Legends of the War (War of the Magi Book 3) Page 3

  When Tetra felt rage, she would sometimes veer back to the morose feeling of being caught in hell that came from having lost the man she’d known best for hundreds of years. But then, other times, she’d just feel hopeless. What was the point of going after the empire? They’d won. They’d gotten what they wanted. Her whole life, the evil empire had won. What made her think they were about to lose now? Because she’d killed Tyus? The emperor would find a woman before the evening ended to bear him a son he considered more worthy.

  Tetra’s life was suffering. Her life consisted of pain. And now the only thing that had kept her going that didn’t revolve around hatred and disgust had fallen, with Garo dead in her arms after she had spent years pretending she didn’t love him.

  Maybe she was better just ending it. Maybe the world had left her behind years ago. Maybe it was time to let a new wave of magi take over the fight for peace in Hydor.

  As it was, Tetra was already letting the end come to her in one fashion. She had let up on the magic required to keep her body looking young. She’d warned Yeva, fearful that the actual young girl would become too frightened to stay with her as she morphed from a woman in her mid-twenties to an elderly lady.

  Yeva, at first, swore that she would stick around. She said as long as it did not happen so rapidly that Tetra aged by years over the course of seconds, she could handle it. But Tetra could see the fear in Yeva’s eyes after just half a day of hiking east, and when Tetra gazed at herself in the reflection of different bodies of water, she, too, despaired at what she saw.

  Tetra hadn’t just aged. That would always happen at some point, no matter how much magic she used. No magi had ever discovered the power of immortality, and it seemed unlikely one would at any time in the age of Hydor.

  She’d aged unlike when she’d naturally reached a certain age. Her lines were more pronounced. Her eyes didn’t have the same glow that they did in her younger, naturally elder years. Her smile didn’t come as easily. Her face looked more natural resting in a disgusted, angry face than the one she had thought of when she pictured her naturally older years. The stereotype she had of the bitter old woman, the one who hated the world now that her man was gone—she was becoming that living stereotype.

  In short, the elimination of magic had not revealed Tetra’s ideal older self. It revealed her true, mutated, aged self.

  This was the sick punishment Tetra had to face, among many other retributions for her actions. She would not age gracefully. She had lost that right with all the stress, anger, and violence that she had clung to after years of pacifism, hope, and belief.

  But even with the dark personal thoughts that came to mind, even when she considered letting her magic go and her life end, even when she figured she should pass on the task of ending the empire to the next generation of magi—which, as far as she could tell, only included Zelda and Yeva—she couldn’t do it.

  Tetra wasn’t quite ready to end her life. She had two things that she still swore by accomplishing. One was to see the emperor die. It might have been futile to believe that the long-term future of the magi would ever get better, but at least she would have the personal satisfaction of seeing the Syrast family line die at her hands. She did not care if he took her down with her. She did not care if someone else worse rose in their absence.

  She just wanted the emperor gone. The Syrast family had tried to separate her, take her body, take her spirit, take her kind, and now had succeeded in taking her husband. This was no longer about the health of the magi, but about the personal revenge she needed to fulfill. She’d seen the line rise to true power over two hundred years ago, and her naive ways had prevented her from attacking the original Syrast. She had to take it upon herself to end it at Rufus.

  But the other thing that Tetra needed to fulfill was a task she had promised her late husband, Garo. She would head to the library in Caia, the building that had once protected the base of her former militia unit, the Shadows of the Empire. Garo had told her she needed to head there and collect more information from his meditations, and she swore to do it. Perhaps she would find something in there that she had not yet discovered. Perhaps she would discover the key to finding peace for the magi. Perhaps she would find a new reason to continue fighting. She found any of that unlikely, for Garo had shared most of what he knew with her.

  But… well, how much had they really shared with each other since Garo had become Gaius and her Kara? How much had they become separate people, an old librarian teaching the youth of Caia and a militant operative hellbent on killing the people the youth looked up to?

  Tetra didn’t think too hard on the question. She knew that the more that she thought about what he could have said, the more she would realize he would have more to share that she would never have listened to. And while that should have given her hope that she might find something worth acting on, it instead saddened her to know that there was a part of her husband she might not know. It gave her great guilt to know that she had shunned any potential advice from her husband for decades.

  Tetra and Yeva climbed past the waterfall and came to the cavern which had housed the behemoth from their last pass. Cautious, Tetra took the lead, utilizing spurts of fire to light the way. Every echo, step, and grunt could have foretold of the behemoth’s return. Every drop of water kept Tetra at full alert. Whenever the essence of Indica collided with her leg, she reached down for it, prepared to unleash its fury upon any obstacles, living or dead.

  But when she saw the afternoon light on the other side, Tetra finally breathed easy. She couldn’t smile in celebration. She honestly didn’t know if she would ever smile again. But at least they’d made it to the plains before Caia.

  “Can we rest?” Yeva asked when they had scaled down to the flat terrain. “I’m so exhausted. I wish we had Zelda or Romarus to give us some magic.”

