The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 493

Chapter 493: For The Days To Come

CAERA DENOIR

I stood high up on the curving road that ran around the outer wall of Vildorial’s primary cavern. The highway connected the lowest levels, from which hundreds of interconnecting tunnels branched out, all the way to Lodenhold palace at the top of the cavern. Dozens of roads and hundreds of homes and businesses were built into the walls along the path. The palace was at my back, its sharp lines jutting out of the bare rock, while three large portal frames filled most of the highway not far in front of me.

The frames were alien in design to anything I had ever seen in Alacrya, but I knew they’d been developed by Scythe Nico during the final days of Agrona’s reign. Based on the teleportation gates of the ancient mages, these portals could create a stable connection from one continent to the other by detecting and connecting to an existing portal or tempus warp receiver.

It was almost ironic that the very technology that had allowed Agrona’s final assault on Dicathen would now be used by the Dicathiens to send our people home.

The scene was tense. A small group of Alacryans stood around me, including Cylrit, Uriel Frost, and Corbett. The once-powerful men and women looked strange in their simple tunics and pants, absent the trappings of their old stations.

Behind us, barring the way to the palace, was a small army of dwarves. They wore heavy armor and their weapons were drawn. The dwarven lords stood behind them on a raised dais of stone, along with Lance Mica Earthborn and two elves. These two stood out among the dwarves just as much as I did.

It was odd, seeing Cecilia’s image there. Or rather, the face I had known as Cecilia’s. I found myself inspecting her more closely now. She was of average height, perhaps a bit shorter than me, and quite slender. She was dressed in a simple green gown, but a laurel of blue flowers woven into her metallic gray hair elevated her look to that of a princess. Which she was, I had to remind myself. She remained silent as Commander Virion spoke with Lords Earthborn and Silvershale, her gaze drifting thoughtfully around the cavern.

What was the reunion between her and Arthur like? I wondered despite myself. Even considering my own complicated feelings toward him, it was difficult to picture him being romantic, inflamed with passion, pouring his heart out to this silver-haired beauty…

I put the elf out of my mind. There was too much at stake to lose myself in such thoughts. Although I regretted the way things had gone, petty jealousy was beneath me. Arthur was my friend, but even that was a difficult relationship to maintain with someone in his position. I didn’t envy anyone who attempted to be more than that with Arthur, although I did wish them both well.

Giving myself a small shake, I refocused on what was happening. In front of us, arranged in rows behind the portals, were approximately thirty exoforms and their pilots. The bestial machines were supposedly there to ensure our peaceful teleportation to Alacrya, but, alongside the army of dwarven soldiers, they seemed more like a threat than a promise of protection.

There was no part of me that blamed the Dicathians for this. We’d attacked them, and instead of destroying us, Arthur had given us a home, such as it was. In thanks, we’d attacked them again to save ourselves from the curse of our own magic. If this had happened in Alacrya, the offending bloods would have been wiped out utterly, man woman and child. Although I was glad for the Dicathians’ mercy, I could hardly believe they were capable of it. A small part of me—the Vritra-blooded part—even judged them for this mercy, knowing that it could be taken as a weakness.

That wasn’t the part of myself that I embraced, however, and I left these thoughts to linger in the dark corners of my mind.

The normally busy highway was empty of its usual traffic. Every gate and side road was blocked off by dwarven guards. The way near the bottom, below the lowest of the newly constructed prisons, was barred as well. A crowd had gathered there, and even from the top of the cavern, I could hear their shouts. Not the words, specifically, but the deep rumble of their noise. They clearly were not cheering in celebration.

Three figures watched everything from above.

Seris had donned her gleaming black battledress, and her mana was coiled tightly around her, suppressing her aura but not hiding it. There was an intentionality and protectiveness to the act, like a mother sovereign cobra coiling around her eggs. The tendrils of her power seemed to extend out to wrap around all of the Alacryans still locked up in the dwarven prisons.

