Durest

  “What do we do with him?”

  “Well, we can’t just leave him here.”

  “That’s not what I was saying.”

  “Maybe—maybe we take him with us?”

  “To Hui?” Gareth asks. He sniffs at me, before turning his gaze back to Nimra. “I don’t know. What if this is some act or trick?”

  “Gareth. Be reasonable. The man’s just frightened.”

  “But he was fine a few minutes ago—I don’t understand.”

  I tune them out eventually as they continue deliberating. Nimra had the courtesy to wrap me in her own cloak. I pull that closer now and shiver. Shiver at the thought of the knight, of the soul freeze, of the sensation of that damn zweihander passing through my body like a knife on melting cheese.

  A sharp pain squeezes my wrist taut. I grit my teeth. It's a familiar pain—one that usually heralds nothing good.

  I flip the underside of my wrist.

  Bloody words drip upon the shoddy, unfinished 6 I attempted to draw.

  ‘Want to make a bet?’ they read.

  I wipe away the blood. Shake my head. Stop trying to coax me.

  In the blink of an eye, the old letters disappear and the wounds are healed. Only for new ones to be drawn out, this time excruciatingly slow.

  ‘I can get you out of this one. Not my knight. Interloper.’

  Why should I believe you?

  Erase. Write again.

  ‘Fair enough. But offer’s still on the table: for a price of course.’

  I pause. In the past, he’s never given me anything. Not for free. The costs were always… well, they were life-changing, to say the least. Besides, I came to this forsaken continent for a very specific reason. I can’t lose anything else.

  No.

  ‘You will not win.’

  Maybe. But neither will you. And besides, dumbasses like me usually find a way through.

  The writing pauses. Then, new, deeper lines of blood inscribe in my skin.

  ‘It's your funeral.’

  “Durest? Durest?” Nimra waves a hand in front of my face.

  I cover my hand out of instinct, but she just looks at me as if I’m crazy. Then I remember that all my discretion was for nothing—she probably couldn’t have even seen it. Typical.

  I wave to her slightly.

  She kneels down to my level. “You’re shivering.”

  Like a coward. I nod.

  “Gareth and I have been discussing it—we know it must’ve been hard. I can’t heal your jaw, nor your vocal chords. But we know someone who can. If you want, you can come with us. It's a bit of a journey, but we’ll protect you from anything.”

  Right. I forgot that on the paper I gave to Gareth, I explained my muteness as a consequence of one of the cultists breaking my jaw. Not the real reason.

  What is the play here?

  If I go with them, will the knight just disappear?

  No, don’t be a dumbass, dumbass. You know how these things work.

  It's never that easy.

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  But maybe, just maybe, with their help…

  And where has that line of thought ever gotten you?

  For once in your life, don’t be so selfish.

  I take out my ledger. She waits patiently for my answer while Gareth begins chucking his hatchets at a tree.

  My quill pauses over the paper. A dot of black ink bleeds from the tip into the parchment.

  Why do you torture yourself like this?

  I sigh.

  Then, for the first time in a long while, I write the truth.

  …

  Raiten

  “Why would I do that to you?! That’s insane,” Kiren says

  “A little bit. But that’s why it might work. I mean, I can’t think of anything else—”

  “That’s not the point, Raiten. I mean, it's you. I don’t want to—you—” he sighs. The sun gleams hot through the sparse white clouds. No wind, all wetness and sweat that stinks down our backs and attracts flies which buzz around our ears, as if trying to burrow into them and escape that sweltering, all-seeing orb in the sky. “You could die.”

  “He might not actually,” Umbrahorn says. He coils around one of the pillars of a fallen building. “I mean, I’ve seen him regenerate through some pretty bad injuries.”

  “See? I’ll be fine—”

  “But I agree, it is kind of stupid Raiten,” Umbrahorn cuts in.

  I glare at him. “Whose side are you on?”

  “The right side. As always.”

  I rub my eyes and kick off from the wall I was leaning against. When I do, some of the bricks fall back and issue a series of cracking sounds that echo across the ruins. I wince at the noise—everything has been keeping us on edge.

