The Beginning After The End Chapter 503: Aftershocks

ALARIC MAER

The contents of the small leather pouch gave a crystalline clink as I set it down on the bar. The wrinkled little bartender scooped the payment away in a swift, silent movement, making it disappear behind the counter. Her beady eyes squinted and her lips pursed, deepening the craggy wrinkles of her face. She drummed her fingers across the bar once, then pointed out the nearest window.

A long-legged equine mana beast was connected to a ramshackle carriage outside. A man in a long coat and wide-brimmed cap lingered next to the cart, eying anyone who walked by appraisingly.

I knocked twice on the scored and pocked bartop, winked at the tender, and then headed for the door.

The commander leaned against the wall beside the door. “Leaving without even a glance at the bottles behind the bar?” She clicked her tongue, and I caught the ghost of a smile beneath her hood. “You really have turned over a new leaf.”

It was moments like those that reminded me most clearly of one certainty: as lucid as the hallucination was, it was only ever a reflection of my own internalized thoughts. Commander Cynthia Goodsky—a name she took after turning away from the Vritra—would never have been so graceless as to kick an old dog while he was shivering from withdrawals. That was a special kind of self-deprecating cruelty that only I could come up with.

I shoved my way through the creaking door out into the street. It was overcast and had recently stopped raining. Although Onaeka was a prosperous trading city on the coast of Truacia, I was in the unad edge of town. The street wasn’t even paved, and my boots sank an inch into the muck as I crossed it.

The coachman saw me coming immediately. Straightening, he flicked the brim of his hat back and hooked his thumbs in his belt. He had a scruffy, patchwork red growth of something almost like a beard. His face was pockmarked from sun-scars, but there was an unhidden cleverness in his dark eyes.

“Need a lift, stranger? You look like a gent with a purpose.” He grinned, revealing multiple rotten teeth.

I got close enough that when I spoke softly, he’d still hear me clearly. “Right on both counts. You’re clearly a clever man.” I paused, letting him digest the bent of my words. “Clever enough to catch the eye of someone wanting to go into hiding. Clever enough to turn another man’s desperation into a bit of hard-earned wealth for yourself.”

I admired the belt he was wearing: acid green and gleaming, at odds with the rest of his drab, damp attire.

“A functioning relic. Pretty rare, that. Exceedingly rare, I’d say, since they’re all taken to Taegrim Caelum and very few ever make it out again.”

His eyes widened. “Well now, friend, don’t see why you’d think—just a backwater coachman, ain’t I? Couldn’t afford something like—”

A dagger flashed in my hand, and I stepped forward and plunged it into his ribs. Or I would have, if not for a burst of mana that wrapped him in a shield of glowing blue energy. It was fast, flickering in and out in a blink.

The mana beast harnessed to his cart let out a nervous crooning noise and shuffled back and forth.

“Aye, what are you—”

I stowed the blade with one hand and held the other up to silence him. “That’s the kind of thing might have been stolen from Taegrim Caelum. Say, by someone who worked there before everything went sideways. Maybe given to you in trade for passage and sealed lips. Still, the belt’s worth a thousand times whatever service you could have possibly provided. A lot of wealthy highbloods would kill for such a thing.”

The coachman glanced around nervously as he closed his coat, hiding the artifact. “What do you want, chum?”

“A ride.” I gave the man a knowing smirk, and his face fell.

If his secret benefactor had been someone powerful, maybe things would have played out different. But this was the kind of man that could smell desperation from a hundred feet. He knew the runaway Instiller was less of a threat than me, and so he didn’t argue.

I took my place in the carriage. The door didn’t close properly and creaked dangerously when I forced it shut. The carriage had an open window out to the driver’s seat. It looked like, once upon a time, there had been slats that could be closed to keep out the wind and weather, but these had long since been broken.

The coachman hopped up into his seat and took up the reins. He shot a furtive glance back at me, then gave a gentle tug at the mana beast and a click of his tongue. The axle groaned as the cart began to move.

