The Vitalis Chronicles: Steps of Krakador (14 page)

“
Caspian?” The thought of the old Mage made Ardin smile in spite of himself. “You've seen him?”

Alisia let herself laugh at that. “
Yes, everyone is there. We're all waiting for you, Ardin; it's a beautiful place. Made just for the Magi.”

Ardin's smile slowly melted from him as he felt the distance grow between them.

“
What is it?”

“
I'm not a Mage, Alisia.”

“
You were meant to be with me, Ardin.”
It was her turn to touch his face, her hand just large enough to cover his cheek.
“
I know as much. There is a place for you here.”

“
But what about my family? Will I ever see them again?”

“
Ardin...”

The thought of never being reunited with his family struck from his mind straight to his heart, nearly causing him to topple over. It had never truly occurred to him that he might, but now, being offered a new life, he feared for that of his family.

“
They are where they were always meant to go.”
She smiled sadly, though he hardly found it reassuring.

“
Where I was meant to go...”

“
You will have a choice, I'm sure...”
He was hurting her; he could tell.
“
You should do what's best in the end, of course.”

“
But... I really have to make that choice?”

“
I don't think you can have both, Ardin.”

He raised his eyes again to look at her. She was pleading without any words, he knew that, and in a way he appreciated that she wouldn't press him. But in some small way he wished she would. Instead he simply stroked her hair, feeling the long auburn locks flow between his fingers before he held her close to him again.

“
You know that place in the mountains, Tertian's little castle overlooking the sea?”

“
Yeah...”

He could feel her smile softly against his neck. “
I still hope to meet you there someday... in my own way. That's where I'll always know to look for you.”

He didn't know what to say. Could she meet him there somehow? The thought made his broken hopes mend, though he knew it was in vain, even if only for a moment.

“
You need to build your defenses here, Ardin.”
The sadness in her voice made his throat twist.
“
You don't have much time. Build them well, so that no one could ever find their way in.”

“
How will I bring you back?” He didn't want to let go, but she took a step back from him anyways.

“
Call for me.”
His heart began to crack as she faded away.
“
You'll know how.”

And with no other words, she was gone. The emptiness in his very core told him exactly how he would choose. It broke his heart to say goodbye to his family, to think that he would never see them again, but it would kill him to say goodbye to her.

He didn't have time to waste. Having Alisia leave brought him back to the reality of his situation all too quickly. He didn't even know how long he had to do this. He let his imagination go to work, starting with the thickest walls he could imagine, building a sphere around himself so that soon he floated in the center of a giant globe. The walls themselves were plain, and that was good enough for now. He needed to make an entrance.

Mazes formed in his mind and came into existence beyond the globe, stretching for as far as his ability could reach. The entrance to the maze he opened in a mountain range that he drew from the mists of the plain. He hid the entrance under a large stone. Not the most creative of entrances, but he could modify it later. He would, in fact, modify it regularly in case any intruder began working to break his way in. Maintain the landscape's appearance to the outside observer, but keep the elements in motion; he didn't know why, but the necessity of it was well settled in his mind.

The maze itself he hid in a jungle of his own creation, modeled after the one that had surrounded White Shores. It was, he reasoned, one of the more confusing terrains he had ever seen, and should the entrance be found, the maze should be impossible. The strange uniformity to the tropical topography made it an illusion of its own, and the undergrowth slowed any progress exponentially. The walls and twists and turns of the maze he disguised as trees and ferns, lacing the dead ends with thorns to slow the progress of anyone unlucky enough to find themselves there. Whether this could actually work or simply proved he was going insane, he didn't know. But then again, building physical things like walls to keep someone out of his mind was along the same line of madness if he was.

He wove the maze around and around the walls, memorizing the path that would lead him to the entrance to his mind, building timed alterations to keep the path in constant flux in a pattern only he would know. He smiled. This was actually a lot of fun. When he was finally done with the maze, he returned to the globe, where he had left a hole small enough to fit through if you crawled. This he covered with vines and moss, then sealed it with a false wall that would only open on his command.

Alisia's warning about not locking himself out of his own mind rang in the back of his memory, and he forced himself to focus on memorizing what he had created.
Better to be locked out
, he figured,
than have the Relequim inside.

He completely lost track of time; the feel of pure creation sucked him in and gave him a high unlike anything he had felt in ages. Now came the fun part: making a home for himself. A place to bring Alisia. He began a foundation, then realized he would need to fill in the sphere to make sense of it. He wiped the foundation away, dissatisfied with its blocky commonness. In a way he liked the broad, open sphere.

He spent some time detailing the walls, carving faux arches and tapestries in the stone while his thoughts wandered. Then he had it! He would create a floating castle, one with no up or down, but one that grew from the center outwards in every direction. He began with the towers, then realized he hadn't left himself any room to build save down.

After a few false starts, he had the skeleton of a castle blooming like some strange, gray, bulbous flower.

“
Ardin!”
The world which he was creating reverberated with Tristram's booming voice.
“
Awake, Ardin!”

Ardin let his consciousness slip back to what he previously would have referred to as reality. Somehow the gritty nature of the world made it feel far less real than the dream he had let himself slip into.

