Chapter 55: Chapter 55 – Betrayal

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Ruby moves fast and hits with brutal force, but Leech and Thayne aren’t ready to die. The hard fire axe forming along the edge of the enchanted staff clashes against the steel haft of the dwarf’s axe, leaving it dented and marked black. Leech tries to use this chance against her, but he’s much too slow, taking a blow to his shield before he can even take a swing at her.

While they exchange blows, I try to reach out for Parker. He’s still alive and I can heal his injuries easily enough. When he’s fixed, we can work together to hold Ruby back. We can beat her and force her to explain whys she’s doing this.

But I already know why, don’t I? She’s protecting me.

Still, if we can take a moment to talk, we can find another solution. We can deal with this without anyone having to die.

“Leave her to it,” Lothar says, gripping my shoulder tight. “She knows what she’s doing.”

“Lothar?” I ask. “What about…?”

 

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“Syr…” Lothar’s expression softens just a little as he meets my eyes, still holding me back. We watch mercenaries fighting one another, kicking at the skeletons that come together to fight us.

“This was always how it was going to end,” he says, shaking his head. “Semi… criminal lords like her, they aren’t idiots. You know that even if these mercenaries try to keep your secret, there’s a good chance that they’d say something at some point. This is the only way to be sure.”

Ruby is bouncing between Leech and Thayne, the staff that she’s taken off of the rusted knight glows with solid fire that shifts from a spearhead to an axe, to a hammer, then a war pick. She punches holes through Leeches shields and dents the haft of the dwarf’s large hammer, hitting them faster and faster.

She’s using some sort of magic to speed herself up further than body strengthening can usually manage to do. I’ve seen the same magic before when we fought that vampire near Cildr, the people that were fighting beside the vampire used a similar magic. Ruby takes it to another level, she moves fast and hits hard. If there are any openings, they’re gone before anyone can exploit them.

“But, they didn’t… they weren’t…”

“If even a whisper gets out, we could all be killed,” Lothar says, shaking his head as he stares at Parker, who’s trying to crawl his way to us. A few weaker skeletons have reached him by now, and their bony fingers sink into his flesh and are soon painted red with his blood.

“I don’t want this…” I tell him, gripping his hand and prying his fingers off. “I’ll run away, no one will ever find me. Not until I’m strong enough to beat all the people that try to kill me. I… we should just run away…”

“I agree, this isn’t right,” Lothar nods slowly. “This is… it’s the cost of letting people know of your magic, Syr. It’s why we want you to give it up, and it’s why you need to keep it secret. We should never have brought people like them with us.”

“Then why?” I ask, gripping my swords. “Can’t I just…?”

He grips my shoulder tight as I try to step closer to Parker. He’s not dead yet. I can still save him. I can still make this end happy. I can save them…

“This is what she intended from the start,” Lothar explains. “These mercenaries were disposable. They weren’t ever going to make it out of this alive.”

I shake the thoughts out of my head. It’s only a distraction right now, and I need to act if I want to change how this ends.

Setting my feet on the stone ground, I lean forwards pulling myself free from Lothar’s grip before charging through the scattered bones. I nearly stumble with each step, the skeletons crunching underfoot, while I charge in towards Parker. He’s bleeding out slowly, but I can save him.

He doesn’t like my necromancy.

He might even want to see me dead.

But he was at my back protecting me down here.

He’s a mercenary. We’re meant to fight monsters, not each other.

I kick off of the ground, crumbling a skull underfoot, and leap at the dying man. I thrust my hand through the pile of writhing bones, gripping his flesh beneath the undead that are crawling all over him. Flooding him with healing magic as I pull him away, I use my sword to break the few skeletons that I can’t just push through.

Parker is still gurgling through the blood pouring out of him, holding his throat with one hand as he looks up at me. As my healing pulls his flesh together, he finds his strength and draws a dagger from its sheath and pulls himself up using my arm to balance himself.

“We have to stop this fighting,” I say, staring at Ruby still beating on the other two, but she looks back at me worriedly. Lothar is rushing to me with his sword drawn.

Parker grips my arm tight and pulls me close, pressing his dagger to my neck. I knew this could happen, but I didn’t think he’d so quickly turn on me. I thought he might at least work with me until we stopped the fighting…

“Stop!” He shouts at Lothar pressing the knife to my throat. “It’s poisoned!”

I growl.

I tried to save him.

I wanted to help him.

But he’s choosing to be my enemy.

I was stupid to even try and save him.

My frustration escapes as a deep growl that spreads through my chest. I ignore the dagger at my throat, pushing and twisting, letting it bite into my neck as I managed to claw at Parker’s face. He flinches back from me, just enough that I can squeeze my leg between us and kick at his chest, sending us tumbling away from each other.

