Medilus 5, 1278: Arth Prayogar’s Council Building. Nearly getting dead was the easy part.
I had a list of things to do that day. Diving backwards into a rolling fog of murder dust wasn’t on it. Neither was hugging a scheming, walking corpse that kept oddly insisting we were the same—but also wanted to kill me.
There was a lesson in there, but I was a little busy.
My head hit the tile floor when I fell backward. Stars painted my vision with white sparks, and I lost the world for a moment. I came to with a scream wedged like a bone in my throat. That dry fog boiled around me. It was storm-thick, full of charred dust and damp regret.
I gagged, rolling to my right away from Rima and Garrik. It felt like I’d inhaled a tomb, along with bits of its residents. The problem wasn’t just the fetid smell; it was a bitter, gray powder eager to crawl between my teeth and down my throat. While I liked to study history, I didn’t want to swallow it—especially not when it was the powdered remains of a dead nobleman with a grudge.
“Marius!” My voice held a dry rasp that shocked me. “Get out of my throat!”
To my surprise, it did.
“By the Lady Deep and her Saint of Tides, that’s vile,” I swore, spitting a mix of blood and burned spirit dust from my mouth.
I had rolled onto my hands and knees, body shuddering as if from a sharp winter wind. The receding gravedust peeled off my skin, leaving a memory of chalky sludge along with the taste of tarnished coins and cruelty. It swirled around me; a lazy cyclone too bored to move.
Dimly, I realized I still held the Iraxi gemstone. It pulsed warmly. I shook my head, collecting my torn wits.
“Whip,” I sputtered, then found it next to me. I picked up the weapon before shoving myself upright, squinting through my confusion. “Where’s Garrik? Rima? Anyone?”
Past the lively haze, I couldn’t see Rima but did see Garrik. The elven thief fought like a cat fleeing a bath. Ribbons of charcoal-colored gravedust clenched at his arms, legs, neck—anywhere to get purchase. He’d swat a gust away, earning singed skin, only for two more to grab him elsewhere. Both his boots and legs had vanished under the dark mist.
Then a familiar tail lashed through the choking dust—it was Skarri.
“Go!” she hissed, voice rough with overuse.
Mikasi appeared next to her, tossing a vial through the dead haze. It splattered, chasing back the mist long enough for the pair to grab Garrik. They pulled—the gravedust yanked back harder. Garrik yelled.
I shoved at the dust cyclone around me to get through, but it pushed back. After that, I punched and swore it winced.
“Hells and high tide, Marius Apollinare! Dead or not, I’ll kill you again. Let me out!” I yelled, though my voice was barely louder than crumpled paper.
Again, it—no, he—cooperated. I tucked that away for later under ‘future problems’, then charged forward as if chasing my own death. Death wisely kept out of my reach, but Rima Nimad had not.
In the time it took with my misadventures with the dead dust from the lich soul crystal, Rima was back on her feet. Somehow she’d pulled Garrik’s dagger from her back, then started flaying the thick mist with her flaming whip. A wet pop slapped a hole in the dust, leaving the stink of burned blood behind. It was surprisingly effective—even if her whip was dying like old embers. But the death mist wasn’t to be outdone; it scorched her too-pale skin like acid in long strips.
Then the dust cyclone circled me again. Understanding—a shred of it—penetrated my fatigue.
“It isn’t trying to hunt me. Not really,” I muttered, watching the chaos with a calculated look. “The gravedust coming out of the lich crystal… that’s Marius, but he’s just reacting like a wound does to salt.” My eyes cut over to Rima “As if reacting to something irritating.”
Rima glared knives in Garrik’s direction as the others pulled the thief loose. She lashed at the dust again as it tried to swallow her. It parted, and I filled the gap.
“What? Not hurt enough people yet?” I said with a glare.
Rima sucked a ragged breath, hurling the same look back.
“This from the same woman who drags her enemies to the grave, so she doesn’t die alone,” she said icily.
I gave her a casual shrug, sliding the whip beside me like the tail of an irritated cat.
“I thought you’d feel at home in a grave, Rima.” My smile fled. “You won’t get what you want out of this. This stupid plan of yours failed centuries ago when you tried it the first time. Admit it, you’ve lost.”