Beside her on her left, Lance Bairon Wykes gleamed in shining plate armor. A long crimson spear was held comfortably in his left hand, its point down. Outwardly, he seemed stoic—perfectly calm—but there was a crackling energy to his mana signature that felt tense and nervous.

Arthur floated to Seris’s right. He was in his conjured relic armor, but it had changed since I last saw him. The black scales now sat beneath white pauldrons, gauntlets, greaves, and boots. The heavy plating had an organic look to it, as if it had been carved out of bone. Even from such a distance, his eyes gleamed golden.

He looks the part of an asura, I thought, having heard the rumors already circulating throughout Vildorial. It wasn’t difficult to imagine him shouting down dragons and basilisks around a gilded table atop some high tower in the faraway land of deities. At the very least, he stands out just as much as I do with my horns.

My gaze flicked to the elven princess and away again, wondering what she thought of all that.

I’m not doing a good job of not thinking about them, I admonished myself, firmly redirecting the spotlight of my attention.

Seris made a gesture. Many seconds dragged past, then Alacryans began to stream from the lowest prison. It took them quite some time to ascend the highway. As they walked, they shuffled into three distinct columns, each one aligned with one of the portal frames.

The portals were activated one at a time by a number of human and dwarven mages under the watchful eye of Gideon. Each portal hummed with mana, and an opaque, oily pane of energy rippled into being within the frames.

“This is not what we want!” Someone shouted, their rough voice carrying through the cavern like falling stones.

Distracted from the procession, I searched around for the source of the cry. At the mouth of the closest side street, which descended to the first row of dwarven homes beneath the level of the palace—the same street, incidentally, that I’d nearly died falling onto—a couple dozen dwarves had gathered. They pushed angrily against the line of guards blocking access to the highway, and it looked like a few even carried weapons.

“Justice for the fallen!” a red-faced dwarven man bellowed.

“Backstabbers!” a woman was screaming. “Liars! Betrayers!”

“Justice! Justice!” Several more were shouting now, picking the word up as a kind of chant.

Corbett shuffled nervously next to me. “Why aren’t they shutting those people up?”

“It isn’t their way, to govern with an iron fist,” I pointed out distractedly.

The lines of Alacryans reached a level with the screaming crowd. As I looked further down, though, I realized that all of the side streets that I could see were likewise thronging with protesters. The dwarven guards at the very bottom, only barely visible, were being pushed back, forced to slowly follow the lines of Alacryans as an angry crowd drove them along. Another squad was hurrying down the highway, apparently going to reinforce them.

“Vritra, there are hundreds of them,” Uriel Frost said, scowling.

Among the front lines of the Alacryans, I caught sight of Justus Denoir, Corbett’s uncle, and my pulse quickened. When I’d last seen him, he’d been actively attempting to kill Corbett and Lenora. He had killed Taegan, my longtime guard, and Arian had almost died during the altercation as well.

I understood the dwarves’ anger. They were not the only ones who had suffered and been betrayed. But then, was Melitta’s rage any less justified? Her husband, her children, had been slaughtered in retribution for our defiance. No, her rage was justified…but it was also misplaced. Justus and his faction of the Denoir blood had blamed Corbett and me for leading us into this folly when they should have blamed Agrona; it was the High Sovereign who had butchered sweet little Arlo and Colm like animals.

The cycle of hostility and revenge would be endless. Every reaction, every death in the name of “justice,” would only spawn another in response. In the end, though, the true originator of these crimes, Agrona himself, was already gone. It didn’t feel like justice, but it was as close as any of us would ever get.

I knew, though, that the protestors couldn’t see it that way. I had lived my entire life in the shadow of the Vritra, but these Dicathians saw us as the aggressors, the backstabbers. To them, Agrona and his ilk were nothing but that: a shadow, distant and indistinct.

I knew it would take a strong leader to bring the two sides together.

Glancing up at Seris, I considered what came next, but sudden motion drew my focus back to the ground.

