Season 3: Episode 4 – The Cost of Victory

This series contains mature themes and is intended for adult listeners.

POV: Bryn Tal

> Begin Porta Cor imprint.<

Before I even called Dahlfia’s name out the second time, I already made up my mind.

I needed to go into the city and find her.

“Oswalt, assemble two dozen to guard me into the city. I’m going to meet our forces in Market Square.”

He blinked at me for a moment without answering.

I looked at him with eyebrows lifted high.

He nodded and turned to issue the order.

“I think you’re supposed to stay here.” He said it as though it were a casual suggestion.

“Well, the plan has changed, Oswalt.” My two dozen fighters arrived at that moment. “Hold everything down here.”

And I slipped out with my guards all around me to enter through the West Gate.

Bodies were everywhere—some dead, some in the process.

In places, it was hard to walk forward as there could be two or three, sometimes four, bodies deep in areas where the line was held.

Other than the dead and the dying, there were no signs of any life or activity here.

We passed the towers of the inner wall and were on Main Street, heading east toward Market Square.

I looked south. My house, if it still stood, would be a few streets down and over.

We moved further east into an area of inns for out-of-town travelers. They were all empty now.

The balconies were dark as the sun set, casting shadows in them.

Then everything changed.

That’s when the bodies seemed to drop down from the balconies and rooftops around us.

We were trapped.

Not even two minutes into the fighting, I dropped from two dozen guards to ten.

With Dahlfia’s knife in my hand, I weaved in and out of assailants, thrusting and stabbing.

More guards down. I was down to five and me.

The enemy stood four rows deep, circling us. They paused and sneered at us.

Statistically, there was no way around this.

I reached my other hand into my sleeve for my second knife and now had Dahlfia’s in my right and mine in my left. I would not be taken alive.

Oddly, a sound like racing horses came up from the direction of the west gate behind me. Closer and closer. The enemy fighters’ attention shifted from us to that direction, and I heard one ask, “What is it?”

I heard someone suck in a breath and yell, “VELG’LAN!”

The enemy fighters collided with us.

We fell to the ground.

The air was knocked from my lungs.

I had no idea what was happening from down there.

I clamored, trying to get back to my feet, but could not because of all the others rushing by that kept knocking me down.

One of my guards grabbed me under my arms and dragged me out of the road and into an inn. Another guard followed and stood in the doorway protectively.

At first, the only thing I could make out was a blur of many black cloaks with red trim. Knives and fire flashed in unison.

The scene was beautiful and terrifying at the same time.

Then, some enemy fighters ran through the street fully engulfed in flames.

Some staggered around with twenty or more throwing knives in them until they fell over.

We had no fighters capable of matching that level of strategy and precision.

Five Velg’lan claimed a whole row of enemy fighters by combining their magic fire and sweeping it down the row. I had never seen magic amplified collectively in that way.

For a moment, it felt as if they were one being rather than five individuals.

A taller and more familiar figure emerged from the Velg’lan. Even in the fading light and with her hair, which I’d only ever seen worn down, now pulled up under her hood, the gold eyes were unmistakable. Awyr’s eyes swept me for only a fraction of a second, but there was a flash of recognition.

Then she pointed at one of the enemy commanders and the ten fighters around her. She made it clear that she was coming for them.

She put her left foot out in front of her with just her booted toe on the ground while making a series of strange clicking sounds.

The other Velg’lan avoided those enemies. She had claimed them as hers.

Maybe there was time for a breath between her clicking sounds and when the whirl of commotion began, but it wasn’t much of one.

My senses could not process what she did fast enough to understand until bodies started falling to the ground. Sometimes one fell, sometimes two or three fell together.

When I searched for the Commander, all eleven were down.

Awyr’s face was a smooth, unreadable expression.

She wiped her blades off on the clothes of the dead and then slid them back into their sheaths at her side.

I realized that everything in the street had gone quiet.

I watched her for a moment.

Then I looked down the street in front of me.

No enemy fighters were alive.

The Velg’lan were all standing across the width of the street – not so much in rows, but in an unusual pattern I could not describe.

My two guards helped me to my feet, and I felt Awyr in front of me.

“Do you need a medic?” she asked, looking me over.

I forced my breath to steady.

“No,” I replied, shaken. “But I need to get to Market Square. I need to find out what happened to Dahlfia.”

“Did you get separated from her?” Awyr asked as she followed me out the door of the inn.

“No, she went missing in a tunnel that comes up on the east side of Market Square.”

She made a few clicking sounds, and a group of her fighters sped ahead down the street.

“They will investigate the tunnel.”

She clapped four short times, and the rest of her fighters moved in the same direction but at a slower pace. She walked with me behind them, my guards trailing behind me.

After a brief, uninterrupted march, we joined the rest of my troops in Market Square. They, along with Kylah and six of her original group, were still standing and had just finished fighting off the last of the enemy fighters there.

The Velg’lan kept their odd formation but stayed off to the side of the square.

Myr stepped up to where Awyr and I stood, “Bryn, what are you doing here?” She was surprised to see me. Then she gave a respectful nod to Awyr, “Much damage to Che’el de Velg’lan?”