  Tetra gave a brief snort in response. There was no rush. The fact that Ragnor hadn’t risen from the south was promising in that it meant the hunters had probably perished. Good. Though she felt a small portion of sympathy for the young boy, Eric, whom she’d fooled with romance, the anger she felt toward their leader, Artemia, overwhelmed anything else. She’d promised them to overthrow the emperor, and instead let the emperor kill them off.

  In fact, Artemia hadn’t ever returned after getting part of the essence of Indica. Although Rufus Syrast remained Tetra’s last task, if Artemia got in the way before then, she would have one more kill added to her ledger.

  The good news, though, was that with the destruction of Dabira, neither Artemia nor Rufus would suspect their return to Caia. Tetra knew one guard who had escaped and would return, but he would report that they had destroyed the entire city and left no one alive. They wouldn’t send more troops their way. And if they do, good. More of the empire to slaughter before I say farewell to this miserable existence.

  “I suppose,” Tetra said, not wanting to sound weak before the young girl. “But we must take turns keeping a watch out. Hydor still has natural forces which would kill us as fast as the empire.”

  “I know,” Yeva said. She hesitated, clearly unsure whether to speak her next words. “It would be nice if we had more of us.”

  It took quite a bit for Tetra not to snap at the young girl. “Nice if” were two words that didn’t go together in Tetra’s eyes. “Nice if my husband still lived.” “Nice if the empire would just take a step back and not murder us.” “Nice if the hunters weren’t blind to the danger they might awaken.”

  “Nice if” just meant that someone wanted a reality that wouldn’t exist. That Yeva didn’t yet recognize that fact yet spoke to her youthful age. She had probably not even crossed twenty yet.

  But was it not Yeva’s youth that made her—and Zelda—so potent? Was it not their blissful ignorance that would enable them to continue fighting?

  Tetra had one fight left in her, a fight she had plans to take on before the end of the month, if not the week. Yet she knew the fight between her and the emp
eror would not spell the end of the ugly relations between humans and magi.

  So Yeva and Zelda had to play a role. They would grow out of their desire for “nice if.” They would age as Tetra died. And then someone else would come to take their place.

  Tetra just hoped that at some point, the war of the magi would come to a close. Certainly, Tetra could temper the bloodshed, but she would not see the mentalities each side had diminish in what remained of her lifetime.

  Suddenly, Yeva began to tear up. Just what we need.

  No, Tetra. She’s come to help. She’s all you have by your side.

  “I miss Zelda,” Yeva said. “I miss Garo.”

  That jerked Tetra out of her thoughtful, contemplative state of mind. It shoved her into a fury that not even she would have anticipated.

  “You miss Garo, do you,” Tetra said. “You think you miss him because of his magic and his power. You don’t know what it’s like to miss him, Yeva. You don’t know what it’s like to see him next to you for decades and you pretend that you two were never even married—and know all along your attempts to keep him away don’t work. You don’t know what it’s like to miss someone even as they stand in front of you, giving you information about prisoners or the empire.”

  Tetra was trying to speak fast enough and with enough anger to outrace her bubbling emotions. It wasn’t working.

  “And you don’t know what it’s like to regret decades of…”

  She couldn’t finish. If she did, she knew she would acknowledge a terrible truth—that for as much as she loved Garo and had sworn her life to him, all she had done the past several decades was act in the exact opposite manner.

  Tears started to rise up. She could have let them come. She could have finally shown some truthful emotion.

  Instead, Tetra bit her lip, shook her head, and laughed sadly. This is what decades of a wasted life look like. Chasing a failed pursuit while ignoring the man who loved me enough that he refused to die until the very end. I don’t know why I ever thought it could be any different.

  “I don’t know, I’m sorry,” Yeva said. “But I do—”

  “I’m sorry, Yeva,” Tetra interrupted. “The last few days, as you can imagine, have not been kind to me.”

  “But Tetra, I do know how you feel,” Yeva said, raising a hand before Tetra could respond in anger. “I lost my partner in the battle against Indica. I know it’s not the same. I know we were young and stupid, and you had centuries of experience and memories. But. I can at least relate on some level. I’d like to think that he sacrificed himself so that we could live, but the truth is, I wonder if that’s a lie that I’m telling myself to make me feel better. He charged that dragon without thinking twice about it. Some might call it heroic, but…”

  “It is heroic.”

  Yeva’s eyes widened and her head cocked to the side.

  But the truth was, Tetra had only spoken to assuage the young girl, not necessarily because she believed he was heroic.

  Tetra had known of the boy, but she didn’t remember his name, if Yeva had ever told it to her. She hadn’t witnessed the moment when he perished. And now she was trying to say he was a hero? What happened to the cold woman who told the truth and ignored the weak? Had she become one of the weak?

  “It’s like Garo,” Tetra said, her words nervous as she sought a way to deflect it. “He… he was always heroic. He’s the one who stood up to the soldiers.”

  Tetra sighed. She could see in Yeva’s eyes she wasn’t connecting with her. How could she fault her? Tetra was a hurricane of emotions, impossible to predict and difficult to handle. What she said ventured on the gibberish. And she expected a young girl in her teens to understand?

  Tetra had to take a step back. Even if Yeva believed and said foolish things, even if Tetra lived only to see someone die before her, she had to act in a more rational manner. If Yeva wanted to continue the fight, she couldn’t see the warrior from the last generation as impetuous and cruel.