Holding my throat together, I roll to my feet and start healing, finding the sword I dropped in the struggle.

“Sry!” Lothar cries, pulling me aside as I recover my weapons. He stands between me and the mercenaries, ready to defend me the moment they come for us. “Damn it! Just stay out of this.”

I squeeze out a reply, but the air just gurgles at the blood in my throat. My healing isn’t working quite right.

Rattler poison, or something like it.

A thick oil covers my wounds, and the magic I feed into the injury is absorbed by the poison instead. I’m not healing quickly enough.

“Damn it,” Lothar kneels to get a look at my injury. “Poison?”

“Lothar! Catch!” Ruby cries, just before a glass bottle flies right at us. Lothar stumbles, barely catching it while a skeleton pulls at his leg. A quick stomp scatters it as he brings the potion over to me, checking the label on it.

“Expensive…” he mutters, forcing my chin up and splashing the liquid on my injury. It washes out the poison that’s getting in the way of my healing.

“Why?” I gasp when my voice comes back. Parker is fighting off the skeletons, healthier now than he was before but still pale and struggling to breathe.

He could still make it out alive if we do nothing.

What should I do? Should I kill him? Leave him?

“He wasn’t trying to kill you,” Lother spits, crushing in the skull of a skeleton as it crawls toward us. “He wanted to use you as a hostage to stop Ruby. He wasn’t expecting you to fight.”

“He cut my throat!” I shout, gripping my swords tight with shaking hands.

“He did,” Lothar nods, staring down at me. It’s like he’s trying to tell me something, but he can’t quite say it. “Let Ruby deal with this.”

“But…”

This isn’t right.

None of this is right.

“Leech,” Thayne calls to his friend. “We can’t win this…”

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Leech glances back at his friend.

“Make sure they can’t win either,” Thayne shouts, lifting his hammer and charging at me and Lothar. Leech is at his back, trying his best to throw off Ruby’s attacks, but he’s struggling to keep up with her.

They want me dead too.

I was hoping that we could be friends. That even if they hated my magic, they could eventually realize that I’m still me and not some awful villain. Instead, they’re hoping to kill me before Ruby can kill them.

Thayne doesn’t even have any regret in his eyes as he glares at me.

They don’t care.

I lift my swords, standing beside Lothar. He glances at me for a moment before nodding confidently. He’s ready to fight alongside me, even though he hates my magic just the same as these guys do. He should be fighting on their side instead. It would’ve been easy to leave me to die here, and he could come up with all sorts of excuses for it, but he doesn’t.

He hates my magic, but he’s still my friend.

He raises his shield, ready to take the hammer that is aimed at me.

Ruby slides easily past the armoured Leech and thrusts a red-hot spearhead into the dwarf’s side, but while it carves through his armour, he doesn’t even slow by a step. Ruby frowns as she pulls her weapon back, forced to deal with Leech instead while the hammer slams into Lothar’s shield.

There’s no room for me in the chaotic melee that follows, as Ruby and Lothar try to keep the other two away from me.

Lothar slashes at the dwarf while holding the hammer at bay with his shield, but the stalwart dwarf takes the blows easily without even stumbling. Ruby, dodging attacks from Leech, takes half a second to flick her staff into the dwarf’s knee, wrapping the shaft of the weapon in hardened fire.

This time he stumbles but Leech pulls him back taking on both Lothar and Ruby for the second it takes his friend to recover.

Ruby doesn’t even try to get past him, smashing at his armour a dozen times in one second by using both ends of her weapon. Then when Leech reaches out to grab at the shaft with his armoured glove, she drops it, sliding a knife from her sleeve and thrusting it up into his shoulder.

His blackened hand slips from her weapon as his arm falls to his side, her dagger is pulled out, covered in blood. It’s gone again in a moment, as she takes up her staff with both hands, stepping back and forming a war pick with the hardened fire to finish the armoured man.

An arrow flashes through the darkness, nearly striking her, only narrowly passing her by. Either by chance or a careful dodge, it’s impossible to be sure. Leech barely manages to raise his shield in that moment, catching her attack.

If she wasn’t defending me, she’d already be finished with him.

It’s wrong to try and save Parker. To try and save Leech and Thayne.

I can’t.

Lothar trusts me to stand beside him, and Ruby has done all of this for my sake. All of it is to protect me.

I can’t let them get hurt for my sake.

Lifting my swords and spreading my necromancy to the bones on the ground near me, I take a breath and ready my mind to take this fight properly.

The skeletons at our feet are simple creatures, but the magic flowing through the air empowers them. It’s all too easy to have them group up and focus on grabbing at ankles to tug the warriors down to the ground.

