Talons tore the air above me, as I dove to recover my saber. Pain danced along my right arm, victim just heartbeats before to the same claws. Whistling marked Gyevo to my left, as his hammer swung to cover the retreat the others were beating.
"Billenius! Stay down!" Nonia's spear drove over me, seeking the softer belly scales on our foe.
Rolling away, Specula in my hand again, my lungs labored after the flames unleashed by a dying salamander moments before. Cilixia's corpse, victim of that conflagration, still smoked just beyond the main trail. Flickering auras drove past my mental controls, as the strain of the fight was testing the limits those restraints kept upon my donum. Over her burnt flesh wisps hinted her anima still hovered, trying to aid us from beyond death.
Steffan or Zeffan, I still could not tell them apart, grabbed my arm, pulling me up. "We have to run, Bill!"
"We retreat, she'll just ambush us again downhill." Growling, I shook off his hand.
"And here, on ground she chose, is any different?" The karlykn shook his head, stout frame shifting to avoid the swipe of the Flame Queen's tail, as she lifted again into the air, seeking her next victim.
Admitting he was right had to wait, as the beat of her wings staggered us both back a bit, further from the fight. Nonia's strike had failed, leaving my current companion's twin our hope, the only one with any missiles left. The distinct buzz of his bolt echoed strangely, almost as if from the past, not present.
Above me, the red and gold scaled beast roared her fury, a handful of her fiery minions answering her command. Better than the scores we faced earlier. Too many now lay on this battlefield as steaming cinder pile, their ashes tossed about by her rising up for another attack. The Paths of Damnation were living up to their name, condemning us for daring to tread them. Aradlisa cursed from over her lover's remains, soft words that worried me, even as she parried off a pitchfork of the afreet bound inside a serpent's flesh.
Beyond her, Norbanus gathered around him our few still living companions. Rents in his tarnished chest-plate attested to how strong a dragon is, able to crease and tear apart that elven steel easily. Stavros and Nonia both flanked him, backs to his, as more of the burning reptiles drove towards them, rising from where the evoked flood Cilixia died calling down tossed them.
Around them all, the auras bloomed brighter. Or darker, as shadows and darker flames tore about their frames. Trembling, I fought to regain control of my donum. Last time I neared this level, two friends nearly perished when I could not break free of the visions the Parcae tossed at me through them.
Beyezid rose up, limping, to join the three still standing, as Gyevo collapsed, leg pinned to stone by one of those burning prongs. I shifted fast, unleashing Specula's power, allowing a single blast of stored sunlight free of her chablys blade against that salamander. The last such blast left. The fires of creation such light is born of evaporated the prison of earth, freeing the afreet. One less to worry about, as once released, it fled.
Checking our foe, my third eye opened again, showing many things, not just her aura, for some reason. Each of the few wounds dealt her so far glowed in a purple flame so deep it bordered upon black. An internal conflagration that sickened my stomach. I hate necromancy, and that Cilixia's death fueled her healing hurt more. More was revealed at her left fore-claw, where a strange glow of blue and smoke grey formed something like a 'C' mark the Centuria used to mark their status as elite warriors of my kindred.
Fighting the visions was too much, so I focused on them, binding their flows. I needed some hint for a way to save my remaining friends. A hint of verdigris around one of her fangs told me where to strike next, given the chance. I knew of such tools, made ages ago to bind the children of the fires to one's will amid prisons of sinews and bones.
"Billenius, this is hopeless. We must flee." Gyevo pulled along Nonia, limping beside him. The left leg of her trews torn off, along with a dangerous amount of her thigh. She still struggled to fight, though.
"Varus, we get out of this, I am either killing you, or marrying you." She snarled.
Laughing, despite my pains, I she shrugged. "Let me know which."
Turbator's whinny warned me our enemy was approaching. The onager danced away from his attacker, silver horn of his headdress twisting as my mount, the only not fled or dead, drove it into the draka's side. The old enmity of onageri and dragons proving provident for us.
"Distract her for me. If I can get a strike at her maw, we have a chance." My voice choked on the ashes stirred moments ago.
"Damned crazy alf." The Karlykn snarled, gesturing to the skies. "How. We cannot see her."
He was right. The clouds now cloaked the mountain side, streamers lifting up the canyons and draws, cloaking her movements, as the vapors wrapped around Granshal's Knob, before enfolding us as well.
"Perfidio." My whispered curse about damnation seemed appropriate. Biting my upper lip, my mind wrestled with my equally cursed third eye. As in the Grey Mesas three decades ago, it rebelled from any control, showing me everything but what I needed. Auras of our foe's minions, flares of the other fire spirits dancing amid the molten rock rivers flowing off the broken cones of Anyarinth, the throne of the Flame Queen. But her distinct aura, known from previous battles against her, hid away from my inner vision.