  “Yeva, I’m sorry,” Tetra said again. “I don’t know what to think anymore. I need to calm myself down. I… I’ll watch shift for the first bit. I’ll wake you when it’s time.”

  Yeva, confused, thanked Tetra before curling up near a fire the two magi quickly produced. Yeva didn’t seem angry; in fact, she seemed understanding. Tetra knew, however, that while the young girl could look past a day or two of Tetra’s impulsive and unpredictable mood swings, she could not do so for the duration of their journey to Caia.

  When the sky had grown so dark Tetra could make out multiple constellations in the sky, she didn’t bother to wake Yeva from her slumber. She knew the girl needed her space more than she needed to fulfill her nightwatch obligations. I am not the only one who lost someone yesterday. I keep forgetting she lost her parents. I have to remember that.

  Tetra instead looked to the stars, as if she might find Garo among them. She thought of the good times they had shared, the frightening moments, the near-death experiences, the dark expanses… and how even at the end, he’d died declaring his love for her.

  She thought of his heroism, saving her from the first emperor all those years ago. She couldn’t believe that after all that time, after pushing Bahamut back, the hunters and the empire seemed destined to try and take down the legendary beast once more. Would humanity ever learn from its past mistakes? Would his heroism hold up? Or had it only delayed the inevitable?

  Tetra thought of the various quirks that he had, some of which faded when he became Gaius, some of which only intensified. The man had an ability to focus on a single task like no one she’d ever met before—and Chrystos help the mage who interrupted Garo during his meditations or writing. The mage had once had an odd fascination with statues, hence leading to an unusually high amount of monuments in Dabira, but that had faded once they got to Caia.

  She thought of his love. It took a special kind of man to love his wife for over two centuries and to continue to love her even when she deliberately pushed him aside. Even when she deliberately became a younger woman in appearance, he continued to love her. I can never appreciate or love you enough, Garo. I promise I’ll go to the library and find what you learned. No matter how much it may surprise or hurt me.

  And if there’s something that those journals tell me to do, I’ll do it.

  The evening passed quicker than Tetra realized, and when Yeva opened her eyes, the young girl jumped with a start, realizing she’d slept longer than she thought she should have.

  “Relax,” Tetra said. “The land was kind to us this previous night and you needed rest. I can always use my magic to stay awake if necessary.”

  Yeva said thanks but gave no indication of comfort with the decision. Tetra didn’t mind—Yeva needed rest more than she needed comfort. Comfort was a luxury she feared they wouldn’t experience for many weeks, if not forever. It’s our curse as magi.

  Even without comfort, without peace of mind, without a lack of fear, they continued marching, the plains seeming to repeat themselves, an endless, unchanging terrain broken up only by the occasional small dragon or boar in the fields. They had escaped the most dangerous elements of Hydor but were making their way toward the most dangerous parts of the empire.

  As Tetra’s feet began to fatigue and her legs began to ache, her mind grew darker with each passing cycle of the sun. The end was near for her, even if she accomplished what she’d left Dabira in the first place to do. Most likely, she would die at the hands of imperial soldiers as she chased down the emperor. If she was cautious, maybe she would increase her chances of success.

  But what would caution do, buy her a few extra hours of life that she didn’t need? No, as soon as Tetra saw a path to the emperor, even if said path took her through swords, spears, arrows, and the jaws of death, she would walk that path even as blood spilled out of her.

  She just hoped that once she walked the path that Zelda, Yeva, and any remaining magi would find the walk more peaceful and more harmonious with the rest of the worl
d.

  CHAPTER 4: ERIC

  Blackness.

  From the furthest reaches of perception, a faint shrill was heard, as if someone screamed in the distance.

  A faint light appeared, so tiny and so subdued that it was impossible to differentiate from an imagined pulse of yellow.

  The shrill picked up. Now it became clear that the cry was of a woman.

  The light grew in luminosity, changing from yellow to green and back again.

  The cry sounded not just like a woman, but a young girl. Probably no older than ten or eleven years old.

  Suddenly, the light exploded.

  ***

  Eric rolled over, expecting to feel the weight of pain, wounds, and broken bones. But not only did he not feel anything, he felt so light it was like his body wasn’t touching anything at all. When he opened his eyes, he found that to be true. There was nothing beneath him. There was nothing around him. There was nothing above him.

  “What…” he said, but his voice carried endlessly, as if he’d found himself in a void where sound never died.

  But he felt pretty sure he had.

  He heard a familiar giggle. He looked behind him. A single house stood there, but not just any house—the house in which he had grown up. On the front steps was a sight that he couldn’t believe. But, given what he’d felt and seen so far, maybe it made total sense in this new dimension.

  “Rey?” he said.

  The girl giggled, then put her hands on her hips.

  “Sort of!” she said, her voice like a guilty young girl trying to act innocent.

  Eric looked at the girl and the house, trying to match it with the utter void of nothingness that surrounded him. Aside from a cobblestone path and a small garden around the house, the same empty darkness surrounded him. No sky, neighbors, sun, or even stars came to view.