Hart
patreon
61. [Infinzel] Solstice, Conclusion
🕑 Added 2024-08-27 18:19:09 +0000 UTCCarina Goldstone and Cortland Finiron, Champions of Infinzel
Those they have met so far…
…and those they will meet soon
***
30 Frett, 61 AW
The pyramidal city of Infinzel, North Continent
150 days until the next Granting
Vitt Secondson-Salvado expected treason. Or, if that was too much to ask, to catch Carina and the cocky little bartender in some illicit tryst. He wanted an undeniable, present day link between the logician and the troublemakers in Soldier's Rest who had raised her. Of course, such a discovery would do little to smooth relations with the striking outer districts—preposterous to think that some whispered he was to blame for the present chaos—but Vitt suspected it would be enough to convince his father to take a firmer hand. Or, at least, for the king to again acknowledge Vitt’s existence.
However, Vitt had not expected to find the logician on fire.
Vitt swung through Carina’s window victoriously and then froze, his leering grin fading. As suspected, he had found Carina in a state of undress. A symbol in the language of the gods burned on her chest, the flames leaping up like from a freshly stoked hearth. Vitt thought the burning symbol read [Detect Magic], but that wasn’t one of the girl’s abilities, was it? Carina’s existing Ink writhed across her torso, bunching and peeling back from the flames, spilling bursts of blood where her skin split. More disturbing yet was her face—ruined, Vitt thought—the flesh around her eyes peeled back, all her features taut and strained, like she faced a powerfully scathing wind. Her wide open eyes were alight with an arcane glow, staring off into the distance.
“Fuck me,” Vitt mumbled.
A low growl to his right momentarily caught the hunter’s attention. His nightstalker Patricia hunkered down, ready to pounce, but she had also been stilled by the sight of Carina. Or, perhaps, it was the two small arrows—one in her shoulder, the other in the side of her neck—that had given Patricia pause.
A zigzagging trail of blood led from Patricia to the far side of Carina’s bed. There cowered the bartender, Traveon Twiceblack, bleeding from the clawing Patricia had delivered to his back. He held a hand-bow in front of him, pointing first at Patricia, then Vitt, and then back to Patricia.
And now, a different conspiracy took root in Vitt’s mind. One where the logician’s spurned lover came back for some kind of revenge, or else came to assail her for not being sufficiently supportive of Soldier’s Rest. Perhaps, Vitt thought, he had known this all along, instinctively, and had arrived just in time to protect his fellow champion.
“What have you done to her?” Vitt snarled.
“Done? Me?” Traveon replied. “Get fucked, moron.”
Vitt’s knees bent in readiness. The bartender might get one shot off, but with Vitt’s [Speed+] he was unlikely to hit. And then, Vitt could be on him. Snap his neck with his bare hands. No reason to bother dirtying his blade.
“You see that?” Traveon asked, pointing upward. “What is it?”
At first, Vitt suspected a ploy, an attempt to distract him. But, when he glanced upward, he saw a stone plate in Carina’s ceiling vibrating with energy, a glow emanating from beneath. A rune hidden in the logician’s room. But why…?
“Oh, Vitt, he uses you.”
Vitt’s attention snapped back to Carina as she croaked out words. Like some cackling undead apparition, she stumbled toward him, reaching for Vitt’s chest and grasping at the air between them. He felt a cough tickle the back of his throat, but fought it down.
“He uses all you children,” Carina continued. “I can see it now. He drains you. Your father drains you.”
With Carina now in arm’s reach, Vitt hesitated for only a moment. He whipped off his cloak and spun it around her, using it to pat out the flames on her chest. She screamed in the way he’d heard Garrison cadets scream during surgery when an arrow needed to be pulled out of them, and then collapsed against him. Her body was surprisingly cold, and light, and he worried that the logician might shatter as he scooped her up. He needed her whole. He needed to know what she meant, what she had seen.
“Hey!” Traveon shouted as Vitt stepped toward the window. “What are you--?”
“Kill him,” Vitt said to Patricia, the order an afterthought.
