Nurturer of Nightmares

Sellan

Three hours earlier…

Lydiav and Nym paced the space of the Den, where I had told them to go before Selphien had arrived in the inn this morning, their faces grim. Jane had already been briefed as best we could, our simple warnings that we might have to flee sinking in, the Fae deciding to get some sleep before what could be the beginning of the worst time of our lives.

At our feet, the second Sacred sat in a hessian sack. Emmett and I had found it tucked amongst the other supplies in the Den, and left it here so we could bring the others, but to make it believable, we’d had to trick Selphien into thinking we weren’t going out together. I’d forced her to stay at the Inn under the pretence that we were still searching.

Emmett was seated on the stone ledge of the Den, shaking his head in horror as he breathed, “We’ll never get out of here with the Sacreds…”

I’d already suspected as much. Leviathan had been toying with us, and he wasn’t going to be willing to let us go, not with two of the most important pieces for their ritual.

“Then one of us will have to take them. The others will have to be distractions. Sacrifices,” Nym said with a shrug, her tone one of bleak acceptance. Lydiav nodded silently, staring at the cobblestones, and I breathed, “Who? None of us could outrun Leviathan!”

“No, we couldn’t. But all of us are skilled fighters. We could hold Leviathan off while someone else runs.”

“Who?”

“Selphien. Leviathan will never see it coming- Selphien’s been so distracted by finding Syrphien’s killer, and so disinterested in the Sacreds, that he’ll suspect she’s the decoy, and one of us has the real Sacreds.”

“Leviathan might not even know we have them!” Emmett cried out, and Nym snorted, rolling her eyes and sarcastically saying, “And Zeella is the Queen of England! Of course he knows we have them! He followed us this far, for Hell’s sake!”

Selphien would freeze up if she knew she had the Sacreds. As much as I loved her, she wasn’t ready for that kind of responsibility.

“Selphien would panic under that kind of pressure,” I supplied, Emmett nodding in agreement, “We can’t hand both of them to one person.”

“We’re going to have to! Selphien could go to Tarvenia. She could meet Tatiana and Lucifer with them. Keep the war going.”

“That means we could die.”

“Yes,” Nym said fiercely, “We could! They already have Destiny, Jezebel is willing to go ahead with the ritual, and they have the Paradoxin Cord and Inferos. They don’t need much to get the final pieces. If we can take these ones from under their noses, we stand a better chance than if we do nothing! We need to do this tonight!”

“We’ll need a plan. In case he follows her.”

“We’ll station ourselves around the area, send her out the tunnel entrance. Provided we can hold him off for long enough, she’ll get away.”

“Again, she would panic if she knew she held the key to winning the war on her!”

“We don’t tell her, then!” Nym argued, “I’ll pretend I have one! Emmett can pretend he has the other! We’ll take some of the supplies from here to make it seem legit, fill a bag with some useless crap, and then head out in pairs. Lydiav and I can go first. I’ll station myself on the roof with these.” She patted a nearby bow and sheathe of arrows, “And Lydiav can hide on the ground with a dagger. Jane and Emmett can go out after and hide somewhere else in the streets, and then Selphien can leave with the Sacreds. If Leviathan follows her, you follow him. If he attacks, or she screams, I start loosing arrows, you start swinging swords. Easy.”

“We won’t kill him,” I warned. There was no way we could win a battle against Leviathan, especially not at night, and Nym said, “No, we won’t. All we have to do is hold him off long enough that she gets away.”

“And when she questions why we’re the ones staying behind?”

“She won’t have time to question it. We’ll make it clear that she runs. She can meet us in the Old Mill Inn in three weeks- long enough that she can walk there, since she can’t fly.”

Emmett now looked convinced, staring at the Sacred at his feet, and Lydiav threw herself into his arms, hugging him tightly as she breathed, “We’ll be okay!”

Nym didn’t seem to hold the same optimistic view, and when I raised an eyebrow at her, questioning those views, she simply said, “I’ll either be back with Destiny, or I’ll be dead and out of this war. If, by some miracle, we all survive, then great! Until I hear the news that we’re all okay, though, then I won’t have high hopes.”

“Very dire of you,” I muttered half-heartedly, knowing she was right, and she smiled slightly, saying, “Destiny and I got into some very tight situations. Bal’gag and Lydiav too. I don’t keep my hopes up until I get the message that we’re safe. Listen, Sellan, we are the last hope this war has right now, alright? We are the front lines, the cavalry and the back-up all rolled into one! There will be no retreats, no special extractions! We are the only ones still standing in Ordeallan right now, and either we get those Sacreds out, or we die trying! Selphien will be our offering to the world, to hope.”

“We’re going to die, aren’t we?” Lydiav said quietly, and Nym took her hand, squeezing it lovingly and breathing, “When are we not about to die, Lydiav? The people in this city are drowning in oppression right now, and it’s our job to break it. If we have to burn a few bridges and buildings along the way, so be it. If we have to die for it, then fine! We’re doing this, whether we’re okay with death right now or not, because Selphien cannot die. She is the last heir to her throne, to any throne in The Borderlands right now, and if she dies, the hope of her people die with her. I can’t imagine being in the middle of the war and hearing that not only did you lose the four cities, you lost the side city too, that the final link to normalcy died.”

“I thought you hated her?”

“I hate that she ran and left Lydiav to die, but that’s what gave me this idea in the first place- Selphien’s first instinct is to run. If she runs, and we stay behind to make sure nobody runs after her, she’ll be okay.”

“You really want to die a martyr? There’s got to be another, better way!” Emmett argued, and Lydiav quietly said, “We were trained for this. If we die, having our names on that monument is more than we ever thought we’d get. It’s up to us to win, now.”

Clearing my throat nervously, I said, “Fine. Here’s what we’re going to do…”