Kai and River were talking, their words swallowed by the outraged cries from Rigel’s army.Ione patted herself down for her monocular and lifted it to her eye, zeroing in on them.Kai’s movements were stilted, injured, but then he shuddered, seeming to regain control.He whirled towards River and took his face in his hands, saying something that made River grab his sleeves and shake his head.
“Stopping their attack is a good message,” Saros said, rubbing his chin.“But I’d like to send a better one.”
Nalu stood at his side, his hand healed and voice smug.“Teach them for their little surprise attack.”
Malia stormed in front of Saros.“He’s done enough, Saros.He’ll kill himself at this rate.”She lunged, throwing Nalu off of her when he cast for her wrist.“Kai!”she screamed, her voice coming out strangled.“Fall back!”
Kai didn’t so much as turn, even when River and now Hilo tugged at him, talked to him, shouted.Hilo moved to shove him, nearly falling when Kai just stepped out of the way.
“Now, Malia,” Saros tutted.“If he stops, then what?Leave the rest of your sons and our meagre crew to face death?”He sent her a scolding look.“A horrific way to go, immolation.You know Menon is our only way out of this.”He faced Kai again and drew his shoulders back.“Halve their army.”
As though merely opening a curtain, Kai swung one arm to the side.Water rushed, loud enough to snuff out the surprised cries, the screams.The sky darkened, and Ione craned her neck, horror flooding into her.
A tidal wave, taller than the mountain itself, swept up from the ocean and soared overhead.It plunged, blasting through the back half of Rigel’s army, before it gathered and shot skyward in monumental spikes of bloodied ice.
Something tightened around Ione’s stomach.Lina’s arms, struggling to hold her up, to keep her from sinking to her knees.Ione felt her lungs inflating, deflating, but she wasn’t taking in any air.She was drowning on dry land, imagining the pain, the sheer, inescapable terror these people suffered.The cruelty of it all.
There was a resoundingcrack, and the first ice spike shattered, followed by another, another.Shards of ice the size of boulders hurtled down to earth, each impact sending out shockwaves, more piercing screams.
“That wasn’t Kai.”Cynthia’s voice, brittle, yanked Ione back to the present.“Was it?”
“It wasn’t.Of course it wasn’t.”
“It wasn’t Kai,” Lina said.She swallowed, held Ione tighter to her.“But it wasn’t Menon, either.”
Ione’s hands were empty.She had dropped the monocular.She stooped, groping for it in the rough gravel, and brought it again to her eye.
River was still trying to talk to Kai.No response, nothing, just a reactive wave of power, the scent of the sea, of ozone.Somewhere nearby, Nalu laughed, pointed.“How’s it feel?”he goaded.“Not good, right?”He flashed a grin at Saros.“Make him dance, will you?”
Malia silenced him with a sharp slap.
White robes flickered, blown by the resounding magic in the air.“I think that should do,” Saros said amiably.“I’d like to see how they respond to that.”
At the far end of the field, Rigel’s army had stalled.Ione adjusted the dials on her monocular, squinting: Rigel emerged first from the carriage, resplendent in robes threaded with gold and dotted with rubies like drops of blood.
Lina’s breath hitched.She said nothing, but Ione could sense her rage, her bone-deep hatred.
And lilting softly beneath it, a siren’s song, Sowelan’s.
Moving to the front, but still well out of the way of Kai, Saros drew an amplifying ward in the air before him.
“We have Menon,” Saros said into the ward, his voice loud enough now to reach Rigel at the end of the field.“And as you can see, we have Sowelan.”He opened his hands, an incongruously casual posture.“I intended to negotiate, but I can see now that that is pointless.My suggestion of a parley was meant to be a gesture of goodwill.”
He let that settle over them all.Ione shivered, his friendly voice tinged with its usual meanness.A grandfatherly veneer that only she could see through when she was younger.
She couldn’t imagine how the opposing army, how Rigel, as odious as he was, felt to hear it now.
“You stormed our mountain to frighten us, to disguise your fear at the loss of your own God Incarnate.But we’ll call it what it really is: an insult, an unforgivable act of disrespect to our people, who have only ever harmed you in self-defence, and who had hoped to proffer you an olive branch.”Saros quieted, his tone lofty, prayerful.But Ione could hear the suppressed joy in it when he said, “If you think it is appropriate to spit in our face, then so be it.In your last moments, remember that we offered you a chance.”
Grass smoked, then burned, at the end of the field.Rigel stepped into the smouldering circle, another lower-tier ward that amplified his own words:
“You may kill me,” Rigel said, the familiar oily voice sending a chill up Ione’s spine.“You may destroy my army.You may even kill the successor.”
“Thank you,” Saros said.
Rigel didn’t give him the pleasure of reacting to that.“But Sowelan’s spirit will only be released back into the ether.”His tone was brave.Proud.He was a man marching to his gallows, and he knew it.“My work lives on,” Rigel finished, his voice echoing as the ember ward died out.“Soon, another will replace me, and summon Sowelan anew.”
Saros tittered.“We would be at risk of that, if I intended on letting any of you live.”His attention flew back to Kai, still standing stock-still ahead of them, still ignoring all attempts from River and Hilo and Mikau to speak to him.“Kai.”
