Eidel

  A wet, rattling cough pulled Eidel’s attention downward.

  She followed the trail of scorched earth and churned mud until she found him.

  Zahir lay where the warlord had thrown him, armor cracked, blood spreading beneath his body in a dark, creeping pool. Each breath came shallow and wrong, his chest hitching as though it could no longer remember the rhythm it had followed all his life.

  Eidel dropped to her knees beside him at once. The battle noise dulled, receding until there was only the sound of his breathing and the pounding of her own heart. She took his hand, her fingers slick with blood, trembling despite every discipline drilled into her since childhood.

  “Zahir…” Her voice broke on his name.

  His eyes fluttered open. Blood stained his lips, but somehow, impossibly, he smiled.

  “Don’t,” he rasped, the word barely carried on breath. “Don’t look at me like that.” A cough wracked him, sharp and wet. “We’ve done…all we can.” He swallowed hard. “The rest…belongs to fate.”

  Tears spilled freely now, blurring Eidel’s vision.

  “Was I a fool?” she whispered, the question tearing itself from her chest before she could stop it. “Letting the girl go. Staying here to fight when we could have fled?”

  Her grip tightened on his hand. “I thought I was choosing what was right for our future…but I don’t know anymore.”

  Zahir did not answer at first. His eyes squeezed shut, pain tightening every line of his face. Eidel didn’t need a healer’s sight to know most of the damage was hidden inside him, beyond anything she could see.

  “I shouldn’t have listened to her,” Eidel murmured, shaking her head, her voice thin and raw. “She’s even more na?ve than I was.”

  Zahir coughed again, a violent spasm that stole his breath. When he spoke, his voice was barely there.

  “The red-haired girl…” he said slowly, carefully, as though each word cost him something precious. “She’s wiser than she knows.”

  Eidel shook her head, tears falling onto his armor. “I can’t do this without you,” she said, the admission slipping past her defenses. “I don’t know how.”

  “You must,” Zahir replied softly. His grip tightened, just barely. “And you won’t have to do it alone. Trust others.” His gaze lifted, unfocused but steady in its intent. “There are…good people here.”

  She nodded, swallowing hard. “The Imperator,” she said quietly. “He’s a decent man.”

  Zahir’s lips twitched, a ghost of a smile. Then his eyes drifted, focus slipping as the weight of the night bore down on him.

  Crunch.

  A heavy step cut through the crackle of fire.

  Then another.

  Eidel stiffened.

  She turned slowly, dread pooling in her stomach.

  Gabul emerged from the flames.

  His armor was blackened and glowing at the seams, heat shimmering around him. Blood slicked his tusks, dark and fresh. In one massive hand, he dragged his sword behind him, the blade carving deep furrows through the earth as though the ground itself offered no resistance.

  The fire parted for him.

  And he smiled.

  “We can’t—” Rei gasped, the words tearing free as panic finally broke through her control.

  Her hands shook as she fired another flare skyward. Then another. Three burned red against the night…and then more, one after the other, her arm trembling as she sent them up again and again as if sheer insistence might force the world to answer.

  Nothing came.

  Eidel closed her eyes.

  For a heartbeat, the battlefield vanished.

  She drew in a slow breath through her nose, then let it out just as carefully. Again. Slower this time. She felt the ground beneath her boots, the ache in her muscles.

  Her pulse steadied.

  Eidel opened her eyes.

  She rose to her feet and stepped forward.

  Gabul watched her approach, the firelight sliding across his blackened armor. His tusked grin widened, slow and pleased, as he lifted his massive sword with deliberate ease, as though savoring the moment before the end.

  Eidel felt the weight of his gaze settle on her.

  Her eyes flared again, violet light burning bright, runes stirring beneath the surface like waking embers.

  And this time—

  She did not look away.

  —

  Darkness swallowed the world.

  Eidel drifted within a black, endless void of a room floating above her enemy. Metal bars surged upward from nothingness, locking into place around the massive orc beneath her. The cage sealed shut with a hollow clang that echoed through the abyss.

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  Gabul did not flinch.

  He stood at its center, broad shoulders relaxed, tusked mouth curling into something that might have been amusement. His red eyes swept the prison once, dismissively.

  “Hah,” he rumbled, the sound scraping like stones dragged together. “Humans.”

  He spat the word.

  “Always think tricks make you gods.”

  Eidel hovered above him, robes stirring in a wind that did not exist. Violet light bled softly from her eyes as she stared down at the creature that had brought ruin to the night.

  “Your name is Gabul,” she said.

  The orc’s gaze lifted.

  For a brief moment something like curiosity crossed his brutal features. One tusk scraped slowly against the other as he considered her.

  He did not deny it.

  “Why?” Eidel demanded, the word tearing free of her control. “Why break the Compact? Why plunge everything into war?”

  Gabul’s lip curled.

  He yawned, then reached out and casually wrapped one massive hand around a bar. The metal groaned beneath his grip. Slowly, deliberately, he turned his head back to her.

  “You already know,” he said. “Compact good for your kind. Bad for us.”

  He leaned closer to the bars, eyes burning brighter.

  “You grow late. You grow clever.” His grin widened. “We grow strong from birth. And then nothing.”

  Her breath caught.

  She had read the theories. Claims that the Compact favored races whose strength bloomed later in life, humans and elves foremost among them.

  It had never quite convinced her.

  Other races grew stronger with time as well, such as dark elves, dragons, and stonekin.

  Was this truly about a perceived imbalance?

  Or was balance nothing more than a story?

  Gabul’s grin widened, teeth yellow and cruel.

  “You knew this was coming,” he growled softly.

  He laughed, a deep, ugly sound that rolled through the void like distant thunder.