Rima circled me in the bitter dust as her flaming blood-whip sputtered out. Letting the ragged embers scatter to the floor, the lich slid a dagger from her belt—the same one she’d cut me with before. I drew a deep breath, trying to remember our fight last time.
The lich lunged, her knife a flashing blur. I cracked my whip but missed, getting sliced along my upper arm for the trouble. Hissing, I darted away to avoid being stabbed. We circled each other, the Iraxi bracer with the lich soul stone on the floor between us. Rima smirked, eyes dancing over me in a way that made me cringe.
“Lost? For now, but so have you.” She inclined her head toward my arm, punctuating the point. “That has to really hurt.”
I spared a glance at my latest wound. The gravedust and smoke curled around me like a shawl or some perverted death armor. Where Rima had cut me turned a shadow-slate gray; the blood a reddish-black. The horrid effect spread over my skin like a demented sunburn. I grimaced. Kiyosi, Mikasi, and the others were going to have a fit.
“Maybe,” I replied. “But the longer I keep you here, the better my friends can kneecap your bad idea.”
“Then we shouldn’t waste time,” she countered with a twisted smile.
Rima thrust low, but I was waiting. The slice caught air and dust, parting both. I side-stepped, flipped the whip in my hand, using the handle like a bludgeon. It smashed along the lich’s jaw, snapping her head to the side. Wet gravedust—what passed for her blood—spilled over her lips. Rima staggered aside as I stepped behind her.
Suddenly I was all too aware of the elemental-possessed gemstone in my hand. The gem was a dull, insistent heartbeat of power—warm, steady, and so inviting.
“It could fix this,” I murmured as Rima winced, resetting her jaw. “Just open myself up to it. One pull of magic could end this.”
But I knew what that meant, and I’d been on the wrong side of it before. I touched the side of my head beside my goggles that protected my permanently altered eyes. Ghostly dust of a dead lich—one I’d killed before he killed me—brushed my skin, caressing my hands. A ragged breath fell out of me.
“No,” I told the crystal. “No, I won’t do it.”
My eyes flicked between it and the gemstone I’d stuck in the bracer. “Wait,” I murmured. “Is that why the Iraxi can’t be destroyed? They’re pieces of a shattered Automatic Crystal golem?”
I realized I’d been wool-gathering when Rima faced me with a glare so hot; I swore it burned the air.
“You’ll pay for that. For all of this.”
She darted in low again, dagger aimed for my guts, as I threw myself at the bracer on the floor.
I was faster.
The blade sliced past, cutting a new hole in my shirt. I rolled, grabbed the bracer, slamming the Iraxi crystal against the lich soul stone. They connected with a gentle click, as if part of the same structure. Immediately, both stones glowed in unison as if… talking?
I glanced up too late to see Rima looming over me. The lich hauled me up by my shirt collar as her dagger plunged. I reached to pull mind magic threads and failed—they frayed; I was too rattled. Desperate, I rammed my shoulder against Rima’s knife arm. Her dagger tip brushed my back as I shoved the Iraxi bracer and its pair of crystals against her gut.
The air felt as if it had ripped open and the world exploded at my feet.
Dark, brownish-black gravedust erupted around us like a hurricane. Red bolts of fire-touched lightning scored the clouds like cracks in the fabric of life.
“Tela!” I heard Kiyosi shout over the maelstrom. “Someone grab her!”
“We can’t get close!” Atha replied from nearby, yet painfully far away. “Storm will tear us apart!”
“Toss her a rope! Something!” That was Rhen Shotho.
I clenched my jaw. It was too late for last-ditch rescues. All that was left was to hold on and ride the storm.
Chaos raged. Rima screamed as if being torn apart. My legs shook, knees giving way, but I tensed to keep myself standing. For a moment, I thought I felt a pair of spectral hands steady me, then vanish.
All at once, the world felt too tight. Then it snapped like a frayed bowstring with an obvious, painful pop. Dust, false wind, all of it vanished as if it’d never been there.
I stumbled forward wide-eyed, accidentally kicking the burnt bones of Gregori Elkerton clattering across the floor. The Iraxi in my hands steamed.
