The Beginning After The End

Chapter 503: Aftershocks

ALARIC MAER

The contents of the small leather pouch gave a crystalline clink as I set it down on the bar. The wrinkled little bartender scooped the payment away in a swift, silent movement, making it disappear behind the counter. Her beady eyes squinted and her lips pursed, deepening the craggy wrinkles of her face. She drummed her fingers across the bar once, then pointed out the nearest window.

A long-legged equine mana beast was connected to a ramshackle carriage outside. A man in a long coat and wide-brimmed cap lingered next to the cart, eying anyone who walked by appraisingly.

I knocked twice on the scored and pocked bartop, winked at the tender, and then headed for the door.

The commander leaned against the wall beside the door. “Leaving without even a glance at the bottles behind the bar?” She clicked her tongue, and I caught the ghost of a smile beneath her hood. “You really have turned over a new leaf.”

It was moments like those that reminded me most clearly of one certainty: as lucid as the hallucination was, it was only ever a reflection of my own internalized thoughts. Commander Cynthia Goodsky—a name she took after turning away from the Vritra—would never have been so graceless as to kick an old dog while he was shivering from withdrawals. That was a special kind of self-deprecating cruelty that only I could come up with.

I shoved my way through the creaking door out into the street. It was overcast and had recently stopped raining. Although Onaeka was a prosperous trading city on the coast of Truacia, I was in the unad edge of town. The street wasn’t even paved, and my boots sank an inch into the muck as I crossed it.

The coachman saw me coming immediately. Straightening, he flicked the brim of his hat back and hooked his thumbs in his belt. He had a scruffy, patchwork red growth of something almost like a beard. His face was pockmarked from sun-scars, but there was an unhidden cleverness in his dark eyes.

“Need a lift, stranger? You look like a gent with a purpose.” He grinned, revealing multiple rotten teeth.

I got close enough that when I spoke softly, he’d still hear me clearly. “Right on both counts. You’re clearly a clever man.” I paused, letting him digest the bent of my words. “Clever enough to catch the eye of someone wanting to go into hiding. Clever enough to turn another man’s desperation into a bit of hard-earned wealth for yourself.”

I admired the belt he was wearing: acid green and gleaming, at odds with the rest of his drab, damp attire.

“A functioning relic. Pretty rare, that. Exceedingly rare, I’d say, since they’re all taken to Taegrim Caelum and very few ever make it out again.”

His eyes widened. “Well now, friend, don’t see why you’d think—just a backwater coachman, ain’t I? Couldn’t afford something like—”

A dagger flashed in my hand, and I stepped forward and plunged it into his ribs. Or I would have, if not for a burst of mana that wrapped him in a shield of glowing blue energy. It was fast, flickering in and out in a blink.

The mana beast harnessed to his cart let out a nervous crooning noise and shuffled back and forth.

“Aye, what are you—”

I stowed the blade with one hand and held the other up to silence him. “That’s the kind of thing might have been stolen from Taegrim Caelum. Say, by someone who worked there before everything went sideways. Maybe given to you in trade for passage and sealed lips. Still, the belt’s worth a thousand times whatever service you could have possibly provided. A lot of wealthy highbloods would kill for such a thing.”

The coachman glanced around nervously as he closed his coat, hiding the artifact. “What do you want, chum?”

“A ride.” I gave the man a knowing smirk, and his face fell.

If his secret benefactor had been someone powerful, maybe things would have played out different. But this was the kind of man that could smell desperation from a hundred feet. He knew the runaway Instiller was less of a threat than me, and so he didn’t argue.

I took my place in the carriage. The door didn’t close properly and creaked dangerously when I forced it shut. The carriage had an open window out to the driver’s seat. It looked like, once upon a time, there had been slats that could be closed to keep out the wind and weather, but these had long since been broken.

The coachman hopped up into his seat and took up the reins. He shot a furtive glance back at me, then gave a gentle tug at the mana beast and a click of his tongue. The axle groaned as the cart began to move.

