me, pushing to confront the man who killed my parents. I don’t let it. This is about more than just the two of us.
“I’m sparring every day, multiple times a day, against the best of the best. I have to use Infusions or there wouldn’t be any way for me to survive even our practices.”
He nods. “Good. You’ll have to show us all you’ve learned while you’ve been here when you get home.”
If I go back home.
“Have you ever heard of the Hunters?” I ask, changing the conversation.
He cocks his head. “Where did you hear about the Hunters? That’s not a topic that’s spoken about regularly.”
“Darian said they’re why this whole war began.” I may have decided not to confront Rhaskar about my parents, but that doesn’t mean I trust him with the full truth of what I’m learning.
He sits down on the ledge that rings our hiding place and says, “He’s right.
He was there when Maeve Arden forced Calyr to wake the gods.
The dragon explained to the gods that the Hunters would come for them soon, and they forced Nyth to train for the war that would happen when the Hunters arrived.
That’s the point of these eighty years of fighting. ”
“Yes, he told me all that, but what do you know about the Hunters? Their motivations, their abilities, their numbers?”
Rhaskar sighs. “That’s not a simple answer.
There was a book called A History of Magic and Dragons written by Erevyn Morvyn, the first Conduit of Shadows, which had some information on them.
Then there is The Future of Magic and Dragons by Maeve Arden, which has collected some other tidbits of lore.
But all of it has come from two sources: the dragons that are still on Nyth and a being that lurks just outside of Nyth within the Void called the Darkness. ”
He rubs his cheek and continues, “Remember that all this information could be completely wrong, as the dragons spent far more time running than fighting, and the Darkness’s information is secondhand.
The Hunters’ numbers are endless according to these sources.
They are extremely powerful and could destroy hundreds of dragons while taking no losses.
The only dragon who ever successfully fought them was Sidon, and he did it alone.
“What we’ve assumed is that they kill by pulling the magic from a creature.
I doubt they’d have any problems wielding a sword or spear, but their true danger is how easily they can drain a magical being’s power.
For dragons, this would be deadly. For nearly anything else, it would be nearly as deadly, with the sole exception being humans.
Sidon’s powers are unique in that he doesn’t really have any.
He didn’t depend on his magic to win him fights, so he had experience fighting with tooth and claw rather than powers. ”
I nod to him. “That’s interesting. That means that Priests would probably have a reasonably good chance of standing against them?”
Rhaskar shrugs. “I don’t know. If they’re built like Chained, I doubt it.
If they’re built like dragons, definitely not.
Regardless, they’d have the numbers. We have what…
a few thousand Priests? Most of them are barely more than typical humans other than the ability to wield dragonfire, which I’d assume is worthless against Hunters.
Otherwise, the dragons wouldn’t have had any problem fighting them.
The numbers are the real danger, though.
You can always figure out how to kill a single enemy if you can find his weaknesses and exploit them, but to do that millions of times?
That’s a completely different question, and it’s not always one with a reasonable answer. ”
I chew my lip. “That’s not the best of news.”
“It is what it is. We’ll have to adapt just like we did when the gods began their war. We can’t adapt until we know what we’re up against, though.”
I look him in his eyes for a few long moments before saying, “You should begin recruiting more heavily for the Order. It feels like something is happening behind the scenes. Echo died. Saelira said one of the gods will die soon. Other gods have mostly disappeared. Things are changing, and it’d be better if you had more people trained up now rather than trying to scramble for numbers later. ”
His face is grave as he hears my suggestion. “We will do our best to increase our numbers. This is good information. Do you have any more?”
“I’m fighting on a team in the third trial. All the gods, champions, and most of their generals will be watching us. I won’t be able to use any of my Marks, and any use of Infusions will need to be hidden.”
He nods. “We already expected you to have to hide your strengths. That you’re on a team is worrisome, though. Do they trust you to hold your own in a fight? If they still look at you as a…”
“No, they trust me. I said that a Priest had trained me from a young age, and they haven’t questioned it. Rurik and Erik Halden are on my team. Both of them believed me when I explained why I could fight like I do, so the rest of the group has accepted it.”
Rhaskar’s eyes harden at the mention of the princes’ names. “You’re working with the Halden boys?”
I nod to him, and he lets out an exasperated snarl.
“They’re not to be trusted, Fiona. Their father, Brandor Halden, was the first to give in to the gods’ demands.
He allowed thousands of his people to be tortured for five years to create the Stormbringers.
They were the first ones taken and the last ones to be brought back to Nyth. ”
I’ve been told how each of the Godforged were created.
The process wasn’t pleasant for any save Adelyth’s group, though they all started as Fae rather than humans.
I thought it was horrible what each of the gods had done because Rhaskar had spoken with such ferocity on the matter.
I’d trusted him implicitly then, but now…
“How many years of torture do you put the average Priest through?” I say softly.
He whips his head toward me with anger in his eyes. “I don’t tortu…”
“What do you call breaking my legs when I was seven? What about when you flayed my arms? How about when you forced me to learn to think while my body fought for air?”
