Elegy (The Arbiter Codex), page 13
One down, still a dozen to go.
His head was beginning to ring from the impossibly loud buzzing sound that surrounded them. He forced his brain to stay focused on the task, trying to focus on the sound of blood in his ears to drown out some of the outside sounds, but to little avail. His only choice, then, was to strike quickly in hopes that he could destroy the demons before the buzzing disrupted his thinking too much.
Immediately he struck outward again, and another of the demons – which had apparently in no way anticipated an attack at that moment – was caught by the edge of his manna blade. It was just deep enough to leave a long red slit across its throat below its disgusting visage, and the manna flames ignited in the same second, burrowing inward, seeking the corruption that lay within. The demon stumbled away from him, screaming in the same silent agony that he imagined would have been much louder, if he could have heard it at all.
His attacks became a dance of sorts, a series of flowing movements with the most deadly intent. He struck and they parried, and he moved to strike again or to strike another. Each of his movements flowed perfectly into the next, and though the buzzing in his ears was almost deafening him, he began to imagine that he heard a rhythm in the sound that he used to time his movements. Cut, step, strike… the pattern of movements took him back to his fencing days at the Arbiter’s Tower in the clean warm air, in those golden days of youth that are always remembered fondly. He struck down demon after demon, the blue flames igniting eagerly at each successful stroke, consuming the demons from head to toe in a matter of seconds.
As suddenly as it had started, the noise ceased.
His head continued to ring. The sudden silence was almost more deafening than the noise itself. He turned to find Elisa, down on one knee and holding her sword almost desperately before her, shaking her head to try and clear it of the ringing that remained behind.
“Are you all right?” he asked, and his voice sounded strange as it echoed in the stone chamber.
She nodded slowly, and then climbed back to her feet. Bright red blood showed on her tunic from where a demon had cut her across the arm, but she showed no other obvious injury. Acolytes always wore white, so that injuries could be more easily spotted. The manna would not start to heal her wounds automatically for several years yet – in the meantime, she would have to rely on her body’s natural healing ability.
“What was that awful sound?” she asked.
He gave a half-shrug and shook his head. “I have no idea. That’s the nature of this place, though… it will do whatever it can, whatever it has to, so that it can win the fight. Whoever – or whatever – is the master of this place does not control these happenings any more than you or I can. These are creations of the corrupted manna, spun from whole cloth in order to drive out the purity that’s crossed its gates.”
“What might be next?” she asked, a hint of fear in her voice.
“I don’t know,” was all he could answer.
The doorway that led back to the room of perfect darkness was visible, and there was another doorway directly across from them that led into yet another unknowable chamber. Anything could lie beyond that threshold – even the certainty of their own deaths – and yet he was compelled to travel onward, to discover what had brought this place so deeply into corruption, and to drive it out.
He glanced at his young student, who returned his gaze bravely. “Are you ready?”
“Will I ever be ready to take that step?” she asked rhetorically.
“I’ll let you know if I ever get there,” he said grimly.
Together, they stepped across the next threshold.
Flames surrounded them. D’Arden could feel their heat, blinding him and searing his flesh. He heard Elisa cry out beside him. The fire had not been there only seconds ago, but now it was all too real. He could feel his skin as it blackened and burst where the flames touched him. He gave a shout of agony as well that echoed in the chamber above the sound of the roaring flames.
He got a glimpse, ahead of them, of a doorway that seemed impossibly far away. The floor was made of hot coals and embers, and fire flared all around them on every side. The heat was so intense that he felt as though he might simply die on the spot. Sweat poured from every part of his body and yet it was immediately evaporated. There was no way to survive.
This was the end.
D’Arden clenched his hand down on the sharp edges of his manna blade. Blood surged forth from the wound, and he cried out yet again. The pain from the wound in his hand, however, made the flames in the room flicker slightly. He felt cooler, and the azure fire of the manna blade danced around him. His flesh no longer felt as though it were being seared. He could still see the flames, but they seemed more distant somehow.
