Chapter Four
When Faith woke up, she first found herself greeted by an empty bed, and not Erlandur’s slumbering form as she had hopefully anticipated. Her body ached, both in a good and bad way, and she forced herself upright in the sheets. She saw the undead wolves, who looked a lot better for wear now. The one she landed on no longer dragged its feet upon the ground.
They’re regenerating?
It certainly looked like it. Where in curses was Erlandur, though? Puzzled, she went to relieve herself, then pulled on her clothes, teeth chattering as she did so. The black knight obviously had a lot on his mind, but part of Faith wished he might have at least stuck around for her to wake up, and to give himself the rest he clearly needed.
The river’s trickling magnified in sound through the cavern, sounding like a constant gurgle and babble, soothing and disconcerting at the same time.
Where in blasted skies was he? She rubbed her eyes, annoyed. What did she expect from Erlandur, exactly? People like Faith didn’t grow attached in that way. Didn’t love. Not without dire consequences. People died all the time in the Lunar Wastes. Only through constant vigilance did anyone survive, through hours of training and patrols, of never giving a chance for the Shadows to win. Yet, despite herself, she had grown fond of Erlandur Malgrave.
Something in the way he stood as he surveyed others, lonely but powerful at the same time. It was as if a personal blizzard whorled around him, obscuring him from the sight of everyone else. The wolves were his barrier, circling on the edges, and he shared nothing, not even with the sister he grew up with, loved, and left.
Something about that loneliness called to Faith. She sat on a pedestal as well, not quite as condemned as Erlandur, with the marked veins, the Shadow blood coursing through, but she did stand somewhere no one else could reach.
Even with her former passion to annihilate Shadows, she felt empty as she did it. Battle wasn’t fun, just a mechanic she did well. Sure, sometimes she got herself in the mood, but the Shadows kept coming. They never stopped.
Now this man offered an answer to their plight, but played his cards close to his chest. He had seen things in that city. Something that convinced him to keep going.
But whatever made him leave home in the first place?
I like him more than I’m willing to admit. But like? Affection? That won’t stop either of us dying. It didn’t stop us suffocating in the death zone. Tumbling through space from the avalanche, by the Shadow that shouldn’t have been there.
Almost as if they were prepared. Expecting the scouts to come, to make it through the mountain.
No way can we send our whole army through that.
Fully dressed and armed, she hovered by the entrance to the cave. No sense disappearing, in case he made it back and found her absent. Still, she itched to move. To do something other than wait around for events to occur.
Acting was so much better than merely reacting.
To calm her fraying nerves, she did some stretches, limbering up her muscles, focusing on her breathing and making sure she drowned out the sound of the trickling water behind.
“What is this?” The voice carried across the dimly lit cavern.
Faith started in fright when she turned, and stared directly into the cold black eyes of a Shadow. One that wore a female form.
How in the world had she not sensed that foul creature? Instantly she unsheathed her blades, taking a battle-ready stance.
The Shadow’s lips curled in a dry, sardonic smile. “We knew the caves under the mountain would be used at some point. But to see someone like you? Ah…” the Shadow stepped closer, before hesitating. “You seem… familiar, somehow.”
Not wanting to give the Shadow anymore time to prepare, Faith lunged.
The Supreme, to her surprise, unsheathed a blade as well, and sidestepped the attack. The blade spun at her size, and Faith perfectly avoided it, in-stepping forward for the uppercut she knew the Shadow wouldn’t avoid in time.
Except, it did.
What?
Their swords clashed together in a frightening blur of movement, each duellist avoiding blows, slamming attacks into one another.
The Shadow seemed just as surprised as Faith as they both danced, both mirroring each other’s moves, neither able to get the upper hand.
The opening should be here! Three successive hits, but then she felt in her intuition, the Shadow planning to exploit her momentum, she stopped, then anticipated the attack, then anticipated the change of tactic –
Her mind overloaded with confusion – the Shadow kept changing, as if they were both playing a mental game where they saw each other’s moves, thousands of steps ahead.
Impossible.
The blade snaked past Faith’s defenses for the first time in her life, the same moment she struck the Shadow. Both opponents leapt back, the Shadow hissing in shock, Faith trembling from the fresh crimson wound near her clavicle.
She’d never been hit. Never.
Realization struck her like a thunderbolt. “You’re a combat Shadow.”
The Shadow hesitated. “I have never seen another combat witch before. So many moves… so far ahead. So hard to see…”
Both fighters had momentarily stopped, stunned by the revelation.
“There is only one bloodline that has the power. You must be of the same blood as my body.” The Shadow leered, and something about the jawline made Faith pause. It looked eerily like her father’s jawline.
“Who are you?” Wrong. “Who were you?”
They both began circling again, unwilling to take eyes off one another. The scent of danger intoxicated them, made their bodies tremble.
