The Green Thief: The Land in the Void, page 54
“But this is of course not what we’re here for, is it?” Pharroth asked.
“What?” Kaland asked.
“This is his collection, but it is a trinket collection compared to what else he has. Isn’t it?” Pharroth asked the Shade, who was still standing nearby, looking corporeal enough to be a real person.
“It is, indeed,” the Shade agreed.
“Show us the vault, Edo,” Pharroth said sharply.
“No need, I can do that too. It’s yet another spell that is only fueled because I allowed it to be,” the Shade said.
The Shade stepped forward, moving between the two great cases and ignoring the chest sitting in that space. After a wave of its hand, the glittering wall began to change appearance. It was as if a layer sitting on top of it was burning away like a curtain hanging on a wall, the enchantment Edo placed there long ago disappearing. Whatever the mineral that made up this chamber was, it held onto his enchantments forever, yet another reason it was the perfect place to hide the collection.
The shining rock disappeared in a perfect shape, revealing a square made out of the same material, smithed and set as a stone slab that functioned as a door.
“What is in there?” Kaland asked, his voice somewhat concerned.
“Exactly what we need to bring your war to a swift end,” Pharroth gave a reassuring nod.
“He’s lying, he’s going to-” Edo’s words were silenced by an immediate punch that went across his cheek.
“Silence,” Pharroth hissed.
“Unfortunately, he will need to open it,” the Shade spoke up, looking at Edo again with eyebrows raised expectantly.
“Very well, open it,” Pharroth pointed at the door as he looked at Edo.
Edo, cheekbone throbbing, now stood freely on his own two feet, but was still held in place by the axe-man. With a blank face, he turned from the Shade back to Pharroth, and slowly shook his head. There was a pause as the silence hung in the air, and then Pharroth let out a great sigh.
“I am growing tired of this, Edo,” Pharroth droned on.
His hand scanned along the shelf, and then came to the dagger right in front of his face. Baron Detrite’s dagger. Edo recalled how, after stealing it, he had tested it on himself to see the full extent of what it could do. Pricking his finger with it had sent him collapsing to the ground, writhing in pain. Pharroth gripped it in his hand, and began to move toward Edo.
“Open the vault, or I will use every single object in this room to hurt you. Not just this one, but this is where we’ll start.”
Edo stood there, relegating himself to take whatever was going to happen. If Pharroth got into the vault, that was likely it. Edo could see the darkness encroaching in his mind, like someone had doused a campfire in the dead of night.
“Do whatever you want. I’ll die before I open it. If you’ve seen into my head you know I’ll have no problem with that,” Edo said.
“Indeed. That’s why you’ll do everything but die,” Pharroth said as he closed in with Baron Detrite’s dagger in hand.
Edo closed his eyes, waiting for the point of the dagger to touch him. Where would it be first? His face? His chest? It didn’t matter. Wherever the first cut fell, the pain would spread through his entire body. Pharroth’s footsteps closed in, and Edo instead focused on the hurricane of noise in his head. Then he heard it more clearly. No.
It wasn’t in his head.
The sound of wind was closing in. Edo opened his eyes, and saw Pharroth’s long silvery hair start to sway as an impossible air current flowed into the chamber. Edo looked around, and then at Pharroth. The two stared at each other in silent acknowledgment, both remembering that feeling and knowing what was coming.
The flowing air in the chamber suddenly changed into a hurricane, swirling in a great circle around all of them. Edo was dropped to the ground as the axe-man stumbled backward, along with the other members of the Dead Dragons. Edo rolled off to the side and covered his head as his cloak billowed around him. It was like he was in the middle of a storm on the open ocean. The wind rushed over all of them and then, as quickly as it came, stopped. Edo cautiously took his hands away and looked up. Not only had the wind died down, but the rest of the air seemed to be sucked out of the room as Edo looked towards the stairs.
“Venwyl!” shouted Sevrun, “You did not return to the tower as we discussed.”
Sevrun stood in the center of the assembled Shrouded Combine. All six of them were there. Next to Sevrun stood Ehfayr, still holding Edo’s staff. On the left were Stasim the Essence and Arkad the Draught. On the right were the new Wright, Zent, and Ainof the Perennial. All of them were carrying their staffs, and for once, all of them looked unified in their intentions.