“I didn’t get your name, friend,” I said as the cart squished through the mud.

“I ain’t nobody.”

I chuckled. “Nobody’s nobody in my line of work.”

After confirming our destination with the driver, I settled in for a long ride north up the coast. I could have used a tempus warp, but pinpointing a destination without a specific target or a clear picture of where I was headed seemed like a mistake. Far easier if this coachman could drop me off right where my prey landed as well.

Besides, it was a welcome reprieve from the chaos. In part, that’s why I was out here myself, tracking the Instiller across the ass end of Truacia. Anything to not be part of one more answerless meeting.

The pulse of mana that killed Scythe Dragoth had reached past the borders of Central Dominion, drawing the mana out of every mage it hit. The backlash hit the strongest the hardest, ironically. But plenty of others—those who were frail by nature or still weak from the shockwaves that had rippled across the world only weeks earlier—died too. Although she played it off, Seris seemed pretty close to the edge herself right after it happened.

The one-two punch of the shockwave from Dicathen, followed by this mana-draining pulse that seemed to originate from the Basilisk Fang Mountains—maybe even Taegrin Caelum itself—had everyone spooked. Not that there wasn’t reason for it. Tens of thousands of mages all got the mana sucked out of them at the same time…well, it didn’t seem like a sign of particularly good times to come.

As the carriage rumbled along, I didn’t dare close my eyes—at least one stayed firmly on my driver at all times—but I let my tired mind crunch back through the last few days since Central Academy. My bruises felt sharp and fresh as I remembered the wild escape, dead Scythe, and the recording artifact.

I hadn’t been surprised to find Caera Denoir on her feet despite the fact most mages were barely walking. The girl was tenacious.

She’d been organizing a bunch of unadorned to bring in whatever comforts they could for those most impacted by the mana pulse. None of Highblood Kaenig’s men even bothered to ask who I was as I approached the library, and I was able to watch from the mouth of an alley for several minutes.

“When I say anyone who can activate a tempus warp, I mean anyone.”

Caera was scolding a grumpy-looking man in Kaenig colors. He had no mana signature, so I assumed he was an unadorned servant. From the quality of his clothes and the pouty scowl on his face, he was clearly high ranking among their staff and not used to being ordered around by anyone besides the Kaenigs.

“We have a lot of people here who will be better off in their own homes and puking and crying on the library floor following that—that—whatever that siphoning blast was.” She took a deep breath to calm herself.

“Everyone here is hurting. But anyone who can still stand and channel mana is needed. Send a call out into the city if necessary.”

I didn’t hear the man’s response as he bowed and marched quickly away.

I’d slipped from my hiding spot and approached Caera as she took a scroll from another unadorned and began reading it.

“Well, isn’t this a tidy little custer f—”

“Who—Alaric!” Several expressions tumbled across her features in quick succession: relief, guilt, and hope, among others. “I was hoping we’d catch up with your group, before. But now…” Her voice softened, the scroll hanging limp in her grasp. “We could use some help, if you’ve got any to offer.”

I made a point of glancing around the scene outside Cargidan’s central library. Every single mage present had the same green-around-the-gills look. In fact, it was the only way to tell the mages from the unadorned. Almost no one had a solid mana signature.

“Lady Seris?” I asked when I didn’t see her.

Caera bit inside of her cheek and shot a furtive glance to a nearby tent. It had been erected in a hurry in the grassy lawn beside the library. More were already going up around it.

“Alive?”

Caera nodded. “Come on.”

She led me into the tent, which was guarded by two young mages with weak mana signatures. I gauged them both to be no more than crest-bearers. The pulse, through the act of drawing out all a mage’s mana from their core, had impacted the stronger mages more than the weaker ones.

Inside, the tent held nothing but a single fold-out cot. Seris, once Scythe of Sehz-Clar, was sitting up in the cot, her back supported by several rolled blankets. Dark rings surrounded her eyes, and her cheeks were porcelain pale. Her retainer, Cylrit, sat on the ground beside the tent, his head reclined against the thick fabric wall, eyes shut. Both gave off weak, shuddering auras.

