'Kastor...KASTOR!'
What? Who's that calling my name? Can't she tell I'm having a nap? It is such a versatile skill, napping; "close thine eyes and all that befalls thee are dreams" – that's the only line I remember from the Maker's scriptures. It's just so...applicable: to lazy mornings, to being yelled at...and to surviving the apocalypse.
It's no permanent solution though. Can't really explain why it isn't. With every second that passes lying here unconscious becomes a little too...easy. Hear the urgency in her voice, screaming your name? And here I am, taking it easy.
Wake up now.
A world of grey death, of swirling cinders in a storm of ash. Before me the silhouette of Oon'Shang is that of an immovable statue encased in black tar. The slab of rock on her back is nowhere to be seen, but her stance is still frozen as if carrying a great weight.
She's not moving. Not moving at all.
Pieces of skin are peeling from her body all cracked and edged with ember. Her globular eyes seem melded into their sockets. As I watch, her left arm detaches itself and shatters into charcoal bits upon hitting the ground.
Alright, enough of this. Time to wake up Kastor.
There's a jagged hole in her chest, just below the neck. The sky is visible through it.
Wake up. Come on wake up. Enough.
The ash...can't...breathe...
Kathanhiel's voice cuts across the dreadful silence. 'Kastor! Call out to me! Respond!'
Why does she sound so panicked? She would never sound panicked. Get your facts right, stupid dream.
'KASTOR! STOP KIDDING AROUND!'
Her voice is tearing; screaming does that to you. First time hearing her scream liking this; not even with Rutherford did she sound so desperate, losing her mind.
Alright, stubborn lips, open now and respond even though that's impossible since this is a dream and in dreams you never get to talk or do –
'I'm here!'
The loudest yell I could manage is the wheeze of an old man on his deathbed. Head so heavy. Eyes feel like they're about to shrivel up and roll out of their sockets.
A minute or a century later, muffled footsteps seep through the mud and into my ears: slow-quick-slow-quick, the rhythm of a cripple. With it comes a wave of dull heat, like that of a dying furnace choking on ashen logs.
'Oon'Shang...' I hear her exclaim. A dull thud; she falls over.
I tell myself to move; myself doesn't listen. Crawl then, stupid, put your hand on that scab of rock and drag – no not that arm not that one, the other one – good, now crawl. By some miracle there is strength still in a few remote body parts. Has it always been there, or did it come rushing back because she isn't getting back up?
Crawling, crawling. The ash tastes like a sweat-soaked pillow packed with coaldust. The solidified earth cuts open hands, knees, and every piece of skin in between; the wounds feel hot, smoky even, as if slit by a hot knife.
Nope, trying to stand up isn't a good idea. These legs don't seem to have bones in them.
There she is, leaning against a jutted rock with the look of soul-devouring exhaustion. Her skin is steamed red but at least it's no longer glowing. Somehow her shirt, made out of that slippery fabric, is still intact, along with her crystalline greaves that seem to have been dipped inside a volcano.
Her left arm is clamped onto a boulder, using it as leverage. The stone surface underneath is already a dull red.
Her right arm is...well, worse.
A gauntlet made out of charred flesh had grown out of her skin. Her hand is twice its normal size, an abomination of metal and flesh melded together by hundreds of blood-red veins. Angular flourishes that eerily resemble her crystalline armour have grown out of her elbows, climbing all the way to the shoulder in gnarly spirals. And it's falling apart. As I look on, a great chunk breaks off her upper arm, and even though it consists mostly of that fiery growth, there is a bit of her actual arm in there...or what used to be.
Kaishen, however, looks completely inert, as if the whole story about glowing swords that spit fire is make-believe nonsense. Under the rain of ash it looks just like any other sharpened metal stick: dull, lifeless, and unfeeling.
Kathanhiel sees me. Her eyes are drooping, as if fighting off sleep, but from them pour relief so palpable no one in the world should deserve it.
'Thank the Maker. Thank all the gods that ever was,' she whispers.
I stop two paces in front of her, coughing and regurgitating my lungs. So painful, but it's not the time for rest. Will there ever be time?
'The...fire...'
She leans forward, digging Kaishen into the earth as leverage. 'When I slew Elisaad, this same contest lasted thirteen days.'
'Thirteen...?!'
'Kaishen did all the work,' she says, looking at the sword the way an esquire would a great dragon slayer, yet assessing the state of her own arm with indifferently. 'As ever, I am but a bag of flesh and bone dragging him down.'
With a determined grunt she stands, anchoring on Kaishen all her weight. The exertion breaks a massive chunk off her right arm, but she manages it.
'I hope it rains again,' she says casually, offering her left hand.
There's a very real chance skin contact would set me on fire, but my languid brain doesn't know that. All it sees is the gesture, and the instinct to take it up bypasses all the mental hurdles, because the hurdles are in disarray, some broken, all fallen over.
I take her hand. It feels warm and smooth – sweaty, sure, but the very fact that sweat exists on it makes no sense. Just seconds ago this hand was hot enough to cook stone.
Confused, but not exactly sure why I'm confused because I can't think at all, I look at her.
'I thought so. You survived, after all,' she says gently.
'W-what?'
With strength far surpassing that of someone who has not rested for four days should have, she pulls me up. Her staggering due to my weight is almost a relief; it's a very human stagger.
Oh no, I'm falling again. These cotton-stuffed legs, embarrassing me for the hundredth time with the cheap you're-a-weakling trick. Wait, don't fall that way, she's standing there don't knock her over –
This moment, this silent stillness in the ashen rain, is what I've been waiting for all my life: a sense of being needed. This physical acknowledgement, somehow, means more than all those inner lectures I give myself put together.