Vitt did not stop to watch the nightstalker work. He leapt out into the night in search of the healer Henry Blacksalve. The man would no doubt be at the fires with his gods damned bleeding heart. Vitt only hoped he could make it there in time, and that Blacksalve would have enough Ink to piece their logician back together.
***
Cortland had thought the king’s attitude too flippant. Mocking the old general in his own place, using that condescending tone that sometimes even got under Cortland’s skin—it was not like Cizco to be so tactless. Of course, Cortland kept these thoughts to himself, assuming the king knew the best way to handle Bel Guydemion.
But then, Cizco’s head had snapped around in the direction of the pyramid. Whatever alert rattled Cizco’s senses, it left him drained of patience. When his attention returned to Guydemion, he leaned forward with shoulders bunched beneath his ward-lined battle mage cloak, looking to Cortland like a man poised to tip the table and throw the first punch. Power radiated from Cizco—a bracing ripple of magic, like heat pouring forth from a furnace. That arcane energy—drawn from reserves Cortland didn’t understand—was not pushed into any particular spell. King Cizco simply wanted them to feel it. Behind the old general, Hellie Opensky took a nervous step back. Cortland, reflexively, dropped a hand to his hammer.
The fleshy old general, swaddled in his blankets like a babe, simply fluttered his drooping eyes at Cizco.
“Do you need a moment?” Guydemion asked. “To pull yourself together?”
“Do I not seem together?” Cizco said through his teeth.
“I have never been one for magic, so perhaps I am ignorant,” Guydemion responded. “But I understand there are costs to such power as you draw now. An impetuous use, is it not? Burning up that which we wish for every year?”
Cizco snorted. He glanced back at Cortland as if to see if the hammer master could believe the old man’s audacity. Cortland kept his expression carefully blank.
“You sit there like a shriveled worm beneath my sun and yet lecture me as if we’re equals,” Cizco said.
“I merely wonder at the costs of your actions and whether such misappropriations of power are why we in the outer districts must suffer.”
The king scoffed. “Costs and debts. This is all you have ever thought about. All these decades later, and you still think you are owed.”
“Am I not?” Faced with the king’s harsh tone, Guydemion made his voice softer still. As a man prone to anger, Cortland knew how infuriating calmness could be. The old general seemed to be a master of that provoking unflappability. “My memory has not gone so much. Your brother promised every enlisted man and woman a place upon their return.”
“My brother promised many things, to many people,” Cizco said. “He believed death lurked around every corner, waiting to pounce on him, and so it mattered little what he offered knowing he would not be around to make payment.”
“A luxury you don't have, given your insistence on lingering.”
King Cizco set his hands on the table. Cortland wouldn’t be surprised if he left burnt fingerprints in the wood.
“No. You are right about that.” The king took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “And you think this debt falls to me, then? All these years lingering out here in your fiefdom of castoffs, waiting for me to kiss your swollen toes. You hold that I should have long ago made room for your army of broken men, cutthroats, and failures. Is that the thrust of it, old man?”
“We ask for only what is fair,” the general responded. “To be treated in the same way as those who live within.”
“Those within perform a function,” Cizco hissed. “They earn their place through work, as they always have. Did you finish your work, Bel? All that fighting. All that running and retreating. It did nothing to protect Infinzel. The greater service, I think, would have been to die out there and spare the pyramidal city decades of you dangling here like a leech.”
Guydemion’s jaw set beneath his jowls. “You forget how we kept enemies from your walls.”
“We could have withstood more.”
“Said with the confidence of a man who watched battles from his high window.”
As their elders bickered, Cortland hazarded a glance at Hellie Opensky. The woman’s eyes were elsewhere—on the ring of flowers and bottles arranged to one side of the bar. Again, Cortland wondered about that, but he’d not get a word in here.
“Did I lead Infinzel through the first ten Grantings while peeking out through curtains?” Cizco asked. “I don’t remember you volunteering for the Ink.”
“And who fights your battles now, ageless king? A healer from Soldier's Rest and a young woman who I–”
King Cizco slapped the table. Everyone flinched, including the old general.
“Three hundred and forty-three,” Cizco said.
“Excuse me?”
