Remnants of Night

I blink my eyes, shock not quite letting another emotion take over. Destroy? Did this sputtering camp fire just threaten my new realm? My world with its dismal skies and loud noises, its non-magical transportation and its fabulous form-fitting jeans? Oh no you didn’t! Righteous anger flooded my limbs and threatened to steal my breath if I didn’t use it right then and there. Maybe I would forgo the yelling and just skip right to the incinerating!

Invyrchal snapped and reappeared close behind me. “Don’t do anything foolish. I would hate for you to ruin your reputation with our dear friends the Sarkkrai.” He placed a hand on my back below my nape and—I swear it!—my spell was gone. Gone! The power to douse his life was scattered like a dream upon wakening. I rocked forward and turned to face him, my unblinking eyes drying in the heat being put off by his flame body.

“What did you do?”

“Oh nothing. Nothing at all, really,” he snapped back to the fire pit and took a seat on the metal rim with the rising flames at his back. His voice lost its coating of mocking humor. “Now that I have your attention, I want you to return to Osiril and tell them what I said, then I want you to return to your new life.”

“What is the catch?” I asked, mind still reeling from the possibilities.

“You will then seek me out there. If you do not, I kill everyone. Every day you wait, I will heap more tragedy upon the world, starting with Rutherford. Find me or become the reason for its destruction, either way—what fun I will have,” Invyrchal laughed, rocking back. There was an air of menace to his words that was on par with Ve’Sath; this creature would do exactly what he said he would do.

“Fun? You do this for fun?”

“Does that motive sound oddly familiar, Darkest Despair? Oh and take the mage with you. It will make things easier and you will need the help.” Invyrchal strove to his feet and blinked to stand before the bound Ianarius. “I won’t make you, of course. You, I will let decide on your own but I know your type—knowing that you could prevent thousands of lost lives will drive you to act. Their world does not know monsters like we do…” The fire being was back in front of me again. “Do not fret, my dear. I will give you clues to follow. For now, I will be lenient.”

“This will end. When I find you, you will leave the world in peace,” I told him, finding strength in my own words of conviction.

Invyrchal cocked his head. His reply came a few breaths later. “It will only end when I say it will end and unfortunately for you, I hold great interest in both you and this Earth. Be a good girl and do as I say and maybe this will even be pleasant for you. Anger me and you will wish that your kind did not have such long lives…

“Seek me out. I need to speak to our illustrious Warlord so I am going to cut this little meeting short.” With that, Invyrchal turned his fiery back and I found myself back in the castle of Osiril, staring at a fire pit in a strange room. The fire was empty and the room was near pitch, the only light coming from the open door behind me. There was a thump and Ianarius popped into view, falling immediately to his knees. The chains were gone but apparently not the nauseating feeling. He spat out the nasty bit of metal the Sarkkrai had put in his mouth, gagging and nearly vomiting right there. Sucking in deep lung-fulls, his disorientation didn’t last. Either through fortitude or simple male aversion to showing weakness, the mage got to his feet, wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve.

“Something to be said about Sarkkrai hospitality…” I commented dryly. “Always leaves a bad taste in your mouth.” Ianarius glared at me, spitting off to the side and wiping his mouth again. “I always thought that unnatural metal would put your kind out. How about that…”

“I am a master. I am no snot-nosed novice,” he replied. “King Burend must be informed of what we’ve learned.” Having gathered himself, he pivoted and strode quickly from the room.

I stared at the empty fire pit for a moment, pondering what all this meant. This Invyrchal proved more than once not someone I could easily brush aside; he can teleport people from inside a warded area, he knows guarded secrets about mage-kind, he has Ve’Sath’s ear and is in league with the Sarkkrai. And, most of all, he could extinguish my spells before I had even begun them. Decidedly slower, I followed and by miracle (and trailing the leaking emotions of a certain mage) found the throne room.

Ianarius was already speaking to Ostas. The King was listening intently but I doubted he was not aware when I entered. When I approached, I got the tail end of their conversation. “…glad for Pelthocia but at a loss for words for this… other world. As King, I do not like the idea of giving in to this Invyrchal nor do I like having our Master Mage absent for an unknown period of time as well as putting yourself in harm’s way. As any man, I would wish to offer as much assistance as I could.”

