Week 17

  The first cries came from the far rampart.

  “Sekhmet is here!”

  The shouts carried across the oasis with impossible clarity. Even the dying took it up, a whispered hope that made the next volley of Shadeclaws and Gorekin pause at the threshold.

  Briar shaded her eyes and peered into the shimmering haze: the sand lizard’s gait was too smooth for anything but a trained beast, and the rider sat on it with the poise of a person who had lived more in the saddle than on solid ground.

  Behind her, Calanthe limped to the crenel, mana reserves spent. “What are they shouting?”

  The black-robed rider drew closer, the desert’s afterimages peeling away to reveal a woman in scholar’s robe, cut for motion but unmistakably academic.

  Even from this distance, Callie could see the set of her shoulders, the calculated precision of her motions.

  When the rider finally pulled the Sandstrider up at the base of the city’s shattered gate, the silence was so profound that even the demons seemed to hold their breath.

  Sekhmet scanned the field in front of her and the battlements, locating Callie and Briar in an instant. She did not wave. She did not nod. Instead she seemed to mouth a single word. Three vortices opened on the battle ground simultaneously.

  The first vortex opened a few paces before the trench dug in front of the glass wall; a spinning gyre of pure darkness ringed by fire that twisted the air around it. The vortex was immense, at least ten meters across, and it devoured everything in its reach: Shadeclaws, Gorekin, the Cestodes. They opened their mouths to scream but their breaths had been taken from them before their bodies.

  The second [Maw of Nyx] split the ground on the left flank, catching the Capra Oblivione and their retinue mid-leap. Their momentum carried them forward, but the gravity of the spell bent their path, and they disappeared into the spiral with nary a noise.

  The third [Maw] formed precisely where the Dread Knights and Lebetem Miasmatis had massed for their final charge. It sucked at the world, an event horizon that dragged sound, dust, bone, even fragments of metal into its heart. For a moment, it felt as if the city would be pulled into it as well.

  The defenders were silent for three breaths, then began to scream, this time in celebration.

  Briar lifted her bow, took aim at the demons trying to flee the maelstrom, cutting them down with head strikes until she had spent the last arrow in her quiver; then went searching for more.

  From the top of the wall, Callie saw the monsters try to regroup. The heat was so intense that, even from her vantage point, she felt her skin tighten and the hairs on her arm singe.

  Below, the surviving demons began to panic. Some tried to retreat, only to find themselves constrained into a narrow rightward corridor between the vortices.

  Sekhmet moved with the confidence of someone immune to fear.

  This time, the spell was not a vortex, but a [Molten Burst]. The fire radiated outward in a perfect sphere four meters wide, disintegrating the Shadeclaw shield wall the Reaper had hastily conjured to block the blow.

  The Reaper recoiled, half its mask burned away, but before it could move, Tanith spoke: [Mnyororo wa moto]

  A ribbon of fire lanced through the Reaper, branching instantly to four other demons in rapid succession, each time erupting in white hot heat. Within seconds, the entire field became a charnel house of burning, liquefying flesh, and ash. Even the Dread Knights, armored in fire resistant plate, were not immune. Their amor heated until it glowed, then fused to the bone beneath. The Knights collapsed in place, encased in their own melted armor; the bones within fragmenting into shards and dust.

  Callie scanned the smoke-filled field for the Face-Sewn Reaper. Its cloak of human flesh had been incinerated; its own flesh melted off its bones. Its face now uncovered revealed a raw, red skull.

  In a final desperate act, it roared and started toward Sekhmet, loping forward with inhuman speed.

  Sekhmet did not move.

  She waited until the Reaper was within a five meters, then cast the simplest spell in the book: [Flame Dart.]

  A bead of fire, no bigger than a cherry pit, struck the Reaper between its empty eye sockets.

  The monster stopped, for one heartbeat, as if confused by the insignificance of the attack. Then, from within, the red skull erupted with a fountain of blue-white flame, the heat so intense that the monster’s head simply vaporized, the rest of the body crumpling into the desert sand.

  The air still shimmered with residual heat.

  Three immense pits of glass marked where the [Maw of Nyx] spells had dissipated after devouring the land. The screams were gone, replaced by the moans and sobs of the wounded.