I would have been surprised to find them in such good condition, considering Dragoth, but a handful of empty vials in the grass beside the cot explained it: elixirs, and potent ones by the residue remaining.

Seris’s eyes flickered open as we entered.

I gave her an appraising look. “You look a far sight better than your contemporary, Dragoth. Dead as a doornail.”

Seris’s eyes closed as if dragged down by a heavy weight. “A pitiful end for a pitiful man.” Her eyes opened again, and she gave me a sharp look. “What were you doing anywhere near Dragoth?”

I chuckled and withdrew the shard of carved crystal: the storage crystal from a recording artifact. “The people need proof that Agrona’s really gone. If my intelligence is correct, this crystal contains just such proof.”

“Some good news today,” Caera said under her breath. “But how did you get this?”

Seris leaned forward, staring into the crystalline structure as if she could read its contents through sheer will alone. “It’s from a mobile recording artifact.” Her brows rose slightly. “From Dicathen. But the images will be mana locked. They require a specific sequence of applied mana—sometimes even from only certain people—to access.”

I felt my expression sour. “You were a bloody Scythe. Are you saying that you can’t use this?”

Seris was silent a moment, and her disapproval hung heavy in the air despite her backlash. “I might be able to break the lock…once I’ve had time to recover.”

I picked dried blood out of my beard and flicked it into the grass. “Speaking of…I don’t suppose you have any idea what in the abyss that was, do you?”

Seris sighed and eased back again, closing her eyes. “Several theories, but they’d likely do more harm than good if I shared them now.” She waved a hand as if clearing away cobwebs. “I need time to think.”

“We should let Seris rest,” Caera said, putting a hand on my arm, about to lead me out.

“There’s something else,” I said, taking half a step closer to the cot. “Everyone who’s seen this recording is dead, except for Wolfrum of Highblood Redwater. Him, and a single Instiller who managed to slip out of Dragoth’s clutches before he merced the others.”

Seris shifted slightly in the cot, but she didn’t open her eyes. “He may be useful if we can’t unlock this recording ourselves. Can you put someone on it?”

I shrugged, then realized she couldn’t see me. “I’ve spent the last day imprisoned and tortured. Not sure what kind of mess this pulse thing has done to my people, yet. I’ll go myself.”

Caera pushed out a sharp breath through her nose.

“You just said you—”

“Nevermind that. They were amateurs.” Behind Caera, in the doorway to the tent, the hallucination of Commander Cynthia smirked.

Seris coughed. Her eyes were moving rapidly beneath the lids. I couldn’t explain it, but a shiver ran up my spine. Even in this shape, her mind was churning. “This pulse of mana, as you called it, has come at exactly the wrong time,” she said, speaking slowly and clearly. “We need a positive message to counter the people’s despair. Like showing them indisputable evidence that they are no longer under the Vritra’s yoke.”

“Understood,” I grunted. With a wink to Caera, I showed myself out.

My network had been in shambles, as expected. It was the mystery of it, more than the effects themselves, that shook people. A bitter wind from the mountains that stole the mana from your very core…

Like the tales of Wraiths told to scare children straight, I thought as I watched the Truacian coastline slither past from the carriage window.

The sheer scale of it was the real thing. “Agrona’s ghost, still sucking the life from his people,” I muttered.

My driver shot a watery-eyed glance back at me, but neither of us spoke.

Whether by luck, a lack of skill on the part of my prey, or the fact that word of Dragoth’s death spread like soulfire, it had not taken long to hear rumors of a desperate, on-the-run Instiller headed north. This, of course, had led me eventually to Onaeka and the dreary coachman currently delivering me to my destination.

It had taken just enough time for the doubt to set in.

