The Beginning After The End

Chapter 462

Chapter 460: Abandoned

NICO SEVER

As the tempus warp enveloped us in its magic, pulling us across space to the preprogrammed destination, I examined the bone-deep aching sensation that gripped my chest like a prolonged cardiac event. It was foolish—and human, too stupidly human. It wasn’t really the sharpness of Cecilia’s tone or her shrinking patience that made me feel like a twice-kicked dog dragging my tail in her wake…

No, what really bothered me was the fact that I couldn’t help but feel this treatment was deserved. I didn’t believe in karma as any sort of actual manifestation of results based on the inherent goodness of one’s own actions, but every time Cecilia snapped at me, I remembered myself in the early days of her reincarnation—equal parts desperate and terrified— and how that unhealthy alchemy of emotions led to the occasional cruelty to her, the person I had done everything—given everything—to see again in this life.

She had lied to me, kept things from me…but I had done the same to her first. I had helped Agrona corrupt her memories and implant false ones in her mind, building myself up as some fairy tale hero of her previous life, scrubbing out Grey and inserting myself in every positive place throughout her short and unhappy life.

With jarring suddenness, we appeared in the receiving chamber near Taegrin Caelum’s base. An eruption of motion and noise greet us as the soldiers and attendants hurried to solute, visibly caught off guard by our appearance. Instinctively, my gaze panned across the faces, looking for Draneeve, only for me to remember an instant later that he wasn’t there and never would be again. I had helped him escape.

I had helped him. After being cruel and awful to him, I had helped him escape the twisted life he had to live serving Agrona.

Watching Cecilia’s gunmetal gray hair bounce as she marched quickly past the surprised attendants, I steeled myself, wrapping up the hurt and crushing it down deep. I had failed Cecilia again and again, first in our last life, where I had let her be taken and hadn’t found her soon enough. And then again, in the end, when I had been right there, but I had only watched as Grey ran her through…

I missed my step as I followed Cecilia up the stairs, a sharp exhalation slipping out. She turned to regard me with concern, but I waved it away, and she continued on, surging forward on a wave of tension and eagerness.

It still didn’t seem real, the knowledge that Grey hadn’t intentionally murdered her. I inwardly cringed as I thought of all the things I had done, claiming that moment as justification for the most horrible actions. For years, back on Earth, I had fomented this hatred, biding my time as I planned how to take King Grey’s life in revenge…and then here, reincarnated, hadn’t I made destroying Grey and reincarnating Cecilia my entire life’s purpose?

A memory surged unbidden into the spotlight of my consciousness. In it, I kneeled before a magical shield, rubbing my eyes and blinking in disbelief. Through the magical barrier, I was looking at a figure, hoping it was a trick of the light, a hallucination, a mistake, but then as now, there was no mistaking that gunmetal hair, even matted with dirt and blood.

My mind had raced as I wrestled with the understanding that Tessia was there, in the middle of the attack on Xyrus Academy, when she was supposed to be with Arthur. Draneeve and Lucas Wykes had captured her, were ready to…

I had been so angry. So ready to kill. Hadn’t I repeated it over and over as my suppressed Alacryan self clawed and tore its way to the surface? Feelings so strong they had broken the lock Agrona had placed on my mind, but why?

I stopped climbing and leaned against the stairway wall. These memories had never been so clear. I needed to digest them, to understand something, a detail about my own behavior.

Ahead, Cecilia stopped and turned, the runic tattoos highlighted against her skin, but I didn’t see her. I looked harder, but I couldn’t see Cecilia…only Tessia Eralith.

The truth was that Tessia had been so important to me that witnessing her near death had been enough to shatter a spell placed by Agrona himself. But not because I had been close to Tessia. No…it was Arthur. I knew how important she was to him, and he was—had been—so important to me…my entire life…

Just as Grey had been on Earth. At least, until Cecilia arrived.

My best friend. My brother. And…I had hated him, tried to kill him…because of something he didn’t even do.

“Nico? Come on, we need to…Nico? What’s wrong?” Cecilia’s frustration melted away into tenderness as she took a step back down the stairs. Her hand raised, reaching for my hair, but she stopped just shy of actually touching me.

My face was scrunched up with the effort not to break down into tears. “You abandoned me.”

Tessia’s mouth turned down into a deep frown. “Nico, I’m right here. I haven’t left you.”

I shook my head, struggling to control my voice. I had to swallow twice before the words would come out. “I was doing everything I could to rescue you, and you left me behind. You gave up on me. Do you have any idea how torturous my life was after you died?”

Her brows pinched together, her nose wrinkling as her frown pressed into a straight slash across her elven face. “More torturous than my own before my death?” Regret immediately flooded over her features, and she let out a shaky breath. “You’ve never told me about after…on Earth.”

“There never seemed a point,” I answered, my voice a low moan that was almost embarrassing to hear.