Awyr answered flatly, “Surface damage only.”

Myr turned back to me, “We sent a group to clear out the Council Hall. No one’s seen Mallaidh yet.”

Awyr’s eyes looked distant for a moment, and then the Velg’lan seemed to stir slightly. She didn’t explain.

Kylah stepped up to me now and smiled, “You want a hug now, Bryn?” She was covered in blood and gore.

“I am grateful to see you, but we can save the hug for another time. Any sighting of Dahlfia?” I asked her.

“No,” her answer was short and abrupt.

Then, she and Awyr exchanged glances.

“Glad you could join us,” Kylah remarked after a pause.

Awyr, still stoic, said, “I heard you disfigured Peryglus’ head so badly my intel almost didn’t recognize her.”

Kylah grinned, showing full teeth, still covered in blood.

Myr turned back to us after talking to a runner. “They say Mallaidh is alone inside. No one approached her, and they do not believe she saw them.”

I really wanted to find Dahlfia, but I needed to confront Mallaidh. “It’s not rigged, is it?”

I worried about more traps.

Myr shook her head, “All clear.”

“Let’s go then.”

Myr, Awyr, Kylah, and I made our way to the steps of the building and walked inside.

We walked down that long hallway I walked for so many years. The last time I was in this hallway, I was with Dahlfia as we fled. My heart hurt.

The massive wooden doors to the main chamber hall were off their hinges and busted.

On the dais, a lone figure sat in a chair next to the podium, in the leader’s chair.

She looked like she might have been sleeping.

We moved through the aisle, up the steps onto the dais, and stood before Mallaidh.

Her eyes fluttered as if struggling to open. She was dying.

Everything was still and eerie.

Awyr leaned down in front of her, inspecting. Mallaidh’s eyes fully opened and locked with Awyr’s for a moment. As she stood back up, Awyr whispered, “You could never have been ONE.” And she stepped back.

Mallaidh blinked and watched Awyr step back from her.

I moved to Mallaidh now, and her eyes met mine. “Bryn.” She said quietly through painful breaths. “Murithir intended to betray me. After he died, I made a deal with the wrong partner.” She swallowed with great difficulty. “I never wanted your family to die. It wasn’t my…” and her last word came out with her very last exhale, “order.”

Her eyes remained open and lifeless as her ragged breath stopped.

I exhaled. The room was still.

After a couple of moments in silence, I looked at her body, and there was a strange-looking dart with a vial attached to it sticking out of her abdomen.

Kylah noticed it too, because I heard her say, “What the hell?”

“That is not from this planet.” Awyr added.

We stared speechless at her lifeless body.

Until Awyr’s position shifted slightly, and her head tilted toward the east. Listening.

I heard it—a low vibration pulsing through the ground.

The rhythm was perfect.

The sound got louder.

What was it?

I began moving outside. Awyr was directly behind me.

I stepped out of the door of the Council Hall, and a massive army in formation marched in front of the entrance and came to a stop. They were all human males who wore the same uniform.

My tired army stepped back toward Market Square and looked small by comparison. The Velg’lan stood unmoved from where Awyr left them, making this army slightly adjust its formation around them.

The rows of men parted, and a solitary figure with two men behind him walked up the steps, and he turned to face me once we were on the same level.

“I am Emperor Daxingovan of Tukdurin.” He said it rather matter-of-factly. “You are the person I have come to speak with, Bryn.”

“Bryn Tal.” I corrected him.

“I have an agreement for you to sign today. You will agree to take all the humans from before the Industrial Age of Earth, because I don’t have the time for simpletons.”

“And why would I make such an agreement?” I asked, straightening my shoulders.

“Well,” he lightly clasped his fingertips together, “I could just take Teithia now for my own.” He looked around at my army. “I don’t think it would take long.”

Then he waved someone forward down below. “And then there’s the matter of this little trinket we found. I think it belongs to you?”

A group of five human males surrounded a figure who appeared to be bound at both hands and feet. Blue hair. Light blue skin.

My heart sank when her green eyes met mine.

Blood pooled down her neck from her ears.

I inhaled slowly and deeply so I wouldn’t collapse. I saw Myr beside me nodding. Awyr stood unmoving but watching everything. Kylah held her knife.

“Yes, of course.”

Emperor Daxingovan had other males run up with a small folding table. They opened the table and put the document and some writing instruments I’d never seen on it.

He took one of them in his right hand and signed. For my name, they only put Bryn. I took up one of the writing instruments, added a “Tal” to the end, and then signed above it, as he did.

He smiled at me.

“You can expect the first shipment in three days.” His people took the table and all away, and he looked around at everything.

Then he was down the steps and into his ranks.

His soldiers swallowed him up again, and the formation closed as if he had never stepped out of it.

We watched them grow smaller down the street, and the joy of victory gone with it.

I started down the steps when Oswalt approached me.

“Bryn, there’s a transmission from the coast. I can’t understand it. Something’s wrong.”

> End Porta Cor imprint.<