“I see the memories,” the Shadow murmured. “The memories of this body, so long ago… why, she was gone before your time, but you must be her flesh, her blood. Your necklace. I recognize it. That used to be mine – hers.”
No.
“My grandmother.” Faith gaped, her hands shaking, nerveless.
“Perhaps. It took hundreds of us to wear her down. And I have never been beaten since. It’s a good body. A strong one.” The Shadow smiled brilliantly, a manic gleam in its dead eyes. “Will you be the one to beat me? Will you? Will you?” With a frenzied roar, the Shadow dashed forward.
Faith barely avoided the blow, the mental game panning out again in her brain. Strike after strike. Dodge after dodge. Neither could outmatch the other.
For the first time, along with the fresh cut, Faith realized she was fighting for her life.
The terror flooded her, along with a deep surge of adrenaline. Her eyes hardened in resolve. The trembles in her arms stopped as she set her jaw grimly.
They continued their elaborate dance, hacking at one another, neither willing to stop, to slip up enough in the mental game so that one of them crashed out forever.
It disturbed Faith, dimly, on a level, to see that the Supremes were all Shadows that had hosted themselves in powerful witch bodies. They wore the faces of those long dead and stole the magic, warping it to their twisted desires.
Candles scattered about as Faith jumped and ran over a table, avoiding a scything blow, tumbling towards the Supreme and hacking at their heels.
Anticipate. It knows everything I’m doing, and I know everything it’s doing.
She stopped suddenly and leapt backwards, just in time to avoid a crackling bolt of lightning. Her attention turned on another Supreme – the same bastard that had caused the avalanche on the mountains. It sneered.
“I notice you’re having trouble with the human. I thought you were supposed to be the best,” the newcomer hissed. “Always insisting you should be head of the council.”
“Watch out,” the Shadow using her grandmother’s body snapped, “she’s the same as me!”
The newcomer zapped out more black lightning, and Faith swerved, just moving enough to avoid the licking tendrils of her demise, hurtling towards the Supreme which could not predict her movements in the same way.
She halted and ducked, rolling clear of the combat Supreme’s assault. Of course, the Supreme knew she intended to take out the weak link…
One movement possibility ignited her brain. Her heart pounded faster as she considered in a split second, before letting a scream rip out her throat.
She dived forwards, blocking everything the combat Supreme delivered her way.
“Run!” The combat Supreme flung the warning at its companion. “Don’t be stupid, you can’t take this one.”
“How dare you tell me what to do…”
Faith allowed the combat Supreme to stab her through the side. She winced but in one fell swoop, swept the lightning Supreme’s blocking hands aside and decapitated it. In the same movement, she levelled a slash towards the combat Supreme, who was forced to let go before she eliminated it from the world.
Footsteps could be heard resounding in the narrow chasm outside the cave. The Supreme chuckled as Faith continued her advance, lumbering because of the injury.
“I look forward to fighting you again. You might be the one to kill me. You might…” a strange, almost fond smile stretched its lips, before it backed away, beginning to dissolve into the walls, out of the sphere of influence of Faith’s living body.
Faith gasped, swords clattering from her hands. The pain surged through the adrenaline haze. It shouldn’t be a fatal wound, she deliberately plotted that out – but the blood loss and pain rapidly spiraled her system into shock.
Erlandur burst into the cavern, gaping at the dead Supreme, followed by others – others Faith didn’t recognize.
“Faith!” Erlandur flung himself beside her, eyes darting frantically from her face to her wound. “No! What happened?”
“By the moon,” one of Erlandur’s companions whispered. “She killed a Supreme.”
Borderline worship slid across his face – his black veined face. Faith stared at him through her blossoming fever. What was this?
Who were these people?
“Ssh. It’s okay.” Erlandur seemed truly panicked, hand twitching as he grasped the blade. “Should I?”
“No,” one of the companions said, her voice low, almost a growl. “Take her to our care unit. That blade is serrated. It may cause more damage coming out of her than going in. She’ll have more chance with our med unit.”
“What’s going on?” Faith’s voice rasped, as she clutched at Erlandur’s armor. “Who…?”
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have left you. It was stupid of me. Oh blasted moon.”
“She fended for herself very well.”
“This is Aria’s body,” a black veined male said, examining the head. “She doesn’t use weapons.”
The people in the room took time to digest the news.
“What happened, child?” The oldest member of the group, a wizened woman, old enough to be Faith’s, no, she couldn’t use the word grandmother without a deep sense of pain – old enough to be her elder.
“I fought two of them,” Faith wheezed, struggling to keep herself conscious. Her body wanted to shut down, to remove her mind from the pain. Erlandur clasped her hand, and she found herself reaching out to him, soothing him of all people.
She saw the terror in his eyes. He didn’t want to lose someone. He didn’t want to lose the woman who had seen the secrets under his armor, who understood a glint of that emptiness inside.
“Blast! I think this is Grace’s blade. You know.”
“Yeah,” Faith said. “My grandmother’s body.”
