Chapter 10: Fear Toxin
Iskander
The white blade remained lodged deep within my chest, a frozen lightning bolt of agony piercing my body from side to side.
The crimson mist-creature—the Being from the Fog—hovered, its multitude of swirling eyes fixed on me with unnerving intelligence. It didn't pull back, didn't press forward. It simply held.
A cold, horrifying realization seeped through the pain: it knows. It sensed the unnatural vitality humming beneath my grey skin, the aether already knitting torn flesh around the foreign intrusion.
It understood that ripping the blade free might only accelerate the healing. This wasn't mindless hunger; this was calculated cruelty, a predator playing with its wounded prey, waiting for the shock, the despair, to finish the job its steel had started.
"Child! Don't close your eyes!" Sylvia's voice was a whip-crack in my mind, sharp against the encroaching darkness that threatened to swallow the edges of my vision.
The pain was a dreadful and suffocating entity albeit familiar, a ravenous beast gnawing at my focus, making even thought itself a labor.
My lungs hitched, each shallow breath scraping like broken glass against the blade's obstruction. Blood, warm and metallic, welled thickly in my throat.
"Thanks, Sylvia…" I managed to project even though only gibberish exited my mouth, the mental words too were thick and sluggish. "But… it's very hard to concentrate… with something stabbing your heart…"
Then, a blur of emerald light.
It sliced through the grey residue of fog like a sigh of wind given lethal form. A silent, singing arc of pure, cutting force. It slammed into the swirling crimson mass of the Being from the Fog, not dissipating it, but impacting it with tangible force. The creature recoiled with a silent shudder, its eyes flaring with surprise and fury.
I blinked, the sudden violence jolting me back from the precipice of unconsciousness. Sevren was there, his face pale as bleached bone beneath the grime, his eyes wide with a terror that mirrored my own, yet burning with fierce determination.
He had one arm wrapped around my shoulders, holding me upright even as I sagged. The other hand was outstretched, fingers splayed, the fading echo of that green wind-blade shimmering around them.
"Iskander!" His voice reached me, but it sounded distant, muffled, as if heard through layers of waterlogged cotton.
My ears roared with the frantic drumming of my own failing heart desperately trying to... push the intruder out?
I couldn't speak, couldn't draw breath to form words. My gaze, desperate and pleading, locked onto the golden hilt protruding obscenely from my chest. My hands fluttered weakly towards it, then fell back, strength leaching away with every pulse of blackening blood.
Sevren followed my frantic, bloodshot gaze. His lips moved, shaping words I couldn't hear. I saw a curse form—sharp, vicious—before he acted. Without hesitation, his hand, still trembling from the exertion of his wind spell, clamped around the golden hilt.
His knuckles whitened. There was a sickening, wet schlorp sound that vibrated through my bones, a sound that bypassed my deafened ears and registered directly in my gut.
Agony, fresh and blinding, ripped through me as the blade was wrenched free.
I gasped, a ragged, sucking sound, as if drowning. The world tilted violently as if shaken by a giant and unseen hand. But even as the darkness surged again, the violet sun within my core flared.
Instinct, deeper than thought, deeper than pain, took over. Aether, thick and potent as liquid starlight, surged through the channels I forged mere hours prior to this, converging on the ragged hole in my chest.
I felt it—the impossible, terrifying, beautiful process of healing. Muscle fibers snaking together like frantic serpents, vessels sealing, bone knitting with a faint, internal click.
The searing agony dulled to a deep, insistent throb, then faded further, replaced by the humming warmth of concentrated aether sealing the breach.
Seconds. It took mere seconds. I drew a deep, shuddering breath, the air tasting sweeter than any ambrosia.
"Thanks… Sevren…" The words were a raw scrape against my still bleeding throat, but they were clear.
My hearing snapped back with jarring intensity—the rasp of Sevren's breath, the damp squelch of mud beneath us, the low, menacing hum emanating from the coalescing crimson mist a dozen paces away.
"Thank me later," Sevren gritted out, pushing himself upright, his movements stiff with pain. He spared me a glance, a flicker of awe warring with urgency in his brown eyes as he took in my already healing wound.
"My runes are usable again. Let's fight our way out of here." He turned slightly, and I saw it: the back of his dark-grey tunic pulsed with a soft, complex luminescence.