“And does my opinion count at all in this?” I asked with spread hands. “I did not say I wanted any assistance from Pelthocia or its Master Mage…”

“If you truly wish to become a protector instead of a villain, you should be thankful I am even considering.”

“I wish,” I said tersely, “to be neither. I only wish to continue the life I have made there but obviously that’s not going to happen. Perhaps if I find the bastard, he’ll realize that Lehiras is much more fun to terrorize. I don’t need help in that. Especially from the likes of you.”

The man’s eyebrow tweaked. “If you insist on lying, barricade your nonsense behind a better shield.”

I could feel anger rising up toes to fingers. Frustration, worry and anxiety tainted the purity of my anger and I wanted an outlet right then and there so much I probably would have burned the damn city... excuse me, City… to the ground, if it weren’t for the added emotion of sorrow that threatened to blur my eyes with their tears. Earth would pay for my transgressions. If I didn’t go back, the world would pay, of that I had no doubt.

I could feel the hotness of my face; I was beet-red and the telltale color shamed me. I wouldn’t cry frustrated tears in front of these men! I wouldn’t! Ducking my head, I made a show of rubbing my brows as if the anger had nearly won out. Was I fooling them? I don’t really know.

“Will you return to this other world?” Ostas Burend said, his voice soft and un-incriminating.

“Yes,” I said with a bob of my head, barely able to trust my own voice.

“You will seek out this scoundrel and learn what he plans? You will do what you can to protect this other world from him?”

“I am going to try.”

“That is all that can be asked. Be their protector. They do not need to know your past. Suffer for them and know the unsung hero’s burden.”

I swallowed. Hero? Me? I could do that. Yeah.

“Pelthocia will provide what we can, you need only ask.”

I nodded, feeling more like myself then I had since I got here. I was a King, practically a god to the Sarkkrai; I don’t quaver from a challenge. Invyrchal was stepping on my toes and I got big feet (er, in true form, natch). I could handle this, I handled Ve’Sath after all (Ooo, naughty!). I straightened my back and looked Burend in the eye. “I will head out first thing tomorrow morning but before I leave, I believe you have something of mine that I would like back.”

The Harbinger’s eyes had already focused in our direction prior to our actually being visible. Always vigilant, my assassins, even here and under these conditions. I could see him well enough in the dim light where he sat as far from the prison bars as he could, back to the cold stone wall. There was a smattering of old straw on the ground and a discarded blanket. His clothing was moldered, having rotted on his thin malnourished frame throughout what had to have been many years of incarceration.

The lantern was lifted higher at my shoulder and the light lit the inside of the cell, causing the Harbinger to cover his face with a snarl. The guard chuckled. “It really hates light.”

“No. He just doesn’t want to show his true face to those he considers enemies. It is a dishonor and you’ve left him nearly without the ability to even do that. Lower the lantern.” Portions of the hands that covered his face looked to have been cut off and mangled without being able to fully regenerate. That it had healed at all meant that the Harbinger had found a blood source. I glanced about for mice or rats, instead finding food dishes lumped in a corner. The contents were rotten and foul. I’d bet that he had drug the bowls just out of reach of the guards in attempt to get them to come into the chamber. “You were feeding him?”

“We were feeding him once a day but after losing a guard, we decided that twice a week would be good enough. It’s not like he was eating the food anyways.” The guard had the decency at least to look somewhat abashed at their poor treatment of a prisoner. He wouldn’t meet my eye. The second guard however spat on the ground near the bars. Ianarius rounded out the group and was quiet at my back.

Stepping to the bars, I lowered my mental barrier enough to send out tendril to him; just enough to let him know who I was. The faded eyes widened and slowly as if he hadn’t moved for quite some time, the Harbinger pushed his tired body to one knee, his head bowed. Heavy chains weighed down his limbs and rustled with movement. “And you called me a monster,” I remarked to those behind me. “Not even a Sarkkrai would have left someone to slowly rot to death in a prison cell.”

“No, they would have degraded, tortured and then killed their prisoner,” Ianarius remarked. The mage did not fail to notice the Harbinger’s head lift as if he was scenting the air. Whilst my assassins couldn’t precisely sniff out magic, they were remarkably astute in addition to resistant.