  Sekhmet stood at the epicenter, arms slack at her sides, face streaked with sweat and blood. She was breathing hard, but there was no sign of injury, only exhaustion.

  The defenders on the wall were the first to move. They staggered from cover, blinking at the sunlight that filtered through the thinning smoke. Some fell to their knees and wept. Others cheered, or collapsed in relief.

  Callie leaned against the parapet and looked at Sekhmet; and Tanith stared back at her with eyes like polished amber.

  ***

  Sarapis’ town hall had never been a beautiful building, but with its doors standing wide, most of its windows shattered, and all but a handful of the benches broken, it had achieved a kind of monastic purity.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Callie sat in the high-backed wooden chair reserved for the mayor. Her arms trembled with each movement. She’d spent the entire night on her knees, crawling from cot to cot, applying whatever spells or bandages she could to stop the dying. Her fingers were still stained with the blood of elves and dwarves and even a handful of humans who had made it through the first wave only to fall to poison or trauma after.

  Outside, the wind carried up the smoke of the funeral pyres. The dwarves burned their dead, as was tradition, adding iron nails to each body to bind the spirit to Kur'gal’s anvil. The elves did not burn, but sang their souls to the water. In the absence of a river or ocean, they left their kin to float out on planks in the waters of the oasis, then retrieved them and planted them under the palms. The human rites were the simplest; a few lines of recited verse and a hurried earth burial before the next shift on the walls.

  Inside the hall, the only light was from the high windows.

  Briar slouched on a bench nearby, one boot propped up, the other foot bare. She’d spent the night pulling survivors from the debris, then started sewing wounds shut when Callie’s magic ran dry. Now she slept with her mouth open, snoring faintly.

  Tanith stood at the far end of the long table.

  For a long while, there was nothing but the groan of the hall in the wind and the soft snap of pyre wood.

  It was Tanith who broke the spell.

  She didn’t look up as she said, “Did you ever consider, Calanthe, that I might have been using you?”

  The directness of the attack made Callie blink. Her first instinct was to protest, but the words wouldn’t come.

  “I mean this in the most literal sense. That I have been using you to gain gold mana. That any person with the capacity to meet and treat the Petalorian Oracle, and survive the consequences, would be the sort of person worth following and leveling with. You do realize that, yes?”

  Callie massaged her temples, trying to corral the migraine that had been brewing since before sunrise. “If you wanted to betray me, I’d be dead already.”

  Tanith’s lips twitched. “That is a comforting fiction, but not the point. The point is that I needed a key and you presented yourself so readily. You must have realized by now that only the Library’s chosen have the ability to acquire gold mana so readily; the rest of us are left to scrape what we can over our meager life spans. What I did not anticipate is that you would be so consistently unwilling to use your advantages. It’s honestly quite frustrating.”

  Briar, without opening her eyes, muttered, “She’s always been like that.”

  Tanith ignored her, stepping closer to the table. “You’re not the first Library exile I’ve followed, but you are undoubtedly the one with greatest gift for acquiring and squandering the élan Vital, the Logikos—that’s what the Kernel calls what you term gold mana.

  “It was you who told me to spend it with the Bai Ze,” Callie said irritably, not opening her eyes.

  “And you just went along with it.” Tanith leaned on the table. “I find it curious that you trusted me so easily. You must have known, at least intellectually, that my loyalty was not a virtue, but a function. I serve my own interests.”

  Callie looked up at last. “I can’t say I didn’t know that, but I think you might be underestimating my capacity for self-sabotage. Wait, is this some kind of passive aggressive gaslighting?”

  “I have no idea what you just said. Stop distracting me,” Tanith said, gaze narrowing. “Zhao Tong had his reasons for seeking your favor; his sister being the primary one. But what was my reason? Did you really think I joined you because of some metaphysical alignment about the axioms which govern this world? That I admired your… what, your medical ethics?”

  Callie didn’t answer. She had no idea why Tanith was trying to justify her manipulations, unless this was some kind of Bond villain-style monologue.