Surprised mutterings broke out.
“No wonder. Two Supremes, my word. You weren’t joking, Erlandur. You said you’d put together the best fighting force the north’s ever seen. You’d help us…”
Faith almost screamed when she saw a Shadow walk in behind the babbling group. “S-Shadow…”
The Shadow in question waited for the humans to step aside. “That I am.”
Faith felt her whole world toppling upside down.
A Shadow.
Black veined humans.
Erlandur, not reacting to the Shadow’s presence, even smiling at it.
What in the moon…
Why was no one reacting? Why smile at it?
I don’t understand. I don’t understand anything. I just fought my grandmother. I found the secret under Erlandur’s skin. And there are humans near the Fractured City?
“There’s a lot to explain,” Erlandur admitted. “I think we should save it for after the operating theatre.”
Faith noted that all of the people in the room wore crescent necklaces. The same symbol Erlandur had told them to watch out for.
Even the Shadow wore it. The Shadow with the face of a white-haired woman.
“I’m not falling unconscious,” Faith said. “You’ll carry me, and you’ll be giving me some blasting answers. If you want me to trust you. If you want me to stay by your side.”
“Of course,” Erlandur said, kissing her forehead, stroking her short hair. “Anything. And I’m so sorry. I should have waited. I didn’t think it through very well at all, did I?”
“To be fair, I doubt you’d expect two Supremes to be walking around the chasms.”
“Not a good sign,” the Shadow said. “They’re already aware something’s up. They’re trying to flush out the rats.”
Faith squinted at the Shadow. “I need a name from you. Otherwise I will see you as nothing but as an enemy.”
The Shadow nodded. “Helena. Or, at least – this is what this body used to be called.”
Helena. Not a name I’ve heard. She is not anything significant to me or the legends I know. “I hate Shadows, Helena.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.” Helena’s peculiar silver eyes clouded over for a moment.
“This was what the original scouting party was meant to do,” Erlandur said, carefully draping Faith in his arms. They began the walk, everyone quiet as they moved, the black veined humans, the Shadow known as Helena. “We needed to find the Fractured Ones – those who live near and within the city, resisting the absolute influence of the ruling council.”
Ruling council? “Wait. The Shadows have a society?”
“In a word,” Helena answered for Erlandur, her soft, melodic voice carrying over the darkness. “They also have a human population they subjugate to their demands. If you fail to satisfy them, they’ll turn you into a Tormented, and set you out into the wastelands. There’s millions of people here. The Fractured City is at least as large as your Lunar Wastes.”
The information processed through Faith’s brain.
All these years, she’d assumed the City was in ruins. The Shadows mindless entities. The north and south suffering the brunt of their evil for centuries.
She winced as Erlandur took a particularly heavy step, and he winced with her.
“Sorry.”
“You keep saying that.” She buried her face into his chest, taking comfort in it. “When I get better, I’m gonna kick you into the sky.”
He let out a half laugh, half scoff. “You can kick me around any time. Just get better. I need you. We need you,” he amended, but Faith most definitely caught the flush in his cheeks, the slip in his mind.
For whatever reason, this knight of the Lunar Wastes wanted her.
He didn’t act intimidated by her, afraid of her powers, afraid of who she was.
That touched her somewhere. Deep inside, where an icy fortress encased her heart. It thawed the cold there like the hot springs under Ghost Lake’s Mirror of the Sky. It left her with something more than just the thought of living, fighting and dying.
What if she could live for something? What if she could live for Erlandur? To see a smile upon his lips?
The thought warmed her up inside, breaking apart the bonds of her mind as he continued carrying her, towards whatever base that belonged to the self-proclaimed Fractured Ones, with the Shadow called Helena, a new mystery in the vast jigsaw puzzle the Lunar Wastes offered.
A new face to the war they fought.
I believe him. Faith reached up absently to stroke Erlandur’s stubble cheeks.
I really believe he’s not lying when he says there’s a way to end this once and for all.
She scowled at Helena’s back, where black energies unfurled out of her skin.
Answers lay within Erlandur. With this creature. And in the way that somehow, a Shadow had managed to procure the body of her long dead grandmother, who should have been buried under the snows.
Her grave had been desecrated without their knowing.
How many other witches had suffered the same fate, knowing no rest in death?
The implications of that thought terrified her.
They made it at last to an odd slit within the chasm, and a new network of caves, barely visible to the human eye.
“You’ll be treated soon,” Erlandur crooned to Faith.
“We’ll set up search parties for your missing scouting party as well,” Helena assured Erlandur. “Then we’ll try and figure out just where we can hide your army.”
“I can hardly wait,” Erlandur said dryly.
Faith grinned. She felt woozy, light headed, and more than a little nauseous, but she also felt confident. Hopeful.
Purposeful.
She breathed in Erlandur’s natural earth scent, her mind full of thoughts for the future that awaited.
Just as soon as she got patched up, of course.
That would help.
The End
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