“I didn’t get your name, friend,” I said as the cart squished through the mud.

“I ain’t nobody.”

I chuckled. “Nobody’s nobody in my line of work.”

After confirming our destination with the driver, I settled in for a long ride north up the coast. I could have used a tempus warp, but pinpointing a destination without a specific target or a clear picture of where I was headed seemed like a mistake. Far easier if this coachman could drop me off right where my prey landed as well.

Besides, it was a welcome reprieve from the chaos. In part, that’s why I was out here myself, tracking the Instiller across the ass end of Truacia. Anything to not be part of one more answerless meeting.

The pulse of mana that killed Scythe Dragoth had reached past the borders of Central Dominion, drawing the mana out of every mage it hit. The backlash hit the strongest the hardest, ironically. But plenty of others—those who were frail by nature or still weak from the shockwaves that had rippled across the world only weeks earlier—died too. Although she played it off, Seris seemed pretty close to the edge herself right after it happened.

The one-two punch of the shockwave from Dicathen, followed by this mana-draining pulse that seemed to originate from the Basilisk Fang Mountains—maybe even Taegrin Caelum itself—had everyone spooked. Not that there wasn’t reason for it. Tens of thousands of mages all got the mana sucked out of them at the same time…well, it didn’t seem like a sign of particularly good times to come.

As the carriage rumbled along, I didn’t dare close my eyes—at least one stayed firmly on my driver at all times—but I let my tired mind crunch back through the last few days since Central Academy. My bruises felt sharp and fresh as I remembered the wild escape, dead Scythe, and the recording artifact.

I hadn’t been surprised to find Caera Denoir on her feet despite the fact most mages were barely walking. The girl was tenacious.

She’d been organizing a bunch of unadorned to bring in whatever comforts they could for those most impacted by the mana pulse. None of Highblood Kaenig’s men even bothered to ask who I was as I approached the library, and I was able to watch from the mouth of an alley for several minutes.

“When I say anyone who can activate a tempus warp, I mean anyone.”

Caera was scolding a grumpy-looking man in Kaenig colors. He had no mana signature, so I assumed he was an unadorned servant. From the quality of his clothes and the pouty scowl on his face, he was clearly high ranking among their staff and not used to being ordered around by anyone besides the Kaenigs.

“We have a lot of people here who will be better off in their own homes and puking and crying on the library floor following that—that—whatever that siphoning blast was.” She took a deep breath to calm herself.

“Everyone here is hurting. But anyone who can still stand and channel mana is needed. Send a call out into the city if necessary.”

I didn’t hear the man’s response as he bowed and marched quickly away.

I’d slipped from my hiding spot and approached Caera as she took a scroll from another unadorned and began reading it.

“Well, isn’t this a tidy little custer f—”

“Who—Alaric!” Several expressions tumbled across her features in quick succession: relief, guilt, and hope, among others. “I was hoping we’d catch up with your group, before. But now…” Her voice softened, the scroll hanging limp in her grasp. “We could use some help, if you’ve got any to offer.”

I made a point of glancing around the scene outside Cargidan’s central library. Every single mage present had the same green-around-the-gills look. In fact, it was the only way to tell the mages from the unadorned. Almost no one had a solid mana signature.

“Lady Seris?” I asked when I didn’t see her.

Caera bit inside of her cheek and shot a furtive glance to a nearby tent. It had been erected in a hurry in the grassy lawn beside the library. More were already going up around it.

“Alive?”

Caera nodded. “Come on.”

She led me into the tent, which was guarded by two young mages with weak mana signatures. I gauged them both to be no more than crest-bearers. The pulse, through the act of drawing out all a mage’s mana from their core, had impacted the stronger mages more than the weaker ones.

Inside, the tent held nothing but a single fold-out cot. Seris, once Scythe of Sehz-Clar, was sitting up in the cot, her back supported by several rolled blankets. Dark rings surrounded her eyes, and her cheeks were porcelain pale. Her retainer, Cylrit, sat on the ground beside the tent, his head reclined against the thick fabric wall, eyes shut. Both gave off weak, shuddering auras.