“No, I suppose not. I…” She hesitated, swallowing heavily. “For what it’s worth, I thought I was protecting you.” Her expression cooled suddenly, one brow rising slightly higher than the other. “We’ve had days—weeks—to talk about this. I can see that you’ve been simmering in your own anger, building yourself up for a fight, but now isn’t the time—”

“Cecilia!” I barked, my voice amplified by the close quarters.

She flinched, and the expression of hurt was so purely Cecilia that she suddenly shifted in my eyes and mind, no longer the image of Tessia Eralith but once again Cecilia—my Cecil.

“I’m sorry,” I breathed out, choked by the pain and desperation to be heard. “I just…Grey. Arthur. I—he…” I shook my head, trying to clear the cobwebs from my stupid skull. “I didn’t just lose you. I lost him too, and without the two of you, I…don’t know. I lost myself.” I clenched my eyes shut so tight that stars began to burst behind the lids.

Soft fingers laced through my own, and my eyes snapped open. Cecilia’s face was hardly an inch in front of mine, looking down from one step above. “I’m sorry, I just didn’t know how to tell you. It was…a shock for me too. It took…too long to sort out the real from the implanted.”

I flinched at her words, which stung like the bite of a venomous hunter fly.

Cecilia’s jaw worked wordlessly as she seemed to struggle for what to say, then her gaze flattened and went blank, turning inward.

When she didn’t say anything for several long seconds, I cleared my throat. “Cecil?”

She scoffed and gave a small shake of her head, which she cocked slightly as if she were listening to something far away.

I squeezed the hand that was still holding mine, and her eyes refused and jumped to me.

“What just happened?” I asked nervously, suddenly worried for her.

Cecilia’s jaw clenched as she ground her teeth. “Nothing, nevermind.” She gave a small shake of her head and pressed her fingertips into her temples, looking pained. “We just need to find Agrona, and I’ll explain everything.”

“I…sure. Okay.”

Slowly, Cecilia began ascending again, grabbing my hand firmly and pulling me behind her. I let myself be tugged along, emotionally drained and mind blank as freshly pressed parchment. There were too many things to think through. I didn’t know enough, lacked the understanding to make decisions. The dread that Agrona was lying to us still sat in my guts like curdled milk, but I couldn’t be sure of anything.

There was a sharp edge of fear to my thoughts. I had seen it: Cecilia fraying at the edges like this. Her behavior was becoming more erratic, self-doubt bleeding from her very pores. It was too much pressure, to be the Legacy; that was no different in this world. I knew the spirit of Tessia Eralith remained dug into her mind like a tick, but she wouldn’t ask Agrona to help soothe the voice again. If she let him in like that, he might see the lies.

The thought was too much, and so I focused on the thing I always had: Cecilia herself. The feel of her skin against mine, the sway of her body as she climbed ahead of me, the one true piece of knowledge that I was absolutely certain of: I would do whatever it took to ensure our life together. If this world had to burn for our new lives to begin, so be it—

Except, even as I had this thought—an old line of thinking worn into the pathways of my mind—I had to second guess myself. I didn’t allow myself to dig any deeper than that, not wanting to face the question of what, exactly, I would or wouldn’t do to ensure that our vision would come true. It was too difficult and painful. And I couldn’t think about the fact that there might be a line out there, invisible but already drawn in the dirt, that I couldn’t cross.

Cecilia led me to Agrona’s private wing, brushing past guards and servants alike, unlocking mana-locked doors with a wave of her hand as easily as I might brush away a cobweb. When she didn’t find Agrona waiting for us in any of the expected places, she led me down into a labyrinthine series of tunnels and rooms that I had never seen before.

“Where are we?” I asked, immediately uncomfortable.

“Some kind of reliquary, I think,” she said off-hand. “I found him down here last time I visited, or he found me. He’s got to be here somewhere.”

Cecilia didn’t open any of the doors as she rushed around, clearly navigating by her sense of mana. Despite a powerful but dangerous-feeling sense of curiosity building with each door we passed, I followed in her increasingly desperate wake, allowing myself to be dragged along like a frightened child.

After twenty minutes or more of going in circles throughout the expansive system of hallways and small rooms, Cecilia began to slow, the urgency of her searching draining out of her as it became clear Agrona wasn’t there. We meandered a bit longer in silence, and I could see some thought simmering beneath the surface of her expression. Then, approaching it as if afraid of the contents, she came to a stop before one of the many, many doors.

“This is it,” she said after a moment, her tone uncertain.

“What?” I asked before sparking with understanding. “The rune-etched table? The one you took that mana from?” She had told me she’d found it but hadn’t given me many details, and there hadn’t been an opportunity to go in search of it before we were sent off to Dicathen.

I immediately reached for the door, my many hours of considering and researching the piece of mana she had shown me surging to the forefront of my mind and pushing out everything else.

