The Beginning After The End Chapter 407

CAERA DENOIR

“Report,” Seris said, her tone commanding.

My mentor had been more serious and straightforward than usual since her brief conversation with Scythe Nico and his strange companion, the woman who wore the body of a Dicathian elf—the Legacy.

“The bombardment in Rosaere has started,” Cylrit answered with snappish military precision. “We estimate twenty thousand troops currently, although forces are still being rallied. The shield is holding.”

“And the Legacy?”

Cylrit’s handsome features darkened at the name. “She has so far seen fit to command from the rear.”

A frown, hardly perceptible, creased Seris’s brow. “Anything else?”

“A fleet of twenty steamships left Dzianis this morning, heading south,” Cylrit answered immediately, glancing out the open window toward the glittering ocean in the distance. “We expect them to make for the Vritra’s Maw and Aedelgard.”

Seris’s piercing gaze shifted to me. “Do we know if the Redwaters were able to complete the plan you suggested?”

I tapped one of the many two-way communication scrolls that littered the large table at the center of Seris’s war room. “Wolfrum sent word late last night that friendly sailors had been successfully relocated to Dzianis to help ‘fill out’ the steam ship crews.”

“Good,” Seris said with a nod. “Have we received any additional confirmations?”

I glanced at Cylrit, who responded with a slight shake of his head. “No.”

“I see,” she said softly, clicking her nails together. Realizing it, she stopped and straightened. “Then I shall leave for Rosaere at once. Cylrit, you are to stay here and ensure the shield battery remains operational. Caera, relocate our strategic operations to the city of Sandaerene. You will be safer there.”

I bit my lip but didn’t speak the thoughts that came to my mind.

Seris’s brows rose a fraction of an inch.

“Forgive me,” I started, still grasping for the appropriate phrasing, “but I have no interest in remaining ‘safe.’ I am not—”

“Expendable,” Seris said unexpectedly. My mouth snapped shut in surprise. “No one knows your strength better than I, Caera. But I have soldiers. What I lack is an abundance of Vritra-born highblood foster children with in-depth knowledge of both the intricacies of noble politics and the Relictombs.”

She paused, giving me an opportunity to speak, but I had no response. “This is not a contest of power and strategy between two sides, where strength of magic and arms will win the day. This is a revolution. This is about reshaping the world so that it works for the people who live in it, instead of the deities who simply use it. And even if it isn’t the role you would have chosen for yourself, your part in all this is to guide your peers toward understanding.”

My head fell, my unfocused gaze on the ground at Seris’s feet. She quickly closed the distance between us, her hand gently but firmly lifting my chin. As she had so many times before, she seemed to peel me apart with her eyes, lying bare my frustration and fear.

“Even I can’t foresee everything that will come to pass,” she said, more gently. “But I know for certain that any plans I make require you to succeed. Without good people to care for the world we seek to build, what would be the point?”

Her grip tightened on my chin, and she forced me to look her directly in the eye. “Now, you’ve wheedled enough compliments out of me for one day, and you’ll get no more. Make the arrangements with my contacts in Sandaerene. And reach out if you must, otherwise continue stirring the pot outside of Sehz-Clar.”

She glanced at Cylrit, who gave her a shallow bow.

Then she was marching out of the room, off to lead the primary defense at Rosaere.

I glanced around the war room, where I had spent many, many hours since coming to Sehz-Clar. It was a sprawling, undecorated space on the west end of Seris’s compound, dominated by a long oval table, with smaller desks pressed haphazardly to the walls around us. Open arches led out to a wide balcony that overlooked the western half of Aedelgard and gave a grand view of the Vritra’s Maw Sea and the ocean beyond it.

“Lady Caera, please let me know if you need any assistance,” Cylrit said with a bob of his horned head, then he started out of the room in Seris’s wake.

Just before he passed under the arched opening deeper into the compound, I said, “Do you think she’s all right?”