“Infinzel is a perfect system. Every task accounted for. I need three hundred and forty-three from the outer districts to keep it functioning. In time, I will find them places inside, but until then, I will let them build as they wish between the walls, increase their earnings, and allow them to form their own Garrison to enforce the laws as you see fit for the outside. All that you have asked for, but only for the three hundred and forty-three who I need.”
Guydemion’s eyes narrowed. “There are ten times that in the outer districts.”
“Their families can stay, of course. I am not cruel. And those with businesses that prove useful. The inns and the trading posts. Perhaps the taverns. We will assess them on a case-by-case basis. The rest?” Cizco waved his fingers. “I have too long let them linger due to my sense of charity. They will leave at the end of winter, or I will have them removed.”
Cortland’s brow furrowed. An eviction of hundreds, maybe thousands. Given how staunchly they’d resisted attempts to break their strike, Cortland doubted the outer districts would go along willingly. The king’s proposal would lead to bloodshed. As a champion, would he be expected to enforce such a thing? Turn his hammer against these people? Cortland wasn’t sure he could do it.
Guydemion’s chair creaked. He tilted back slightly, like a potato bug that had been flicked over, Cortland thought. The old general closed his eyes.
“Long have I waited for you to make matters so clear,” Guydemion said. “That Infinzel does not work for us, but we for it. And you-”
“Yes,” Cizco said. “I am Infinzel. Blah, blah, blah. I will give you a week to consi-”
Now, it was the king's turn to be interrupted. “I accept,” Guydemion said, his eyes still closed, head back.
Cortland was surprised by how quickly the old general acquiesced. Even the king seemed taken aback.
“Ah,” Cizco said. “Well, this was surprisingly productive.”
“Not your proposal,” Guydemion said, his eyes fluttering open. “Theirs.”
The old general gestured toward the circle of flowers and bottles. Cortland glanced in that direction—saw a vibration in the air, there and gone—then turned back to Guydemion as the old man tugged his blankets away from his chin. The pyramid symbol on his neck was gone, replaced by a broken wall like the one leading out of Soldier's Rest. Cortland sucked in a sharp breath.
“I knew I felt them,” Cizco said flatly. “Didn't I tell you, Cortland?”
Cortland could only stare. The pyramid was gone from Hellie’s neck, as well. She tentatively rubbed the broken wall on her throat.
“They came to us a week ago, after your Garrison thugs brutalized two masons who refused to return to work,” Guydemion said. “Right where you see the offerings. A shimmering in the air. A sensation of power untold—”
The king clicked his tongue. “Spare me the descriptors. I have been in their presence too many times to count.”
“Not me,” rasped Guydemion. “There is yet awe in this world for me.” He squinted at Cizco. “The gods offered my people this boon, their protection, and I told them we would wait. We would give the great King Cizco an opportunity to cleanse what festers in Infinzel. Or to show himself as inseparable from the rot.”
The old general waved his hand and a golden inkwell appeared on the table before him.
“You are more experienced at this game than I,” Guydemion said, his pudgy hand wrapping around the inkwell. “So, I will give you a week, Cizco, to decide how we might best work together in this new alignment. But I must warn you, Soldier’s Rest will not countenance a wish wasted on vanity.”
King Cizco stood up, his fingers clenching and unclenching. “Good for you, Bel. One last losing battle before you retreat for the last time.”
“We’ll see,” the old general said. “We’ll see.”
With that, King Cizco spun away and headed for the exit. Cortland lingered for a moment, still staring at the new symbol on the necks of the two from Soldier’s Rest. He watched as Guydemion took up his quill and stirred the Ink inside.
“Not quite full,” Guydemion said bemusedly. “I should have asked the king what that means…”
***
Traveon Twiceblack felt his blood stop pumping. The sensation wasn't so different from when he closed a tap at the bar and could feel the pressure from the keg rattle behind his hand. Except, this was in his guts. His horribly clawed open guts.
For a moment, he thought that might be the denouement. The last signal from his body—already numb from the mauling—that would mark his ignominious end. He would go out gracefully, at least, having shit his pants only a little bit.
But Traveon didn’t die. The nightstalker cocked her head and peered down at him with quizzical green eyes. The vicious bitch made a lunge for Traveon's throat that he was powerless to evade, but though she whipped her head back and forth like she had a piece of meat in her jaws, Traveon felt nothing but hot breath on his throat.