So far, we’d gone with the story that this secondary, mana-stealing pulse had been a kind of aftershock to the original shockwave. That, of course, we now knew was caused by Arthur Leywin’s defeat of Agrona in Dicathen. I didn’t understand it, but I didn’t need to. This aftershock story was bullshit, of course, but Alacrya was already on the edge.

I didn’t know how much more pressure the nation could take before it tore itself to shreds in a terrified frenzy.

“Listen to you, worrying about ‘the nation’ again,” Cynthia said from the seat next to me. She reclined with one leg kicked over the other, absently picking at the sole of her boot. “You’ve rediscovered patriotism, it seems.”

I scoffed. “Been shackled to it by Arthur Leywin, more like. Lying little shit.”

She laughed, making me chuckle too. She didn’t have to tell me that I was lying. She wasn’t even there. Just a hallucination of a broken mind.

Cynthia cocked her head as if reading my thoughts. Her smile softened, becoming sad. She looked out her window. I blinked. She was gone.

“How much longer?” I asked, half shouting at the driver, suddenly antsy to be out of the carriage. It was starting to grow dark, and the lights of a small village could just be seen in the distance.

He clicked his tongue at the equine mana beast pulling the carriage, and it slowed to a stop. “You’ve got a good nose on you, mister.” He hopped off the front of the carriage and opened the door with a grunt. “Feller you're looking for had me let him out right here.” He indicated a standing stone that marked a break in the thick tangle of bushes that separated the road from the rocky coastline. “No idea where he went from here.”

I kicked a rock. It skipped twice before vanishing into the bushes. “We’ve come a long way together, friend. Maybe our relationship has had some ups and downs, but I’d like to think we’ve built some trust over the last few hours. Most people take years to build up to the comfortable silence we’ve shared.”

I pushed mana into my runes, letting it emanate out as a threatening intent without casting a spell. “It would be a shame to ruin it now.”

“Ah, piss on this,” he muttered. “I ain’t dying for some bloke I don’t even know. My cousin has a shack down on the beach, on the other side of town.” ‘Nobody’ the coachman shrugged his shoulders in defeat. “Cousin works on a shipping vessel that runs ‘round the north coast to Dzianis, don’t he? So he ain’t hardly ever home. Told this feller he could stay there for a bit.”

I considered forcing him to take me right to the front door. His appearance in town might just tip off my quarry, though. Besides, I was pretty sure he was telling the truth. “Get out of here.” I pressed payment into his hand. Enough that he was unlikely to do anything other than high-tail it back to Onaeka. “And sell off that belt as soon as you can, or someone is likely to gut you for it.”

The coachman scratched his scruff of beard as he visibly struggled to find words, then grunted, jumped back up into the driver’s seat, and clicked his tongue at his mana beast. The creatures carefully dragged the cart in a loop, crushing the brush on the other side of the road, then hurried away.

The coachman, pale in the dim light, stared straight ahead.

A cool wind blew in off the sea. I pulled my cloak tight around me, lifted my hood, and started toward the village. The main road veered left, while a separate path broke away to the right, leading right through the center of the village. A couple of farm houses surrounded by small plots of struggling crops marked the outer edge of the village. A farmer, still toiling in the twilight, stopped his work to lean against a rake and watch me pass.

The village itself was fairly quiet. At its center, it had a small square defined by a warehouse that stank of fish, an inn with no sign out front, and an out-of-place manor house that I guessed was some kind of town hall, or maybe the residence of whatever struggling Named Blood controlled the place.

Several market stalls lined the square, but they were all closed up. The dull roar of drunken conversation came out of the inn, along with the smell of roasting meat, herbs, spices, and stale beer.

I caught sight of two armored men as they rounded a corner down the street past the inn. Not wanting to get caught up answering questions from nervous small-town guardsmen, I ducked into the shadow of the inn and waited. The guards passed by without even glancing in my direction.

Careful to avoid sticking my face directly in the window where the light from inside would highlight it for all to see, I glanced into the inn, searching for a man matching the Instiller’s description. Many of the locals were out for a drink and a late dinner, probably only havi