“Perhaps so but you Pelthocians always claimed to be the better race, taking the high road, the honorable road. Yet here in this pitiable cell sits evidence of the same violence you accuse the Sarkkrai of.” I looked back at the Harbinger, wobbling slightly on his knee. That such a beautiful graceful creature could be reduced to this… “Your name, Harbinger?”

His eyes snaked past me then back and his mouth opened, moving like he couldn’t quite remember how to form the words. He croaked out his name in the Sarkkrai language, unwilling to not respond to my question but not willing to let them know it. I translated the word as best I could in my head and frowned over the result. Was I wrong? It had been a while. “I want them to hear it, to know they kept a living thinking being in this cage for all these years, so speak. Translate it to their language.”

“Deviant.”

No. I was not out of practice in the Sarkkrai tongue. “I’m not calling you that.” Gonna nip that right in the bud. “Devi. That’s much less… ugh.”

“Mistress, forgive…” came the whispery dry voice. “Twenty three moons ago… I began to… doubt… you would return.”

My heart constricted in my chest. Twenty three moons out of perhaps five or six years and only then was he beginning to doubt? Oh my faithful creature… “The war has ended, Devi. It’s been over for many, many moons. Have your people still been fighting all this time?”

He gave a nod. “We were not told otherwise. We continued our war.”

“The Harbingers that remained in our towns and villages were routed. Once we knew what they were, we went town to town. This one was brought down but before we could burn the body, its heart had restarted. We tossed it in irons so that we could learn from it.”

“And what did you learn?”

“That these things are damn hard to keep dead and nothing will make them talk if they don’t want to. This is the first time I’ve actually even heard it.”

“I didn’t deserve such loyalty,” I said softly, my hands on the cold bars that separated us. “And your people were left forgotten at their posts, just like you were left forgotten in here. I am sorry for what I did.” The Harbinger wavered on his knee, placing a hand on the ground to stay up. The chains jingled around him. The look on his face was so lost, I could almost cry. That I had used this entire race so badly that this one lone being could quite possibly be the last of his kind was a sin I would never rid myself of. “Your time in purgatory ends today.”

“I am not going to let this monster out of here, just to go back to preying on the countryside,” Ianarius declared.

“He will do as I tell him,” I hissed over my shoulder. “Devi, the war is over. You will return to your lands beyond Rakmorath and take as many of your people with you as you can locate.”

“…Mistress…” The Harbinger breathed out, putting his other knee under him until he was kneeling completely. “I beg you. Don’t... make me leave you.”

“The war is over! The Harbingers are free. You don’t have to do this anymore.”

“You are here,” he replied in simplicity.

I thunked my forehead into the bars, feeling the cold permeate my skin. How could I turn my back to that? What was I to do? Well, first things first. “Open the cell.” The Pelthocians exchanged glances. “I assure you, he will not attack.”

The guardsmen exchanged glances but at a nod from Ianarius, one relented and the door screeched open. Agonizingly slow, the Harbinger got his legs up under him. The people at my back tensed as if this half-dead creature could possibly do them harm. Hm, well, then again maybe they were right to be afraid; a Harbinger was a force unto themselves, spending their lives hiding their nature like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. “Alright, let’s undo the damage wrought by all those deaths.”

Reaching out a hand, I saw the Harbinger’s instinctual reactions even as he tried to mask them. Dry lips pulled back from teeth that ended in serrated edges—little doubt this was how they found they could tell the difference between them and the Pelthocians. A pale pink tongue peeked out to run along the edges then moisten his lips. A tentative hand came to meet mine, shaking as if afflicted with palsy. No, he was physically shaking, not just his hand, and I felt a spike of sudden fear as I began to reassess what it was I was doing. In a small cell with a half-starved killer and I was trusting he wouldn’t savage my arm?

He breathed in a hitching breath as his other hand curled at his side. Harbingers could taste chemical changes; no doubt he was catching my fear and it was ratcheting up his predatory senses. Devi looked to want to lower his eyes from the pulse of my wrist but couldn’t. As I watched, with every blink his unremarkable blue eyes bled more and more into pure black. He was quickly losing control.