I would have been surprised to find them in such good condition, considering Dragoth, but a handful of empty vials in the grass beside the cot explained it: elixirs, and potent ones by the residue remaining.

Seris’s eyes flickered open as we entered.

I gave her an appraising look. “You look a far sight better than your contemporary, Dragoth. Dead as a doornail.”

Seris’s eyes closed as if dragged down by a heavy weight. “A pitiful end for a pitiful man.” Her eyes opened again, and she gave me a sharp look. “What were you doing anywhere near Dragoth?”

I chuckled and withdrew the shard of carved crystal: the storage crystal from a recording artifact. “The people need proof that Agrona’s really gone. If my intelligence is correct, this crystal contains just such proof.”

“Some good news today,” Caera said under her breath. “But how did you get this?”

Seris leaned forward, staring into the crystalline structure as if she could read its contents through sheer will alone. “It’s from a mobile recording artifact.” Her brows rose slightly. “From Dicathen. But the images will be mana locked. They require a specific sequence of applied mana—sometimes even from only certain people—to access.”

I felt my expression sour. “You were a bloody Scythe. Are you saying that you can’t use this?”

Seris was silent a moment, and her disapproval hung heavy in the air despite her backlash. “I might be able to break the lock…once I’ve had time to recover.”

I picked dried blood out of my beard and flicked it into the grass. “Speaking of…I don’t suppose you have any idea what in the abyss that was, do you?”

Seris sighed and eased back again, closing her eyes. “Several theories, but they’d likely do more harm than good if I shared them now.” She waved a hand as if clearing away cobwebs. “I need time to think.”

“We should let Seris rest,” Caera said, putting a hand on my arm, about to lead me out.

“There’s something else,” I said, taking half a step closer to the cot. “Everyone who’s seen this recording is dead, except for Wolfrum of Highblood Redwater. Him, and a single Instiller who managed to slip out of Dragoth’s clutches before he merced the others.”

Seris shifted slightly in the cot, but she didn’t open her eyes. “He may be useful if we can’t unlock this recording ourselves. Can you put someone on it?”

I shrugged, then realized she couldn’t see me. “I’ve spent the last day imprisoned and tortured. Not sure what kind of mess this pulse thing has done to my people, yet. I’ll go myself.”

Caera pushed out a sharp breath through her nose.

“You just said you—”

“Nevermind that. They were amateurs.” Behind Caera, in the doorway to the tent, the hallucination of Commander Cynthia smirked.

Seris coughed. Her eyes were moving rapidly beneath the lids. I couldn’t explain it, but a shiver ran up my spine. Even in this shape, her mind was churning. “This pulse of mana, as you called it, has come at exactly the wrong time,” she said, speaking slowly and clearly. “We need a positive message to counter the people’s despair. Like showing them indisputable evidence that they are no longer under the Vritra’s yoke.”

“Understood,” I grunted. With a wink to Caera, I showed myself out.

My network had been in shambles, as expected. It was the mystery of it, more than the effects themselves, that shook people. A bitter wind from the mountains that stole the mana from your very core…

Like the tales of Wraiths told to scare children straight, I thought as I watched the Truacian coastline slither past from the carriage window.

The sheer scale of it was the real thing. “Agrona’s ghost, still sucking the life from his people,” I muttered.

My driver shot a watery-eyed glance back at me, but neither of us spoke.

Whether by luck, a lack of skill on the part of my prey, or the fact that word of Dragoth’s death spread like soulfire, it had not taken long to hear rumors of a desperate, on-the-run Instiller headed north. This, of course, had led me eventually to Onaeka and the dreary coachman currently delivering me to my destination.

It had taken just enough time for the doubt to set in.

So far, we’d gone with the story that this secondary, mana-stealing pulse had been a kind of aftershock to the original shockwave. That, of course, we now knew was caused by Arthur Leywin’s defeat of Agrona in Dicathen. I didn’t understand it, but I didn’t need to. This aftershock story was bullshit, of course, but Alacrya was already on the edge.