“Apologies, Patron Sevrun,” Edo groaned from the ground.
“PHARROTH!” boomed Sevrun.
“How I’ve missed that voice, Sevrun,” Pharroth said with an annoyed sneer.
“Traitor! You have betrayed the Combine, and DEFILED your Patronage. You will be taken back to the Combine, and undergo the Ritual of Demarcation. Never again will you summon the powers of-”
“Silence!” Pharroth boomed.
Sevrun was, for once, silent. But his eyes weren’t. An enraged, widened pose took hold of them even while Sevrun’s brow dropped to a scowl, causing his bushy white eyebrows to pull down into a V.
“I’ve wanted to tell you for years to shut up. But now I can do more than that,” Pharroth hissed.
Pharroth dropped the dagger to the ground next to him, and then raised both hands to bring them to the necklace of broken crystal pieces hanging at his chest. Pharroth began to lace the strings through his fingers, tangling all of the pieces together, and then closed his eyes as he shoved his hands together tightly. When he pulled them apart again, all of the broken pieces had been rejoined into one large crystal, hanging in the center of his neck and glowing with every color of the rainbow.
“Kill them all,” Pharroth said quietly.
The Dead Dragons snapped to attention. The axe-man hoisted the axe up onto his shoulder. Two-swords drew both of his weapons. The decaying face drew Edo’s sword. The map-seller drew a sword of his own. Even Kaland stepped forward, holding his own sword in one hand, and the C’rux in the other.
“Kaland, your Rite of Exchange forbids violence against you. However, this band was not a part of that Exchange. I advise you to stand aside,” Sevrun said quietly.
“If I recall correctly. The Exchange was that you would stay your hands whether for or against me. Where in that arrangement does it say that I cannot fight you?”
Sevrun cocked his head as the realization caught him off-guard. Then, his bushy white eyebrows went even lower into their scowl. Edo slowly put both hands on the ground, preparing to push himself up. He glanced around the room, his mind full of, and terrified by, the sheer number of possibilities. Then he looked past them all to the Shade, who was leaning against the vault door, casually waiting for whatever resolution may come.
Sevrun and Pharroth both shouted furiously at the exact same moment, and both propelled themselves upwards with a gust of wind. The sudden whirlwind filled the chamber, staggering the other occupants backward. Sevrun and Pharroth flew towards the ceiling, clashing against each other as both threw a burst of flame toward the other, washing the room in heat for a split second.
The line of Dead Dragons charged forward as the Shrouded Combine stood their ground. Kaland hesitated a moment, first looking up at the duel on the ceiling where Sevrun and Pharroth were both hurling waves of what looked like lightning, ice, and fire all at once that crashed into each other. Edo shielded his eyes as two crackles of lightning burst against each other, and then looked away from the stalemate down to the others.
The Dead Dragon with the two swords charged forward first, coming directly at Arkad the Draught. Arkad’s pale face watched with disinterest until her opponent was close enough. Then, with a quick flick of her arm, Arkad produced a small flask of a bilious yellow liquid, and hurled it square at her opponent’s chest. It was blocked with both swords, shattering the glass and splattering the liquid all over him. He seemed unaffected at first, but as the swords moved again, the yellow liquid began to smoke and sizzle. Every drop of it, whether it be on the metal of the blades, or the armor of the opponent, popped and fizzed, and then began to burn downward. The Dead Dragon let out an anguished shriek as it staggered back. The blades of the swords crumbled and fell into broken pieces, as did the breastplate it was wearing. A moment later, the figure’s entire body fell back, not moving as it continued to burn.
The figure with the leathered, decaying face charged Ainof the Perennial, ready to strike at her with Edo’s sword. Before he could reach her, Ainof produced a tree branch from the sleeve holding her staff, and held it aloft. As she raised her staff to it, the base of the crystal shaft began to glow, and then flowed from the bottom up to the staff’s crown, bouncing off and into the branch. The wood came to life, growing to the size of a small tree in an instant, and then wrapping itself around the attacker. Edo’s sword was dropped to the ground as the wood split in countless directions, some wrapping around the figure's limbs, others piercing his dead skin and growing straight through him.
