Theira’s expression turned fierce and exultant, and as sweat streamed off him, Varius felt it too.
All at once, they had a chance.
Together.
Chapter 4
Dayspassed,andtheypracticed.
Or perhaps more accurately, they played.
Theira stood in the back of her underground, watching as Varius’ golem army tore through the shield-wall of opponents she’d animated for him. Her side didn’t do anything but stand and punch on repeat, a pattern she could activate and then leave off controlling.
They were a delaying tactic for the real setup.
As one of his golems breached the line, it set off one of her spells, which detonated, sending a spray of rock and dirt into the air.
The sorcery-resistant golem was unaffected, but Varius’ vision wasn’t.
He’d learned to arrange formations around one golem—not the one he was inside—to give himself a point of focus, a way to help him filter and process the information. And now, when that golem ran into difficulty, he rapidly chose a golem in another position and switched.
They could only practice for so long before he was too mentally exhausted to continue, but it took longer every day, and they were able to get more and more sessions in.
Theira, frankly, was still astonished not even just that Varius could control all the golems, but at his level of sophistication.
One of his golems hurled one of hers across the room—which required Varius to manipulate clay arms and use them in a way unlike a human’s—at the same moment another kicked debris out of the way and yet another advanced.
He didn’t make each of them do complex motions simultaneously, but instead batched them, with either multiple teams of golems collectively doing the same maneuver or different sections of his army executing particular tasks.
And while Varius exulted in personally controlling an invincible army that would do whatever he wanted exactly to his own limits and he never had to worry about their injuries or death, Theira got to play.
No risk of hurting Varius, let alone the golems or her house.
So she unleashed explosions to blot Varius’ vision, or triggered illusions to turn the hall black as night, or launched bombs that filled the room with acidic haze.
She caught golems in traps of vines or her new sticky glue, while others arrested mid-step to change direction.
She drowned one in a pool of hot clay only to realize she’d melted the golem, so that wasn’t one to repeat except for extraordinary circumstances.
They had always been each other’s best match.
Sometimes Theira won, or Varius tired before they could finish. Some days his sorcery-invincible golems plowed through all her improvisations, or her newest experiments failed spectacularly.
But no matter the outcome, every time ended with Theira’s blood singing.
She thought Varius loved it too, but though she’d catch heat in his gaze and he’d flirt, he hadn’t made a move toward anything more.
Now that he’d finally seen a way to end the war, she guessed he was imagining the life he could go back to in the Aurelian Empire. Varius was an all-or-nothing sort, so she should be glad he cared enough not to start something he didn’t intend to finish.
So Theira would be his friend, and his accomplice, and if together they could end a war and then perhaps meet occasionally for dinner, she could live with that. It wasn’t what she wanted, but it was more than she’d had before, and she would survive.
But her heart still raced when Varius climbed golems on top of golems, balancing them to make a tower to reach the sorcerous construct she’d been using to spray sticky goo all over the field as well as covering their ‘eyes’, and pulled it from the air.
Theira was already launching her next attack and had to quickly deactivate it when Varius popped open his golem’s top and lifted himself out.
Shirtless, as he always practiced, and she could not decide whether he was taunting her on purpose.
“That’s it for me right now,” he said.
