Legends of the War (War of the Magi Book 3) Read online

  “To all of you, I wish you a good evening,” Abe said as he rose. “I will see you at dawn. Sleep well. This may be the last evening we get to enjoy our rest.”

  Everyone bid Abe farewell, and the older dragon hunter departed.

  “I am going to bed,” Romarus said. “I am too old to stay up around fires and too reserved to say anything of myself. Campfires will put me to sleep faster than a spell.”

  He didn’t even give the four of them a chance to bid him farewell, as he headed for the stacks with a barely-lit book to go to sleep. It left Tetra, Zelda, Eric, and Yeva sitting around the bonfire.

  “I hope the three of you understand that Abe had a very crucial point,” Tetra said, wanting to end the night on a positive note after all that had transpired over the last full day. “Even if this older generation survives our encounter with Artemia, we are not long for this world. Perhaps Abe is, but his days of fighting will close soon, and he will become more of a thinker than a combatant. It is up to the three of you to mold the world as you see fit. Let love guide you. But also let your own actions guide you.”

  She stood, her knees creaky and her back stiff. Even if she hadn’t let herself die, she couldn’t erase all of the physical limitations that had come with letting go of her previous magic.

  “Tetra, I’m coming with you,” Zelda said. “I have some things I want to talk to you about.”

  “Of course,” Tetra said, thinking the girl just wanted an excuse to let Yeva and Eric be by themselves. “Yeva. Take all the time you need, but please don’t leave the library. The last thing we need is a fight tonight.”

  “Don’t worry,” Yeva said with the warmest smile she’d worn that Tetra had seen.

  Zelda quickly rose, bidding Eric and Yeva a hasty farewell, and then came to Tetra’s side. Tetra moved faster as she got momentum, but she never moved faster than a casual walk for a girl of Zelda’s age.

  “What is it, Zelda?”

  “One of the things I’ve been thinking about,” she said, followed by a prolonged pause. “Is if I can ever love someone back. You told me I was the embodiment of Chrystos, which… I guess I believe for the power I have. I should be grateful to have this kind of power. But it scares me. I don’t know that I will ever be able to love because of this.”

  “Why?” Tetra asked, genuinely perplexed. “Garo loved me.”

  “But he loved you before he knew about his place as a magi,” Zelda countered. “And besides, I imagine it’s easier for boys. For me, I… I don’t know. I can’t imagine falling in love. Everyone wants to kill me or use me for my power. I’ve never lived a normal day in my life. And I’m never going to, now that I know I’m made in the image of a god.”

  As much as Tetra wanted to give Zelda reassurances that things would turn out fine, the way the young girl made her points, Tetra found it difficult to disagree.

  “To be truthful with you, Zelda, I am unsure of how to respond. You are in a unique spot in history that no one living can relate to. Your power gives you great authority and responsibility, but, yes, I suppose it also comes with social limitations.”

  Tetra felt terrible not giving Zelda an uplifting answer. But nothing she could come up with would register as even having a hint of truth.

  “I think you’re going to have to figure this one out for yourself,” she said. “I know that is not a good answer. But think of all that you’ve figured out for yourself so far. You reached Dabira on your own. You helped save many of us from the destruction of Dabira. You went with Abe to try and find Ragnor. And now you’re here.”

  “But all of that came from my power, Tetra,” she said. Her words were becoming emotional. “I don’t know what I can do with my relationships. I just…”

  Tetra did the only thing she could think of in that moment.

  She hugged Zelda, and she embraced her as if she were her own daughter.

  Zelda let a few sniffles emerge, but Tetra knew she was trying to resist letting them fall.

  “I’m sorry,” Zelda said. “I’m being weak right now. Mama wouldn’t—”

  “Shh,” Tetra hushed her. “You said you wanted to stop following in your Mama’s footsteps? Let yourself cry. It’s OK to have moments like these. If you get them out now, it makes it easier to focus later.”