Intricate patterns, like glowing tattoos woven into the fabric itself, shimmered across his shoulder blades—the source of his power. Runes. Agrona's gifts to the population he controlled, etched onto human flesh.
"Care to enlighten me how your runes work?" I asked, forcing myself to my feet. The world swayed momentarily, residual weakness battling with the thrum of renewed aether.
My focus split: half on Sevren, half on the predatory aetheric signature of the Being from the Fog, now coiling itself tighter, its multitude of eyes fixed on us with renewed, chilling hatred.
The sword Sevren had pulled from me laid discarded in the mud, gleaming wickedly.
"I have a Caster Crest," he explained rapidly, his eyes never leaving the crimson mist. He raised his hand again, and the air shimmered around his fingers, coalescing into another short, humming blade of solidified wind. "As well as some auxiliary Marks."
"I can shape wind like this—projectiles or temporary blades. They don't last long. For sustained combat…" He hefted the bone-white dagger. "...I have this."
"Understood," I nodded, the simplicity of the division calming my racing thoughts.
The Being from the Fog didn't roar. It didn't snarl. It didn't make sound. It simply moved. The crimson mist flowed forward like spilled blood seeking purchase, the white blade—reformed now from its own essence?—lashing out with viper speed.
Yet, strangely, the crushing anxiety, the soul-deep dread that had defined its presence earlier, was absent. Was proximity our shield? Or had its focus shifted entirely to physical annihilation?
"How do we defeat it?" Sevren asked to both me and himself, dancing back from a slash that carved a deep furrow in the damp earth where he'd stood.
His wind-blade flickered out, scoring a line across the mist, causing it to ripple but not disperse.
"Can you sense anything? A weakness?"
A harsh laugh escaped me. "I am not a fighter, Sevren! I just had my first real fight maybe… a day ago?"
Time in the Relictombs felt fluid, meaningless. The memory of The Thing, of the self-inflicted agony forging my core, felt simultaneously ancient and raw.
"...Fantastic," Sevren muttered, pure sarcasm dripping from the word as he parried another mist-formed tendril with his dagger, the impact sending green sparks flying. "A Vritra Blood who's never fought in his life. Fine. I saw my wind spell disrupts it, cuts through the mist. So maybe—"
"You annoy it, distract it, carve openings," I finished for him, the plan forming as I spoke, fueled by a desperate, giddy energy. "And I smash whatever you reveal. Perfect."
"More or less, even though I would have used better words," Sevren sighed, a flicker of grim amusement touching his lips despite the situation. "Try not to get skewered again and we will make it."
The crimson mass surged, not as a wave, but as a swirling vortex of malice, the white blade a deadly focal point within the storm. Sevren met it not with brute force, but with chilling precision.
His wind-blades became scalpels, lashing out to dissect. They sliced through tendrils of mist, forcing the creature to recoil, to reform. It was an intricate dance of evasion and calculated strikes. The mist flowed like water, retreating from the cutting wind, reforming instantly.
But the eyes. Dozens of them, swirling, blinking pools of malevolent light embedded within the crimson fog. They couldn't flow. They couldn't dissipate and reform like the mist. They were fixed points. Targets.
There.
Without a word, without waiting for an opening Sevren might create, pure instinct propelled me forward. Aether flooded my legs, muscles coiling and releasing like steel springs. I lunged, a violet-tinged blur across the muddy ground.
"Iskander, what are you doing?!" Sevren's shout was half-shock, half-exasperation as he threw himself into a desperate roll, the white blade whistling through the space where his head had been a split-second before.
"This!" My hand, wreathed in crackling violet energy, shot into the swirling crimson vortex. Not at the red mist, but at one of those hateful, watching orbs. My fingers closed around something cold, gelatinous, yet unnervingly solid.
Pure, protective fury ignited the aether in my palm. I crushed it.
The effect was instantaneous and electrifying. A silent, psychic scream tore through the aetheric fabric around us.
The entire crimson mass convulsed, recoiling violently as if physically struck.
The swirling mist contracted, then exploded outwards in a chaotic, furious whirlwind, the white blade spinning wildly within its depths like a demented compass needle.
"Get out of its reach! NOW!" Sevren bellowed, already scrambling backwards, putting precious distance between himself and the enraged maelstrom.
I turned to run, but the crimson hurricane was already upon me. It wasn't an actual chase, it swallowed me. The white blade lashed out with berserk fury, aiming for tendons, joints, anything to cripple.