Pushing things, seeking the emanations her powers would stir in the Aether of the world left me retching in several heartbeats. Something out there crafted necromantic spells, consuming the lives of every beast and plant on the mountain-side. I could feel the deaths despite raising every mental barrier at my disposal.
"Dammit. Bill's down, people." Nonia towered over me. Her anger lighting her blaze up just enough to block that foul aura of death a bit.
"Just sickened by what she's doing, girl." I gasped. "Have 'Lisa shield us, fast. Death spell."
A shocked silence fell amid a lull, as the salamanders retreated in fear of their own destruction at their mistress's claw. They could not believe even the Queen of Flame would slay her own to win. I knew now just how desperate our drive up the Paths had her. And why so few came back from the Paths.
"Aradlisa! Shield!" I hollered, moving towards our companions, taking Nonia from Gyevo, so she was not so stooped over. Gyevo's alright, just short, even for a dwarf.
Our friend's eyes were still wild with her hate, but that cry at least shook her from seeking her own death.
Until that death found her anyway.
Red and gold scales erupted from the fogs, one claw pinning down Aradlisa, talons breaking ribs as they peirced her chest. The other caught Stravos's leg, severing it. Their last screams echoed through the saddle we fought in, even as the vast head of our foe descended upon us, nearly a dozen spear lengths away. I knew what was coming, thrusting Nonia away, even as the flames seared from that mouth, strangely cold, not hot.
She screamed, as the fore-claw descended, catching her. Her Hastia fell near me, even as the crimson and gold skull turned away from me. Truly, a skull, and the colors shifting, red fading to blue, gold falling away to reveal the blackened bone under them. Behind, three spears rose to strike, blocked by someone's left hand.
As the flames came near, I stooped, screaming with rage, as Nonia disappeared in that conflagration. Her spear came to my hand, just as the head swiveled back at me, the last blast sweeping my face, chest and leg, before dying. Such flames take a price, but anger rules me, I drive in, lungs searing under the last licks of fires I no longer see.
But the eyes are the window of the soul, where the fires burn the brightest. Deep inside my own skull, my third eye came into a last moment of clarity. The deep crimson hatred lay before me, calling me to death, and Nonia's spear in my hand to that aura.
* * *
Rising up, a weight falls upon my chest, driving me back to the cot, where seconds before ground lay.
"Dammit, Augur, stay still. You will dump me out this window!"
A voice I know. One who was not on the Paths of Damnation this night... that night.
Awareness comes slow, the cold air flowing over me, ashes turned to snow, wet and cool upon the parts of my face still able to feel things.
"Rico?" I groaned, trying to roll free of him.
"Bill, seriously, stay still, let me get the weapons in here first." Rattles, familiar ones from better days, metal and wood moving against each other. Punctuated by a lance of pain, as Didius Loricus' greaves dug into my ribs, still sore from a spearing just a few hebdoma before.
My cries of agony brought a cool hand to my forehead, one gentle yet rough with calluses. "Perfidio. Rico, off him, now. They have done more than beat him." Her voice barely cut through the ache and sudden flaring of visions, as my third eye again opened.
"I'll gut Sticchius and that damned Cato for that."
I saw, despite my blindness, a thousand spears tossed aside by a tarnished gladius, held in a blue skinned left hand. Yet, that despite the dire future that portended, the avalanche unleashed of the window ledge when Rico moved triggered another, stronger prescience across my sight. One where a hoard of those swords scattered and shattered under the onslaught of a blizzard, whose winds drove the spear true to targets.
I must have spoken such amid my agony, for the room fell silent, save the breaths of several in it.
"The Parcae still touch him." Matertera muttered. "We'd be foolish as my son to take him out into this storm, Loricus."
"Well, I have no say over the weather, nor do any in our little cabal, Antonia." Rico snarled.
"No." She laughed weakly. "But I know one who does, even if we forgot him. You called out for one, to save the other. Trust me, the bond these boys share, there was no way he would not hear of it, and kick aside all of Infernus to be part of this brawl of yours."
Hands moved Rico off my chest, guiding me towards the edge near the head of my wooden bed. Along the way, hisses came from my aunt, as her fingers noted many wounds, quite a few from the severe beating Sticchius dealt me the night before.
Above me, the old elf laughed. "Billenius is tougher than you think, 'Nia. And we had him under the protection of commitae I have full faith in."
"Broken arm, a spear in the side. You call this being under the hands of trusted friends, Rico?" Matertera snapped, her anger boiling up enough to drive the flames of her aura past the visions the goddesses of fates tossed into my view. "Which beast impersonating an elf dared do this to him."
