Chapter 28 #3
Kársek manifested his rune hammer and held it just below the mighty head with one fist. “Let’s get moving.”
Exeros’ mote bobbed once and floated away.
Sam took after it. She moved as if in a dream. So much had happened, and so quickly. It felt as if the very tethers that bound her to her own life were coming apart. She didn’t know what to think, or how to understand these rapid developments.
For Harald to have accepted Eclavistra’s Artifact into his Cosmos… to have done so without even asking for their opinion on the matter, her opinion on the matter… and then to abruptly appear on the 36th Level days in advance of when Alabenthos had predicted he might?
And for Exeros to return to the 33rd to report that fact?
She eyed the bobbing mote that flitted on ahead. The sour Seraph child had refused to answer questions after briefing Alabenthos in private. Had merely referred to himself as a “wretched errand boy” and demanded they hurry.
Sam rested her hand on the pommel of her sheathed blade.
Strode after the mote, clambering over rubble and rocks.
Harald was still alive. She knew this to be true.
Knew that the moment he died—the very second—she’d be made aware of his death.
Perhaps due to his Mote of Humility that she carried in her Cosmos.
Or perhaps simply because they were bound together, bound even in the eyes of the Fallen Angel.
He was alive.
He was out here somewhere.
But what had he become?
The others followed gamely, eventually falling into silence as they lapsed into an athletic scramble over the rough terrain. Ever Exeros’ mote flew ahead.
Why had the Seraph intervened? If he had truly thought Harald was in danger, why hadn’t he reveled in the fact?
At last: movement up ahead.
Sam raised her hand, drawing the attention of the others, and slowed as she rounded the base of a great blocky hill.
Approaching was a terrifying cadre of monsters.
Two gigantic spiders of the purest ebon were picking their way forward, each as large as a house, their exoskeletons finely ridged with elevated black patterns.
A towering golem of white stone strode before them alongside its exact opposite, a hulking warrior of darkest night, its plate armor and helm crowned by a sheaf of thick black leaves.
And in their center, hands linked behind his back, striding forward with a pensive frown?
Harald.
Or a creature shaped like him.
Black shadows were thinly burning off him, manifesting a few inches above his skin to ripple and stream back where they faded once more into the air. His skin was unnaturally pale, his mane of hair darker, and his movements controlled, poised, and infused with a lethal, subtle grace.
Their eyes met as both came to a stop some thirty yards apart.
For a long, aching moment Harald just stared at her, face blank, mouth a taut line. There was no recognition in the depths of his eyes, no emotion.
The twin gigantic spiders sank a little lower on their great legs, as if preparing to leap, and twin white blades of pure fire roared forth from the golem’s fists.
Then Shadowpaw gave a happy bark and came running from somewhere off to the side—she’d not even seen him in the shadows—to leap up at her, tongue lolling, huge paws on her chest as she nearly staggered back.
“Sam?” Harald’s voice was one of burgeoning recognition. “Sam! Nessa! You’ve all come!”
Sam forced a smile as she boxed Shadowpaw’s ears affectionately, then sidestepped so that the giant mastiff dropped back down.
The twin spiders, golem, and black leaf knight were gone as if they’d never existed. Harald came jogging up, his grin the same, that rueful, charming crooked smile, and she yearned to match it, to let her relief at seeing him alive be all that mattered.
But in the depths of his eyes, even now as he came up to embrace her, she saw something new. Something cold and distant and masterful.
Then he was laughing and hugging her tight, face pressing into her hair, then pulling away to beam at the others who’d come up to join them.
Sam drew back, smiling, yes, but trying to understand her own numbness. The others were talking animatedly, Vic launching into an account of all that had transpired, Kársek quietly content, Nessa with her hands on her hips, shaking her head in mock despair.
They’d done it.
They’d found him in time.
But even as she crouched to scritch behind Shadowpaw’s ears and hug him tight, some part of her refused to agree.
That was Harald, yes. But also, not. It felt like a stranger had appeared in their midst, for around him lay a subtle aura of bleak power, of subtle despair, of compelling majesty.
And the way he moved. She couldn’t pin it down, but it felt too fluid, too smooth, like a mimic aping human movement and doing it too well.
They’d arrived in time, she acknowledged. But as Harald glanced her way with a grin, she forced a mirrored response that she didn’t feel in her heart, and thought: we were too late. We were too late from the moment he left Flutic.
Oh, Harald, she thought, her smile stiff on her face. Oh, Harald.