  “Does it?” Zelda said, her words hopeful for a positive answer.

  “Entirely so,” Tetra said. “Those moments of recluse I had to myself when I could express all of my emotions meant I didn’t have to express them in the middle of battle or with Garo. You should do the same.”

  Zelda nodded, though Tetra suspected her words hadn’t completely registered yet.

  “Look, for all of our talk about love, I don’t suspect that we’re going to make any new romances in the next couple of weeks.”

  “Except for those two,” Zelda said, nodding back.

  A thought came to mind, one Tetra thought had to be asked.

  “Are you jealous of what’s forming with them?”

  “No,” Zelda said with enough confidence that Tetra believed her. “I don’t look at him and feel anything other than gratitude to have someone else who can fight in the group. Could that change?”

  Tetra was silent for a few moments before realizing the question wasn’t rhetorical.

  “A lot of things can change,” Tetra said. “But right now… I know this isn’t a good answer. But just know that when we defeat Artemia, a lot will change. And you can figure out then if you can find someone. I know you can, if you try. But let’s worry about that after the fact. Can you promise me that?”

  Zelda’s eyes dropped, her arms crossed, and she bit her lip.

  “If you promise to have a conversation with me about this before you die,” she said.

  “Of course,” Tetra said.

  The two finished their walk to a new room where Romarus slept around a new bonfire. Zelda and Tetra curled up as well near it for warmth.

  Yeva arrived about ten minutes later, and Tetra closed her eyes, knowing that she could sleep peacefully for perhaps the last time.

  Everything that needed to be said had finally been said.

  CHAPTER 14: ARTEMIA

  For nearly two months, Artemia had not seen this side of Hydor.

  But now, finally, after defeating two legendary dragons, acquiring monsters of hell, playing the emperor like a fiddle, and gathering enough resources and dispatching enough obstacles to take on her greatest challenge yet, she had returned to the place where it all started.

  Mathos. Home of the Dragon Hunter’s Guild. Home of her ascension from bullied, isolated girl into the most powerful human in all of the land.

  She smiled with arms crossed as the ship docked in the middle of the afternoon, perhaps a few hours before sunset came. The monsters bounded off the ship before it had completely anchored, eager for space to run and terrorize.

  The guards, meanwhile, silently suffered. Artemia had provided them with the minimum amount of food and water necessary and had ignored their cries for rest. Their skin peeled from sunburn, their legs shook from exhaustion, and their voices croaked from the lack of water. But it didn’t matter. These men were her pawns, and one didn’t waste resources on pawns, especially when one would rule all of the land someday. She held them not for purposes of battle, but mere entertainment.

  With the ship fully set, Artemia step off the deck and smiled. The Dragon Hunter’s Guild was less than a mile away and visible at this point. She glanced at the rising tower in the middle, the spot where many a hunter had attempted to jump in order to tackle beasts who had come too close. A few succeeded. Most might as well have jumped to die, because that’s exactly what happened.

  “Let’s go,” Artemia snapped to the guards. She could see the strain in their faces, but they still believed they might live if they did as she said. Artemia did not know, nor did she care, if they would get that opportunity.

  Odin offered her a seat on his horse, but she declined. She wanted to feel Math
os beneath her feet, let its citizens notice the return of the monsters in a slow fashion, and have the chance to think about what would happen.

  More importantly, though, she needed to return to the Dragon Hunter’s Guild to do some research on Bahamut.

  When she reached the doorway, she noticed some small details that had come from her absence. The grass and the plants had grown to an unacceptable height, in part because no one cared for the place. Blood from the most recent hunt—the one Eric had jumped from a tower for—had not yet been washed away. The doors hadn’t rusted, but opening them took more strain than usual. This was unacceptable, but for now, it didn’t matter as much as getting what she needed. If the chores would not have sapped the guards’ energy…

  What am I thinking?