I didn’t know how much more pressure the nation could take before it tore itself to shreds in a terrified frenzy.

“Listen to you, worrying about ‘the nation’ again,” Cynthia said from the seat next to me. She reclined with one leg kicked over the other, absently picking at the sole of her boot. “You’ve rediscovered patriotism, it seems.”

I scoffed. “Been shackled to it by Arthur Leywin, more like. Lying little shit.”

She laughed, making me chuckle too. She didn’t have to tell me that I was lying. She wasn’t even there. Just a hallucination of a broken mind.

Cynthia cocked her head as if reading my thoughts. Her smile softened, becoming sad. She looked out her window. I blinked. She was gone.

“How much longer?” I asked, half shouting at the driver, suddenly antsy to be out of the carriage. It was starting to grow dark, and the lights of a small village could just be seen in the distance.

He clicked his tongue at the equine mana beast pulling the carriage, and it slowed to a stop. “You’ve got a good nose on you, mister.” He hopped off the front of the carriage and opened the door with a grunt. “Feller you're looking for had me let him out right here.” He indicated a standing stone that marked a break in the thick tangle of bushes that separated the road from the rocky coastline. “No idea where he went from here.”

I kicked a rock. It skipped twice before vanishing into the bushes. “We’ve come a long way together, friend. Maybe our relationship has had some ups and downs, but I’d like to think we’ve built some trust over the last few hours. Most people take years to build up to the comfortable silence we’ve shared.”

I pushed mana into my runes, letting it emanate out as a threatening intent without casting a spell. “It would be a shame to ruin it now.”

“Ah, piss on this,” he muttered. “I ain’t dying for some bloke I don’t even know. My cousin has a shack down on the beach, on the other side of town.” ‘Nobody’ the coachman shrugged his shoulders in defeat. “Cousin works on a shipping vessel that runs ‘round the north coast to Dzianis, don’t he? So he ain’t hardly ever home. Told this feller he could stay there for a bit.”

I considered forcing him to take me right to the front door. His appearance in town might just tip off my quarry, though. Besides, I was pretty sure he was telling the truth. “Get out of here.” I pressed payment into his hand. Enough that he was unlikely to do anything other than high-tail it back to Onaeka. “And sell off that belt as soon as you can, or someone is likely to gut you for it.”

The coachman scratched his scruff of beard as he visibly struggled to find words, then grunted, jumped back up into the driver’s seat, and clicked his tongue at his mana beast. The creatures carefully dragged the cart in a loop, crushing the brush on the other side of the road, then hurried away.

The coachman, pale in the dim light, stared straight ahead.

A cool wind blew in off the sea. I pulled my cloak tight around me, lifted my hood, and started toward the village. The main road veered left, while a separate path broke away to the right, leading right through the center of the village. A couple of farm houses surrounded by small plots of struggling crops marked the outer edge of the village. A farmer, still toiling in the twilight, stopped his work to lean against a rake and watch me pass.

The village itself was fairly quiet. At its center, it had a small square defined by a warehouse that stank of fish, an inn with no sign out front, and an out-of-place manor house that I guessed was some kind of town hall, or maybe the residence of whatever struggling Named Blood controlled the place.

Several market stalls lined the square, but they were all closed up. The dull roar of drunken conversation came out of the inn, along with the smell of roasting meat, herbs, spices, and stale beer.

I caught sight of two armored men as they rounded a corner down the street past the inn. Not wanting to get caught up answering questions from nervous small-town guardsmen, I ducked into the shadow of the inn and waited. The guards passed by without even glancing in my direction.

Careful to avoid sticking my face directly in the window where the light from inside would highlight it for all to see, I glanced into the inn, searching for a man matching the Instiller’s description. Many of the locals were out for a drink and a late dinner, probably only having recently returned from a long day’s fishing, but none of them had the look of outsiders to the village, and no one matched the description I’d been given.