From my door, another known voice, tinted with humor spoke up. "The spear is all his fault, 'Nia. And from the same hand that always gets him there."
My aunt merely scoffed at that. "I knew I should have let my clan or his mother's take him, not you two drunken fools."
Again, Nonia stood above me, scarlet feathered hair flying as she lunged forward, face twisted with rage above that crimson dyed leather breastplate, as the spear sought my chest. Not accidentally, this time, unlike the many before.
"Nonia." I gasped, trying to reach out and block her hasta from sinking into my chest. My arm reminded me with daggers under the skin, that this was a dream, though of the recent past, not the present.
"Gods, they broke his arm again." Matertera groaned, grasping my bicep firmly, to curl the arm in. "I'll need my kit, and splint material. Nonia is dead, Billenius." Her voice turned firm, the healer side of her barking orders and giving advice.
"Reborn." I muttered, focusing on the licks of orange anger in her soft golden aura. "North. Cardenelis. Stabbed me again."
Tickles of confusion's soft blue slithered into that copper hued blaze. I despised the third vision so long, my perceptions of what it showed me of the world were not as others, having eschewed any training in their use.
"Cethegor? What is this nonsense...."
"He's right, 'Nia. Trust your old commites. It was Nonia, reborn. And she seemed mighty irked this time around, when Bill tried to make up for failing her on the Paths." Keth's rough voice, nearly as rugged as his face in my memories, grated after the others softer tones. "Rico, bad news. The Cato is marching across the causeway to the temple, and he has a legion pushed the five maniples of Left Handers he hides behind."
"Which Legion?" Rico grunts, shifting another load of weapons in the window.
"Ninth. And it's commander is in chains, being dragged along by that islander bully." Keth stated, as I felt his eyes on the ruin I'd become. "Damnio, Bill. If I'd known Sticchius intended to thrash you that much, we'd have moved last night. You look terrible."
"Still better looking than you." I moaned, as Matertera's hands sought other issues, such as the leaking wounds under my eye-wraps, where empty sockets still wept pus, a century after my orbs were boiled away. Amid the auras, slowly brightening, I still saw things that already occurred dancing between images more shadowy, of things that might happen.
Gusts of cold winds racing in the window announce the storm outside worsening. From beyond, curses came from the elf handing in the weapons. If memory serves, that ledge is very narrow, made more treacherous by the polished marble the temple was crafted from in the old days.
"This storm is not natural." Rico opined, carrying in the last load. "Get off the ledge, Bana, head into town, secure us some mounts. Fastest you can find."
Another voice I knew well answered, to my surprise. The lilting touch of Insular accent marking her as one that I never suspected would ally with my kith and kin. "The hastae shall be raised, Triari."
The mention of that rank evokes more memories for me to battle, not pleasant ones. Rico lost one of the items being brought in, which settled against my thigh, even as I remembered his own rise to Triari, leader of the Ordo Triarium, the spearmen guardians of the temples. Ignoring my aunt's protestations, my left hand reached over to shift that item off my thigh, only to find something I long thought lost. A hilt that settled into my hand perfectly, despite the gnarled knuckles from the many beatings I'd suffered of late. Soft sand-shark skin wraps gave slightly under my grip.
"Specula. You brought my acinias." I murmured, even as Matertera tried to take her from me.
"Rico, a blind person with a blade is a bad idea." She snapped.
"Even blind, Billenius would be better than many." Cethegor reached in, helping me slide my saber across my lap, out of her way. "And, if I remember, you taught him to use this blade as a focus, Antonia. Right now, we need him focused, not walking amid dreams from the drugs slipped past me and the Parcae."
Sighing, Matertera relented. "Fine. Just keep him out of fights, he's in no shape to swing Specula, let alone be able to see his opponents."
I know better than to argue that point. The damage to my shins argued that standing, let alone walking, would prove impossible. "So, this is a jail break?"
Even my aunt chuckled at that. "Possibly. Those things tend to go awry easily into mass internments, in my experience." She whispered. "Billenius, at least let Specula go long enough for me to splint this arm."
"Not happening, Matertera." I groaned, easing the blade off my lap, and marginally out of her way.
"Point me at that overbearing Islander lapdog, after you get me bandaged. I want a rematch."
Keth's laugh echoed in the small room. "My last twelve vittles on Bill taking him."
Aunt Antonia snorted, even as Rico laughingly chided his old comrade. "Thought you gave everything already to the cause."
"Ran into another friend in the halls who owed me some coins." Keth's light tone left me puzzled. Of all here, only he seemed light-hearted. "Something about a onager race down Pelori way, he reminded me."
