now see that she was suffering no real injury, she truly believed that she was. The illusion here was very strong. She had given up screaming now, and was only barely whimpering.
She was not strong enough for this.
He knelt down beside her as the flames continued to retreat for him, their heat dissipating rapidly. D’Arden took hold of her hand and sliced his blade along it, drawing a thin line of red forth. She yelped, a pitiful sound of the dying caused yet more pain, but he could see that the heat was beginning to fade for her as well.
Slowly, she sat up at last. There was a haunted look in her eyes that reminded him of the night they had first met, which seemed far longer ago than it was. “Is this the kind of thing you deal with every day?”
“Not exactly,” he admitted. “I haven’t encountered this much corruption in many years.”
“When was the last time?” she asked.
“Mount Tzoggoth,” he replied immediately, offering a hand to help her up.
She accepted it and rose to her feet, a bit unsteady but otherwise looking unharmed. She gripped the handle of her manna blade as though it were her only lifeline, and perhaps in a way it was. She was still not fully attuned to the blade, and it would take a few years of training before she would completely understand its power, but for now her simple prowess with the sword would be enough.
They approached the next doorway. As D’Arden looked through it, he saw only what seemed to be an endless procession of doorways attached to square stone rooms. They appeared to go infinitely into each other, vanishing eventually into the darkness. He shook his head. He did not know how long that they would last with these trials. Eventually, an illusion would fool himself or his student completely, and they would be lost forever inside the bowels of this ancient fortress.
Laughter echoed through the stone halls, its source unseen but the sound unmistakable. It was not maniacal laughter, not the laugh of the truly mad, but instead the cold, calculated sound of a mastermind who was enjoying the results of his plan too well.
“Are you enjoying my maze, little ones?” a voice asked.
The Arbiter’s head snapped around as he searched for the source of the voice. It sounded all too familiar, and the words sunk deep into him and filled him with a dread that was entirely unspeakable, a feeling that could not be put into words. His knees felt weak, and sweat began to bead on his forehead.
Elisa looked at him strangely. “Are you all right?”
D’Arden felt as though it was difficult to breathe, and there was no illusion causing that feeling. He coughed, and the light from his manna blade flickered angrily in response to his sudden stress.
“We’re in a lot of trouble,” he murmured when once again he could finally speak.
“Do you know that voice?” she asked.
“Yes, tell her, D’Arden,” the voice mocked from its ethereal position. “Tell her that you know exactly who was sent to Calessa five years ago. Tell her that you know exactly who I am, and what I intend to do to the both of you before the day is out. Tell her all the things she wants to know, because in a very short amount of time, she won’t be hearing anything any longer.”
“Who is it?” Elisa asked, a note of fear rising in her voice.
“I haven’t heard that voice in many years,” D’Arden said softly, his brain still stammering uselessly as the realization of exactly what he was in for sunk in. “It’s been almost twenty long years since I’ve heard that cadence, those words, that voice. There was a time when it would comfort me, when it would reassure my fears away, and when I might have felt better for hearing it.
“Now my heart fills only with dread, and with sorrow, for many questions have now been answered, but so many more have become apparent.”
D’Arden took a step forward and held his head high, bringing up his manna blade before him and staring deeply into the light, hoping there to find some sort of comfort.
“Come out, Havox Khaine!” he intoned, making his voice as deep and confident as he possibly could. “Drop this ridiculous charade and make some semblance of the honor that you once carried as a member of our illustrious Order! Stop hiding behind your traps and your illusions, you coward! Come out and fight!”
“Are you sure that’s what you want to do?” Elisa asked as the disembodied laughter echoed around them once again. “Who is he? Who is Havox Khaine?”
D’Arden bowed his head.
“My mentor. My teacher. My… friend.”
The stone room dissolved around them, and suddenly D’Arden saw through the illusion as it began to fade. The tiny stone rooms had never existed at all; in fact, they had fallen right into the trap laid by Khaine, the man who’d been his first Master as an Arbiter – the man who’d taught him nearly everything he knew about wielding the manna blade, purity and the danger of corruption.
They stood instead in a great chamber, with crumbled remains lying where before the stone walls of the interior of the fortress had stood. They had obviously been demolished in an effort to create what was in fact some kind of massive, twisted throne room.
Before them stretched a long staircase, constructed entirely of glossy black stone that resembled obsidian, but glowed softly with an ominous red light. It sparkled in the light in tones of red and orange. His eyes traveled up the massive stairway to the top, where sat his mentor, the first person who’d ever spoken to him in an official capacity as an Arbiter, the man who’d trained him and put him on the course to righteousness and purity, in a giant throne made of red and gold. So massive was the throne itself, so arrogant was its presentation that Khaine himself nearly disappeared when the entirety of it was viewed as a whole.
“Do you like my kingdom, young one?” Khaine’s voice boomed in the chamber, echoing and reverberating several times off of the walls. “Soon all of Calessa will be under my control, and then my power will spread farther yet. No more will the Arbiters bow a knee in fealty to the broken throne at Hartsknell. We shall rule with an iron fist, and the manna shall transform all who resist into our servants – or else they shall die. I have discovered true purity, my student – true purity lies in absolute power.”
“So that wolf I slew in the low quarter truly was your servant,” D’Arden sneered, finding no trace of the man he once respected and loved as a father in the apparition that sat before him. “It too spoke of power as purity. You are lost, Khaine. I may once have been your student, but this student has become more than his master obviously could ever have become. I have surpassed you. My dedication is to the land, and your ‘purity of power’ is killing this land and its inhabitants. What is power if there is no one left alive to rule over?”
Khaine laughed, a terrible sound that at once reminded D’Arden of the kindly laughter of his mentor and the screeching sound made by a demon all too amused by its prey. “Power is in the hand of those who hold it, Tal. You would not dare to stand against the power that I wield now. It is only with power that we can truly be free. You ask me what is power? I say that it is the ultimate goal of life, that which can only be attained through the death of those who stand in your way. Tell me, Tal, do you stand in my way?”
“I do,” D’Arden said, his voice proudly defiant.
Khaine clucked his tongue reproachfully. “I thought that you had much potential, D’Arden, when you were my student. I see now that I taught you the lessons of the Arbiters all too well. You cling to their false ideals like a child clings to its mother’s teat. You were not fit to be my apprentice.”
The figure rose from its seat atop the dais and slowly began to descend the staircase. As it came into view more closely, D’Arden could see that it was in fact the image of the man he’d loved so dearly. The same red hair, though it was graying around the temples. The same kind eyes, though they had been hardened and carried many more wrinkles now than they had the last time D’Arden had seen the man. Once an apprenticeship ended, an Arbiter was not likely to see their mentor again unless there were some kind of extenuating circumstances.
D’Arden wished they’d met again under different ones.
“What about your little acolyte there, Tal?” Khaine asked him. “Does she see the world the same way you do? How long has she been an Arbiter? Does she know that the Arbiter’s Tower has sent her to her certain death?”
“I’ve never been to the Arbiter’s Tower,” Elisa said before D’Arden could stop her. D’Arden mentally smacked his own forehead. There was no way that Elisa had been properly prepared for an encounter of this magnitude.
Khaine’s head tilted in an approximation of surprise. “You hold a manna blade. You wear the robes of an acolyte. Tell me, child, how is it that you have never before been to the Arbiter’s Tower?”
Elisa looked toward D’Arden for some sort of help, having realized that she’d said something wrong. He gave