He stopped and turned to consider me. It took a moment for him to come to an answer. “She doesn’t think about things like her own health and well-being. For her, it’s all about the plan.”

I couldn’t help but smile at the chagrined reverence in his tone. “Is that why she has you, then? To think about her health and well-being?”

No flicker of emotion broke the stoic expression Cylrit always wore. “Perhaps.” He started to turn away, then stopped. “We’ve set up several recording artifacts around Rosaere. If your mind won’t settle, perhaps being able to see what is happening will ease your thoughts.” Then, like Seris, he was gone.

I wondered how he stayed so calm and collected all the time. Despite looking relatively youthful, Cylrit had been Seris’s retainer for many years. Together they had led Sehz-Clar’s forces against the Vechorian invasion, back before I had even been born. Most of the time he seemed just as poised and confident as Seris. Sometimes, when I struggled to see a positive outcome, it was Cylrit I attempted to emulate. As my mentor and a Scythe, Seris had always felt like something other, beyond reckoning. In contrast, Cylrit’s story was very similar to my own, which somehow made modeling myself after him feel more attainable.

But nothing at all will be accomplished by standing here thinking, I told myself. Straightening my stance and pulling my shoulders back, I began rifling through the many maps, missives, and communiques, sorting them into hasty piles to be relocated.

I stopped suddenly, irritated with myself for forgetting that I had an entire staff of attendants to aid me with this sort of thing.

As if summoned by the thought, a young woman named Haella of Highblood Tremblay—a cousin of Maylis’s—poked her head in the door. “Oh, forgive me Lady Caera, I saw Commander Seris and retainer Cylrit leaving and—”

“No need to apologize,” I said with a wave of my hand. “Call everyone in, actually. We’re relocating.”

***

After a quick meeting with the rest of our small clerical entourage—all trustworthy individuals who agreed with our cause and had talents or runes that helped with the distribution of the many missives we sent out—I retired to my private quarters and began to collect my things.

I chafed at the idea of hiding in Sandaerene, a city in the near center of the west half of Sehz-Clar, as far as possible from any potential fighting. But I knew Seris was correct in her assessment. And, while I would have liked to stay in Aedelgard and help watch over the shield battery array and the Sovereign at its heart, Cylrit was more capable than I.

To help still my mind and stop second-guessing my commander, I did as Cylrit suggested. Set into one wall of my sitting room was a projection crystal I often used to keep apprised of Agrona’s messaging to the people of Alacrya. With a pulse of mana, I activated the crystal, then set about attuning it for the mana signature of our recording artifacts.

It didn’t take me long to locate the artifacts Cylrit had mentioned.

The image showed the towering curve of the shield splitting the city of Rosaere in twain. The device seemed to be located around the city’s central boulevard, facing outward.

The image it captured made my pulse quicken.

On the other side of the shield, several hundred battle groups were lined up and hurtling thousands of spells. Bolts and bullets of every element, green beams, black rays, and bright missiles crashed into the shield, many dozen per second.

The artifact wasn’t portraying the sound of the battle, but I could imagine the cacophonous crashing of the spells, a noise to shake the bedrock foundations of the continent.

But, so far as I could tell, the shield barrier was holding without strain.

I adjusted the attunement again and found myself looking at nearly the same image, but from a higher and farther angle. This vantage point allowed me to see the depth of the enemies—I frowned, realizing I had taken to calling these Alacryan soldiers the ‘enemy’ without even noticing—and the war camp far in the distance, beyond the eastern borders of the city.

Changing the attunement for the second time revealed a sweeping, rushing image of the city from a bird’s eye view, and my frown curved up into a smile. I found the simple birdlike automatons, one of which I knew was carrying this recording artifact, endlessly charming. They were a relatively new invention, according to Seris, having been piloted in the war against Dicathen but never put into full-scale use due to the difficulty of crafting such things.