  “I. Won’t. Die. I’m telling you, I can take it.”

  “And what if you can’t? We can theoretically do this without putting you in harm's way,” Kiren retorts.

  I squint at the cracks that web in his shield, which fades ever slowly. He looks pale and drained.

  “When that falls,” I begin, pointing to the dome, “how many more can you create?”

  “For what you’re thinking of, maybe… three?”

  “Okay. So let's say we try trapping him thrice—”

  “Once,” Kiren cuts in, holding up a singular finger. Then, he holds up three. “Once turned into three.”

  It takes me a second to get what he means. “You can layer them?”

  He nods. “We’ll have a much better chance at this if I layer them and then constrict—that way, if one breaks, two remain. Plus, more pressure from the density of the shields.”

  “But that just makes me even more essential,” I argue, pacing about now. “Without me, what’s the guarantee that you catch them?”

  “But the way in which you want to hold them—”

  “Guarantees that they won’t be able to break the shield.” I hope that’s what will happen, at least. But I need to put on a brave front.

  Kiren throws up his hands in frustration. Then, he turns to Umbrahorn.

  “What do you think?”

  Umbrahorn whirls his large hammer head about theatrically. Then, he points the fin to himself. “Me?”

  Kiren and I just remain silent.

  He sighs. “Honestly? I don’t think it's a bad plan. Certainly not a Great Spirit sort of plan, but it might work. However, have you thought about the possibility of everything going according to plan and it still not working?”

  The question hangs like a rotting corpse amongst willow trees. I open my mouth to respond—bite my tongue.

  Kiren perks up: “what about you Umbra?”

  “Hey! Don’t just shorten my name without my permission—”

  “Although you can’t go under my shield, once it's gone, there’s nothing stopping you from leaving.”

  His black eyes seem to shift. “Oh. I see. But, will that be enough—”

  “Should I even be trusting you with leaving?” I ask, stalking up to the shark.

  Rather than back away however, he draws up to me. “Don’t look at me like that Raiten, if I really wanted to, I could’ve left your dumb human ass a long time ago. But I haven’t.”

  “If you—”

  “Don’t forget who refused to abandon our mission back at the fortress! Unlike you, my grudges die. And they don’t eclipse what matters most.”

  I raise a fist. He looks me dead in the eye.

  He doesn’t even cower like he used to.

  I sigh and let the arm fall. “Piss off Umbrahorn.”

  “That’s better. Glad we can all be friends.”

  I shake my head. “Why do you even care so much? You don’t seem the type.” He opens his mouth to answer, but I cut him again. “And don’t say it's because Dandy gives you fish or something stupid like that.”

  He snarls. “If you must know, I just owe that old bastard one. He saved my hide—even if he did enslave me to his farm, he kept me fed and treated me well. Better than going under whatever Fangshade had in store for me.”

  Huh. That’s actually a pretty good reason—

  “I also desperately need my completion. And I’m hoping that once we get a cure, maybe he’ll just let me free of my bindings to the farm. Free to become what I’ve always meant to be.”

  “A Great Spirit,” I mutter. That makes more sense.

  “So? Any doubt now in that thick, stupid, lightning filled—”

  “I can still hit you.”

  “Majestic, beautiful, sensational noggin of yours?”

  I shake my head and turn to Kiren. He’s walked away from us and now he lashes a distant rock with Meteorfang. When he sees me looking his way, he calls me over.

  “Let’s try to sharpen up your whip skills as much as possible,” he says as I come up next to him. “After all, if we want this to work, you’ll have to almost master it.”

  I shrug. “Can’t be harder than lightning right?”

  “That’s the spirit,” he says as he cracks the ball-end of the chain against a wall, causing it to wretch forth and crumble.

  I whistle. “You’ve got to let me try that one day.”

  “Learn to whip before you can kusarigama.”

  “‘lEarN tO wHiP bEfOre yOu caN kUsaRigaMA,’” I imitate in his higher pitched, kinder voice.

  He just laughs.