Agony flared along my calf as the edge bit deep, but even as the pain registered, aether surged, sealing the rent. My asuran physique, augmented by the raw power thrumming through my channels, was my salvation.
I ran from the sheer, suffocating hate radiating from the swirling eyes. I outpaced the storm, the mud churning beneath my feet.
"Sevren! It's all yours!" I shouted, skidding to a halt, turning to face the approaching tempest. The creature was focused on me, blind with rage.
I saw his nod, sharp and decisive. He planted his feet, the runes on his back blazing brighter. Wind blades materialized around him, not just one, but three, four, humming with lethal intent.
What followed wasn't elegant. It wasn't skilled swordsmanship or masterful spellcraft. It was raw, brutal synergy. Survival forged in shared desperation.
I became the bait, the anvil. I dodged slashes that would have bisected me, using my augmented speed and aether-fueled reflexes, sometimes taking glancing blows that tore cloth and bit flesh, only for the wounds to seal moments later in a flare of violet light.
Each time I blocked or dodged, forcing the blade to momentarily halt or redirect, Sevren struck. His wind blades, precise as a surgeon's tools, sliced through the obscuring crimson mist exactly where I'd sensed a cluster of eyes.
"Left, high!" I yelled, throwing myself sideways from a downward chop.
A green blade hissed past my shoulder, carving a swathe through the mist, revealing a trio of swirling, hate-filled orbs. My fist, blazing with condensed aether, slammed into them, a wet, crunching pop echoing in the sudden silence of the revealed space before the fog rushed back.
One eye shattered. Then another. Then a third. Each destruction elicited that silent psychic shriek, each causing the crimson mass to shudder and flail more wildly, its movements becoming more erratic, more panicked.
Pain flared along my ribs, my arm, my thigh—shallow cuts, deep bruises—but the aether core burned within me, a relentless furnace repairing the damage almost as fast as it was inflicted.
A wild, almost delirious joy surged through me, completely alien, utterly intoxicating. I laughed, a sound of pure, unadulterated defiance, as I blocked another slash with my forearm, feeling bone grate against enchanted mist-steel before aether surged to mend it.
Sevren, covered in mud and sweat, a thin line of blood tracing from his temple where a flying shard of something had grazed him, met my gaze between strikes. He didn't laugh, but a fierce, exhilarated grin split his face. We were fighting. Together. We were winning.
The Being from the Fog finally made a real sound. Not a psychic scream this time, but a physical, guttural snarl that ripped through the air like tearing canvas, loud and primal as a wounded storm god.
It vibrated in my chest, a sound of pure, impotent rage.
"Sevren! The fog!" I shouted, my senses screaming a warning a fraction of a second before the grey wall slammed back down with terrifying suddenness.
Not just a return of that accursed fog, but an onslaught. It was thicker, heavier, colder than before, actively pressing in, swallowing Sevren whole mere feet from me. One moment, his determined face, the next, obliterating grey.
"SEVREN! SEVREN!" My shout was raw panic, shredding my throat.
Blindness, utter and absolute, crashed over me. The crimson predator, the white blade—they were secondary. Sevren was gone. The panic attack Sylvia had warned me about earlier was nothing compared to this.
This was abject terror, a black hole opening in my chest where my core had been. The fog's psychological assault returned with a vengeance, amplified by my sheer, unadulterated fear. Images flashed: Sevren impaled, Sevren dissolving into mist, Sevren alone and terrified just like when I'd first sensed him.
In that moment the God of Misfortune was feasting.
"Child, you are playing the fog's game!" Sylvia's voice was a desperate anchor in the roaring chaos of my mind. "Clear your mind! Focus on my voice! Breathe!"
"Shut up, Sylvia!" I snarled aloud, the words tearing free, ragged and furious. My fists clenched, violet light flaring violently beneath my skin.
"If this fog can do this to me, with you and aether shielding me… Sevren…" I couldn't finish the thought. The image of him succumbing to that soul-crushing dread, alone in the grey, was unbearable.
Reason drowned. Strategy evaporated. There was only panic and the desperate need to find him. Aether, vast and uncontrolled, roared through my channels, down my arms, into my fists. I didn't aim. I didn't think. I punched.
BOOM.
A detonation of violet force tore a ten-foot sphere of clarity around me. Grey vaporized. Empty mud. No Sevren.
"SEVREN!"