I watched for some time, forgetting what I was supposed to be doing. Seris had gathered just over five-thousand soldiers in Rosaere as a failsafe should the shields be breached, and from the high, circling vantage I could see them in their defensive positions throughout the western half of the city.

I tried not to think about how much I would have preferred to be with them, closer to where the action was.

A noise like thunder reverberating inside a bell jar ripped through the air, so loud it shook the floor beneath me and made the projected image jump and blur.

I reached out and grabbed the nearby tabletop to steady myself. The noise came again, and the compound shook even harder, and for a moment I worried it might slide off the cliff face and into the sea.

Screams came from a dozen different directions all throughout Seris’s home.

My mind whirled, struggling to think through the reverberations left by the tremendous noise, then it was sounding again, sending a vibration through my teeth and eyes and into my brain, filling it with a dulling fog.

What in the abyss is…

It hit me all at once: the shields.

The shields were under attack.

Moving at a dead sprint, I slammed through the door to my chambers and along the hall, hurtling up the stairs three at a time and then peeling through one of the upper dining chambers and out onto a balcony.

Beyond the shield, which came up from the base of the cliffs far below to curve gently overhead, two figures flew high above the tumultuous waters of the Vritra’s Maw Sea.

The blood rushed from my face, and I had to clench my fists to keep my hands from shaking.

I knew these figures.

The pieces came together quickly. The Legacy must have ordered the bombardment of Rosaere to lure out Seris, then took a tempus warp northwest into Vechor before flying south over the sea. Whether she knew this compound was the source of all the energy currently powering the dominion-sized shield or was targeting this location only because it was Seris’s home and base of operations, I couldn’t guess.

I stood immobile as she reared back again, gathering a swelling force of mana to her, and hurled her hands outward. The thunder sounded yet again, a noise so great and terrible that it drove me to my knees with my hands clapped over my ears.

Through the railing of the balcony, I watched as jagged lines of white hot light spread across the surface of the shield, like cracks over thin ice.

Strong hands grabbed me beneath the arms and heaved me to my feet. Dazed, I struggle to focus on the face swimming just before me.

“Caera, listen carefully.” A familiar voice from that blurry face—Cylrit? “Evacuate as many as you can, then send word to Commander Seris. Go yourself if you can, but leave now—”

The thunder crashed again. I shook my head, blinking rapidly. Cylrit’s face finally came into focus, even more pale than usual. His jaw tightened and he flinched away from the noise, making me feel better—but also simultaneously worse. It was so much more frightening knowing that he was also afraid.

As the echoing vibrations receded, I risked a glance at the shield and was horrified to see how far the cracks had spread.

“Caera!” Cylrit said urgently, his hands gripping the sides of my neck with a tender firmness. “I will stay and fight, but—”

“Cylrit…” I said, his name barely a whisper on my lips. He followed the direction of my wide-eyed gaze, and together we watched as the Legacy flew toward the shield.

Both her hands reached out and pushed into the cracks, taking hold and pulling.

Like glass shattering, except a thousand times more cutting, the shield began to give way.

Cylrit launched himself toward the breach with such force that the balcony cracked. I threw myself back into the compound just as the supporting timbers shattered, and the balcony separated from the building with a sound like breaking bones.

By the time I had my feet under me, Cylrit had reached the barrier, a pure black greatsword as long as he was tall clenched in his fists.

All I could do was watch as the Legacy’s fingers clawed through the transparent barrier, ripping a hole the size of an outstretched hand. The shield crackled with desperate energy around her fingertips, surging against her power and control as it attempted to reseal itself.

Silently, Cylrit thrust his void wind blade into the gap, aimed right at the Legacy’s core.

“Cecil!” Scythe Nico shouted in alarm, his voice barely audible over the pounding in my ears.

Suddenly Cylrit jerked violently, attempting to pull away from the breach. He was struggling, but from my vantage, all I could see was his cloaked back. Belatedly, I ripped my own blade free of its sheath, but any attack I made would do more damage to my ally than the Scythe and Legacy still on the opposite side of the shield.