“Elisa!” he cried out. “Let pain be your guide!”
He heard her sob to his right, and he turned to look. She had collapsed to the ground, and though he could now see that she was suffering no real injury, she truly believed that she was. The illusion here was very strong. She had given up screaming now, and was only barely whimpering.
She was not strong enough for this.
He knelt down beside her as the flames continued to retreat for him, their heat dissipating rapidly. D’Arden took hold of her hand and sliced his blade along it, drawing a thin line of red forth. She yelped, a pitiful sound of the dying caused yet more pain, but he could see that the heat was beginning to fade for her as well.
Slowly, she sat up at last. There was a haunted look in her eyes that reminded him of the night they had first met, which seemed far longer ago than it was. “Is this the kind of thing you deal with every day?”
“Not exactly,” he admitted. “I haven’t encountered this much corruption in many years.”
“When was the last time?” she asked.
“Mount Tzoggoth,” he replied immediately, offering a hand to help her up.
She accepted it and rose to her feet, a bit unsteady but otherwise looking unharmed. She gripped the handle of her manna blade as though it were her only lifeline, and perhaps in a way it was. She was still not fully attuned to the blade, and it would take a few years of training before she would completely understand its power, but for now her simple prowess with the sword would be enough.
They approached the next doorway. As D’Arden looked through it, he saw only what seemed to be an endless procession of doorways attached to square stone rooms. They appeared to go infinitely into each other, vanishing eventually into the darkness. He shook his head. He did not know how long that they would last with these trials. Eventually, an illusion would fool himself or his student completely, and they would be lost forever inside the bowels of this ancient fortress.
Laughter echoed through the stone halls, its source unseen but the sound unmistakable. It was not maniacal laughter, not the laugh of the truly mad, but instead the cold, calculated sound of a mastermind who was enjoying the results of his plan too well.
“Are you enjoying my maze, little ones?” a voice asked.
The Arbiter’s head snapped around as he searched for the source of the voice. It sounded all too familiar, and the words sunk deep into him and filled him with a dread that was entirely unspeakable, a feeling that could not be put into words. His knees felt weak, and sweat began to bead on his forehead.
Elisa looked at him strangely. “Are you all right?”
D’Arden felt as though it was difficult to breathe, and there was no illusion causing that feeling. He coughed, and the light from his manna blade flickered angrily in response to his sudden stress.
“We’re in a lot of trouble,” he murmured when once again he could finally speak.
“Do you know that voice?” she asked.
“Yes, tell her, D’Arden,” the voice mocked from its ethereal position. “Tell her that you know exactly who was sent to Calessa five years ago. Tell her that you know exactly who I am, and what I intend to do to the both of you before the day is out. Tell her all the things she wants to know, because in a very short amount of time, she won’t be hearing anything any longer.”
“Who is it?” Elisa asked, a note of fear rising in her voice.
“I haven’t heard that voice in many years,” D’Arden said softly, his brain still stammering uselessly as the realization of exactly what he was in for sunk in. “It’s been almost twenty long years since I’ve heard that cadence, those words, that voice. There was a time when it would comfort me, when it would reassure my fears away, and when I might have felt better for hearing it.
“Now my heart fills only with dread, and with sorrow, for many questions have now been answered, but so many more have become apparent.”
D’Arden took a step forward and held his head high, bringing up his manna blade before him and staring deeply into the light, hoping there to find some sort of comfort.
“Come out, Havox Khaine!” he intoned, making his voice as deep and confident as he possibly could. “Drop this ridiculous charade and make some semblance of the honor that you once carried as a member of our illustrious Order! Stop hiding behind your traps and your illusions, you coward! Come out and fight!”
“Are you sure that’s what you want to do?” Elisa asked as the disembodied laughter echoed around them once again. “Who is he? Who is Havox Khaine?”
D’Arden bowed his head.