BOOM. Another blast, angled slightly. More mud. More nothingness.
"SEVREN!"
BOOM. My knuckles screamed, skin splitting over bone, soon healing only to split again. The air crackled with spent energy.
"SEVREN!"
Each explosion was a hammer blow against my core, draining reserves far faster than ambient aether could replenish them. I felt the humming sun within me flicker, dimming dangerously.
"Child, you are exhausting your core!" Sylvia's voice was sharp with alarm. "Stop! You'll burn yourself out!"
I ignored her. The God of Misfortune laughed in the echoes of my own frantic blasts. You lose. You always lose. You couldn't keep your body whole, you couldn't keep Alfred caring about you forever, you couldn't stop Cassian from leaving to fly leaving you behind, and you can't keep this fragile, newfound friendship from crumbling into Grey.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
And then, within the brief, violet-lit clarity of that blast, I saw it. The white blade, materializing like a ghost from the roiling grey wall, aimed with lethal precision at my throat.
Behind it, a flicker of deeper crimson—the mist-body of the Being from the Fog itself, seizing its chance amidst my blind panic.
Instinct, honed by the last few minutes of brutal combat, overrode the terror. All the draining panic, the helpless rage, the fear for Sevren—I funneled it.
My right fist became a conduit for pure, distilled fury. Aether, drawn from my core, pulled from the very air screaming around me, condensed into a point of incandescent violet fury on my knuckles.
Time seemed to slow. I saw the blade's trajectory, the flicker of crimson mist behind it.
I punched the space the crimson mist occupied.
The explosion was like heavenly revelation. A supernova of violet energy erupted, not outwards, but inwards, collapsing onto the point of impact. The fog vanished in a perfect sphere.
The crimson mist was blasted apart, shredded, revealing the core of the creature—a dense, swirling knot of blood-red energy shot through with those hateful eyes, clinging to the golden hilt of the white blade.
The force of my punch sent shockwaves through its form, momentarily stunning it, the blade wavering.
"Come here," I growled, the sound guttural, inhuman.
Pain? It was irrelevant. My hand shot out, not towards the mist, but towards the gleaming white steel itself. My fingers closed around the blade, just below the hilt.
Agony, instant and searing, lanced up my arm as the impossibly sharp edge bit deep into my palm, slicing through flesh and grating against bone like a sew against metal. Blood, dark and thick, welled instantly, dripping onto the mud.
"PAIN?!" I roared the word, the sound tearing from my throat, raw with defiance and the echo of a lifetime of suffering endured. "THIS IS NOTHING! WHERE IS SEVREN?!"
Ignoring the blade sawing into my hand, I planted my feet, coiling the immense strength of my basilisk-dragon hybrid body.
Muscles, tendons, ligaments—all augmented by the fading reserves of my aether core—strained against the creature's resistance.
This was not physical strength alone, nor aether-empowered one. It was force of will.
My will to protect my friend against the Being from the Fog's will to consume. The blade became the focal point of a brutal, silent tug-of-war.
The golden hilt burned with unnatural cold in my bleeding grip; the crimson mist swirled violently, trying to reclaim its weapon, to envelop my arm.
The realization struck me like lightning: the blade wasn't directly wielded by the mist. It was the mist itself. Part of its essence. Severing it might be like severing a limb. I needed to end this. Now. Sevren needed me. He needed the aether I was burning in this contest.
Vivum. The edict of life. Could I use it? Could I push healing energy into the wound in my hand without waiting for aether to do it alone? Into Sevren, wherever he was? The thought was a desperate spark, immediately drowned by the immediate, crushing need to win this contest.
First, disarm the monster.
Then, save Sevren. Priorities carved in fire.
I heaved. Aether, the dregs now, flared one last time in my limbs. With a grunt that came from the depths of my being, I yanked. The blade tore free from the resisting crimson mist with a sound like ripping silk and snapping bone.
The severed connection sent a visible shockwave through the mist-body, causing it to billow and scream silently.
I stumbled back, the heavy, cold length of the white blade now clutched awkwardly, dangerously, in my bleeding hand. I didn't know how to hold it. I didn't know how to use it. The elegant lethality felt alien, grotesque in my grip.
Weapons. Instruments of violence. They reminded me of King Grey's warmongering, of the sterile, painful medical instruments of my past life, of everything I'd been too weak to wield or resist. I hated them.
But for Sevren? I would wield this cursed thing.
