Chapter 34: A Friend Thought Lost
Sevren Denoir
The frigid air burned in my lungs with each sharp, controlled breath.
"Teagen, support Caera!" The command left my lips with practiced ease, though my focus was split.
My eyes tracked the hulking forms of the Frostminthes as they lurched across the ice, their grotesque, fur-covered bodies moving with a disturbing, gelatinous grace.
They were an easy creature to deal with. Tough and sturdy, but way weaker than most adversaries one could find in the Relictombs.
Taegen, a mountain of muscle and crimson hair, grunted an acknowledgment, his shield slamming into a creature that threatened to flank my sister.
"Onwards! There is no time to question our choices! For Alacrya!" The declaration came from Delilah, her voice ringing with a fervor that was both inspiring and utterly terrifying.
She was a tempest in human form, an Ascender of Unnamed Blood from Etril who fought with a reckless abandon that reminded me painfully of him. Her lance, wreathed in coils of her unique, red-hot fire, was a constant blur of motion.
Just like Iskander, the thought whispered through my mind, an unbidden ghost amidst the chaos of combat.
Where was he? That Vritra-blooded enigma? It had been over a year and a half since he'd vanished into the depths of the Relictombs, and though our acquaintance had been brief—a mere two days—his impact had been seismic.
He'd dismantled my carefully constructed worldview with a few casual words and impossible actions, leaving me with a hunger for understanding I couldn't satiate.
By simply existing he destroyed the cynicism that characterised much of my life. By simply being he reignited my will to... live. That single day has been the happiest day in my life in years.
The Relictombs, once my private refuge, my dangerous sanctuary from the pressures of Highblood Denoir, had transformed.
Now, they were once more a mystery to be solved, a puzzle box whose secrets I was desperate to unlock, all because of him.
"Delilah!" Caera's voice cut through the din, sharp with warning. She was trying to rein the girl in, to impose some semblance of strategy on her glorious, headlong charge.
It was a futile effort. Delilah, much like the man who had indirectly brought us together, operated on a frequency beyond mere reason. That shared connection was precisely why I'd used my family's considerable resources to recruit her.
After my near-fatal encounter and subsequent rescue, I'd refused to let Caera delve alone, and I couldn't stomach the thought of venturing with just any hired swords.
I'd wanted someone who understood, on some level, the strange, world-consuming gravity Iskander exerted.
Taegen and Arian, the other members of our team, were capable Ascenders in their own right—friends of Caera and, more officially, guards hired by my ever-watchful parents. They provided solid, reliable strength, a bedrock upon which Delilah's and, to a lesser extent, my own more esoteric talents could flit and strike.
I channelled mana through the intricate runic pathways etched on my back, feeling the familiar hum of power. A lance of compressed wind shot from my fingertips, screaming across the ice to strike one of the Frostminthes.
It wasn't a killing blow; the creature's thick blubber and dense fur absorbed most of the impact, but it staggered the beast, giving Delilah the opening she needed. Her lance took it through what passed for an eye, her fire magic sizzling against its frozen hide.
Delilah was a conundrum. Registered initially with a few Striker runes, she'd been awarded a Regalia—a rare honor—after single-handedly uncovering a significant Relic, a feat that happened perhaps once a decade.
Her magic was peculiar, a fierce, aggressive fire that seemed to carry her own indomitable will. And despite the fame and opportunity such a discovery offered, she'd refused to found her own Blood, a decision she'd vaguely attributed to her brother.
After three Ascents together and almost three months of cooperation, her brother remained a shadowy figure in her past, a subject I respected enough not to pry into—I knew too much what it felt to hide your own past.
My dagger found its mark in the forehead of another Frostminth that got too close, the blade sinking deep with a wet thud. I yanked it free, sidestepping a clumsy, mace-like swing of its limb.
I sighed, the sound lost in the battle's clamor. Despite all my training, all my study of aether theory and combat magic, I would never possess that raw, world-bending power Iskander had wielded so casually.
Despite knowing perfectly where to strike, when to strike, how to strike... I was weak. And obviously I couldn't count on my runes, tainted by the High Sovereign as they were—I immediately cut the thought.