I straightened at that, and the pain as Matertera bound my ribs up, still waiting for the splint. "Drinius." I gasped. Things began to clear in my head, despite the pain.
"Peace. Let me work on him." Antonia snapped. I heard the slosh of water when her hands left my side. Followed by a sharp smack, distinct shattering of ceramic vase, and her hiss. "The wound needs cleaned, Cethegor."
"Not with rust laced waters, 'Nia. That is why everyone is ill here. I kept those I could safe from iron fever, but some still makes it in." Cethegor's voice held an edge.
"Gods. Find me something safe then." She muttered curses and discussed the ancestry of others under her breath, in several languages. My aunt has a way with such insults that leaves me in awe. Enough to distract me from the pain.
* * *
Once Matertera had me bound up enough to move, I settled my acinias back across my lap, trusting none with her. Fingers sought out that bundle Rico'd dropped by me during the bandaging. Soft, worn leather met that touch, leaving me trying to smile. Not the silk or wool robes of a priest, but the working clothes of a Custos, the guardians of the borders. My set.
"Must be a bad time if you have to call me back to serve in the catervae, Rico." I commented.
"Just what will keep you alive out there. Robes are not made for fleeing in blizzards." Rico snarled back. "Keth, get them moving, I need to collect Doma Velina, and let her know the Triarium have risen from the ashes." That chilled me, too close to something I'd once said myself, years before being blinded.
"At least you have honor, boy. Better a blind elf that knows his limits, than what the Decuria dumped into the riders of late." Cethegor answered heatedly, helping me up. "Besides, the mount Drinius chose from your string of mounts will take a Custos to ride."
I tried laughing, despite the grimness in his voice. "Which one?"
"An unnamed onagera." Matertera said, scoffingly. "Fool's choice, that one. Unbroken, untrained, barely of safe age to use as a casual mount, let alone in fights and flights. Kicks too much already."
Sucking in air, I leaned back my head, images of this onagera's ultimate sire in my mind. "Turbator's line. Sired by Corfuego upon Zephyria." I whispered. The two best lines in my stable, in one mount. Something in it stirred my visions again, granting me glimpses of a long, brutal ride, and the flare of lightnings off a silver fork. But we'd bred horns out of the onagers ages before, leaving only them to use only ones on barding of a type I'd disdained before.
"Yes. Your parents wish to have words with you about this mingling, and this filly." Matertera spoke solemnly. "She is an anachrnonism, child. Deformed in the head."
"Just spirited, I'm sure." I chuckled. "Pater fails to realize how useful kicking is in mounted combat. Besides, I'm sure she's not a true unicornis."
The silence after that stirred my darkest premonitions. Something was wrong here.
When the quiet, even in the halls suddenly broke, it was at Keth's rough voice. "Bicornis, boy. Two horn nubs, wide skull, and she's gray, like a mortisia's mount."
I shivered, suddenly cold. That ride was coming, one more dangerous than my foray on her great sire's back into the heart of the Dunes, and out the other side in my old life. "Dieum." My whisper at least told me I'd made them aware of wariness. "Long hard rides ahead of me, I guess."
"She needs to be put down, Billenius." Matertera snapped. "She's an abomination. Born with silver hooves, those horns, and hates lizards."
I grinned, fighting off the pain such stirred on my scarred face. "Perfect mount to take on the Paths for another rematch I'd like to have." That set Keth to coughing, trying to cover his laughter.
My aunt grasped my arm. "Billenius..."
"I've seen her, Matertera. Not just in my mind as I bred the line, but in my dreams of late." That stilled them fast, save muttered curses from Cethegor. "Like the pegasae of old, she will challenge any of the draconis. Or save them, if she deems them worthy."
They let it drop, for now. This would be a long, nasty argument over the next few fortnights we call a hebdoma. They would want her destroyed, but I needed her, I knew it, not just in my heart, but my anima.
Rico's voice at the doorway stalled the fight, thankfully. "Well, Velina is being as stubborn with me as she was with Bento. But, at least she is willing to meet us in the great hall."
Keth let his ragged laughter out again. "Better than we hoped. She claims her death is nigh, though."
"I pray not, Cethegor. Bento will not forgive me if she dies here today." Rico's voice held a dark tone, one I knew well from working with him in the past.
"Don't let me slow down the meeting. I'm sure Matertera wants to scold me some more." I grunted, ribs aching as I bent the bit allowed by the tight cotton cloths wrapping them. My fingers lifted up my pants. "Besides, I want to be dressed when I meet the Cato and his rabid lapdog."
That left the air still. Which saved me from their mirth at my struggling to dress in clothes I could not see, and barely remembered how to secure onto my thinner than their cut frame.
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