Swinging it felt clumsy, ungainly. I lacked any finesse, any training. My House Hyperion background in Etharia—managing public safety, infrastructure, the quiet, vital machinery of civilization—felt galaxies away from this brutal struggle.
The Hyperion House has always run with oil and gasoline. My ancestors were revolutionizing the industry when Etharia was nothing but a concept, forging a legacy of steel generations before my time.
I was a bureaucrat of peace thrust onto a battlefield of nightmares. I hacked at the swirling crimson mass trying to engulf me. But the blade… it bit. Where Sevren's wind blades had disrupted, this blade harmed.
Striking the mist wasn't like cutting air, it met resistance, a terrible, spongy solidity, and where it passed, the crimson substance recoiled, darkened, seemed to wither. A guttural cry of rage and pain, felt more than heard, vibrated from the creature.
The mist redoubled its efforts, no longer trying to reclaim the blade, now it was trying to overwhelm me, to smother me in its essence, to tear the weapon from my grasp with sheer, suffocating pressure.
Tendrils lashed from all sides.
I couldn't dodge them all. I stomped down, channeling the last dregs of controllable aether into my leg. My foot slammed into the muddy ground.
CRACK-BOOM!
Earth and water exploded upwards in a localized geyser, propelled by violet force. The shockwave ripped through the encroaching mist tendrils, vaporizing them momentarily, clearing the air around me in a stinking cloud of mud and ozone. I gasped, swaying. The drain was immense.
My core sputtered, the violet sun within dim to embers. The ambient aether swirled thickly, but absorbing it felt like trying to drink the ocean through a straw. Too slow. Too little.
Then, through the settling curtain of filth and fading violet light, he came.
Sevren. Staggering. His face was a mask of pain and grim determination, his fine grey expedition robes soaked dark red from a vicious gash across his torso. Mud plastered him from head to toe.
But his eyes… his intelligent brown eyes burned with unwavering focus. He lunged, not at the main mass, but at a cluster of eyes desperately trying to reform within the swirling crimson chaos near the ground.
His bone-white dagger, pulsing with that faint, inherent aether affinity, plunged downward with all his remaining strength.
CRUNCH.
One last eye shattered.
"Sevren!" The name was half-relief, half-terror. "Are you okay?" The question was absurd, but the only one that mattered.
He stumbled, catching himself on one knee, his breath coming in ragged, wet gasps. He looked up, managing a ghost of his earlier smirk. "Just… a little… injured." The words were barely audible, slurred with exhaustion and pain.
The fog, as if sensing the turning tide, began a final, reluctant retreat, thinning rapidly this time, revealing the bleak plain fully. The crimson mist of the Being from the Fog recoiled, collapsing in on itself.
The remaining eyes, perhaps only two or three, blinked erratically within the shrinking, darkened mass, radiating pure, impotent fury. It wasn't dead, but it was definitely broken, its form unstable, its malevolent presence flickering like a dying candle.
The sword in my hand felt impossibly heavy, slick with my own blood. The pull emanating from the wounded mist was weaker now, but still fierce, insistent.
Without aether to augment my strength, it was a contest of raw, asuran muscle against the creature's desperate, fading will. My arms trembled. My wounded hand screamed. My feet sank deeper into the mud, seeking purchase.
"Sevren!" My voice was hoarse, strained. "The eyes! Destroy the last eyes! I'll keep it disarmed!"
Gritting my teeth, I planted my feet wider, leaning back against the relentless pull, the white blade held like an anchor point between me and the dying horror.
Sevren answered with action. Pushing himself up with a groan that turned into a cough, blood speckling his lips, he raised his dagger.
His eyes, though clouded with pain, scanned the shrinking pockets of crimson mist. He saw what I couldn't focus on. With a gasp of effort, he sent a final, faltering wind blade—smaller, weaker than before, but precise—slicing through a wisp of mist near a half-buried rock.
It parted, revealing a single, large, bloodshot eye, pulsing with frantic malice.
His dagger followed, a white flash in the dim light. It struck true.
The silent death scream echoed again through the aether, fainter this time, final. The pull on the sword vanished instantly. The remaining crimson mist dissolved like smoke in a strong breeze, leaving only a faint, acrid smell of ozone and decay. The last few eyes winked out of existence.