Circling around behind the inn, I made my way through the village until it gave way to a rocky beach. The sound of the sea lapping against the shore was more than enough to cover any noise I made as I followed the stony shore northward.

Just as the coachman had said, I found a poorly maintained shack a few minutes outside of town. It backed up to the short cliff that separated the beach from the untamed land behind it. A rickety peer floated thirty feet out into the sea, buoyed so that it could rise and fall with the tide. The shed itself was raised up on pylons, keeping it above the high water mark. The pylons themselves were green with algae and rotten. One had sunk down slightly, giving the entire structure an off-kilter lean.

A suppressed mana signature was just barely detectable inside the shack.

Although I’d managed to learn a fair bit about this Instiller as I tracked him from Cargidan to Aensgar, then Itri, and finally Onaeka, he’d been careful to avoid letting his name slip even as he raced halfway across the continent. Regardless, his name probably wouldn’t help me; it’d only warn him that I knew exactly who he was.

I cautiously approached the ramp that led up to the front door, shrouding my own mana signature as best I could while watching for any flicker from his that he’d channeled a rune.

Suddenly, the wind was blowing from the wrong direction. I spun southward, gaping, forgetting to be quiet. Forgetting what I was even doing.

The familiar, frozen claws ripped their way through me and grasped the mana in my core. I choked, falling backwards. The sea-worn wood of the door frame splintered, and I crashed through the door and landed on my back on a stained rug. I stared senselessly up at a man clutching a burning blade.

The shortsword slipped from his grasp as both his hands went to his chest. The point thunked into the floorboards an inch from my face, the flames scorching my beard in the instant they persisted before fading away.

I was dimly aware of the man reaching out to support himself. His weight overturned a small table, which crashed to the ground. He followed it only a moment later.

My eyes squeezed shut against the pain of having all my mana ripped away from me yet again. An agonized grunt escaped from between my clenched teeth. Nearby, the Instiller was gasping and weeping, his attempt at forming words failing at either his lips or my ears, I couldn’t be certain.

Behind my closed eyelids, our mana mingled together with a weak glow as it streamed away from us.

Nearby on the floor, the Instiller was gasping. Each choked breath was interspersed with a wet cough.

“Fuck,” was all I could muster the strength to utter. But I had to move.

I started by rolling onto my side, using my right arm for leverage by stretching it across my chest. The smell of mildew and salt seawater was strong.

Once on my side, I opened my eyes. The Instiller was only a couple of feet away, eye to eye with me. The short sword stuck up from the floor between us like a warning. His body was shaking, and with each cough, he curled inward, clutching his chest. Blood ran freely from his nose and badly split lip.

“I’m…a friend,” I said, still trying to catch my breath. I completed the roll onto my stomach, then pushed myself to my knees. “I’m here to help you.”

Now fully in the fetal position, his face distorted in a grimace of pain, he shook his head.

With tremulant hands, I tugged the blade free and tossed it aside. The Instiller flinched at the clatter of steel on wood.

My wits finally returned to me, and I used the tiny portion of mana left in my core to activate my extradimensional storage artifact, drawing out two small vials full of gently glowing liquid. Elixirs. Flicking the top free from one, I quaffed it in a single swallow. Mana rushed through me, and the clenching pain in my core eased immediately. It was like a cool wind blowing through my muscles, bones, and brain meat.

I let out a relieved breath. “Here, one for you too. And I won’t even say you owe me one.”

The man struggled as I lowered the elixir to his lips, but he had no strength to fight me. The elixir filled his mouth, which I then clamped shut with my free hand. His eyes bulged and his nostrils flared desperately as he struggled not to swallow. Nature and physics worked against him, and within moments he’d consumed the mana-restoring liquid.