Ruby thrusts another dagger into Leech, forcing his other shield down. A few quick blows to his knees and she throws him to the ground, but Thayne ignores Lothar’s attacks, rushing in to try and support his friend.

I slip around behind him and charge at his exposed back while he pushes through the swarming bones at his feet. He has some sort of armour under his clothes and the others can’t break through, but this is exactly the sort of thing that I’m best at.

I charge at his back and Lothar rushes at the man, grabbing at the hammer as he turns to hit me with it. Ruby attacks the downed Leech, just to make sure that he stays down, watching the darkness for any more arrows.

I fly into Thaynes back, my swords pressing into the thin metal plates of his armour and splitting them open. I hit something harder beneath, but that too breaks under the force of my charge, my swords push in up to the hilt bursting out of Thayne’s chest.

“Syr, archer!” Lothar shouts, and I twist around to use the dwarf as cover.

Ruby moves faster, snapping between me and the archer, slapping at the arrow with her staff.

A solid, fleshy thunk proves that she failed to catch the attack.

The arrow sprouts from her chest and another soon follows the same path, but this one she catches with the side of her staff, knocking it aside. With a cold expression, she charges at Parker, her staff taking on the shape of a fiery hammer just as she reaches him. His bow is raised at her, but her glowing red hammer smashes into the bow snapping it and crushing his hand.

Then his shoulders.

Then his knees.

Parker screams in fury and pain, but she’s already finished with him.

I step away from Thayne, letting him drop to the ground as I pull my swords from him.

Blood erupts from his mouth his blood pours free from his chest. I’ve punched through his lungs but missed his heart. It’ll take some time for him to die.

“Ruby?” I call out for the woman as she returns, an arrow still sprouting from her chest. She stumbles, her legs losing strength. Even as she catches herself, she stumbles again, barely managing to walk down to her knees before falling on her side.

“Lothar!” I shout for his help and race to her.

I don’t know why any of this is happening, but even though she brought these people down here to die. Even though she’s helped to put together this terrible situation, she still looks at me with warmth in her eyes.

She doesn’t hate me, and I don’t want her to die.

“It’s okay,” she whispers, but I ignore her, tearing the arrow out of her chest and flooding her with magic. It’s the same poison again, but this time there’s more of it. It absorbs my magic and spreads through her chest. The damage alone isn’t so bad, but the poison is going to kill her if I can’t stop it.

“The potion!” I shout, and Lothar presses the potion into my hand. He was too quick to splash it on my neck before and now there’s only a quarter of the bottle left.

“The poison’s too deep in me,” Ruby says, grabbing my hand. “Don’t waste this chance. This is all for you.”

“What… what do you mean?” I ask, pressing the bottle into her wound so not a drop will spill, but even then, it’s not enough to quell the poison inside of her.

“You’re here to practice. To grow strong,” Ruby says her hand wrapping around my own. “You’ll need experience and practice. Old bones aren’t going to be enough for you. Don’t waste this chance. It’s why we chose them.”

“Ruby…” I bite my tongue, glaring down at her injury.

“They’re dead already,” she whispers. “They killed one of ours, they were going to die one way or another, Syr. This way they’ll still be useful. This way, I’ll be useful, even after I’m dead. Don’t waste this chance.”

“No,” I shake my head and grit my teeth. Anna is better with her magic, she can make her spells do wonders with even the little power she has, and I wish that she were here with us, because she could do this so much better than me. She could save Ruby for certain.

“Lothar, can you get us out if I faint?” I ask. “With the skeletons and everything?”

“Syr?”

“I want to save her,” I say. “I want to save her.”

She’s plotted something terrible, but she saved me. She took this arrow just on the chance that it would hit me instead. She’s a good person.

I could save the others instead…

If I leave her to die, I could save the others, but… even if they’re good people… which I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.

But Ruby wants to protect me. That alone makes her something close to family, and so even if she’s done something bad, then I’ll save her over these other mercenaries, even if they’re the kindest people in this city.

Pressing my hands to her chest I let my æther flow through to her. The æther flow around me is stronger here, but with the power that I feel burning away at my insides, it doesn’t make much of a difference in the end. I can only take in so much before I’m full, even when I’m drawing everything in as fast as I can.

I nearly black out when I hit my limits and push right through them. This is the sort of magic that should be used by someone much more powerful than me, much more talented than me. It’s the sort of thing that a proper healer could do without needing to put in even a fraction of the effort.

All I can do is give it my everything, and then a little bit more, and hope it’s enough.

While black specks dance across my sight, I press my magic into her chest and try to hold onto the image of healing her. I don’t even know if I’ve succeeded or failed. My vision is stolen from me long before my æther stops flowing.

Lothar… please save us.

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