“Still playing mercenary?” I quipped, scoffing at him. My water whip cracked as though it, too, were laughing with me. “Only deadbeats kill for money. I thought you knew that.”
“Playing mercenary,” the words hissed out of his mouth. Taking a moment to compose himself, he cocked his head to the side. The smile splayed along his lips was disturbingly gentle. “This has been fun, I must admit. Quite the eye-opening experience for me, really. When I first met you on that ship, I walked away disappointed. The once all-mighty Winter Faithful, now just a sorry spectator in the grand tragedy of her own making. How sad! You let your magic fizzle out. You lost your business. Even your own best friend betrayed you. But honestly, who was surprised by that? You’re a hothead, a ticking time bomb, and a coward. All these setbacks… they weren't mere coincidence, no. They were a mark of your incompetence. It seems everywhere I go, I am reminded of you, Azurilina. Every crumbling brick in this place screams to me of your failure. It’s almost poetic, really, the way you’ve become synonymous with despair.” He bowed his head slightly, as stoic as if he were attending a funeral. “Tell me, Azurilina, whatever happened to that hero you pretended to be?” How dare he—
“That’s not what happened! Lordza went behind my back! Valdrec slithered his way up my company, bribing people under my nose! I did everything I could! I gave my everything to that company and where did it get me? Stuck down here in a dirty, wet hole with a bastard who doesn’t know how to shut his mouth!” He has no idea what he’s talking about. That’s not how it happened. I’m not a failure. I did nothing wrong.
Dante chuckled. He raised a hand to cup his chin, eyes blazing. “But Valdrec! And Lordza went behind my back! Enough whining Faithful. You brought this upon yourself. You were foolish for ever taking your eyes off Valdrec in the first place. And Lordza! Oh, Lordza. Did you know?” He snickered. “Valdrec’s set his sights a little higher now, and Lordza. He’s been trying to take over your company now that you’re gone.”
I balked, “You liar.” He wouldn’t! He told me himself that we’d get the company back together. He promised… My nostrils flared with each heavy breath. Anger welled up inside me, burning hotter with each passing moment, blinding my vision red. “Everything he ever told me was a lie…” I flung my hand out. “I don’t care about any of that, Dante! Lordza’s dead to me and soon Valdrec will be too.”
“It’s what they told me,” he shrugged. “But I don’t think you should give up on Lover Boy just yet. You should have seen how tense he was when Valdrec finally gave me the order to end you.” He licked his lips. “It was delightful.”
“Lordza made it very clear he wants nothing to do with me. Why should I trust him? Why should I trust anyone? The only one who has ever looked out for me was myself.”
“And what a great job you did.”
If you’re gonna try to kill me, just shut up and do it already. I raised my arms to my sides, my water slithering up to my biceps. “Save your dramatic monologues for someone who cares, Dante. Let’s do this already. Magic on magic.”
A roar that could wake the dead thundered through the room, reverberating up and down the walls. Like a beast hurtling toward me at full speed, Dante held his sword high and lunged. His blade sliced through the air, forcing me to retreat. Effortlessly, he danced around the shield of water I’d conjured. The gleam in his eyes betrayed a fierce determination that shook me to my core. It was all I could do to keep up. His every movement was both unpredictable and fluid.
I scurried behind a stone statue and yanked out the rusty sword wedged between its cobblestone fingers. Another slash, the air vibrating behind it. I raised my weapon to meet his own with a resounding clang.
“It’s no use,” he whispered.
What the hell is he talking about? This fight barely started, and he’s already talking about how it’s “no use”?
“Save that line for when I’m done with you, Dante!”
The Icelord rushed forward, throwing all his weight into the movement as his blade clashed with mine. Again and again, he pulled back, then threw his sword down. I twirled, dodging where I could and blocking otherwise. But he was too fast. With a thrust I could hardly see, his blade slashed along my hip, and I staggered backward, instinctively clutching the wound.
“Legends rest in rooms like these,” the Icelord cackled. “What better place to die than in a catacomb?”
I whimpered. He’s only trying to get in my head. To scare me. I can’t be scared that easily.
Without hesitation, I conjured a torrent of water, sending it surging toward him. He countered with a mere flick of his wrist and froze my bolt mid-air, just inches from his face. He looked surprised like I’d caught him off guard, but he said nothing.
This strength. This speed. He hadn’t even broken a sweat. There wasn’t a hint of fear or exhaustion on his face. Nothing. He almost looked bored.
“I know I’m not the greatest swordsman in Jaihara,” Dante sighed, “but with the greatest sword, I am one step closer.” He flipped his white hair back, matching his teeth as it sparkled in the sunlight. “This was fun, wasn’t it?”
Faster than light, he moved.
In response, I summoned a swirling vortex of water around me, another shield. Dante frowned as he manipulated the moisture in the air, molding it into razor-sharp icicles. With a snap of his arm, he launched them at me and froze the ground solid. I flung more bolts at him. Circling around him, each one was frozen and cut down—the magic itself dying as quickly as Dante could swing his blade. He stood there, blank, not a hint of emotion on his face, and I wished he’d say something. For once, I wanted Dante to speak—to taunt me, berate me, something—all so I could feel like he wasn’t just some wretched demon possessing a human body.