  “Soldiers,” she said. They all snapped to attention, having walked crouched forward and with shuffled steps. “Stand outside here and clean the walls. My monsters. Make sure they stay alert. If they falter more than once, kill them.”

  She turned before the soldiers could raise a protest. She stepped inside the front door and closed it behind her, grinding it shut it all the way.

  She turned and looked at the red carpet on the ground. She stepped slowly, thinking about the first time she had walked across that carpet as the guild master. She smirked, remembering the level of execution—literally—it had taken to ensure her place. She’d done the guild a favor. The other candidates for that leadership position, including the man who held it before her, were weak and indecisive.

  So many had doubted her, most notably her brother. So many had derided her and declared her worthless. So many questioned her skills as the guild master or as a hunter.

  What better proof of her success could there be than the slaughter of two legendary dragons?

  But what could be better still than the slaughter of the final legendary dragon?

  She continued moving to the doors leading to her basement entrance. It felt strange walking in a building with no one else present. It tempted her to explore the entirety of the guild, if for no other reason than to see if anyone had looted the place, but that didn’t matter. She could always recover stolen goods and execute the thieves. More pressing matters required her attention.

  She came to the spiral stairs and took them down. She came to the first door and laughed at herself.

  The lab. The place where she mixed dragon blood and drank it, thinking that she might have a chance at acquiring magic that way.

  How stupid could she have been? Artemia wanted to punish herself for being so naive and dumb. Just like Auron said. You fool. You pathetic fool.

  She continued on before her self-flagellation became too overwhelming and came to the desk where her assistant had worked. She hadn’t seen her in months, having left her behind when they went to Caia. Just as well, Artemia thought. The monsters had replaced her assistant, whose name she hadn’t even bothered to remember.

  She opened the doors to her chamber. The fireplace remained unlit. Her chair had accumulated dust. And on the wall, she saw the image that brought a grin to her face.

  The three legendary dragons circling each other. Indica, Ragnor, and Bahamut, with the final one standing above all of them.

  She reached up and grabbed the painting. She looked at it, nodded, and then punched two holes in it, one through Indica, and one through Ragnor. She laughed as she powered her fist through the mural.

  Though a valuable painting, currency wouldn’t matter in comparison to power. The ability to kill had a tendency to eradicate any advantages trade of money would provide, and she would have the ability to annihilate not just an individual, but a society, once she defeated Bahamut. Maybe even a world.

  But the first question that came up was “Where would I find Bahamut?”

  She went to her working desk and scrambled some papers together until she found a map of where the dragons lived. The map, now that she could compare the locations of two of the dragons to what was sketched, was actually quite accurate. Indica had resided to the southeast of Caia, and Ragnor had remained in the southernmost mountains, in a valley full of ice and snow tucked tightly between high mountain ranges.

  But unfortunately, for where Bahamut rested, there was just a giant circle covering what looked like hundreds of square miles.

  She knew they would have to march north, perhaps past where even the maps of Hydor covered. Humanity, it seemed, had feared the dragon for so long that they had stopped exploring the northern lands for their maps at some point. With good reason, Artemia supposed. For all her thoughts of defeating Bahamut, she had to remind herself that this dragon would have more power than Indica and Ragnor. Some humility might do her some good in preparing for this battle.

  Then she laughed. With the monsters of Ragnor, what chance would Bahamut have? She could not lose. She would not lose. She simply could not imagine how she would fall to Bahamut.

  Once she found it, of course. That would be the biggest challenge yet.

  She read through as many reports as she could find about Bahamut. She found the one about what Garo had done, nearly defeating the dragon before he left, thinking it dead, only for the soldiers to not have found its body. Artemia didn’t even acknowledge the chance that the dragon would have perished because of Garo. Something would have happened or someone would have found its body by now.

  The rest of the reports since that time told only tall tales. Some men mentioned witnessing a large beast in the sky, but the darkness or clouds obscured their full view. No one ever saw the full view of Bahamut, and Artemia suspected either these men did not know what Bahamut looked like, or the dragon liked playing coy with humans, using its image and reputation as a means of instilling fear into them. Both seemed equally likely.