“
What is it?” Ardin searched the gray world below, saddened to find it all the more real with every passing moment.

“
I fear we are too late.”

“
Too late for what?”

“
Below!”
Tristram gestured with his free hand, pointing towards the base of a group of high hills.

Ardin realized that the world wasn't so much gray as it was brown. In fact, he could see low vegetation from here, trees among the hills, even. And then he saw the bodies. The ground ahead was littered with broken men and women, scattered and killed as they had been fleeing.

And then he saw the monsters.

They looked like huge men in dark armor, horns sprouting from their helms and carrying larger axes than he had ever seen. And he realized what was going on.

“
Cid?” He looked up at Tristram, whose stare fixated on the swarming cluster ahead. “Is Cid down there?!”

“
Yes, though for his life I can only hope.”

Ardin looked back to the ground, augmenting his vision as he drew upon the warmth. There were hundreds of the things, possibly a couple thousand. They were pressing in towards something, someone. A man in brown swung his staff, manipulating the Atmosphere in ways unlike anything Ardin had ever seen before.

And Cid was there too, leaping into the air. But before he could land his final blow, an ax caught him in the side and flung him to the ground.

“
C
ID
!” Ardin twisted in Tristram's grip, pulling away and letting himself fall.

“
Ardin!”

But Ardin didn't need anyone's help to fly, not now. He needed to fall.

Ardin put his hands behind himself, letting out a burst of energy so powerful that he launched himself well ahead of Tristram instantaneously. The world came flying at him at blistering speed, the wind whipping at his new white cape so hard that he felt it might strangle and decapitate him. He didn't care. He pressed into the force of it and willed himself to go faster.

A new kind of mist joined the old as an ear-shattering crack let itself loose. His eyes were watering, so he shielded his face with a thought. The black things were looking up now, stopping to see what was coming. He was coming, white death on the wind.

Ardin braced his bones with the warmth and threw out ethereal cushions to keep from killing himself. He hit the ground with such force that the monsters he landed among flew back at the impact. The dust settled in the crater of his making, and Ardin drew his cloak up with him as he stood.

The black beasts didn't hesitate. They looked like horrors from the nightmares of the damned, but his fear for Cid overcame all others. Ardin drew his sword off his back, slamming an invisible hammer into the face of the first monster and catching the second on Caspian's steel. He spun the beast around, bringing the blade around in time to catch an incoming ax. Another shockwave emanated from him with a thought, splitting the monster in half and knocking three more on their backs.

Ardin roared, his rage mingling with the fear of losing his friend. The snarl stayed on his lips, his teeth bared as he welcomed the attack. Monster after monster leaped down into the crater with him. Each found itself split by his sword or his mind; he didn't care which. They would all die here with him if necessary.

The world twitched then twisted sideways. He shook his head,
Not now...
then the world vanished. He twirled in the mists before jumping back in. An ax caught him in the shoulder, and as he flew to the side the world vanished again.
Cid!

Ardin jumped back into the physical, his legs buckling as he fought to regain control. A boot came flying at his chest with a roar, catching him full-on and sending him onto his back. He shouted against the pain, his body flickering in portions as if uncertain where it should exist, and then another ax came down on his head.

He made the jump, wanting to scream but unable to do so in his ethereal state. And then the world appeared again. The monsters were lunging at him, hundreds of them, and as time slowed, his rage hit its peak. He couldn't afford this; Cid couldn't die because of him. He grit his teeth, and he yelled.

Ardin twisted, blasting fire in a condensed stream across the entire crater to clear its rim, throwing dozens of the nightmares back into their brothers. He ran up and out of it then, looking for Cid, to stand over him, the world still spinning but his body under control for now. The old man was on his side, ax still buried in the other. Blood pooled rapidly beneath him. Ardin howled to see it, matching the clamor of his newfound enemies.

A horn blasted among them, rattling his strange new armor, sending fire through his veins. He turned to face them, watched them circle, waiting for his guard to go down.

“
Well, come on then,” Ardin growled. “
COME AND FIND YOUR FATE!
”

He didn't wait for them to answer. He launched himself forward, blasting into them with a whirlwind of invisible power. Some were torn apart, but most were simply knocked about. He landed among them, taking note of the effectiveness of each attack. He twisted in place, sending a shockwave out with his sword and slicing through an entire circle of them.

That should do the trick,
he thought as he spun again. They backed away. Then one of them stepped forward.

The thing bowed down as it faced him, letting out the longest, most gut-wrenching howl he had ever heard. And then he knew why. The warnings were going off in his head, the enchantments he had set about himself doing their part. But the destabilizing nature of the Shadow and the uncertainty of Cid's fate combined to form a potent distraction. Now this thing's scream served as the only tell to their ploy. He was being struck from behind.

The ax connected with his back, splitting his cloak and armor like cheese in the powerful hands of the monster that wielded it. But it simply kept going, and it never so much as scratched him.

Ardin whipped around, bringing his sword up under its chin and shoving it into its skull before it could recover from the swing. The rush of the close call left him stunned for a moment.
I should be dead.
He twitched involuntarily as the monster dropped to the ground and grit his teeth to fight another lapse of his form.