“My mentor. My teacher. My… friend.”
The stone room dissolved around them, and suddenly D’Arden saw through the illusion as it began to fade. The tiny stone rooms had never existed at all; in fact, they had fallen right into the trap laid by Khaine, the man who’d been his first Master as an Arbiter – the man who’d taught him nearly everything he knew about wielding the manna blade, purity and the danger of corruption.
They stood instead in a great chamber, with crumbled remains lying where before the stone walls of the interior of the fortress had stood. They had obviously been demolished in an effort to create what was in fact some kind of massive, twisted throne room.
Before them stretched a long staircase, constructed entirely of glossy black stone that resembled obsidian, but glowed softly with an ominous red light. It sparkled in the light in tones of red and orange. His eyes traveled up the massive stairway to the top, where sat his mentor, the first person who’d ever spoken to him in an official capacity as an Arbiter, the man who’d trained him and put him on the course to righteousness and purity, in a giant throne made of red and gold. So massive was the throne itself, so arrogant was its presentation that Khaine himself nearly disappeared when the entirety of it was viewed as a whole.
“Do you like my kingdom, young one?” Khaine’s voice boomed in the chamber, echoing and reverberating several times off of the walls. “Soon all of Calessa will be under my control, and then my power will spread farther yet. No more will the Arbiters bow a knee in fealty to the broken throne at Hartsknell. We shall rule with an iron fist, and the manna shall transform all who resist into our servants – or else they shall die. I have discovered true purity, my student – true purity lies in absolute power.”
“So that wolf I slew in the low quarter truly was your servant,” D’Arden sneered, finding no trace of the man he once respected and loved as a father in the apparition that sat before him. “It too spoke of power as purity. You are lost, Khaine. I may once have been your student, but this student has become more than his master obviously could ever have become. I have surpassed you. My dedication is to the land, and your ‘purity of power’ is killing this land and its inhabitants. What is power if there is no one left alive to rule over?”
Khaine laughed, a terrible sound that at once reminded D’Arden of the kindly laughter of his mentor and the screeching sound made by a demon all too amused by its prey. “Power is in the hand of those who hold it, Tal. You would not dare to stand against the power that I wield now. It is only with power that we can truly be free. You ask me what is power? I say that it is the ultimate goal of life, that which can only be attained through the death of those who stand in your way. Tell me, Tal, do you stand in my way?”
“I do,” D’Arden said, his voice proudly defiant.
Khaine clucked his tongue reproachfully. “I thought that you had much potential, D’Arden, when you were my student. I see now that I taught you the lessons of the Arbiters all too well. You cling to their false ideals like a child clings to its mother’s teat. You were not fit to be my apprentice.”
The figure rose from its seat atop the dais and slowly began to descend the staircase. As it came into view more closely, D’Arden could see that it was in fact the image of the man he’d loved so dearly. The same red hair, though it was graying around the temples. The same kind eyes, though they had been hardened and carried many more wrinkles now than they had the last time D’Arden had seen the man. Once an apprenticeship ended, an Arbiter was not likely to see their mentor again unless there were some kind of extenuating circumstances.
D’Arden wished they’d met again under different ones.
“What about your little acolyte there, Tal?” Khaine asked him. “Does she see the world the same way you do? How long has she been an Arbiter? Does she know that the Arbiter’s Tower has sent her to her certain death?”
“I’ve never been to the Arbiter’s Tower,” Elisa said before D’Arden could stop her. D’Arden mentally smacked his own forehead. There was no way that Elisa had been properly prepared for an encounter of this magnitude.
Khaine’s head tilted in an approximation of surprise. “You hold a manna blade. You wear the robes of an acolyte. Tell me, child, how is it that you have never before been to the Arbiter’s Tower?”
Elisa looked toward D’Arden for some sort of help, having realized that she’d said something wrong. He gave her a shrug in return; there was no helping it now. The truth might as well come out.
