Spirits were far higher than they had been several days prior. The arrival of Liz and her reinforcements had done wonders to restore morale, and the soldiers were more than ready for their next battle. All over the fort, they prepared in their own ways. Some took to training to calm their nerves, and while it was too early to sleep, others drank and guffawed or enjoyed one last raucous conversation with their comrades.
Liz, their commander, was in Fort Towen’s war room. A shadow lingered on her dainty brow. Her most loyal retainers stood around her, in no doubt as to what was preying on her mind. At last, a short, silver-haired girl stepped forward as if to speak for the rest.
“Have you found Hiro?” she asked.
Liz shook her head limply. “For all I know, he’s been taken over by the Demiurgos.”
Immediately after Hiro’s escape, she had organized a search party of her closest allies and sent them in pursuit while she tried to track him down alone with the Far Sight. His trail, she had learned, vanished at Anfang Forest. As she drew closer, she had heard a thunderous explosion and felt the visceral weight of some terrible power. She had arrived at the spring to find it dried up and the statues shattered.
The spring had been her habitual bathing spot in the days she was posted at Fort Towen. Surrounded by flowers and sparkling with the faint presence of the spirits, it had been a welcome reprieve from her worries, as well as the place where she had first met Hiro. As exhausted as she now felt, finding him was her highest priority, but all her searching had yielded no trace of his whereabouts.
“For all you know?” Luka rounded on Liz, making no effort to hide her exasperation. “Surely if anybody here should know where he is, it’s you and your arcane eyes.”
Huginn stepped forward to restrain her. “Calm yourself, Miss Luka! Fighting with each other isn’t gonna help us find him any faster!”
“Lady Huginn is correct,” Scáthach said from where she leaned against the table. “A little more restraint is in order.” She turned to Liz with an apologetic smile. “If Lord Hiro eludes you, would it not be easier to track the Demiurgos instead?”
“You’d think so, but it doesn’t seem that way.”
Liz’s eyes had not lost their power. She could have scried from halfway across the world if she had wanted to, even on someone as distant as Lucia in the Vanir Triumvirate. It was more that Hiro and the Demiurgos were somehow exempt. She could not guess why that might have been, but she did remember detecting the power of the Lords not long after Hiro’s escape. She had sensed their clash well enough back then. Only now did they seem to have vanished.
“I can sense something else, though,” she continued hesitantly. “In the middle of the Demiurgos’s army. Something new. Unfamiliar.”
“Could it be him?” Scáthach asked.
Liz tilted her head, her brow furrowing. “I can’t be sure. It feels like him, a little, but there’s all sorts of other things mixed in too. It’s too hard to tell.”
“If that is indeed the One-Eyed Dragon,” Garda said, “we must ask ourselves whether it is possible to retrieve him.”
“Agreed. Even if it really is him, how are we supposed to get to him?” Liz shook her head. The only way to be sure what she was sensing was to see for herself on the battlefield. It might very well not be Hiro at all.
Selene had been quiet, leaning on the wall, but as the group fell silent, she raised her voice. “There is one thing I’m curious about.”
Liz looked up. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing much. I just thought, if the Demiurgos is missing, who’s leading his army?”
“This newcomer, maybe? They certainly feel stronger than the others.”
“If Hiro and the Demiurgos are both missing, they’re the most likely suspect. As I see it, at least.” Selene looked around the room, studying the others’ faces. “I just hope you’re all prepared for the worst. Once battle starts, you fight or you die. Unless you plan on sitting back and watching the empire fall.”
The coming battle would have no room for mercy. If this newcomer truly was Hiro, they would have to be ready to face him and to cut him down if need be.
“No need to be hasty,” Scáthach said. “There may be alternatives yet. That said, I no longer believe we can spare any more effort searching for Lord Hiro. The enemy before us demands our attention.” She turned to Liz. “You do not object, I trust?”
“No. Of course not. Our problem now is the monsters. We can work out what to do about him after they’re dealt with.”
There was no time for indecision. The final battle with the Demiurgos’s forces was at hand. What was at stake was bigger than any one person.
“We should adjourn for today,” Selene said. “I’m sure we all have a lot to think about.”
She clapped her hands, shooing the rest from the room. Once they were gone, she followed them out with a sigh almost too quiet to hear.
As the door closed, Liz clenched her teeth, trying with all her might to hold back tears. Her chair gave a hollow creak as she leaned back and buried her face in her hands.
“Again. I’ve lost him again...”
At her feet, a white wolf watched in silence as her shoulders began to tremble.
＊＊＊＊＊
Eerie shadows danced in the torchlight. Howls split the night, resounding to the beat of drums made from human skin and bone. They formed a battle chant, a potent narcotic to set the blood aflame. Brawls broke out as the hypnotizing beat overcame the monsters. Bone crunched. Blood sprayed. The fights did not stop; they were to the death. Monsters were creatures of feral instinct, and their instincts told them to kill; to stand and to fight and to savor the taste of victory.
All at once, their fervor cooled. As one, they sensed the malice regarding them, the cold disdain in the void-black eyes watching them from the dark. Like mice trapped by the eyes of a snake, the brawlers froze. Two of their heads sprang from their shoulders as they trembled in terror. The frenzied clamor quieted away, and cold dread swept in. All eyes turned, as if compelled, toward the darkness. The blood pools from the fighting pits formed a circle like a coliseum floor, strewn with dismembered bodies. And in the center stood a boy with black hair and black eyes, radiating an intense animosity.
A figure approached him. “My Lord,” it whispered, “have you grown accustomed to your new body?”
The boy flexed his fingers a few times, then reached out and crushed the head of a nearby yaldabaoth. Brain matter sprayed in every direction. Monsters swarmed about it, mistaking it for a gift.
“Well enough. Tomorrow, we bring all our forces to bear.”
Ceryneia’s lips trembled with emotion beneath his hood. “At last, the world will know your wrath.”
The boy did not so much as acknowledge the primozlosta. He turned and walked away.
Ceryneia hurried after him. “Your forces are ready, my Lord. They ache for battle. We have been starving them for days. They hunger for human flesh.” He spoke eagerly, possessed by a strange excitement. Even his master’s disdain did not deter him. “Our reinforcements from the north have halted, but we have a hundred thousand—and you, of course. Soon the banner of zlosta supremacy shall fly over—”
A sudden crash cut him off. The shattered remnants of a chair built from human skin and bone sailed through the night.