Kathanhiel's embrace feels heavy, suffocating even; being half a head shorter, my face finds itself squished against her neck, which is sticky with sweat and almost too hot to touch. Smoke starts bellowing from my leather cuirass, especially from where her left hand is on my back.
In those two seconds of closeness, before my clothes being set on fire ruins everything, she says:
'Thank you.'
'My-my lady I don't know what –'
She pulls back upon seeing the smoking holes upon my cuirass, and sways on the spot. Her eyes droop again. This time they stay shut for a full five seconds before she forces them open with a hateful grimace.
'They will return,' she says. 'They won't stop coming until every last one of them lies dead or I do, which is fine by me. However –' a faint laugh '– I've have overestimated myself. This is no enfeebled Elisaad unleashing mindless hordes. Rutherford knows what it's doing, committing in waves, each just strong enough to push me further. What folly to think that I, of all people, could endure.'
I open my mouth say something stupid, but she shakes her head.
'Now I must put you on the spot, Kastor. For this I apologise with all my heart. Please, do not think ill of me.'
'My lady what are you saying – '
She takes a step backwards and plants her feet upon clear ground, shoulder width apart. Kaishen she stabs into the earth, and upon its pommel her hands rest, right over left; a regal stance, one captured in countless paintings.
'Kastor, esquire to the Heir of Ush'Ra and the Crimson Herald...kneel.'
'What –'
'Kneel, please.' She's pleading. 'I'm running out of time.'
There's a weird buzzing in my head, a nest of bees trying to find their way out.
I kneel.
As the eastern horizon brightens with yet another dawn, the merciless wind tears off bits of her right arm, turning them to ash.
She speaks, her voice echoing as if inside a great hall of marble. 'Courage, loyalty, compassion. These are intangibles in the mirror of the self, sought by those who pretend to enshrine these hollow ideals so that others might think better of them. The blade of Ush'Ra does not tolerate pretence. Dragon fire devours the mind, and the devourer of dragon fire shatters all the mirrors in one's heart, all but one: that of hate and love...for they are one and the same.'
Here she hesitates, waging a war with herself. Her grip on Kaishen tightens, her fingers digging into the steel handle with compulsive claws.
'Alas, if he was here he would berate me for rambling on and wasting time,' she sighs, 'but that's what happens when you part with the one you love; you think that perhaps, by saying one more word – delaying the inevitable by one more second – your fates would change, and your beautiful dream will no longer end with painful waking...for then it will be real forever.'
Suddenly her knees buckle and she almost falls, barely leaning onto Kaishen for support. I begin to reach out but she stops me.
'Stay where you are!' She warns. 'Or I'll change my mind.'
Gently, as if caressing a lover, she runs her left hand upon Kaishen's edge. Sparks, not blood, fly from her palm in golden bursts.
'Look at me, clinging to this false ceremony as if it has any meaning,' she says. 'Foolish girl. Stubborn girl. Should've done this long ago.' Her eyes snap to mine; they burn with feverish light. 'Kastor, hold out your hands.'
My arms move on their own, even the broken one.
'Cowardice, ineptitude, anxiety...these are the intangibles in your mirror, your ostensible lies. The blade of Ush'Ra has them shattered, laid bare all that you are, and it has deemed you worthy.'
Sweating rivers and wheezing now with every breath, she pulls Kaishen out of the ground and places it flat on her hands.
'Take it.'
Page fourteen of the esquire's contract. If I had read it, then I wouldn't be nearly as surprised about what's going on.
No, that's not true. It'll always be a surprise. Who in their right mind would give me – me, out of all the people in the world – the sword of the dragon slayer? Have I not been useless all this time, incapable of doing anything but lying in a hidden spot, getting beaten up, tossed around, laughed at...?
I couldn't speak. Couldn't think. Couldn't move either, until Kathanhiel reached forward with the last of her strength and put Kaishen in my hands.
Careful it'll be hot passes through my head in big, bold writing. Somewhere between thinking about buying a pair of leather gloves and whether I have enough money to afford them, I realise that the sword is completely cool. The flawless and unadorned steel is a dull boring grey, and if stashed inside a barrel with a dozen other ten-crown swords one wouldn't be able to tell them apart.
I look up at Kathanhiel and see that she is smiling. What a lovely smile; bright as the sun, radiant, warm, from the bottom of her heart. It's the same smile she wore on our first meeting – unburdened by sorrow, untarnished by all that had come to pass in her life, and existing for the sole purpose of giving joy to all who sees it. This one is no mask.
'Completely ordinary, isn't it?' she says. 'Just like you and me.'
With the first ray of sun comes a sudden gust.
Her arm.
It disintegrates.
The wind breaks it into a thousand pieces, each chunk ember-red and angular like burnt-up coal. They dance their way into the sky, twirling, entwining. They dance their way into the approaching clouds, where they will dissipate into droplets of fire and return to earth again in some distant place, some distant time.
Kathanhiel closes her eyes and falls with the smile still frozen on her face.
'My...lady?'
Is-is she...oh please Maker don't let her be...
She's breathing, laboured and feverish but still breathing. The red stump on her shoulder is slowly returning to the colour of flesh, though the wound itself has long cauterised.
I look down at the thing in my hands.
Kaishen, Bane of Dragons.
It's raining again. The clouds are moving in, carrying with them the ichor of life.