“Wait,” she said, bringing me up short. Her turquoise eyes were shimmering, and she bit her lip nervously. “Should we?”

“Of course!” I said, excited to see this work of Imbuing for myself. “If it answers our questions—”

“But what if the answers aren’t…good?” she asked, and I suddenly understood.

“Then all the more reason we should know.”

Turning back to the door, I eased it open and entered. The room beyond was dimly lit from no definitive source and empty except for the artifact in question. A finely carved and crafted table, six feet long by about three feet across, took up almost the entire space. It was covered in runes etched deeply into the hard, glossy wood. They framed the top of the table with densely packed lines, then seemed to have been focused at certain positions across the surface.

I activated my regalia, and the table lit up with lines of connection and understanding as the magic attempted to help me decipher the runes’ combined meaning. “These formations, here, here, and here…if you were to lie over the top of them, they would be beneath your head, your core, and your lower spine.” I ran my fingertips across the runes, wondering.

“This bit seems to be a kind of array for storing mana—no, not storing. Transferring or capturing, maybe.” I turned to Cecilia, who was standing in the doorway, still looking nervous. “Perhaps it helped you contain the mana after your core broke down, but that seems counter to what I understand about Integration. And besides, the rest of the runes are too complex for it to be only that. You were right, these really are like nothing I’ve seen before. Maybe asuran in origin? A use structure originated by the basilisks and not integrated into Alacryan society?”

I continued to mumble to myself as I searched from form to form, rune to rune, trying to pluck out the meaning from each one, both individually and as groups in a sequence. And as I read, a prickly sensation began to grow at the nape of my neck, and the hair there stood on end. I wasn’t certain why, but the runes were making me uncomfortable. Was my subconscious beginning to peel away the layers of meaning in a way that my conscious mind hadn’t yet caught up with?

Taking a steadying breath, I pushed mana into the table, watching closely through the lens of my regalia.

“Nico!” Cecilia gasped.

At the same time, the room collapsed in on itself. Starting from the corners, it folded over and over like a piece of paper, too rapidly to react. The space was warping in toward us, caging us within a distortion of space itself. I pushed out with mana, a formless emanation to hold back the effect, but my mana was simply folded into the distortion.

Shimmering within the field of twisted space, I could see another room, like a cage or cell. We were being folded through space into the cells beneath the fortress, I realized with a panicked jolt.

But the folding of space was slowing, the deformed air trembling, and then, more slowly, unfolding. The spell quivered, the forces of magic so powerful I could feel the cracks they were making in the fabric of reality around us.

“Go, quickly,” Cecilia gasped. Both her hands were held up in front of her, clutched and clawlike, and she fought against the trap, preventing us from being shifted away.

I didn’t need to be told twice.

Rushing to the door, I had to wait a long and painful second before it fully reappeared, flat and able to be opened, then burst through, reaching back for Cecilia. But she didn’t need my help. Sweat was building on her brow, but with each instant, she seemed to settle, and she strode, tense but in control, through the door and into the hall. When we were both safe from the spell’s effects, she released it, and the folded space snapped away, the table vanishing and leaving the room barren.

“He’ll know,” I said breathlessly, my eyes wide, my pulse hammering in my throat.

“Come,” she said, hurrying away and leading us out of the reliquary.

At each turn, I expected to come face to face with Agrona, but we reached the upper level without seeing anyone at all, and Cecilia led us to one of Agrona’s sitting rooms, where she poured two drinks, handed one to me, and walked away to stand by the window and stare out at the mountains.

I followed her lead in remaining quiet, knowing this was exactly the wrong place to discuss the runes and what they meant, and so I eased into a tall-backed chair, took a sip of my drink, which tasted of bark and honey, and leaned my head back.

Even if she had wanted to discuss it, I wasn’t sure what to tell her. If I had days or even weeks to explore the runes at my leisure, I still wasn’t sure I could fully decipher the intent behind them. But the more I thought about what I’d seen, the more uncomfortable I became. It wasn’t coherent, there was no specific meaning for my discomfort to congeal around, but that didn’t change the impression that I held onto: whatever Agrona had been doing, I didn’t think it was meant to help Cecilia.

A bottle clinked, and I realized with a jolt that Agrona was standing behind the sitting room bar, pouring himself a glass of some crystal clear liquid. He filled the glass two-thirds full, replaced the bottle, then took a small drink. He met my eyes, smacked his lips childishly, and sighed.

Cecilia had spun an instant before I myself turned at the noise. She bowed her head, letting her gunmetal hair fall over her face, and said, “High Sovereign! Forgive me for returning before my task is accomplished, but I have urgent news.”

Agrona stepped unhurriedly around the bar and then leaned back against it, raising his glass. “To the unexpected!”

