Bereft: Demise

66 | Of the Intruder's Ingress

Dawn had yet to touch the misty marshland of Crow's End when the Sin of Sloth woke with abrupt swiftness.

His office was swaddled in the trappings of night with the shadows unraveled in sweeping trains. The manor remained in its unbalanced state of quiet, its heartbeat reduced to a plodding murmur audible only in these stark, liminal hours of the day. He could hear the ticking of Amoroth's diamond wristwatch and nothing else.

Peroth peered about the room, though his vision was blurry with the residue of sleep. He lay upon his couch and Amoroth lay upon him, cheek resting on his chest as she slumbered. They were both fully clothed and exhausted after spending much of the prior days awake and alert, waiting for Darius's return.

Sloth chased his fingers along her spine with a light touch, not willing to wake her yet. He turned his attention to trying to find what had awaken him, but the source wasn't readily apparent.

All was quiet. Still.

Minutes ticked by as his alarm dissipated into casual wariness. Settling, Peroth rested his hands upon Amoroth's back and began to drift once more into the welcoming lull of sleep—when he again sensed what had woken him.

Like the first strum of a harp's strings, the energy trembled and elicited a similar response from Peroth's soul. Tehgrair keened in the recesses of his mind as Peroth sat up, Amoroth spilling into his lap. She grunted and peered at him through squinted eyes.

"What is your problem?"

The energy followed the strains of Cuxiel's power to its source. He felt the quaver in his chest as if a butterfly were trapped inside his ribcage instead of a beating heart. The resonance was keyed to him, and only him.

Someone had entered the ward. Someone who wasn't Darius.

The Sin of Sloth stopped breathing, eyes wide.

"Peroth, what's—?!"

He thrust himself and Amoroth into the Realm before she could finish speaking. In moments, the chill of the marsh met their warm bodies and the ward loomed before them.

Behind him, the fabric of the void was writhing as it was split and a second curtain of its screaming silence began to rise over the distant manor.

"Cuxiel—!"

Peroth flung an arm into his own ward, bracing himself against the pain as the void's molecular sheet worried his flesh to the bones. His blood welled, and like acid it began to eat an opening through the ancient barrier he'd constructed eons ago.

No sooner had Peroth thrown Amoroth through the opening then a second skein of the void snapped into place. Sloth gave a wordless yell as the new ward burnt his out-flung hands and forced him to retreat.

A new ward had been summoned just inside his own. The two barriers glittered against one another, the millimeter of energy trapped between them crackling in undulating waves of violet lightning. Peroth hadn't summoned this ward. He knew of only one other creature capable of doing so.

With dread, Sloth turned to face the cemetery at his flank. There, balanced upon the lip of an ancient tomb with morning dew caught in his hair, was the Sin of Envy.

"My," Balthazar drawled as he hopped from his perch and landed on the sodden grave. Straightening, he smoothed the ironed length of his sleeves and adjusted his cuffs. From the fog beyond him came the sound of encroaching footsteps as Danyel appeared with a third male in tow. He flung the Vytian to the ground at Balthier's feet.

Anzel glared at Envy and spat vitric words through the gag shoved into his mouth. His hands were bound against his chest in a manner Peroth had seen mages restrain other mages to negate their casting ability.