  “You knew we would break it,” he continued. “Knew this would be the last warp cycle.” His eyes gleamed. “You just hoped we would be too stupid. Too slow.”

  Eidel’s blood ran cold. “You wanted us to know.”

  Understanding slid into place, sharp and merciless.

  “You wanted our families to send their best,” she said. “Our heirs. Our champions. You wanted them stranded on the islands…”

  Her breath caught.

  “…so you could butcher them before they ever had time to grow.”

  Understanding settled in with brutal clarity.

  This wasn’t a reckless gamble. It was the opening blow—the first, carefully calculated move of a new war. A war meant to seize control of Gateway itself, and through it, the countless roads leading to worlds no alliance could ever hope to guard all at once.

  For cycle after cycle, the enemy races had sent their best and brightest into the system. Only now—only in this final cycle—had they allowed the truth to surface, just long enough to draw her and her allies’ elites into the open.

  So they could be culled.

  Including her.

  Gabul’s laughter boomed again, louder now, shaking the darkness itself.

  “We waited,” he said, raising one scarred hand, fingers spreading. “Five cycles. We bled. We starved. We learned patience.”

  His grin turned feral.

  “We left warriors behind. We fed them scraps of gems. Let them rot while we sharpened the knife.”

  Everything made sense.

  The uneven ship’s manifests. The races reporting stagnation. It hadn’t been misfortune.

  It had been preparation.

  “Everyone will flee to EverGreen,” Eidel said, forcing iron into her voice. “You don’t have the numbers to take the city.”

  Gabul stepped forward.

  The bars screamed.

  Metal warped and folded like wet clay as he pried the cage apart with contemptuous ease. The prison collapsed behind him, dissolving as though it had never truly existed.

  “Do not be so sure,” he said, voice dropping to a predator’s whisper. “Most of your ‘inners’ are already dead.”

  He moved.

  The distance vanished.

  One instant he was before her—then beneath her—one massive hand snapping up with impossible speed, fingers closing around her throat. The grip crushed air and sound alike.

  “We are many,” he growled, tightening his hold. “And a Dark One leads us.”

  Eidel’s eyes flared white-hot and blinding.

  The void shattered like glass.

  She severed the dream and tore herself free, the echo of his laughter lingering in the darkness long after the vision was gone.

  —

  Eidel tore free of the vision with a sharp intake of breath.

  Reality crashed back in around her—smoke, heat, screams, the copper tang of blood. Her heart pounded as the last of Gabul’s words echoed in her mind.

  A dark one leads us.

  Impossible.

  There was no conceivable way a Dark One could reach an island unnoticed. The wards alone should have screamed. The sentinels should have burned themselves out raising alarms. Unless…

  Unless they had found one weak enough to slip through.

  The ground trembled, snapping her thoughts apart.

  Gabul stirred.

  The warlord rolled his shoulders once, almost lazily, as if shrugging off a nap rather than the weight of her power. The battlefield snapped back into motion around him. Screams resumed. Steel rang. Fire crackled. And then his red eyes fixed on her.

  He lifted his sword.

  The movement was almost unreal; space itself seemed to compress as he crossed the distance in a blur, the ground cracking beneath his feet.

  Eidel barely had time to inhale.

  A streak of red-white fire slammed into him from the side.

  Rei.

  Her arm burned like a living furnace as she drove forward, her blade and flame biting into the orc’s armor. The impact rang like a struck anvil. Gabul froze, looking down in faint surprise as the heat scorched and chipped his blackened plate.

  For a heartbeat, hope flickered.

  Then Gabul backhanded her.

  The blow detonated through the air. Eidel heard the sickening crack before she saw Rei’s body hurled away, skidding across the earth in a lifeless tumble.

  “No—” Eidel whispered.

  Gabul turned back to her, unhurried now. Enjoying it.

  Eidel reached for her power.

  Nothing answered.

  Her mana was gone. Her limbs felt heavy, distant. She stumbled back a step as the orc loomed over her, shadow swallowing what little light remained.

  He raised the sword again.

  This time, there would be no interruption.

  Eidel closed her eyes.

  She thought of her people. Of Sinea’s silver towers and long echoing halls. Of banners snapping in the high wind. Of her father, who had died believing the future could still be saved.

  She had thought herself strong enough to change the tide alone.

  How foolish that seemed now.

  Still…she had chosen to stand. To stay. To fight when leaving would have been easier.

  At least she would die without shame.

  She exhaled slowly, steadying herself, waiting for the blade.

  KRAA—KRAA!

  The sound ripped through the moment like a tear in the world.

  That…bird?

  Eidel’s mind snagged on the sight of it. Its black wings cutting through smoke and fire, flying straight toward her. Toward him.

  Why was it coming this way?

  A bitter, helpless thought flickered through her panic.

  Stupid bird. Brave, yes, but hopeless. You can’t possibly hurt something like that.

  KRAA—KRAA!

  The cry came again, louder, closer.

  Eidel’s eyes snapped open.

  The sword was already descending, its shadow swallowing her whole.

  Then reality fractured.

  Light bent. Space folded in on itself.

  The raven vanished mid-flight—

  —and in its place stood a man.

  A long spiderweave coat billowed around him as his boots dug into the shattered earth. Messy blond hair spilled around a stars-and-stripes bandana, the red, white, and blue stark against smoke and fire. His massive blade met Gabul’s in a thunderous clash, shockwaves tearing outward as the impact cracked stone and flattened grass.

  For a single heartbeat, the world held its breath.

  The man looked up at the towering orc and grinned.

  “Round two, Gabul,” he growled, voice rough with promise, “let's finish this.”