“I’m sure we could’ve managed it, but it wouldn’t have been fun,” she chuckled. “The last time we went hiking, he—” Her body suddenly tensed as her voice cut out. “Lux, there are guards on the bridge.” I spun to look back at the ruined gate, but I couldn’t find any guards through the black smoke that continued to pour through the opening. “No,” Lia insisted, tugging at my arm, “ahead of us. Four of them.”
I tried to scan ahead with my Detection, but the effort immediately made my head spin violently. “I...can’t see them,” I muttered, squinting past her head down the bridge. I could see Marin driving the wagon ahead of us, but my vision past that was fuzzy. “We can take care of them on foot before they—”
“No, they have bows,” she gasped. “Marin’s going to reach them before we do.” I felt her mana flare up beneath my arms, and a primal fear sprouted in my gut.
“Lia, don’t kill them. Not like that,” I pleaded. “It’s dangerous.”
“We have to keep Marin safe!” she yelled as the energy around her continued to focus.
I shook my head. “You don’t understand! Just...let me do it…” I reached out my mana again, more insistently than before, and was immediately sick to my stomach. Retching over the side of the horse, I struggled to hang on to her waist. “Please...don’t…”
Her amber aura flared up, and I knew the spell had activated. I pressed myself close against her back and carefully suffused the mana from my body to hers, waiting for the onslaught of malicious void energy in an attempt to redirect it away from her. “It’s done,” Lia said quietly after a few seconds had passed. “They’re dead.” The proof came a moment later as we passed by a line of four guardsmen, all collapsed and unmoving against the stone.
“Are you...okay?” I asked haltingly, feeling overly confused and sick. “You don’t...feel...different.”
She turned her head slightly to look back at me over her shoulder. “Different? What do you mean?” She waited a few moments for me to explain, then continued as I remained silent with my eyes scrunched shut. “It’s not the most, erm, comfortable thought, killing someone like that, but it uses basically no energy. In the end, I think it’s probably more peaceful for them; there’s no fear or pain before they die.”
“But the darkness,” I panted, “the void...the pain. Doesn’t it...hurt, Lia?”
Did you honestly think that’s how it works?Amaya’s voice cut through the fog in my head, overwhelming my lowered defenses. Did you think everybody fell into the void like you when they died, too?The voice laughed, shifting in tone from Amaya’s vibrant timbre to the sly, quick voice of Kel.Still so much to learn.
I was vaguely aware of Lia’s voice ringing in my ears, but I had lost the ability to focus on anything apart from the presence inside my head. My vision faded to pinpoints, and I collapsed forward against Lia. In a hundred trillion lifetimes, there’s never been anybody else like you, Elden.Kel’s voice continued to speak as I lost consciousness, reverberating through the darkness. Someday, you’ll realize what you’re truly capable of.
***
5. A LOT TO LEARN
“Okay, loverboy, I didn’t ask for your life story,” Kel sighed, rolling her eyes.
“You asked!” I huffed indignantly. “You asked where I’m from!”
“Yes, and then you started rambling about your beautiful wife who waits for you every day, with hope in her heart and a blush on her maiden cheeks,” she mocked.
I scowled at her, then looked at Jarut. “Back me up here. I don't talk like that, right?”
Jarut pursed his lips and turned his attention to the parade of military units moving down the road beside us, scratching the back of his head awkwardly. “Erm...you do tend to go on about Amaya whenever possible.”
My jaw dropped, and I fell back into the grass with a displeased grunt. My companions both burst into laughter, which drew a flush to my cheeks. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up.” I waited until the laughs had died down to suppressed giggles, then sat up again. “So, I already know Jarut’s story. What about you? Where are you from? Why are you here?”
Kel raised an eyebrow. “The King ‘took notice of my extraordinary abilities and extended the honor of serving in his most esteemed elite battalion.’” She sat quietly for a moment with a dark smirk. “So yeah, I was drafted, same as you.”
Jarut laughed, but I was less amused as I remembered the circumstances of my summoning. “As for the where of it,” she continued, “I’m from up north in the Solaar Mountains. Little place called Mora’s Hamlet. Maybe...sixty people, total?”
“If you were really that far out of the way, how did the King come to hear about you?” I asked.
She puffed out her chest. “When you’re the best fighter the North has seen in a hundred years, word gets around.”
I snorted. “Sure.”
In a flash she sprang to her feet, her eyes narrowed to slits as she watched me with cold amusement. “Care to find out for yourself?”
A wide grin spread across my face as I stood to face her. “I’d love to.”
“Could we maybe not do this?” Jarut asked, somewhere between annoyance and amusement. “You two just met half an hour ago. Is this really necessary?”
“Fighting is the best way—” Kel and I said in unison before pausing, both of us surprised by the other.
Jarut groaned. “Clearly you two are going to be fast friends. That, or you’ll end up killing each other. Either way, it makes my life easier.” He waved us off away from our spot by the road, grinning as he rolled his eyes. “Go on. Get it over with.”
We jogged out to a flat spot between the rolling hills around us and took up positions
