Abolisher
6.

Syrene Alpenstride slid out of the apartment a couple hours before dawn.

Even as silence stretched far and wide, she walked along the shadows of the alley, hidden from any eyes, picking her way to the Stone Chamber. The tavern was situated at the corner of the alley, right before the dead end.

The chill weather had Syrene’s teeth clattering; her breath visualized as soon as it escaped. It was good—the frigid weather. It helped keep the power in her veins at bay. Kept it slumbering, numb. Summers in Silvervale were rare—aside from the town’s anonymity, that had been another reason why Syrene had chosen Silvervale to hide in.

But now, as she walked down the spooky alley once again, she wondered whether she would have chosen this town at all, if she’d known of the eeriness.

Maybe. Maybe not.

She didn’t waste breath thinking on it.

As Syrene neared the Stone Chamber, she caught a hint of gleaming lavender hair as they captured the moonlight. Heard the whisper of wind as the man looming outside the tavern whirled when heard her approaching.

Syrene kept a loose rein on her stealth as she went, just enough so the man would hear her advancing, and not get startled and shriek.

His face cleared, and Syrene caught that familiar curious glint in his eyes. Still thriving, still fuming like an outrageous fire in those olive eyes. Syrene had envied it once—that glint—when she’d just been half alive in that fortress, when she’d been too exhausted to summon any sort of curiosity in herself. And this man … he’d had such lively inquisitiveness in those eyes—so intense that it seemed to have been keeping him alive—when everyone in that fortress had been miserable from slavery.

It had felt unfair.

And now, as Syrene neared Eliver Domwil, she saw that curiosity as her salvation. Saw the answers to the questions that had been driving her insane.

Eliver’s eyes were wide with awe when she stepped before him, as if he hadn’t quite expected her to be real, to be in one piece.

Syrene nodded her greeting. “Eliver.”

Eliver breathed, “Holy burning Saqa.” His breath clouded before his mouth.

Syrene waited as that fanatic spark in his eyes grew enough to take over those large eyes wholly.

“You—you’re …” He trailed off. Widened olive-green eyes scanned Syrene head-to-toe for moments and moments. Then, “You’re intact.”

This was the man who had gotten convicted to Jegvr due to his eternal interest in Drothiker. This was the man who hadn’t shut up about the forbidden device, and made every slave want to rip their ears out. It would take a while for him to take Syrene in.

Elite Kaerions and Drothiker … they held Eliver Domwil’s interest like a human body might hold intestines. Like a sky might hold moon and stars.

Being a Kaerion with Drothiker in her veins, for him, Syrene might as well had been an otsatya. She cringed at the thought.

“Can I— Can I see it?” Eliver asked. “It’s in your veins, right—can you summon it?”

“Eliver—”

“You said in your letter that you need help—”

“No, I said I want answers.”

“But you—you do have it in—in yourself. That means you’re the last heir of the King of Hemvae. No—no, you’re the last full-hemvae.” His eyes again trailed her covered body with that curious gaze. “That means you have zegruks—but you don’t have them on your face like Prince Azryle—and I’ve seen your hands before, you didn’t have them on there either …”

Syrene stopped listening as he rambled on, coming to myriad conclusions. She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall behind herself and waited.

Then, when his breathing calmed a bit, Eliver ran a hand through his curly lavender hair and asked again, “Can I see it?”

Syrene sighed, and brought a hand up.

Lightning crackled and looped around her fingers, brightening her entire hand. She felt a calm wind in herself at even that slightest provocation to her mejest, waiting like a lazy animal. But then, as she kept this power in her hand for mere seconds, that wind in her began growing, began turning into a lethal storm.

She suppressed the lightning back in before that storm could erupt.

Emptiness and silence struck her.

Eliver was gaping. Then, he snapped his mouth close, eyes narrowed.

“No—no …” he whispered. “No, the rumors say you had your lightning before you plunged that sword in your chest. That means this lightning is your own—you own the skies. So this—this can’t be …”

“It’s numb, Eliver.”

He stilled.

“I’ve numbed it. I have been numbing it for the past year. It’s frozen,” Syrene explained slowly, as if speaking to a child. She let out another sigh. “Look, I just want answers—”

“You’ve numbed it?” He looked as if she’d punched him. “How? There is no way …”

Syrene was surprised that Eliver didn’t know it, that that extraordinary mind hadn’t figured out Drothiker’s weaknesses. A petty part of her was delighted—that she knew something even Eliver didn’t, even when she’d gotten that information the hard way.

“Coldness—the device is unfunctional in cold. I’m not entirely certain if it’s vulnerable to casual winters like this. But bathing in near-freezing water freezes the power—the current—for a while.” She shrugged. “It has been asleep for a year now—”

Eliver began laughing. No—not even laughing. It was a hysterical sound that had Syrene straightening.

It faded as soon as it came, and that face grew desperate. “Please tell me you’re joking.” The plea and fear in his voice had Syrene’s heart racing.