  Tanith said, “If you had simply decided to exclude me from your group, you would be leveling much faster than you are now. You do realize that, don’t you?”

  Callie wanted to say something honest, but the words tangled. She nearly told Tanith that she had “written” her, that back in the Library she had created and destroyed tens of versions of Tanith, perfecting the form each time; and that was reason enough for choosing her. But that wasn’t true, not really. The woman before her was not a construct or a theory or even a shadow of someone else. She was a real person, complicated and volatile.

  She was about to say so, in some roundabout way, when the bells in the main square tolled, summoning the survivors to witness a memorial for the dead.

  “Let’s head up to the balcony,” Tanith said. She was off before Callie could even reply, taking the steps two at a time.

  Callie got up to join her. Briar yawned, stretched, and fell in at her side, murmuring, “Is she mad that you’re so bad at being a hero?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe if I had done things better, less people would have died?“ Callie had the distinct impression that the Engine was trying to guilt trip her into becoming more of a protagonist in its story.

  And it was working.

  Outside, the world was still healing; the pyres were burning low, and the songs had faded.

  ***

  The memorial took no more than a half hour and the crowd quickly dispersed, each to their own tiny broken worlds.

  But Tanith wasn’t done with her grousing.

  When they had settled on the first floor again, she walked over to Callie and produced, from her sleeve, a thin rectangular piece of diamond. It was the size of a playing card; its surface etched with fractal lines.

  She set the token on the table between them. “Do you know what this is?” she asked.

  Callie shook her head, though she had a dozen guesses.

  Tanith slid the diamond towards her. “It’s my personal marker,” she explained, “a bit like the kind the Guilds use. Adventurers use them to settle debts. If you show mine to the right people, it might be worth a favor; any favor, within reason.”

  Callie reached out, feeling the cold slickness of the token.

  “It’s not single use so don’t throw it away after you use it the first time.”

  Callie glared at Tanith. It was clear that Tanith considered her a bit of a problem child; maybe a bit feeble-minded. It all seemed vaguely familiar, like the way some children treated their parents once they grew up.

  Tanith said, “I’m not an alchemist at heart, but I do believe in equal exchange. The god of war of the southern tribes lost his hand to bind a warg. The only thing worth more than a life is a favor you can’t repay. You gave me your friendship, and for that I owe you.” Her eyes flicked to Briar, then back to Callie.

  Callie felt a heat rise in her cheeks. “Would it be so hard,” she said, “to just be friends?”

  Tanith smiled wryly. “I’m afraid that word doesn’t exist in the circles I run in.”

  There was an awkward quiet then, only broken by Briar rocking in her chair. “You could have just said thanks and bought us dinner,” she said.

  Tanith ignored the quip. Instead, she turned to the doorway and gestured.

  Two shadows detached from the outer hallway, resolving into the man and woman who had attacked Tanith in Chang’An.

  The woman stepped forward, bowed to Callie, and spoke. “We are sorry for the deception, Lady Calanthe.”

  The man followed suit. “General Sekhmet would have preferred to keep her identity secret. Our presence in Chang'An was meant only to provide plausible cause for her to leave your party.”

  “They are my students, Calanthe,” Tanith explained. “If all had gone according to plan, they would have been the ones to bring you my token. But the charade became impossible once you arrived in Sarapis and spoke with Chief Gornath. Few others know me by my other name.”

  “So that there may be no more lies between us,” Tanith said, her voice grown formal again, “the Academy has given me another reason to return to the fold, quite separate from the incentive to protect my old students. But I cannot tell you what that is, and I do not want you to be involved. At all. Do you understand?”

  Her tone brokered no argument. Callie nodded, and put the token in her pocket. “Understood.”

  The man and woman bowed again, and departed through the side door.

  Tanith lingered a moment longer, looking at Callie as if trying to memorize the shape of her face. “I hope you find what you’re looking for,” she said, and left without another word.

  Briar plopped back down, this time in the chair next to Callie, and propped her feet on the table. “Well,” she said, “I suppose that’s the end of that.”

  Callie stared at the diamond token and wondered if all debts in this world were paid in something sharp and hard.

  Outside, the fused sand caught the last light of day and glittered like a thousand tiny promises.