The Forsaken Hero

I couldn’t find the artifact. I wasn’t smart, clever, or quick enough.

The thought haunted me as Fable raced through hallways, searching for the church’s quarters. Finding those was our best chance, but I was already beginning to doubt. Why would the church’s rooms be on the lower floors of the palace? Would they really allow themselves to reside in the same places as servants and slaves?

The answer was obvious. Father Ithris had chaperoned me around for months, and as well as he knew me, I knew him. He wouldn’t even look at me when I was wearing the plain white slave dress, and he’d never once spoken with a servant without turning his nose up in disdain.

”How couldn’t I see it? Did I want to hope that badly?” I whispered, tears threatening to spill.

Avant had captured the members of the church’s diplomatic party outside of the palace. They couldn’t have been in the sublevels. Whatever building or tower they were staying in was probably rubble now–if enough of it was left to call it that in the first place. The artifact wasn’t destroyed–else the suppression on my soul would have been lifted–but finding it would be impossible. A gust of wind or aura might have hit it, sending it flying hundreds, if not thousands of yards away. It could be in the fires of the battle or lost somewhere in the city below. And that was assuming it was in the palace in the first place.

A low rumble broke into my thoughts. I snapped up, chest seizing, as the entire tunnel shook. Dust rained from the ceiling, and the wall split apart in fissures. There was barely a second to process the glowing orange light behind the wall before it exploded outward, pinging against my wards. I screamed and threw myself down on Fable’s back, covering my head.

A wave of fire rolled through the breach, and I peeked through my arms, sucking in a breath. A section of stone wall thirty feet long was gone, replaced by a gleaming black surface. It was curved, taking up almost half the corridor at the zenith, and covered in large, diametric diamond-shaped sections. Cracks ran across the surface, filled with molten lava. It was...an arm?

I barely registered what I was seeing before the wall started moving. Watching it pull away was like watching the cliff blur by as I fell, giving me a strange sense of vertigo. After almost a full second, the wall abruptly disappeared. I caught a brief glimpse of a titanic clawed digit the size of a small mansion before it was gone, leaving nothing but fire and darkness and an empty space where the inside of a mountain had once been. It was a crater a hundred feet wide, its edge clipping into our tunnel.

The dragon had stepped through the mountain, or maybe it had fallen. Perhaps Elaine had managed a blow and knocked it back down, and it was just trying to catch its balance. Like a toddler pushing into the sand trying to stand up.

Despite the temperature, I broke out into a cold sweat. If it had been just a few feet closer, Fable and I would have been crushed. A hole a hundred feet wide, and we were saved by a few feet.

The ground shook more, debris tumbling into the crater the dragon’s arm left behind. Fable dashed away, leaving the window behind. I hadn’t been able to look up to see the outside world, but there was nothing but ash and fire waiting for us anyway.

An oddly bemused thought wormed into my bond with Fable, and I shook my head. Despite myself, I couldn’t help but chuckle.

”Maybe you’re right. If we were lucky enough to escape that, who’s to say the artifact isn’t down here anyway?”

Another wave of lava elementals found us as we descended a flight of stairs to the next floor. As Fable tore them apart, I fell into thought, running through everything I knew about the church and the artifact. I’d already given up once and wasn’t about to do it again. After all, if I couldn’t find it, we would all die anyway. I wasn’t going to die hopeless in the darkness. Not again.

The range of the artifact was well over fifty miles, maybe more, but there was no doubt it had been in the city itself. The church had been stalling negotiations, perhaps to awaken the dragon, and Blacksand City was the only place they could protect it.

The Palace was the most obvious location, as the inquisitors would be able to watch over it personally. But my fears from before weren’t invalid. They could have hidden it anywhere in a city of hundreds of thousands, with a small group to look after it. If the artifact was nondescript, they could have thrown it in a well and walked away. If they’d done something like that, I would never be able to–

Fable growled softly, tearing the last elemental apart with his claws.

”You’re right,” I muttered, musing on the impressions he shared.

The church was cunning, but they were also arrogant. They’d kept the Crystal Enchantment core in their quarters despite knowing it would betray their role in the massacre. They would keep the artifact close, too.

Another thought struck me, and I gasped, sitting bolt upright. Jessia had infiltrated their quarters. She’d cut a seventh-level inquisitor to ribbons interrogating her and found the core. Could she have learned more than she shared? What if she knew where this artifact was, too?

I groaned, rubbing my horn. There was no point in even asking that. It had the same answer as asking if the sun would rise in the morning. Actually, that wasn’t very fair. I couldn’t even count the number of secrets I knew Jessia was hiding from me, much less the ones I didn’t. Her obsessions with secrets would last long after the sun failed to rise.

As for why she wouldn’t tell me? Secrets were the only currency that mattered to her, and it would cease to be a secret the moment she shared it.

So, could I assume she knew where it was? And if she did, perhaps she had let something slip. No, she couldn’t have. The only thing she ever did was tease me, and...wait, what if she had mentioned it, and I just hadn’t realized it?

A lava elemental stormed out of the passage ahead of us. Fable didn’t even slow, directly trampling it into a puff of fiery smoke.

When Luke had brought me back to his room following our walk into the garden, Jessia had asked me how I’d slept. I’d assumed it was a jab, given that I was in the slave quarters, but...

Wait, hadn’t Jessia known that too? She’d known the maids were with the church and yet gone along with their plan to humiliate me. What if that wasn’t just a prank? What if she--

”Fable, find my room!” I cried. ”Hurry!”

Butterflies danced in my stomach as Fable summoned a burst of mana and dove through the floor. I squeaked and reinforced my wards as rubble collapsed onto us, but in seconds, we were in the slave quarters.

”Please, please...” I whispered, biting my lip as he caught a scent and took off again, searching for the room I’d slept in.

I couldn’t believe I’d missed it now that I’d seen it. Where else would you keep a device capable of blocking fate than by the one you most feared using seeing it? The church hadn’t simply placed me in the slave quarters to humiliate me. Anyone with enough power could sense an artifact, so they put it in the place only the weak go. They must have known about the unstable state of my soul, and trusted I would dismiss any fluctuations I felt as related to it. As much as I hated to admit it, they’d been right.

”Oh, Jessia...” I sighed, shaking my head.

When it came to her, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but if I was right and there was still a chance of finding the artifact, I decided I could at least thank her.

Fable stopped before a random door, merely one of hundreds we’d passed. His tail wagged once, and he launched himself through the door. I took in the familiar sight of bed and plan ornaments that had kept me company through the night and embraced the Oracle of Eternity.

Immediately, the sense of suppression grew stronger, leaving me feeling nauseous. As I looked from wall to wall, it changed, growing weaker, then stronger.

”There!” I said, pointing.

Fable broke through the wall in a shower of stone. I flinched as the debris rolled off my wards and again as startled screams pierced my ears. Two women dressed in white leather armor with golden suns on their chests backed away from the snarling wolf, hands trembling as they gripped short swords. Their faces felt familiar, but it was the faint divine aura that gave them away as the maids from before. Just powerful enough to defeat any of the slaves but not so much that their absence wouldn’t be noticed in the embassy. Two girls who would draw very little attention. Perfect for keeping an eye on me, or perhaps, as I hoped, for guarding the artifact.

”G-get back!” One of them shouted, knocking into the bedframe.

The other noticed me atop Fable’s back, her mouth falling open. She clutched at her friend’s arm. ”I-It’s her! It’s the filthblood!”