  The last report she read talked about the magical powers that Bahamut possessed. In short, it had all of them. Elemental, physical, perhaps even summoning, though no one had ever seen that. The report noted, though, that Bahamut had a legendary attack, one that it needed to fully charge, that would eradicate anything standing in its way with a great and mighty blast. It would rend not just a man or a force dead, but could also rend asunder an entire city. It warned that whatever damage any other being could do, Bahamut’s greatest attack would cause damage on an exponentially higher scale.

  All of this forced Artemia to consider briefly that she had overstepped her bounds. Bahamut had not come to them or been seen in over two hundred years. Perhaps that was the only reason humanity had spread. Not because of its ingenuity. But because of the disinterest of Hydor’s apex predator.

  But Bahamut also had power Artemia needed. She had to do it. She had left herself no choice but to follow her own wishes.

  Satisfied that she had reminded herself of all that she could, she walked back up the stairs. She paused once more, however, at the lab.

  She told herself not to go inside. She knew if she did, she would only feel rage and self-loathing for ever thinking that mixing blood would work.

  But she could not resist. She opened the door and stepped inside.

  At first, she tried to look at the vials of blood. She tried to take an academic approach and think about what could have made sense about her process.

  The answer, however, became apparent after just a few examinations: nothing. She had believed some tall tale, a tale outrageous even by the stories passed around in the guild, and had become desperate enough to try it. She had so sought to prove her brother and others wrong that she took whatever long shots she could.

  “You were so stupid,” Artemia said, laughing to herself. “So stupid. Really, how could you ever believe this would work? You didn’t know anything. Anything!”

  She continued mumbling to herself as she went through the lab. Then she came to the end. She saw a report written in her handwriting. She picked it up to read it.

  “It has become clear that I have not drunk the blood of the right dragons.”

  “You don’t say, you fool.”

>   “I believe that I will need to collect the blood of the legendary dragons. If I drink from them, then I will have power.”

  “No you won’t! It’s the essence, not blood!”

  “I know that this is the final—”

  Artemia couldn’t read anymore. She ripped the paper in half, then ripped at it some more, blindly tearing at it and shredding it in her hands. She even cut herself with her nails, though she did not notice.

  “You’re such a fool!” she shrieked.

  Losing her mind, she went over and slammed the vials to the ground, unconcerned with the shattered glass and blood spilling everywhere.

  “Remember when your brother said you would never amount to anything?!?” she yelled, every word accentuated with a shattering of a tube. “Remember when you were such a fool?!? How does it feel, Artemia? To know how worthless you are! You can only become great by killing! You can’t stand on your own! You’re worthless! You’re scum! You’ll never get the respect of anyone!”

  She broke many more pieces in the room until nothing remained. When she did this, she let out one final, shrill scream and overturned the entire table.

  She caught her breath as she stared at the carnage she had inflicted. She was a fool. She had tried to pass off the self-hatred for so long by remaining emotionless and cold. She had tried to grow her confidence by controlling other people. She had tried to rid herself of the self-loathing by killing her brother, believing that his death would make her the greatest Theros in the land.

  But it had only pushed her disgust for herself so deep that she wouldn’t uncover it until now. Perhaps she had thought about that when she had drank blood or done something else, like leave Eric behind, but now she knew the truth.

  “You want to prove yourself worthy,” she snarled. “Artemia. Don’t just say you killed Indica and Ragnor without actually doing anything. Kill Bahamut. Kill that dragon. Kill it. Kill it. Kill it! I! Said! Kill! It!”

  She couldn’t deny the truth now. She had not killed Indica or Ragnor, no matter how much she bragged about it to the emperor. She had assisted on the hunt, or perhaps even dragged the dragons down. But she had not actually delivered the fatal blow. The magi and Eric had.