“Yes, because they were alive!” he insisted. “Either everyone followed the Path of Kalateth, or they died. That was the choice Baasch gave me, and I chose the option that kept my people alive!”
“Everyone?” Kel said, silently appearing at Orlan’s side. She drew a dagger and traced it along his bearded cheek to his right ear. “If that’s the case, why haven’t you become a Disciple?”
“Baasch said Kalateth had greater plans for me than a mere Disciple,” he answered indignantly.
Kel snorted. “Jarut, I’m tired of this insipid old man. Can we kill him now?” I took a quick step forward and tightened the grip on my sword in anticipation.
“No,” Jarut answered calmly. “We aren’t going to kill him.”
Kel and I did a double take in unison. “Excuse me?” she asked, annoyed.
“Thank you!” Orlan sputtered, patting at the arm that still held him by the collar. “Thank you, Jarut!”
Jarut’s eyes narrowed as he stared intently into the king’s eyes. “Death is a kindness you don’t deserve.” Orlan fell silent at the harsh indictment. “You deserve to live the rest of your life knowing what you’ve done. And when we kill Baasch and remove Kalateth’s influence from Alderea, all of your subjects will know what you’ve done, too. History will remember you as Janus Orlan, the King who brought ruin to his country. You’ll live with that shame, and you’ll die with it. That’s what you deserve.”
Orlan fell limply to the ground as Jarut dropped him and turned away. The throne room fell silent for a long moment, until Kel kicked at Orlan’s foot. “Tell me: where’s Baasch now?”
The king who brought ruin to his country looked up at her, looking suddenly more frail and tired than he had moments ago. “He’s...in the undercroft.” Kel nodded and stepped away, but Orlan grasped out for her boot. “He’s too powerful to be stopped now. Kalateth has blessed him with gifts beyond any normal man.”
“I guess it’s lucky we aren’t normal men, then,” Kel quipped as she walked back to the chamber’s entrance. “You might get to live through tonight, Coward King, but Baasch doesn’t.” I followed along closely behind her, focusing all of my rage into the task ahead of us. “You ready, Luxblade?” she asked.
“I’m ready,” I agreed under my breath. “Baasch dies tonight. But before he dies, he’s going to suffer for—”
---
I awoke to a loud crash and an agonizing fire in my chest. Thrashing against the bedsheets above me, I struggled up to a sitting position as I sucked in air to appease my burning lungs, but the breath did little to assuage the pain. My thoughts were far too frantic and scattered for me to assess the source of my distress, but I could feel that something was missing that I dearly needed. I struggled to my feet and scanned the bedroom wildly. “Lia!” I shouted, clawing at my chest. “Lia, where are you?”
There was a series of thumps on the stairs beside the bedroom, and the door crashed open a moment later to reveal Lia, panting with a pained look on her face. As our eyes locked, the source of our issue finally revealed itself: the mental bond we had shared since our encounter with the monster had broken. She sprinted across the room and threw herself headlong into my chest, bowling me over back onto the bed. I felt an immediate dampening of my pain as her body pressed against mine, and I pulled against her desperately in an attempt to fill the void her presence had left behind.
Our mana coalesced in an effort to reform the lost connection, but the bond we created was only an echo of the one we had shared before. I could feel her consciousness against mine, but we remained two distinct, separate entities like we had hundreds of times before during our meditations. Even so, the presence of her energy was enough to calm my panicked mind. “Lia,” I gasped, “what happened?”
She remained quiet while her breath slowly returned to its baseline state. “I’m not sure,” she answered eventually, curling even tighter against my bare chest. “I was downstairs making us some breakfast, or, uhm,” she paused, looking out the window at a clearly setting sun, “dinner, I guess. I was making us some food, and you started to...remember.”
I ran my hand along her tightly braided hair and sighed. “You saw my dream.”
“That was a dream?” she asked, turning her head to peer up at me with one amber eye. “I could feel everything like I was actually there. Like I was you. I’ve never had a dream like that.”
“That’s just how I dream, I guess,” I shrugged. “Or, used to. It used to be a nightly occurrence, but I haven’t had a dream like that in a long time. At least since we built our house here.”
Lia thought over the statement quietly, then turned her head back onto its side, resting her ear over my heart. “That was Alderea, wasn’t it? And those people...Jarut and Kel?” I gave her a small nod. “You’ve told me about them before, once or twice, but it was strange to see them so clearly, and to...know them.”
I closed my eyes and watched the memory back again. “That was my last night in Alderea. The last night I saw Jarut. The night Kel died.”
Her hand slid up my chest to gently brush along my jaw. “There was so much anger in you then. When you left