Two of the exoforms had left formation. Before I realized what was happening, burning orange weapons were drawn, and swift blows fell against the leftmost portal frame.

The frame shattered with the terrible noise of breaking stone and shearing metal. The opaque surface inside it tore and melted away in an oily swirl.

I stood frozen among the other once-highbloods, not quite believing my eyes.

At nearly the same time, explosions of stone and fire struck the cordons, and suddenly spells were raining down on the unarmed Alacryan lines. A few shields flickered into existence to defend them, but most of the Alacryan mages were still too weak to use magic following the shock of Agrona’s defeat.

“How dare they!” Uriel shouted, and his voice snapped me out of my stupor.

Cylrit was already moving. I lunged to follow, heedless of Corbett yelling behind me.

One of the rebel exoforms was bringing their blade around toward the second portal. There was a purple flash, and the blade halted as Arthur caught it on his own. “Stand down,” he ordered, his voice vibrating with command.

Well ahead of me, Cylrit struck the hand from the second exoform. Its blade flipped around in the air before driving into the stone at its feet. The machine stumbled back a step.

The rest of the exoforms seemed frozen as they searched for someone to give them orders. Only one moved: the tall, lean form of an upright griffon leapt high into the air only to dive atop the back of the first exoform, hurling it to the ground and pinning in at Arthur’s feet. “Positions, damn you!” Claire Bladeheart’s distorted voice boomed.

Behind them, further down the road, a black mist of mana condensed around the Alacryans, swallowing the spellfire before it could reach the Alacryans. Beneath the cloud, many bodies lay still. Several flashes lit up the cavern, and the sharp crack of thunder in the distance cut across all other noise.

As I sprinted through the lines of shocked exoform pilots, the silver spikes released from my relic bracer and flew into the air ahead of me. Beams of soulfire shot from their points, forming a protective barrier around those Alacryans leading the way.

Behind me, the sluggish exoform pilots began to move. They hurried to form up alongside the outer edge of the highway, using their bodies or shields to fend off hurled spells and weapons.

Violet lightning struck group after group, and pulses of what I knew to be Arthur’s aetheric intent drove the dwarves to their feet.

My orbitals followed along with the Alacryans, covering them from spells or projectiles that the mists couldn’t, until they reached the portals. The process was supposed to be regulated by Gideon and his staff, not letting too many through at once, but they’d all fallen back after the first attack. There was also supposed to be a test, with predetermined individuals going through and returning to ensure the connection was stable and the teleportation didn’t go awry. Now, there was no time. Those leading the charge—Justus himself right at the front—plunged into the portals without a second’s hesitation.

This was not how I’d imagined our return to Alacrya, nor the role I would take on in this new world now that the war was over.

Over? The word echoed bitterly in my head as I sought out Seris or Arthur, the two touchstones of strength and sanity amidst the chaos. What could these people have hoped to accomplish in the presence of these great powers? I couldn’t see Arthur or Seris, but no more spells were being thrown by the protestors. The brief conflict had already been quelled.

The dwarven lines that had guarded the palace and their lords were in disarray, I noticed belatedly. Some were on the ground, most had their weapons drawn. Corbett, Uriel, and a couple of the others were watching the dwarves with distaste.

Seeing no more need for my protective barrier, I released it and started back toward the others. Gideon’s voice was echoing through some kind of amplification artifact, demanding order and calm or “you’re all likely to end up in Alacrya in pieces, damn it.” I didn’t think the words had quite the effect he was looking for as a cry went down the lines of Alacryans.

“Peace,” I said to no one in particular. “Peace, friends. The threat is gone.”

I passed the portals, pausing only a moment to watch people vanish into them before rejoining Corbett, who had stayed behind a conjured shield until the violence had passed.

“That seems to be settled, then,” Uriel said as I approached, his arms crossed over his chest, one hand absently brushing down his bushy blond goatee. “It seems to me this attack could have been ended sooner had our defenders acted more forcefully.”