The barrier bulged inward like a distorted bubble, until Cyrilt was outside of it. It was then I realized his hands were empty; his sword had vanished, and the Legacy was gripping him by the front of his armor. The cracked section of shield snapped back into place as she ripped him through it, then shattered with a prolonged crashing, like trees being felled in a hurricane wind.

Despite Cyrit urging me to flee, I knew I couldn’t. The shield had been breached. The hole wasn’t large, perhaps eight feet tall and five wide, but it was more than enough for a person to come through, and I was the strongest warrior present aside from Cylrit himself. If I ran, many more might die.

As I stood, considering, Scythe Nico flew through the shield.

I cursed, and his gaze fell on me. Beyond him, the Legacy held Cylrit up by one hand. There was a surging conflict of invisible mana between the two. It was less a battle of spells than a contest of pure control over mana. Unfortunately, I’d seen enough at the Victoriad to understand who would win.

But there was no more time to watch. Scythe Nico was already moving toward me, flying on a shimmering cloud of air.

Leaping back, I slashed with my sword, rending a crescent of black flames clawing toward him, but he dipped below it, narrowly avoiding the soulfire.

I stumbled as I completed the arc of my cut. The floor had liquified beneath my feet, just for the blink of an eye, then turned solid again, and my feet were half stuck. In the moment it took me to wrench myself free of the stone, the Scythe had landed within the open arch in front of the shattered balcony.

A blood iron spike thrust up from the floor, just where my foot had been. I pirouetted away, bringing my blade up to deflect a second spike that thrust down from the ceiling. I was already breathing hard, too hard—much too hard—when I realized each breath brought me only the barest lungful of oxygen.

When I spun around to put my blade between me and the Scythe, the emerald on the end of his staff was glowing withradiant light.

He’s doing something to draw the air out of the room.

My blade burst to life with soulfire flames, and I thrust it into the ruined floor.

The stones shattered as the soulfire ate the floor out from under me, and I fell through to land atop a circular table. The legs snapped like kindling, and I leapt off its collapsing surface, twirling through the air to land on my feet several feet away. Gratefully, I sucked in a lungful of good air.

The room was dark, but I didn’t have time to take stock of my surroundings.

The floor beneath me burst upward, a solid column of stone hurtling toward the ceiling above. At the same time, several jet black metal spikes grew from the ceiling like so many stalactites.

Planting one foot on the edge of the column, I launched myself away, tucking into a roll and wreathing myself in a halo of soulfire as I went. Behind me, the column exploded, sending knives of solid stone pelting through the room, shredding everything inside.

The soulfire saved me, burning away all but one of the stone daggers, which slashed across my side, leaving behind a line of white-hot pain. As I rolled back to my feet, I quickly checked the wound; it was shallow, but not dangerous.

Scythe Nico appeared above, floating down through the hole I’d carved in the floor. I brought my blade up, ready to defend against his next attack.

“Lady Caera Denoir.” His voice was as quiet and cold as a tomb. “I’ve enjoyed reading your many missives. Seris has really kept you busy, hasn’t she?”

“If you’ve come to arrest me, I refuse,” I shot back, more to buy myself time than anything else.

There was a closed door to my back and an open arch to my right. I needed to move, to keep him occupied and hope that some of the other servants or guards managed to reach Seris. I had to be considerate about how and where I fought, though. The machines far beneath us were well-protected by wards and thick walls of metal and stone, but a battle here would still be dangerous.

And that’s not even taking into account the fact that I’m facing off with a Scythe, I thought.

Still, unlike the other Scythes, I could sense his mana signature and its potency. It was being distorted somehow—my eye was again drawn to the strange staff in his hand—but the signature was there, and it wasn’t as strong as I might have suspected.

“You still aren’t recovered from your battle against Grey, are you?” I prodded. Although