The nightstalker's fangs did not pierce his skin. His new Ink—the symbol of the broken wall—remained unblemished.
As the nightstalker shrank back from him, uncertain what she should do now that the gods had made her master's order impossible to complete, Traveon found the feeling returning to his limbs. He scrambled backward, his tattered clothes heavy and wet with his blood. Traveon managed to sit up as the flesh on his abdomen closed over his intestines. He spit out a clotted glob and chuckled, pointing at the nightstalker.
“You play too much with your food,” he said. “Asshole.”
The beast growled in response, watching him, tail swishing through the air.
Traveon staggered to his feet. He did not attempt to retrieve his hand-bow, uncertain if the gods’ protection would hold if he decided to resume hostilities with the cat. He felt lightheaded and not all of his wounds had closed—only the most serious ones. He would still need stitches, although the cuts that remained no longer bled. The gods looked out for him. They wouldn't let him lose more than he could afford.
“My luck holds,” Traveon said to the cat. “I'll turn my back on you now, as a demonstration of my confidence.”
And he did, leaving a bloody handprint on the wall next to Carina's doorway as he made his escape. Carina—what had become of her? She'd unleashed something nasty, which Traveon didn't understand even a little bit. Vitt Secondson-Salvado had swept her away like some grand rescuer and, while this obviously stung Traveon's ego, he hoped the hunter proved more effective at finding help for Carina than he had at delegating murder to his pets. He prayed that Carina survived the night. They had much to talk about.
Although he knew secret ways down from the high tiers, Traveon Twiceblack decided he would take the elevator. Let the people of Infinzel see him bloody and triumphant, with his new symbol upon his neck.
None of them could touch him now.
***
“Blacksalve!”
Henry turned at his name. He recognized Vitt’s commanding voice, although not necessarily the strain in it. The healer couldn’t remember hearing the hunter sound panicked before. For a moment, Henry wondered how Vitt had found him. But then, he noticed how his gaunt frame stood outlined against the pulsing light of his [Empowering Beacon]. A shining signal to his fellow champion.
Wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, Henry handed his bottle of wine off to one of the others.
The fires in the outer districts were finally out and the mood had shifted to a chaotic kind of revelry. Even considering the bitter cold, there was an aversion to torches given the day’s events. Henry’s beacon provided the light. All around him, the people of outer districts danced and clutched each other, staring at their new markings, passing around flagons and shaking their fists at the dark triangle that still loomed at the center of their world but no longer seemed so immense. The people fell gradually silent as Vitt barreled through them, then formed a loose perimeter around the Secondson, ready to collapse upon him at the first sign of trouble.
Vitt seemed oblivious to the ire directed at him. He held a bundle in his arms that Henry soon realized was a body.
“Heal her, Blacksalve,” Vitt demanded. “She’s fucked herself completely and I need her alive.”
Vitt laid the body down in the ashy slush of the street. Henry crouched there, peeling back Vitt’s cloak to reveal Carina. He grimaced at the sight of her—burns and ruptures and a face that looked half-melted by acid. How many times had he already healed this girl? These were some of the worst injuries she’s managed yet. The logician’s breathing was slow and growing weaker. A lucky thing that Vitt had brought her when he did. An hour ago, Henry wouldn’t have had the energy. All his Ink had been faded.
But the gods had seen fit to color him back in.
Henry activated his [Healing Touch] and pressed his glowing hands to Carina. He lifted her chin slightly. She still had the pyramid on her neck. Loyal to Infinzel, just like she’d always said.
Crouched across from Henry, Vitt’s breath caught in his throat. His hand snapped out and grabbed Henry’s shoulder.
“Blacksalve, what the fuck is that?”
“I’m working, Vitt, please,” Henry said.
“Your neck, man,” Vitt continued. “What’s on your neck?”
***
Henry Blacksalve, Healer of the 8th Renown, Soldier’s Rest
Comments
iridium248
Well, the balloon's up. So they're one champion short - It's too bad the elementalist girl couldn't hold on longer, she'd have been happy to see this.