My mind traveled back to Iskander.
He was a freak of nature, an anomaly that had rewritten my understanding of what was possible and what was not.
My gaze flicked to Caera. She moved with a lethal elegance, the long sword in her hands—his sword, the one taken from the terrifying Fog Being that had almost killed me—a seamless extension of her will.
Iskander had given it to me, a trophy from my rescue, but its weight and length had never suited my style. For Caera, it was a natural fit. She was a storm of controlled violence, her awakened Vritra bloodline granting her a fluid strength that was mesmerizing to watch.
"Iskander Briand," I muttered the name under my breath.
Just Iskander, really. 'Briand' was a fiction, a shield provided by Seris Vritra to hide him from the prying eyes of the Sovereigns, particularly the High Sovereign.
His disappearance had left a void. The world had moved on—war had broken out with Dicathen, various Bloods especially from Vechor were sending their forces to the new continent, the political landscape was shifting like sand—but in the quiet corners of my mind, his absence was a persistent, unanswered question.
"Lord Sevren!" Taegen's roar snapped me back to the present. He bodily slammed into a Frostminth that had been closing on me, his sheer bulk knocking it off balance.
"Focus on the battlefield, for Vritra's sake. Bobcut One is already lost in her world." His nickname for Delilah was typical of him; he categorized people by their most obvious features. Only Caera and I, as his employers, were granted the courtesy of our names.
He was right. I was drifting, my thoughts circling Iskander like moths around a extinguished flame. Why now? Why here, in this frozen hellscape?
We pushed forward, a well-oiled machine against the endless tide of Frostminthes. It was a grinding, exhausting process. In the quieter moments, a dark thought would surface: Iskander could be dead.
Scythe Seris, for all her power and influence, had eventually called off the active search—especially after the start of the war and the situation in Aedelgard itself changing—or so I managed to uncover without being discovered by her.
Luckily, the Scythe of Sehz-Clar has always been easy to fool since Caera first manifested her Vritra Blood.
My second reason for forming this team, buried deep beneath my academic curiosity, was a lingering sense of obligation to her cause.
She needed him for her… plans. A shiver that had nothing to do with the cold ran down my spine. By hiding him initially, I was already complicit.
However, the thought of open rebellion against the Sovereigns was a terrifying prospect. I always considered Seris Vritra crazy for challenging the status quo of Alacrya.
There was a time I even contemplated presenting evidence of her conspiracy to Sovereign Khaernos Vritra, back when the Invisible Sovereign still walked the public halls of the Central Dominion.
But I hesitated—of course I did. Scythe Seris Vritra was the only one who could protect Caera and that was far more important than my worries and fear.
I was a scholar, an explorer, not a revolutionary. I hated the politics, the obligations of my name. My wish, my simple, pure desire, was to explore the Relictombs with Caera, perhaps forever.
That part of me—the part that thought I could change the world—died a long time ago.
And maybe, just maybe, with that impossible freak of nature, Iskander, at our side.
Then, as if the Vritra themselves were mocking my internal conflict, the sky answered.
A voice, thunderous and ecstatic, ripped through the howling wind and the screams of the beasts. It called a single name.
Mine.
"Sevren!"
The sound hit me like a physical blow. I knew that voice. I would recognize it anywhere amongst a hundred more. It was a voice that carried an impossible optimism, a radiant energy that could light up the deepest gloom of the Relictombs.
It was the same, and yet… different. There was a new weight to it, a resonance that hadn't been there before.
My head snapped up, my concentration shattered. And there he was.
He fell from the sky not like a man, but like a vengeful god. He wore armor that was a masterpiece of contradiction—gleaming, sumptuous gold and silver that should have been garish but instead spoke of immense power.
A strange, angular symbol I guessed could be a letter in some strange alphabet was etched into the chest plate beneath the chainmail. Slung at his hip was a helmet that didn't match the rest of the set, a silent testament to some unknown story.
This was not the Iskander I remembered. This was something more.
Before my mind could fully process his appearance, he landed. The impact was catastrophic, a shockwave that spider-webbed the ice for yards around and utterly vaporized the Frostminth unfortunate enough to be beneath his feet. Then he moved.