I mentally kicked myself. I was no human, no Pelthocian. A Harbinger could only hurt me if I let it and this Harbinger needed me. I did not much relish the idea of becoming sustenance but none of the men behind me were going to offer and I suppose it was my fault he’d spent the last several years in solitary confinement, starving… dying….

I steeled my spine and the hand that met my own was no longer shaking as badly. Devi gently pulled me closer to him, raising my upturned hand to his mouth. I could feel his breath along my skin, sending a shiver racing through me. His teeth were exquisitely sharp, the elongated edges slicing into my skin with razor precision. There was no pain at first then it hit me when the Harbinger latched his mouth to the wound. He was still trying to be gentle, holding my arm almost reverently. I felt the occasional pass of a tooth, keeping the wound open. Just when the pain was starting to become too much, Devi pulled back with a small moan. His tongue laved over the cuts. It wasn’t meant to be sexual but the sensuality of sharing blood, of being that close, made my throat dry and my heart flip. Having another’s tongue on my body might also have something to do with it. The Harbinger sighed softly as he drew that soft wet tongue languidly over my wrist but before I could remind myself how seriously inappropriate this all was becoming, Devi released my arm as if shocked. His legs gave out under him and he curled over with a gasp. He coughed and gasped over sounds reminiscent of bending celery until it breaks in two.

“Devi?” I clutched my wrist, sending a healing tendril to knit the skin. The Harbinger’s back twitched and trembled. Behind clenched jaws came groans of pain and gulping breaths. Then it all stopped and he became still as death. “Devi?”

He drew in a deep breath and got to his feet in an eerily-fluid motion. It was if he was replaced by an entirely different person. Gone was the frailness, the ill-health. The Harbinger was tall but not abnormally so; his body was firm with muscle but not overly so—faultless, enticing and unintimidating. His face beneath the dirt was handsome enough, just the other side of average—a nice face but forgettable, as all his kind were. Devi’s jaw was angular, his lips full and pleasant. There was a moment while he slowly opened his eyes that I saw the being beneath the façade—his real face was like a sculpture waiting for features to be chiseled in, plain, wrong and alien. The black-as-voids eyes flickered and suddenly they were an even gray, expressive with laugh lines under slightly arched brows. He was suddenly your acquaintance down the street, the guy you shared a laugh with while waiting in line, the coworker you know but can never recall his name…

The guards behind me were not going to be fooled; they nervously gripped the weapons at the sides. It was only Ianarius’ presence that kept them from slamming the cell door and locking it. I couldn’t feel anything from the mage.

Devi smiled without revealing the lower half of his teeth. “Mistress…” He may not be drop-dead gorgeous, layered in grime as he was, but his purring voice was silky smooth, sending a shiver down my back. The multiple deaths at the hands of the Pelthocians, starvation and dehydration left no mark upon him but his clothes were holding together by dirt. Walking out of here was going to leave me with one dirty naked Harbinger and I don’t think I would have minded that much. Basking in the feelings I was unwittingly broadcasting, he spryly took up my hand and laid a gentle kiss on my palm.

Then his eyes slid past me and I got a glimpse into the creature that lurked beneath that pleasant disguise. I could not blame the inhuman growl that rose up from his throat, the cat-like scrunch of his shoulders as if readying to pounce—these people had held him prisoner for far too long. “Devi,” I said softly; the call of his name snapping him out of the lapse of judgment. “Remember what I said to you—you can come with me as long as you do not attack anyone. Just stay at my side.”

“I will do as you say, Mistress.” The Harbinger lowered his head in acquiescence but only a fool would miss the simmering beast laying below, waiting…

I studied him for a moment, hoping I wasn’t making a Very Big Mistake. This wasn’t an abused puppy I was taking in from the local shelter. I turned to face the Pelthocians, ready to leave.

“S-sir, you can’t really be allowing this!” One of the guards sputtered. “That thing is an enemy of our county! Who knows how many have died at his hands!”

“Stand aside,” the mage replied without looking away from me. He had that same reflective look on his face as he did earlier. The guard wanted to argue but knew he held no clout; with a disgruntled sigh, he stomped out of the way. His fellow followed suit. I strode out of the cell with Devi flanking me. I was unable to keep a self-satisfied smile from my lips. The guard who had spoken out suddenly paled and stepped back; over my shoulder I could see Devi smiling his most devastating smile, all teeth accounted for.