Jesstin closed his eyes, and his thoughts drifted from the massacre. He could die there. Maybe he should. He could simply roll into the abyss and be done. The Conductor might find him when he returned, but assuming it would have any interest in him after he was stripped of his necromancy was just as arrogant as believing he could have won.
Rough hands tugged the back of his collar and flipped him onto his back. In a clap of pure instinct, he didn’t fight it, instead pretending to be unconscious.
The Conductor tried to rouse him with a rough shake, but he had nothing to fight back, nothing with which to defend himself. His heart pumped faster and faster as the creature slapped him, ground its boot into his side, then, exasperated, fell to the earth for a closer look.
One final, avaricious idea took shape. He’d get just one chance. Only one. If the creature’s angle was off, or an arm was positioned wrong...
Fuck it. Jesstin opened his eyes, zeroed in on the target, and launched himself forward with a roar that seared its way out of his gut. His hand sliced the air and connected with the Conductor’s flame. With a triumphant howl, he closed it in his fist and yanked with all his might.
Everything stopped. Hail halted midair. Blood from a nearby woman’s neck streamed sideways and hovered in place. The wailing and cursing and mayhem muted.
All except the sharp ping of a chain breaking.
The Conductor’s mouth hung unnaturally askew. Its tongue moved in crazed lashes, its eyes following the same pattern. Up, down, up, down, and around, like an animal in the forest who’d been surrounded. It batted its chest and screeched.
Jesstin crawled backward until he had enough distance to stand. He took one dazed look at the pulsing diadem in his hand before shoving it deep into his pocket, where he’d put the talisman Elloven had scolded him for being careless with. It wasn’t there, but he didn’t need it anymore. He had the only thing that mattered now.
He waited for the Conductor’s transformation into a fiend, but what happened instead was far more disturbing.
Its lips were the first to go. They tore away from the creature’s face and dissolved, the resultant dust floating in place. Its eyes went next, its sockets spitting them out in pops, then the fingers, shredding into stringy strips, and half of the architect of the biggest prison in history was no more.
The scenery faded. Colors dulled to dreary browns and grays. The people disappeared one by one.
Jesstin turned back to confirm Elloven had left, but he didn’t feel her at all. His senses had returned in the aftermath, and he knew absolutely that she was not there, not anymore. The trial had been his alone, and the past was still the past. Elloven and Taven had slipped in, somehow, but it wasn’t for them.
“I found you before. I’ll do it again,” he said and launched himself at the edges of the tableau. As he crashed into the crimson snow, a discordant warbling sounded behind him, and he looked back just as the entire scene retracted inward. He waited, his hand fixed in his pocket, until Mythgarde was gone.
Only then did he realize he’d lost his chance to retrieve his second vial.
The Conductor’s sacred flame warmed his leg through his thrashed trousers. He could destroy it. Should destroy it. But something bade him reach into his pocket and fold it into his palm instead.
The snowy scape dissolved into the ruddy, dun ochers of the spiral. It wasn’t where they’d lost each other but somewhere deeper, closer to the center, and he knew this not from any landmark, or even the map he’d lost in the turmoil, but from hard-earned wisdom.
Geysers of molten liquid sprayed the distant sky. It seemed a lifetime ago he’d leaped over the lava like a daredevil, Elloven latched to his shoulder.
Two doors appeared directly ahead in his path. They were both a plain, muted gray, not a stripe on either. There was nothing decorous about them at all, save a for single word carved on each. The first read THEM. The second, YOU. Between them was a sign, crooked and stuck crudely into the clay earth. ALL ENDS BEGIN HERE.
Jesstin surveyed the cursed hellscape. There was no sign of the Conductor, and though he’d started to feel Elloven again, he didn’t see her either.
What each door offered was clear. The one on the left was for the dead, the one Mon had poured all his faith into. On the right was Jesstin’s way home, his means of saving Elloven. If he wasn’t careful, it was also the door that would offer entry to Ryquin. He’d never promised the dead deliverance, but his conscience couldn’t carry the weight of knowing he’d damned them to worse misery.
He’d open THEM first, then he’d find Elloven.
And pray like hell he could actually do what he’d crossed worlds to do.
Jesstin approached THEM and reached for the handle, expecting a shock or a sting, some sort of response. It felt no different than handles he’d used a thousand times before though: cool, metallic, smooth. No one was there to explain whether there were rules, or what exactly would happen next. He was on his own. The task, and its consequences, belonged to him alone.
But when he tugged, the door wouldn’t budge. He tried again with more force, but it was soundly stuck, like the frame itself was sealed with mortar.
Jesstin backed up until he had enough runway, then vaulted forward and slammed his entire body into it, but it didn’t even budge. He went sprawling onto the dusty earth.
With his shoulder on fire, he climbed to his feet and searched for a key. He looked under rocks, dug in the dirt, and patted along the door’s frame. But then he noticed there was no keyhole at all.
He mopped the sweat from his eyes. Guardians, he was thirsty. Parched. Their provisions could be anywhere. He doubted there was water anywhere near the lifeless span. There had been no animals, plants... not even desert shrubs. It was a place where nothing could thrive.
The Conductor’s flame throbbed in his hand. He’d almost forgotten it was there.
Jesstin tied the broken clasp into a knot and slipped the diadem over his neck. He waited to see if anything happened, but there was nothing, just like when his own flame had been stolen.