What followed was not a battle; it was an annihilation. He didn't use a weapon. His fists, sheathed in those magnificent gauntlets, were enough.
He moved with a speed that was barely comprehensible, a blur of gold and silver that tore through the Frostminthes with brutal, effortless efficiency.
A will-o'-wisp, the same golden ember Delilah had described with awe, shot from him like a guided projectile, intercepting threats with unerring accuracy.
My feet were moving before I'd even made a conscious decision. I pushed through the stunned stillness of my team, my eyes fixed on him as he finished his devastating work, counting off the kills with a calm that was more frightening than any battle cry.
"I really had forgotten what it felt to win," he said, the words simple, yet they carried the weight of a profound and weary journey.
He turned, and his eyes—those sharp, intelligent violet eyes—found Delilah first. She was pointing a trembling finger, her face a canvas of utter disbelief.
"I—Iskander?!" she stammered.
I reached them just as the words left her lips.
"Iskander, what happened to you?!" My own voice sounded thin, reedy compared to the new gravity he carried.
He looked at us, and for a moment, the demigod-like warrior vanished. I saw the friend I remembered, the man who had laughed in the face of certain death. But etched into the lines of his face, in the slight tremor of his hands, was a depth of weariness and pain I couldn't fathom.
His perfect features, the sharp grey marble of his skin, the horns—they were all there, but they now framed a soul that had seen too much.
Then he moved, and his arms wrapped around Delilah and me. The embrace was tight, powerful, but carefully controlled. It was not the gesture of the boisterous man I'd known; it was the clutch of someone who had been utterly, terribly alone.
And then… he began to cry.
Great, heaving sobs wracked his frame. He cried with a raw, unfiltered anguish that was shocking in its intensity. This was not a few tears of relief; this was a torrential release of despair, of loneliness, of a pain so profound it seemed to shake the very air around us. He clung to us as if we were the only solid things in a world that had spent a year trying to break him.
"I… I missed you so much!" he choked out between sobs.
I was frozen, utterly unprepared for this. Delilah, to her credit, recovered first. She awkwardly patted the unarmored part of his shoulder, her voice soft.
"Iskander, it's alright. It's nice to see you again, especially after more than a year that no one heard about you—you know... Scythe Seris Vritra herself was worried about you."
The mention of Seris seemed to pull him back from the edge. He released us, wiping a gauntleted hand across his face, smearing the tears. The raw emotion was receding, replaced by a startling seriousness.
"Seris? I need to speak with her. It's important."
The shift was jarring. The crying man was gone, replaced by a warrior with a mission. What could have happened to forge such stark contrasts in him?
"She has been searching for you for a while," I said, my voice still unsteady. I scratched the back of my head, a nervous habit. "But you disappeared. You haven't made contact with any Ascenders after Delilah… obviously, someone would have noticed an Ascender like you. Rumors spread fast."
"Iskander, what have you been doing?!" Delilah burst out, her concern overriding her awe. "What happened?! I thought you were dead!"
She gave voice to the fear I had held onto for a year. He was more than a friend; he was a key, a living, breathing mystery that held the answers to the world itself.
"I will explain everything," he said, and the weariness returned to his voice, a heavy weight settling on his shoulders. "I just need to rest."
It was Caera who stepped forward then, her presence calm and steadying. She offered her hand to Iskander, a formal gesture from a daughter of a Highblood.
"Let's find a Descension Chamber then." Her gaze was direct, respectful. "I… I have wished to thank you for a long time, for saving Sevren's life a year ago. But I never met you, so… just thank you. Sevren is really important to me."
Iskander's face transformed again, the shadows momentarily banished by his brilliant, familiar grin. He took her hand and shook it with enthusiastic vigor.
"Sevren is important to me too, don't worry!"
Caera laughed, a bright, genuine sound that felt alien in the desolate landscape. I shook my head, my cheeks warming with a mixture of embarrassment and profound relief.
"Stop talking about me…" I mumbled, but the protest was weak.
The tension broken, a new purpose united us. The Descension Chamber was no longer just an exit; it was a sanctuary for a lost friend returned, and the first step toward unraveling the story he carried.