Cecilia stared at him for a moment, nonplussed, before clearing her throat and continuing. She explained that she had followed a phoenix within the Beast Glades, and her Wraiths had fought him. Just as they seemed to have him defeated, however, Mordain arrived, channeling some kind of domain spell that turned the world to fire around them.

“I thought it would be unwise to engage in a prolonged battle with him, and so I let him go,” she explained quickly, adding, “but I tracked the phoenixes back to their home—the Hearth. I know where they have been hiding all these years.”

Agrona nodded slightly, his brows raised. “And is that all?”

“No,” she answered firmly, continuing with her story.

I felt a knot of tension growing within me as Cecilia explained all that she had overheard while listening in on the conversation between Arthur and the phoenix. These artifacts of Epheotus—the mourning pearls—seemed like something we should control, not our enemy, but they were barely a footnote in the tale.

The tension built as Cecilia explained the keystones, Mordain’s story, and eventually Arthur’s gaining of a sudden burst of insight through the relic itself. Despite listening carefully to every word of her story, I had no idea what to think about it at all.

Fate could mean anything—or even nothing at all. If not for my little knowledge of reincarnation, I would have said it was nothing but a red herring, a false trail that we should let Arthur stumble down to inevitable failure. But…

“You’ve done well to bring me this information, Cecil dear,” Agrona said after taking a moment to digest her words, just as I had. “This makes our complimentary goals in the Beast Glades even more important, but also escalates the need to deal with Arthur Leywin.”

He smiled, looking inward as if sharing a private joke with himself. “From what you’ve said, it sounds as if this ‘keystone’ he retrieved from Mordain was the last piece of a puzzle he has been trying to solve for some time. Which means he has the final keystone already. He will go into hiding, of course, with no choice but to allow his allies to guard over him as the keystone leaves him vulnerable.”

“It doesn’t matter, I will carve through all of Dicathen if you ask me to,” Cecilia said fiercely.

My gaze flicked to her, but I did my best to keep the discouragement from my features.

Agrona gave her a proud, predatory smile. “I know you would, my dear, there is no question about it, but your role in this has not changed. The rift remains your priority.”

Cecilia’s expression fell, and she took a half step toward Agrona. “High Sovereign, I promise you this time Arthur won’t escape me. I…” She trailed off under the weight of Agrona’s stare.

“You forget yourself, child. You go where I wish, strike where I indicate. You are my sword to swing at my enemies’ necks.” His blazing stare softened. “Besides. When we move on the rift, every dragon in Dicathen will come flapping. If our effort there fails, then you will be caught between Kezess’s forces and whatever guardians Arthur leaves in place. While I am not willing to risk allowing Arthur Leywin to gain whatever insight the djinn have left behind should he prove capable of defeating their riddle, there is no route forward in which we do not control the rift into Epheotus, do you understand? That is your job. Without the dragons to defend him, I have other soldiers more than capable of rooting him out.”

Cecilia took a quick step back and bowed her head, her eyes on the floor as she said, “Of course, Agrona.”

His attention turned to me expectantly. I cleared my throat. “I found an intact device, High Sovereign. With this regalia, I am confident I can complete your vision.”

One corner of his mouth curled up in a slight smirk. “A match for your talents indeed. Perhaps I was wrong to be so dismissive of this power you’ve acquired. There is no need to explain why it is now even more pressing.”

He turned away, opening the door out to the balcony. A rush of cold air blew through the room, carrying the distant sounds of marching feet and shouted orders. Following him out onto the balcony, I looked down at one of the courtyards that were built into the sides of the fortress.

The courtyard was full of milling soldiers. Instead of orderly ranks, I saw in their motions confusion and uncertainty. Even as I watched, more portals opened up, spilling soldiers in handfuls out into the milling crowd.

“Wraiths and Scythes will not be enough to accomplish our many goals in Dicathen now,” Agrona continued. “We need soldiers. If we’re forced to search for Arthur Leywin, then we need eyes, as many as we can put on the continent.”

Agrona turned around and leaned against the railing, waving me closer. I took a shuffling step toward him, and he suddenly ruffled my already tangled hair. I froze, looking up at him in surprise. With the other hand, he gestured for Cecilia, who approached with equal uncertainty. He put an arm around her, standing between us like a proud father preparing to have his portrait painted.

“A changewind blows, as they say in the old country,” he said to neither of us in particular. “Everything is aligning as it should be. Our enemy will soon be divided, the Godspell in our power, and I have even invented a proper use for all those little rebel bloods who followed Seris in her futile efforts.”

His demeanor hardened, and his gaze cut down toward me. The fingers threaded into my hair curled just enough to pull and be painful. “And you two will be in your rightful place at the center of it all, earning the fairytale happy ending you both have worked so hard for. You need only do as you are told. Fulfill my vision. It would be a shame if you failed me now, with our goal so close."