Upon her silence, Eliver rubbed at his face. Any humor from his face ebbed, and he looked as if he were at the brink of a breakdown.

“Freezing water doesn’t numb Drothiker, Syrene, it suppresses it. It suffocates it. The device is not just any other power, it’s like any other living thing. It needs to breathe, it needs to feed, to function properly. And you’re its source.” He tugged at his outgrown curly bangs. “Take it like an air-filled balloon. It’ll burst out if you press it for much long. And do you know what will happen if that eternal, terminal power in you bursts out?”

Syrene wasn’t sure she was breathing.

“You will not only be ending yourself, you will be taking this whole planet with you. Drothiker isn’t mejest, it is the power of all five otsatyas combined. You have the power of an otsatya—more—I can’t believe you are so careless with it.”

Syrene felt like a child who’d spilled ink all over the bedsheet and was now being scolded for it. She felt so small, and a fool.

Deisn had given her life to buy Syrene time—her friend and obliterated herself, until there was nothing but raining ashes that remained of her, bought Syrene a fool’s chance to save planet Ianov and every other human being on it.

And Syrene had almost …

She shook her head. “If I don’t freeze it, Felset holds its leash. Felset is its owner—”

“Hold on.” Eliver looked bewildered. “What?”

“Felset is not from this world—she is not human. Drothiker is not from this world. Felset is the one who’d forged the device and let that otherworldly army—her own army—in this world. Grinon had then summoned otsatyas to gain enough power to be able to wield Drothiker and close the Gates. A sword was given to Alpenstrides by Ondes, Otsatya of Skies, to contain the power in—”

“Rukrasit.”

“What?”

“The otherworldly army—they were called baeselk. Texts refer to their world as Rukrasit.”

Syrene opened her mouth, shut it. Opened it again. Until she finally managed, “And that matters because …?”

Eliver ran a hand through his hair, his eyes growing vacant, a furrow appeared between his brows. “Baeselk of Rukrasit don’t bear bodies like humans. In fact, as far as rumors go, many eternally powerful ones don’t bear bods at all. They are free from everything that confines a human. They don’t own bodies, or souls, or hearts …” He trailed off, foraging that abyss of crammed knowledge in his mind.

Syrene recalled when she’d killed all those baeselk a year ago in an arena booming with screams of terror, remembered the excruciating agony they’d caused her entire form, ghosts of which she could still feel reverberating in the curve of her neck—where one had bitten her skin off. But most of all, she remembered how hideous they’d looked—how she’d had nightmares for weeks after facing them.

How she’d spent weeks in a fear that could have cracked her ribs if she’d allowed it to grow even a bit more. Wandering in streets like a homeless, Syrene had remained vigilant—barely slept in those frigid nights—afraid those beasts would return.

They’d returned—if only in her nightmares, they’d returned. Haunted her.

As silence fell, and cold wind—and that memory—made her shudder, Syrene wrapped her arms around herself, feeling the presence of knives in her attire.

She was no longer that terrified girl, no longer afraid of dark and night beasts. No—now, if they came, she slaughtered. Not only those hideous beasts that marred her life, but also the ones confined in human skin, walking in the streets.

One suspicious stolen glance in her direction, and they ended up dead. Syrene was no friend to killing—but she was no stranger either.

She was a survivor. She’d survive this wretched Destiny awaiting her.

Eliver’s head shot up. “They had a ruler.”

Syrene straightened.

His eyes had gone wide. “Baeselk—they’d had a ruler in the Jagged Battle. There’s little about them in the books, but I remember reading someone had led the army …” He slender throat bobbed. “Felset is something else, Syrene—if what you said is true, that she’s the Queen of Rukrasit, Felset is something you cannot even dream up—she is the person who carves up nightmares that have terror seeping into you like an ocean at will. And if she wants to wield you—Drothiker—”

He shook his head. “No—no, you cannot let her. She will fill this world with things worse than baeselk, worse than any darkness—”

“Eliver.”

The half-hemvae seemed to snap to attention.

“Do you know something about Felset?”

He swallowed again. The scent of his fear swept the alley in a swift tendril.

Eliver only said, jerking his head to the tavern behind him, “Come meet me tomorrow before evening.”

And then he was walking away, to the alley’s mouth, his steps quick.

“Eliver!” Syrene called after him.

But he didn’t turn. She could have gone after him—could have caught up to him in a heartbeat with her hemvae speed. But that might only startle him, scare him off.

Syrene fisted her hands, restraining herself from darting after him. Too long she’d waited for answers. No books had helped her, no raconteur had helped her, as if Drothiker was tucked in a pocket of the world, where only Eliver had been able to stretch his hands into.

And this madman, as slaves in that crypt had called him, was her only tether to freedom. Her only tether to the answers that still seemed too far from her.

No farther than home, though. No—nothing seemed so far as her lost home did.