“There, see, not so…” I trailed off, watching his reaction to the elixir. Despite the mana swiftly filling his core and spreading out through his body, he wasn’t relaxing. “Vritra’s balls, what…”

Perhaps finally realizing that I was trying to help him, not kill him, the Instiller reached out and grabbed the hem of my cloak. His face was pale and green, his eyes bloodshot and desperate. “Ch-chest…can’t…”

I eased the man onto his back, and then felt his head, neck, and chest. Jaw clenched, dripping in a cold sweat, looks like he’s about to be sick…

The signs were consistent with backlash, but the elixir should have relieved them immediately. I’d seen men push themselves harder than their heart could handle more than once, and they’d all died just like this.

My focus switched. This was no longer a mission to find and bring back a potentially hostile resource.

“The recorded images. The ones of Agrona, from Dicathen.” The man looked confused, his watery eyes drifting around the dim shack. I pressed down on his chest, and they snapped back to me. “You saw the recording. You know how to access it.”

A flicker. He knew. “We don’t have much time. Tell me how to bypass the mana lock, and then I’ll get you to the village. Surely they have a healer who can help you.” Catching myself, I quickly added, “Dragoth’s dead. Agrona’s captured, you saw it yourself. You’re a free man after this. I just need your help.”

“N-not…can’t—” He choked on his own tongue and coughed blood across my sleeve.

“We can prove to the entire continent that Agrona’s gone,” I said, inflecting my tone so it sounded like a plea. “You hold the key to an entirely new era for Alacrya.”

A spasm of pain shook the Instiller, and he looked away.

“Is it loyalty, then?” I didn’t try to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “Still desperately hanging from your god-king’s short hairs, willing to do whatever it takes to maintain your stake in his broken world—”

“No!” The Instiller grimaced, then affixed me with a bloodthirsty stare. He tried to keep talking, but something was wrong with his jaw and tongue. He just couldn’t form the words. But the look in his eyes spoke volumes.

I took his hand in both my own and squeezed. “I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me. Help me unlock the recording. Give me a chance to figure this out.”

The Instiller jerked his hand free. Turning his head, he spit a mouthful of blood on the floor. He shook badly as he tried to write in the blood, but his hand was no more under his control than his mouth. After several seconds of failure, during which he accomplished nothing but smearing blood into the rough grain of the wood, he let his head fall back to the floor.

Another spasm took him. He wasn’t going to last long.

Suddenly he raised both hands above himself. Mana began to leak from him in a series of pulses. Maybe it was the fatigue and backlash, but I didn’t immediately understand. He opened his eyes, glared at me, then repeated the sequence.

Understanding hit me like a brick to the back of the head. “The mana lock opens to a specific sequence. Show me again!”

His arms were trembling wildly now. The mana fluctuated more than it had the first time, but now that I realized what I was seeing, I followed along easily and committed it to memory. “Thank you, friend. You’re damned brave.”

“H-help,” he said, his arms falling, his fingers kneading into his chest and neck.

I withdrew another vial from my dimension ring. This one was larger, sealed with a waxed cork. The liquid inside was clear. I peeled the wax and uncorked the vial carefully, not wanting to get any on myself.

“Here. This will ease the pain. Then I’ll take you to the village.”

His senses robbed by the pain and fear, he opened his mouth and swallowed the poison without questioning.

Even with my tempus warp, I knew I couldn’t get him to a healer in time. The best I could do was offer him a quick end to his suffering.

He let out a relieved breath as his systems shut down. The poor bastard even smiled, his lips starting to move in thanks. He was dead before he could form the words.

My mind focused on the key to the mana lock, repeating it over and over again to seal it away in my memory. Even as I lifted the surprisingly light corpse and carried him out of the shack, I thought only of what the recording would represent to the people of Alacrya. Proof.

I left the corpse at the edge of the village where the guards would find him soon, making it look like he’d traveled there under his own power. They’d assume he died from the mana pulse, which was true enough. Probably give him a burial at sea, which was better than rotting in that shed for a week or two before the owner came home.

Then, finding a dark alley where I wouldn’t be observed, I retrieved my tempus warp and prepared to return to Cargidan, where Seris and Caera awaited news.