Slowly, he crept toward me, each step methodical and calculated. I focused my energy, channeling everything I could into my magic and forming two glyphs, one per hand. I conjured a wave, pulling everything I could from them. The torrent surged forward, ready to bury the Icelord like a watery tomb.
“I warned you.” Palms in front of him, he squeezed one fist shut, and the swell dissipated into mist. Dante was gone. I raised my sword, barely able to see it a mere foot from my face. In the distance, a sound, like rocks shifting. I turned, but he wasn’t there. Then, his voice sliced through the dissipating fog.
“It’s no use.”
I tried to react, but before I could, the cold steel of his blade plunged straight into my chest, and all I saw was black.
~
The clang of my fallen sword echoed, and with a flourish of Dante’s hand, the mist disappeared as well. I stumbled backward. The pain was immediate, searing, and white-hot. As the world spun, I fought to stay upright. Flashes of light streaked across my vision. None of it felt real—it couldn’t possibly be real. I wasn’t lying here in a pool of my own blood in a cold, dark dungeon where no one would ever find my body. No. I was in my bed. Warm and wrapped up tight. Hands. Those were Isabel’s hands pressing on my chest. Reminding me it was time to wake up. Pressing hard. Pressing way too hard.
Isabel, stop! You’re hurting me!
I opened my eyes, and a beautiful man with a horrifying smile stared down at me. Dante. With every passing second, reality shattered a bit more as each drop of my blood dripped slowly onto the ground.
“Valdrec doesn’t pay me to smile,” Dante cooed. He lodged the blade deeper into my flesh. I screamed. “But, this time, I just couldn’t help myself.” That’s right. We were fighting. And I lost… again.
I coughed a laugh, bringing up blood and spittle. I was wondering why he was so calm. I thought he was afraid that I’d finally met his strength. That we were equals. But I was wrong. Struggling under his weight, I managed to shift my head to the side, a slight smile on my lips. Would you look at that? Shouldn’t have stabbed me so close to the altar.
“Milites enim…” I heaved, “qui vi—vitam.”
Dante leaned back, his nostrils flaring. “Are these your last words, Faithful?”
“Sigillum a horroribus ultra hu—” I continued, despite the look of disgust on his face.
The Shadow looked toward the slab. His eyes widened, pupils dilating. “I already tried that!” he snapped. “Didn’t I tell you I already tried that! What a waste of breath, Zul!”
“Sigillum…” The last word… the last word on the stone… “Jaiharae.”
The room fell silent once more, save for the steady drip of my hot blood on cold stone. Dante stepped off of me and looked around. “What have you done?” He whispered, eyes wide. The silence carried on. “Nothing? All that fuss and nothing happened?” He wheezed loudly, bending forward as he laughed. “What pitiful last words for a pitiful fallen legend. How fitting.” His laughter echoed, bouncing off the walls and bursting into a thousand different voices. “You really think some insignificant little text could defeat me? You’ve gone delusional!”
The sound of gears turning silenced Dante’s cackling. His head whipped around with a crack as an unsettling hymn strangled out of the stone altar. The walls began to sputter as the sounds of gears turning reverberated across the space. I watched Dante become frantic. His eyes bounced around the room, searching for the source of the noise.
Now’s my chance!
I flung a bolt at him point blank. He lunged, pulling his sword out of my body with a sickening crunch, but he didn’t dare to strike me again. His attention wasn’t on me. It was fixed on the altar. The stones were moving.
Right beneath where the inscription was written, the stone parted in two, sinking the stone tablet to the floor. We both watched a small platform rise from the depths of the Catacombs, to reveal a small, thin, stone slab. Atop it, a trinket glistened, basking in sunlight for the first time in over a thousand years. I felt it calling to me, the same way that orb in the well at the Graveyard Village had called to me. Something stirred deep within me, a primal force awakening in response to the ancient magic that undulated off the ring.
“It can’t be…” Dante gravitated toward the platform like it was the only thing in the world. “My Lord was right. It does exist.”
Is that a symbol etched in gold? Where have I seen that symbol before?
He reached his hand forward and wrapped his fingers around the small, metal ring.
A light, blue and resounding, shot out from the hole that had opened up in the floor, and the brilliance of the light consumed me. I couldn’t see. My chest ached. My fingers had grown numb. And Dante was nowhere to be seen. Sucking in a shallow breath, I rasped out a wet cough. My lungs refused to open all the way and let in that last life-saving breath. Pointless. It was over. I was dead. Dante had won.
The room had grown dark. I don’t know when. Maybe I had closed my eyes, or maybe I could no longer see anything at all, not that the light was gone. But then I felt it, a soft touch. Warm like a mother’s love at first, then fierce and brutal like the rage of a father. Hordes of bright, blue light rushed into my skin, flowing through my veins like liquid fire. It washed over me slowly, and then all at once, but it didn’t hurt. Instead, I no longer felt any pain at all. I was free. I was light. As fluid as water and as bright as the sun.