I can see the telltale signs of him trying to control his emotions. The way his jaw tightens. His hands go behind his back so that he can clench his fists. “I had to do that, Fiona. It was a necessary part of your training. You were going to go with me on missions, and if someone had captured you…”
I stop him. “If it looks like a goat, walks like a goat, and bleats like a goat, it’s not a fucking duck just because you put some feathers on it.
You tortured me. You’ve tortured countless others during their training as Priests.
Yes, you had your reasons, but the Haldens aren’t angry that they went through their training.
Stop acting like you haven’t done anything terrible in the name of saving people.
Their father decided the best way to save his people was to make a deal with a god.
More than likely, they would have been crushed, so he probably made the right decision for his people. ”
Rhaskar’s eyes blaze. “You don’t know what you’re saying, Fiona. Spending time with these people has changed you. You never would have considered our enemies to have been in the right before you came here.”
“That’s because you never looked at anything from their side,” I say through gritted teeth.
I know I’m fighting with him because of what I’ve learned rather than because he was saying negative things about Erik and Rurik’s father.
That doesn’t matter. No one stands up to him.
No one tells him he’s as much of a tyrant as any of the gods or their champions.
Yes, he’s saved Sylvantia from the torment that so many other kingdoms have experienced, but that doesn’t mean he’s some white knight from stories.
“Each of them allowed their people to become a commodity for a god. The humans in every kingdom other than Sylvantia are little more than demon fodder.”
I smile at him rather than let the anger take hold because if I give up any of my control, I’ll tell him exactly why I’m furious at him.
“I didn’t say you did anything wrong. What I’m saying is that the other kings and queens didn’t have the tools you had.
They didn’t think they could hold back the tide of the Godforged armies.
Decisions are hard, Father. You made the right choice.
I think Brandor did as well. It’s time you stopped acting like they all gave up so easily. ”
I don’t let him get a word in. “The only reason you refusing Lysara worked was because everyone else agreed. If not enough of the kingdoms had given in, the gods would have come down and fought you themselves. You wouldn’t have been able to win that fight.
From what I understand, if any of the other kingdoms truly wanted to destroy Sylvantia, they would march the full strength of their armies on us.
Even with almost eighty years of you recruiting Priests, we would crumble like paper walls before a storm.
Have we ever faced a full-sized force from any of the Godforged armies? ”
He pauses for a moment, and I don’t respond, forcing him to accept my statement.
“Once,” he says softly. “Once, Lysara’s army of the Undying attacked Sylvantia at the beginning of the war.
The Order was tiny then, barely three hundred of us.
We had only two Marks, the Phoenix and Chains.
It was a massacre. They pushed us all the way back to Stormhaven.
Inni led the attack, and I alone stood against her on the wall.
It was only because of the ballista we’d installed that any of us survived.
That and because the Undying were so new to their powers. ”
His voice trails off as he remembers the same battle that Inni had mentioned. “She didn’t even have a champion. What would have happened if Azric had been riding Inni?”
“We’d have lost, I should think,” he says softly.
“We held them off for three days, and then they left, not even bothering to hold the land they’d taken.
It was as if they had given up. The casualties were massive on both sides, but for every one of them we killed, at least three humans died.
There were only a handful of Priests that survived.
It was catastrophic, but we won. The wall held the storm back even if very little was left. ”
“They gave up because every Undying that you killed stayed dead permanently. It’s why they don’t bother with us anymore. It’s why me becoming a champion is so dangerous to their plans.”
I take a deep breath. “You need to stop thinking as though everyone in Nyth is the enemy, Father. The more and more I’ve heard about these Hunters, the more I think we need to have conversations with champions.
You made your stand, and you were successful.
The Godforged don’t want to go to war with us, but soon enough, we’re going to war alongside them, whether or not you plan to.
You got lucky in this war. No amount of Veris’s touch will protect you or the rest of humanity from the next one. We can’t be shortsighted.”
He doesn’t respond for a long time, and it’s only when he turns to face away from me that he finally answers.
“Maybe you’re right. We’ve been fighting for so long, but if what you say is true, then we need to look to the future rather than the past. It’s the mark of a good leader to put his own biases to the side and listen to reason. ”
He turns back toward me. “I will speak with the most experienced Priests and see if we can come to some agreement on how to move forward in a world where the gods and their armies aren’t our enemies any longer.”
I nod to him and lift the sack of Infusions. Just like within my cloak, there are no clinks of vials. Each of them is protected against any accidental impact by decades of experience. Infusions are, after all, the greatest treasure the Priests hold. “How long should these last?” I ask.
Rhaskar answers quickly, “Based on how you’ve been using them, that should last a month, maybe more. Obviously, if you use the rarer ones regularly, I’ll need to come back sooner. Get a message to me if you need a refill. Otherwise, I’ll plan to come back in a month.”
I nod, and he pauses for a moment as though he wants to say something else. I don’t let him. Instead, I grip the sack in one hand and swing it onto the ledge above us. Then, without a word, I climb up after it, leaving Rhaskar Thorne where I found him.
I’m still furious with him, but a part of me yearns to climb back down, to give him a hug and ask him why he did what he did. I want to cry against his shoulder rather than drive my daggers into him.
He may have killed my parents, but he was the man who made me feel safe. He was my rock. And now… now I have no one.