“I’ve been an Arbiter for less than a day,” she said, somewhat bitterly. D’Arden ached for her, having to face a confrontation like this so soon after her ordainment. Acolytes needed training; he’d been a fool to bring her here.
Khaine’s eyes blazed with interest and amusement. “How is that possible?”
“I have no idea, Khaine,” D’Arden said, echoing the bitter tone of Elisa’s statement. “She’d been bitten by a manna spinner. I gave her a dose from the heartblade to try and save her life. When I offered her body to the font, it revived her instead of dissolving her.”
"Interesting," Khaine mused, stroking his chin. As he approached closer, D'Arden could see that the cool blue eyes that had once belonged to his mentor were gone entirely – instead there blazed bright red light that usurped the entirety of his eyes. He was built more powerfully than D'Arden remembered, his arms bulging with muscles and blazing with strange red tattoos that appeared to be some sort of ancient language, all alive and burning with the power of the corrupted manna that had overtaken him.
"What say you, little one? Do you still stand beside him now that you have seen the power that I wield?" Khaine finally reached the bottom of the staircase and reached out one hand towards Elisa. She stiffened, but wisely she did not move as the disproportionately large hand stroked her cheek almost tenderly. "You have none of the training that my misguided former apprentice carries, none of the values of 'purity' and 'light' that would keep him from attaining all of his goals in life in a matter of moments. What say you?"
D'Arden felt himself tensing with rage also, his knuckles turning white as they gripped the handle of his manna blade. How dare he touch her with his corrupted fingertips, allowing the corrupted manna to flow through her? D'Arden knew though that Khaine well understood what he was doing; Elisa was not properly exposed to the pure manna yet – she'd only had two doses from the heartblade and would barely be considered an infant by the standards of the Arbiters. She was much more susceptible to his corrupted touch.
"Get away from her!" D'Arden shouted, swinging his blade at Khaine. The older man stepped backward quickly, and the blade sliced through the air only inches from Elisa's face. She flinched backwards and stumbled a step or two away as the manna blade cut through the air before her.
Khaine laughed again at his ineffectual attack. "You see, dear child," he said to Elisa, "This is what those values achieve and attain: nothing more than a blind attack that could have just as easily taken off your head as mine."
D'Arden found rage welling up inside him. This man had been everything to him once, and now he was openly mocking the very ideals he'd taught D'Arden to believe in. He struggled to fight back the anger, knowing that it would only blind him to Khaine's next illusion, whatever it might be.
"I knew they'd send an Arbiter," Khaine said, studying one hand dispassionately. "Of course they would, once they felt my power growing here. I never expected, though, that they would send you, Tal. Did the Grand Master even tell you that I was the one who'd been sent here five years ago? Did they even begin to hint at what you might find here in Calessa?"
"Of course they told me," D'Arden lied boldly. "I knew exactly what was going on here, and so did they. In fact, I volunteered to come here just so that I could be the one to put you down."
Khaine laughed again, and the sound boomed off the walls. "Such a brave boy, lying to your Master like that. The manna tells me more than you would ever imagine, Tal. Did you know that once you learn to see the manna clearly, you can see how it changes in a person? Even the poorest, most miserable of peasants has manna within them, and that manna can be changed or it can be manipulated, and those people can be utilized in ways that you would never imagine."
"That's ridiculous," D'Arden spat. "Only the Arbiters have enough manna within them to be read. The amount of manna in the normal person is miniscule, undetectable even by the most well-trained eye."
Khaine wagged a finger at D'Arden reproachfully. "Oh, how little you know. The manna itself is within everything, within everyone in the same amount. Arbiters have no more manna inside of them than anyone else."
"You're not making sense, Khaine," D'Arden said, narrowing his eyes. "Of course an Arbiter has more manna within them. That's why the heartblade exists, that's why regular exposure to the fonts is so necessary. That's how we survive, by tipping the balance of our bodies and our souls toward the manna."