With a surge of newfound power, I raised my hands, and the water around me responded with unparalleled obedience. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before, not even from my days in the military. Torrents of water rose from the ground, lifting me into the air, swirling in intricate patterns around me like a hurricane. The liquid surged, pulsating along my legs, wrapping around my torso, and flowing up my arms, across my back, and out behind me, opening up into two, magnificent wings of water. They sparkled in the fading sunlight.
In that moment, I felt invincible, as if I had been touched by Trianite herself and imbued with her power. My voice echoed across the space, deep, ethereal, and not my own. “You dare enter this sacred space?”
Dante took a step back, then another.
My body moved without my command. With a thunderous roar of pure, undiluted rage, I unleashed a tsunami of water, flooding the ground. It seeped out through the gaping hole by the altar. Not a second later, I snapped my wrists forward, summoning a thousand bolts of water to rain down upon him. I had just raised my hands once more when a voice shouted from the other echoes of the room.
“Don’t touch her!”
I turned, clenching my fists in front of me, poised to strike. Tendrils of water like whips surged in all directions, slamming down into the ground, smashing into the walls, causing rocks to rain down from the ceiling.
“Another intruder enters the depths.” My voice rumbled heartily in my chest. I couldn’t stop it any more than I could stop breathing.
“Zul!”
My head tilted on its axis, eyes blazing azure blue. A tall man with chestnut hair had raced into the room. Two thin blades of ice were held before him like an X. He gripped them tightly, fighting off my tendril whips of water. Each strike pushed him back a step, but he held strong.
“Zul, it's me! Eryx!”
I do not know Eryx. I only know Trianite. Our Lady. Goddess of Water and Ice.
Rocks tumbled at my left, and I struck. A blast of water like a cannonball slammed into the ground, knocking Dante off his feet. I could feel everything, and everyone. All the people in the great city of Ra’Sasha above me. The ebb and flow of the ocean miles away. I could even feel the racing heartbeat of Eryx as he pushed with all his might against my waves, desperate to reach me. I felt it all. Everything, and nothing, all at once.
I am infinite. I am power. I am a God.
“Zul! I’m coming, Zul. Hang on!”
Ice frosted down my back. I snapped it, shattering it in seconds. A sword clipped against stone, and I threw blast after blast, shattering earth and rock and stone.
“Those who enter the depths never make it out alive,” I bellowed. A vortex of water swirled under my feet. “You will be no different.”
Ice and Water. Water and Ice. One like the other, yet each wholly different. He froze my water, I melted it back. And together we twisted in our proverbial dance. I was spiraling down, swirling and drowning in a whirlpool of energy.
Eryx leaned forward, his arm stretched as far as it would go. Sobbing, he reached, inch by inch, millimeter by millimeter, until finally, his hand clasped mine. He squeezed, his wet fingers slipping on mine, desperate for purchase.
“Zul, please. Come back to me.”
The currents of power ebbed and flowed around me. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, I felt myself being pulled back from the brink like I were emerging from a long forgotten, hazy dream.
“E-Eryx?” The name tumbled out of my mouth, and he sobbed again, this time in relief.
“Yes, Zul, it’s me. It’s Eryx. It’s me.” Pain shone in his eyes, melted and mixed in with a deep sorrow and a longing I couldn’t quite place.
With each passing moment, I felt myself growing more and more grounded. Together, we fell to the floor, my torrent of water gently lowering us to the cold ground. As the last vestiges of the blue light dissipated, I felt a profound sense of loss wash over me as though I were mourning the departure of an old friend. It was bittersweet.
I looked up at the man who held me softly in his arms. “Eryx,” I whispered. “You made it out.”
He threw on a half smile. “Yeah, well, after you and Skylar left me for dead, it’s the least I could do.”
My heart dropped. “W-what? But I—” His boisterous laugh cut me off, shaking his shoulders up and down steadily until suddenly he was sobbing silently. I raised my hand to cup his face.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Now’s not the time to be making jokes. I just… I was so scared, Zul. What was that just now?”
“I don’t… know… Something just came over me.”
“Zul! You’re bleeding!”
I looked down at my chest. He was right, it was covered in blood, but when I pulled my shirt away, there was no wound.
“Oh, right. Dante stabbed me.”
“Dante was here?”
I glanced at where Dante stood; both he and the ring were gone. “Yeah, but I guess it’s… f-fine… now.” I stumbled to get the words out. Letting my head fall forward, I rested my forehead on his collarbone.
“Wait!” Eryx clutched me tighter, scanning the room defensively, searching for any sign of Icelord Danterius. But he was nowhere to be seen.
“Eryx,” I mumbled, feebly clutching his shirt. “I don’t feel… so good…”
“Let me take you to a healer.”
“No, wait...”
“No? Like hell. I’m getting you out of here.”
Silently, he slid one hand under my legs and lifted me up, cradling me in his arms. He was warm, and he smelled nice. I breathed in deep and whispered, “Alexis. We have to… get to… Alexis…”
He stopped short, staring down at me with a smoldering fire in his eyes.
“Of course,” he murmured. “We have to get to Alexis.”