Yuma smiled.
“Then I shall return to Danras, Your Majesty. My old friend Aidan has arrived. I must explain a few things to him, as he must be very confused.”
“Very well. I will stay here a bit longer.”
Yuma whistled. Aston came running. Arienne took Tychon from Yuma, watched her mount, then returned the basket to her. Yuma tipped her hat, held the basket close to her chest, and took off toward Danras.
In the world outside of her mind, Arienne drew a large oval in the air with her finger, and patted Aron’s flank. The exhausted donkey stood up, and Arienne managed to goad him into the oval.
“There now, plenty of grass. And water, over there.” She pointed to a pond in the rushes. Aron perked up his ears and lightly trotted toward it. “Huh. You’ve been playing sick all along!”
Aron ignored her and began to drink. A frog jumped out of the pond. The peaceful sight of Aron grazing made her repeat Yuma’s words to herself.
“As long as you shall live, as the King of Merseh… as long as you shall live…”
When Arienne died, this new country would also be no more. Perhaps that was less of a vow and more of a reminder that she would not live forever.
A plan she once had, from what felt like a very long time ago, returned to her now—an idea about raising apprentices in Arland.
It would be an arduous journey back. She was already weak from the whole ordeal at Eldred’s old castle, and putting an entire country inside her mind had taken so much out of her. There were the vast wasteland and the treacherous Rook Mountains to cross. She wondered if she would ever recover from this, or even whether she would survive the return trip all by herself.
Then, she remembered that she wasn’t alone. She had Tychon. She had Noam. She had, now, Merseh. Her very own country, alive and resplendent in her mind.
She gently pulled the donkey’s rein. “It’s time to go, Aron. We have a long journey ahead of us.” She drew a circle in the air, creating a portal out of her mind’s Merseh. Aron followed her out, without so much as a bray.
Once again, Arienne began to walk the darkened wasteland, leaning on Aron. This time, toward home.
42
YUMA
Even with its chest pierced through, the Grim King’s monster continued to attack. Its sharp claws left large gashes on Apollyon’s body, but a machine was too different from a creature made from tendons and bones and muscle. The monster was eventually turned into a lump of trembling flesh and was tossed aside. The Empire’s machine, damaged in places, nevertheless continued its approach at the same pace as before.
As if the Grim King had expected this, he seemed regretful but unsurprised. Yuma had also expected this outcome. The only thing that was left… Just as she thought of this, Apollyon’s chest glowed red again and shot a bright beam of light directly at the gates of the wall surrounding the castle. There was a sound like a thousand mirrors smashing at once.
“This is truly the end, Chief Herder of Danras.” The Grim King sounded wistful yet somewhat detached, like a man watching a tragic play about himself, at the end of the performance.
Yuma looked down below. The Fifth Legion was now advancing through the broken gates, and the corpse army was no match for the Imperials with their Powered weapons. Still, Yuma felt no sympathy for the Grim King—even if he had provided shelter and food, cared for her as she gave birth to Tychon, did not so much as raise his voice to her.
For half a year of good deeds did not erase five hundred years of evil. This ending was inevitable for the Grim King as long as he had continued on his course. The only tragedy about it was that it would happen by the hand of the Empire and not the people of Merseh whom he’d tormented. That the Grim King’s end did not come because he killed Jed and Rizona, nor because of his evil deeds over the past centuries. It came only because he happened to rule over a land that was strategically important to the Empire’s conquest. If the Grim King had ruled the northern lands of ice or some faraway island in the western seas, nothing would have happened to him even if he’d dispensed the same tyranny.
The blue lightning and black rain didn’t cease, and the flashes of light illuminated the last of the battle. Apollyon bent its tall body, casting a shadow over the soldiers below, before it grabbed a section of the castle.
The dais Yuma and the Grim King stood on began to shake. Yuma almost lost her balance, holding on to the baby in her arms. Seeing this, the Grim King murmured something, and the obsidian floor rose up to form something resembling a crib. Yuma laid Tychon inside it.
Apollyon’s other hand came up to where they were. Standing on the palm was a legionary in Powered armor.
The legionary raised his visor, revealing a familiar face. “ChiefHerder.” He was calm, his voice affectionate as ever, even in this field of battle where the sound of heavy rain striking the obsidian was deafening.
“Emissary.” Yuma addressed the father of her child, but she could not bring herself to show the love she still had for this man. A strike of lightning flashed.
Lysandros came down from the hand onto the dais. The armor he wore was larger and sturdier than what he had worn when fighting Garamund. He was carrying a large metal box in chains on his back, which Yuma recognized to be Fractica, the lead coffin, the Power generator. The Grim King glared at Lysandros, but the armored man did not even look in his direction as he spoke directly to Yuma.
“I came here to take you back.”
Yuma looked back at him. He was as beautiful as ever, just as he had been last winter, but his eyes seemed a little more tired. Perhaps he had tortured himself with worry. Yuma didn’t reply and looked down into the obsidian crib.
“Is that our child?”