Rima was gone.
Where the lich had been, there was the burned outer jacket of her monk’s robes and a mangled Fateweaver pin. I coiled my whip, hooking it onto my belt before I knelt. On the pin’s tarnished brass, the symbol of three daggers bound by a cord was twisted into a barely discernible mess. Almost as if the pin had an unexpected fight with a forge and lost.
“Gone,” I wheezed, drinking clean air. “No lich. Nothing.”
The area around me felt twisted. As if the air had been unexpectedly robbed, leaving a feeling of physical absence behind. I couldn’t place what to call it other than what nothing might actually feel like.
A gallop of hoofbeats yanked me back to the moment. I slipped the Fateweaver pin into my bag before I stood. Seven Council guards—all centaurs—galloped over to surround me with drawn weapons. I eyed them warily with one hand on my whip, the other clutching the Iraxi bracer.
“Yoi T’kalo, boys,” I greeted them casually, eyes drifting between them.
“You,” a centaur snarled. I recognized him from the inspection to get inside earlier, and braced to be grabbed. “Windtracer! You’ll…”
“… be still while I summon a healer,” a deep, older voice behind the guards interrupted.
Every Council guard went stiff as a board, like a collection of kids caught with their hands in a basket, stealing muffins. They parted, as the royal-robed Chancellor Fel, speaker and head of the Jata Council of Seven, walked over. The most powerful centaur in the Jata kingdom wasn’t flanked by Council guards. Instead, Nurkes and a certain Trade-Warden I’d come to know, Rhen Shotho, stood in those positions.
“You’re beat to hell, and I’d rather you not be bleeding everywhere,” the Chancellor continued. The centaur gestured to somewhere past the wall of guards, and I heard a scurry of footsteps. “I want answers, and Trade-Warden Shotho says you’re the best to ask. Also, he says I owe you my hide.”
I snorted softly. It might not have been polite, but it was where my mind rested as a headache took hold. For a moment, I didn’t say a word, just sighed as I looked at the Iraxi with its twin glowing crystals. Rima’s words haunted me again. I’d shaken Jata to its foundation—even cracked it a little—just to save its people. Did the ends justify the means? Silently, I wondered if Rima had been right all along, that she and I weren’t any different.
“Chancellor…,” I said with a rough rasp, before my throat gave up.
One of the Council building’s attendants, human by the look of him, appeared next to me with a bottle. I uncorked it, swallowed some water, then nodded. The dark-haired young man, barely old enough to shave, nodded back with a bright grin. Then he set about cleaning the wound on my arm.
“…there’s a lot,” I continued. “But I’ll bundle it up for you. A lich wanted to use Gregori Elkerton and Herd Tolvana to wipe out the Council of Seven. She—the lich—wanted to rule it all. Elkerton had his own plans to rule instead. He double-crossed her, and… well… here we are.”
No one spoke for a moment. Then the Chancellor nodded sagely, folding his arms across his chest.
“I… see. Can anyone back these claims?”
Rhen cleared his throat. “Respectfully, Chancellor, I can on behalf of the Trade-Wardens…”
Another voice, as ragged as mine, interrupted Rhen Shotho.
“Save it,” Garrik said. The elven thief looked beat to hell and back, with dark circles under his eyes. “I can explain all about Rima Nimad and her Fateweaver cult.” He shook his head. “Before anyone gets jumpy, no, I’m not a cultist, but I was on the inside before I picked a better path. So I can explain what Tela Kioni here can’t.”
“Go on,” Chancellor Fel said, looking from Garrik to myself.
I rubbed a hand over my face as another sigh spilled out of me. Quietly, I looked down at the Iraxi bracer with its twin gemstones glowing like a sunrise or maybe sunset. Then I looked up to see Mikasi and Skarri not far behind Garrik. Kiyosi and Atha joined them a moment later. They all looked worried, but still gave me smiles and nods of encouragement.
That told me all I needed to know. No, I wasn’t like Rima. Not in the least.
“Chancellor?” I said in a stronger voice. “How are you on history? Because this really started nearly a thousand years ago, in a land not far from here…”