Next to him, Zent the Wright was staring down the map-seller, who approached with cold, dead eyes but no fury. As he neared and was about to attack, Zent drew what looked like a sword sheathed at his belt. He held his staff in one hand behind his back, and swung the sword with the other. The whole thing moved as a flash, and the map-seller received a downward slice that Zent put the full force of his body into. The map-seller stopped, and then Edo watched with surprise as one of his arms fell off at the shoulder, and then his head. Zent then turned to the restrained figure to his left, and swiftly removed his head with one swing as well, carefully not damaging Ainof’s tree. Neither of the now dead opponents seemed to have any blood in their bodies. When Zent came to a stop, Edo confirmed that the weapon he used was a sword, but it was seemingly made out of the crystals that would be made into staffs.
Stasim waited patiently at the end of the line as the axe-man charged him like a bull. Stasim did not move, even when the attacker was close. The axe-man reared back, preparing to swing the weapon taller than Stasim down squarely at his head. Before he could bring it down, Stasim nodded with both his head, and his staff. One wouldn’t know it was an attack if they didn’t know what Stasim did, but the effect was apparent. The axe-man stopped in his tracks, and the axe slowly tipped from his hand like a felled tree. Then the enormous figure began grabbing at its head, squeezing it as if it was hearing the loudest noise possible. Its enormous gauntleted hands pressed into the helmet, squeaking and scraping loudly. Then, the figure began to bash itself. First with the palms of its hands, and then with both clenched fists. Stasim stared intently as the axe-man pummeled his own head again and again. A series of punches began to dent the helmet inward, and then the figure clapped both hands onto it, and went limp. The enormous body, sealed within armor that seemed impervious to weapons, collapsed to the ground, and didn’t move again.
Edo watched what could be described as either spectacle or horror unfold in front of him. Above them, Sevrun and Pharroth were seemingly at a stalemate, throwing fire and wind at each other with no effect. Edo saw that Kaland was watching too, holding his sword as he hesitated to attack. Then, he looked down at the C’rux in his hand, and back up at the members of the Combine in front of him. Edo could see the anger welling up in his face, and then Kaland began to charge forward. Pushing himself up quickly, Edo sprinted to where Pharroth had been standing, seeing Baron Detrite’s dagger still on the ground. His fingers locked on it as he looked up, and saw Kaland charging directly at Stasim. While still hunched down on the ground, Edo wound his arm back, then threw the dagger as hard as he could.
The entire thing seemed to happen in slow motion. The knife sailed, spinning end over end toward Kaland, who was rearing his sword back to thrust it forward. Stasim looked up, but knew he couldn’t defend himself, lest the Rite of Exchange be violated. Just as Kaland was about to strike, the knife spun to put the point out, and gave him the slightest graze between two of his knuckles. The skin split so cleanly that there wasn’t even blood, and yet Kaland lost his balance and fell forward, wailing in agony as both his sword and the C’rux fell from his hands.
Edo looked up toward the ceiling, thinking that he would need to figure out some way to help Sevrun. But as soon as he had looked up, the only thing to see was a great flash of a fork of lightning as it flew from Sevrun’s outstretched hand, arced across the ceiling, and crashed into Pharroth. Whatever momentum behind whatever force had lifted him into the air was instantly gone, and Pharroth came falling back to the ground with a quiet thump. He gasped, trying to recover the breath he had just lost, while Sevrun gently lowered himself down like a leaf on the tail end of a breeze.
“Yield, Pharroth,” Sevrun said as he stood over him.
Pharroth looked around, seeing the remnants of his followers around him. Not one was moving, aside from Kaland who was struggling to get up under his own power. The other members of the Combine stood by at the ready, although the only one who looked as if anticipating another fight was Zent. Ehfayr stepped forward, clicking Edo’s staff against the floor with each step. As he approached, Sevrun looked up at him.