The sudden release of tension was catastrophic. My legs buckled. The white blade slipped from my numb fingers, thudding point-first into the mud beside me. I hit the ground hard, gasping, the world spinning. Exhaustion, deeper than any I'd ever known, poured over me like molten lead.
Not just physical, but also spiritual. The frantic energy, the desperate fear, the wild joy of combat—all gone, leaving a hollow, trembling shell.
"Sevren?" I croaked, pushing myself up onto my elbows, mud squelching beneath me. My eyes scanned the nearby ground. He laid a few feet away, utterly still, face pale as marble against the dark earth.
"Sevren!" Panic, cold and sharp, stabbed through the exhaustion.
He didn't stir.
I crawled. Mud caked my hands, my knees. The distance felt immense. I reached him, rolling him gently onto his back. His skin was cold, clammy. The gash across his torso was a grim, dark mouth, still oozing thick, dark blood. His chest barely rose.
"No! No, no, no!" The denial was a raw scrape in my throat.
Aether! I needed aether! Vivum! I focused with every shred of my being, reaching for the flickering embers of my core. Violet sparks, weak and sputtering, danced around my hands. I pressed them against the terrible wound.
Heal! Mend! Live! I poured my will into it, visualizing the flesh knitting, the vessels sealing, the life flooding back into his still form.
The sparks fizzled against his skin, harmless, inert. They didn't sink in. They didn't interact. They simply faded.
"Why?!" I screamed the word at the uncaring, pearlescent sky, the sound raw with despair. "Why won't it work?!"
Tears, hot and furious, blurred my vision. The helplessness was a physical weight, crushing me. It was Etharia all over again. Watching life fade, powerless to stop it. Alfred's weary smile as he gave another comic book to his dying charge… the feeling was identical.
"You don't know how to properly use Vivum, Child…" Sylvia's voice was thick with sorrow, a shared anguish. "I… I don't know how to guide you. My affinity was Aevum… time… If only my mother was here… she was a master of life…"
Knowledge wasn't enough. Power wasn't enough. I had the key, but not the skill to turn it in the lock. The embers of my core flickered, useless.
Then, a sound. Faint. Gasping.
"Is… kan… der…"
My head snapped down. Sevren's eyelids fluttered. His lips moved, forming the syllables with agonizing slowness. His hand, trembling violently, fumbled at a pouch on his belt. With supreme effort, he pulled out a small, intricately carved stone amulet, faintly warm to the touch even through the mud. He pressed it into my blood-slicked hand.
"Spare… Simulet…" he breathed, each word a struggle. "Use… together… or… separate… zones…" His eyes rolled back, his body going limp again, but the faint, shallow rise of his chest continued. He was still in there. Still fighting.
Hope, fragile and desperate, flared. An exit. Safety. Medical aid? Did the Ascenders' Association have healers? They had to. They had to.
I didn't hesitate. I looped the leather cord of the Simulet over my head, the cool stone settling against my sternum beside the fading warmth of my core. Then, with strength born of pure desperation, I hauled Sevren's limp form over my shoulder. He was heavier than he looked, a dead weight. My legs protested, my core groaned in protest. I wouldn't let him fall.
My gaze fell on the white blade, standing upright in the mud like a grave marker. Sevren had earned that. Fought for it. Saved me with his wind, saved himself with his dagger, bought us this chance with his blood. It wasn't a gift. It was a trophy. A testament. I bent, wincing, and grabbed the golden hilt, yanking it free.
The blade felt cold, heavy, and strangely inert now, its connection to the vanquished creature severed. I dragged it behind me, its point scoring a line in the earth as I stumbled forward, carrying Sevren towards the faint, familiar hum I now sensed pulsing from a raised platform of pearlescent material fifty paces away—another teleporter gate, its Spatium runes dormant but waiting.
"Be careful, Child," Sylvia whispered, her form flickering anxiously beside me as I staggered towards the platform. "We don't know what Agrona might be planning. Emerging with an Ascender, wounded, carrying two relics…"
Agrona? His schemes, his shadows, his unspeakable name, the King Grey-like regime he imposed on the people of Alacrya—they meant nothing.
Less than nothing. There was only the weight of my friend on my shoulder, the cold hilt of the blade in my hand, the faint pulse of the Simulet against my chest, and the desperate, all-consuming need to reach that platform.
To get Sevren out. To save my first friend. That serpentine High Sovereign could plot his trivial games. Right now, the only thing that mattered was the next step.