“Perhaps we were wrong. Perhaps the signs portending to Venwyl meant only that he would be involved with the doom that Pharroth was trying to bring,” Sevrun said.
Ehfayr looked at him, one of his arched eyebrows raised higher in thought. On the floor, Pharroth began to laugh. A wheezing, half-broken laugh, as if breath couldn’t properly get in or out of his lungs. He slowly rose off the ground, prompting Sevrun to point the tip of his staff at him. When Pharroth was back on his feet, he held his chest with one arm, and then looked at Sevrun.
“Is that what you think?” Pharroth said with strained glee.
He turned to look at Edo, and then raised one shaky hand to point at him.
“Signs in the stars that ‘Venwyl’ here is a harbinger of destruction are the easiest thing to see. But when one looks deeper. That is when you really see the entire picture of what he is, rather than what he has drawn for us to see.”
Sevrun whipped his eyes toward Edo, and then back to Pharroth.
“Speak. What do you mean?” Sevrun asked.
“One of the best parts of my expansion into the other fields of magic is that I am now able to take after our very own Essence Patron. To see into the mind of whoever I wish. Our friend Venwyl here has many things going on below the surface that he’s never shared with anyone. Things that shocked me. Frankly, I’m unsure how Stasim here handled the truth of it.”
Pharroth had a deranged grin on his face as he pointed to Stasim. The others looked at the Essence Patron, who tensed his posture and clenched his jaw. Sevrun did as well, and then looked back to Pharroth again.
“A lie. You are a master of lies to the point that you lied to death itself,” Sevrun said quietly.
“How I wish I was lying, my dear Elemental. Behold.”
Pharroth raised his hands to his chest again, squaring them around the crystal hanging down from his neck. He held his focus for a moment, and then put one hand up as if balancing something on his fingertips.
“I wonder if Stasim here has ever attempted this feat. Or if he simply didn’t want others to know it was possible,” Pharroth boasted.
“What are you talking about?” Stasim butted in with a shout.
“You see, one of our friend here’s tricks is that he can manipulate the senses. Isn’t that right, Venwyl? That’s what makes him such a proficient thief. How difficult it must be to be caught when you can trick someone’s eyes into having never seen you at all.”
More eyes began to turn to Edo. He looked at the floor reflexively, suddenly wishing he had his mask on.
“Even beyond that, he can do it to himself. Is that how you find your footing without looking? Is that how you can climb and sneak with such precision?”
Edo instinctively backed up. He looked to the exit, which was on the other side of the room where the Combine were standing. A quick glance to the Shade, who was still leaning on the wall, prompted nothing more than a shrug.
“But I am losing my place. I have found my own way to do this, adapting it from the Essence technique. Allow me please, to show you exactly what is inside Venwyl’s mind,” Pharroth said as he turned to face Edo.
Pharroth began to raise his hand, his palm pointed toward Edo. Stasim shook his head, and as if expecting interference, Sevrun raised his hand to stop him.
There was a rush in Edo’s mind, of noise and of anger. Pharroth had no right. Edo’s hand immediately went to his leg, searching for however many throwing knives he had left. Pharroth flexed his fingers forward, as if squeezing Edo’s head from a distance.
Edo fell to his knees as a great invasive pain spread throughout his head. Both hands clutched it tightly, trying to shut out what felt like a noise growing louder from within. The shadows flickering on the walls began to take shape, looking like the face he had seen on the cave wall, among others. Great beasts of claws and horns and tendrils and spikes. Shapeless hatred. Jealousy. Want. Abandonment.
Everything flooded into his mind, forcing its way there like a million intrusive thoughts that could send someone into a panic. Edo’s vision began to blur, and the last thing he saw was Pharroth grinning as all the members of the Shrouded Combine, and Kaland, raised their heads and closed their eyes.
A veil of darkness spread over Edo’s vision until there was nothing left.
Nothing.
Chapter 29:
The Void
He looked around in every direction, including above his head and below his feet. There was nothing. He wasn’t even sure what he was standing on anymore. It was as if he was falling through the darkness with none of the wind that came with such a drop. The cave was gone. Those in it were gone. Where was Pharroth? And Kaland? And the Combine?
