A Dagger of the Mind (The Imperial Metals) (30 page)

Chapter
55: The Goddess of Storms

The wind whipped through Duncan’s hair. He felt the mist spray across the beach. The western horizon was gone, blocked by the tidal wave. He thought they had rescued the Turin army. Or most of it anyway. Yet all they had managed was to delay their deaths. Now they would perish on the shores of Anuen, wiped away with the angry sea...

Of course, they wouldn’t be alone. The Rone army turned their backs to the sea when they saw the Turin army appear. The Rone thought they were betrayed again. They thought the Turin had arrived to block their retreat. Even a moment of consideration and they would have noticed that the Turin were going to suffer the same fate. But the fear had eaten away their will to consider anything.

Duncan charged to the top of the nearest dune, hoping to be seen by as many as he could.

“They’re not here to fight you!” he shouted, but his words were drowned out by the roaring sea.

Nuria turned to Landora.

“I need you to knock me out again!”

“Now!?”

“Yes!”

“Are you sure?”

“There’s only one way--”

And Landora knocked her out. She knew they didn’t have much time. The tsunami had started to lower. All of that potential energy, held so high above the city, was about to come crashing down...

---

“Vye!” Nuria shouted. She was running through the Castle Hartstone. She hoped that Vye was sleeping at the moment. She hoped she could find her mentor.

“Vye! We need you! Now!”

Nuria ran through the corridors, but realized she wasn’t in the Castle Hartstone she knew and loved. Was it the House of Vye? No, Nuria had been there, too. She would have recognized it. This was the old Hartstone. The one from before the War.

“Where are you!?” Nuria called out, scrambling through the unfamiliar halls. She ran up the stairs, to the balconies. She ran to the depths of the castle. To the forge...

“There you are,” Nuria said. “What are you doing down here?”

Vye was reclined on a chair, her fingers pinching her sinuses, as though she were fending off a headache.

“An old friend used to live just under the forge,” Vye said. “I came here to think.”

“This isn’t even the right Castle.”

Vye looked around.

“Huh? You’re right. Sorry, I’m exhausted. And I just found out some really...weird news.”

“Well, look, we have a problem, and we need your help.”

“What is it?”

“A tsunami is about to wipe out Anuen. Armies from both the Rone and Turin are there. We’re out of time and out of options. You have to do something.”

Vye sat up.

“Fuck,” was all she managed.

“Come on, let’s go.”

“I can’t.”

“Master Eric of the Turin-Guarde died. Vye, you’re the only one who can do anything.”

“I have nothing left.”

“You’ve been sleeping for weeks.”

“And all that time, my mind was racing. Learning. Hiding. I’ve held up a falling tower, been stabbed in the back by my brother, and communed with the dead. I can try to teach you...”

“There’s no time for teaching...”

Indeed, even as they spoke, a light drizzle swept across the room. Even in the basement, below layers of imaginary stone, the water fluttered horizontally across the room, as though carried by a strong wind.

“What’s going on?” Vye asked.

“The water is coming. Even in this dream, I’m feeling it on my face. We’re all about to die. You have to save us.”

Vye stood up. Every muscle ached. Every ounce of her soul moaned. Even if she wanted to help, did she have anything left to give?

“OK, I’m coming to save you,” Vye said. “Or at least I’m going to try. Show me where you are.”

“What?” Nuria was confused.

“Show me where you are, in real life, right now. If I can anchor myself in this dream, it’ll take less time and energy once I wake up.”

Nuria imagined the beach where she knew her body was resting. She remembered the view she had, the position of the Castle relative to her. The direction of the Rone army and the Turin army. She made the picture as clear as she could.

“Alright, I’m coming to you,” Vye said, “But this is important. You have to find Flopson.”

“Who?”

“Just ask anybody older than you. Flopson. The jester. He knows how to defeat Grimsor. And we need to find him. Now!”

The wind kicked up, the rain pecking away at their faces. The cold woke them--

---

Nuria snapped upright. Duncan helped her to her feet as a smoking door opened on the ledge beside her. And there was Vye. Still wrapped in bandages. Still recovering. But there.

“Countess,” Duncan said, “Good to see you on your feet.”

“Remember it well,” Vye said, “Because I don’t know how many more times that’s going to be the case.”

She beheld the wall of water. The impending destruction of the capital and all those who lived in it. There was no way. Not a chance. She could not possibly contend with such a mighty force.

But she sure as hell could try.

She held out her left hand. The one she always used for her magic. The one with the veins of necrotic death crawling down her arm. The one in the gauntlet. She wasn’t even trying to do anything yet. She was just taking the ocean’s temperature. Feeling out the magical essence of the tidal wave.

It was Selene. She recognized it right away. If she had time to think about it, it would have made sense. Helios, whose power was over the sun and fire, had set off the volcano. But Selene, whose power was that of the Moon, could change the tides of the ocean. And boy was she changing the tide here.

But it was magic, so it could be offset. Vye just needed to put up a barrier. She just needed to hold the water at bay.

She reached out again, this time with force. This time with determination. She held up a barrier against the wave. She started right in front of her, then moved out, to her left and right, spreading along the beach. Every drop of water had to fight for every grain of sand it wanted to cross.

Vye felt the strain right away. Her hand stung in pain. She was overexerting herself. She knew the feeling from when she had held up the tower of Hartstone. She knew the sensation from fighting against Devesant the Dragon. She was going beyond her reserves. Drawing on something deeper and beyond what her life had left to offer.

But it wasn’t enough.

Vye could create a wall of force at the beachfront, but the wave was a hundred of feet high. It would crash over the barricade, hardly missing a beat. It would still kill everyone.

So Vye reached out even further. She held out her other hand, as though conducting an orchestra of thousands. She expanded the wall up into the sky, trying to hold the water at bay.

Up and up and up, until she didn’t even realize it, but she was rising off her feet. Airborne. The wind whipped across the beach. Sand and rain and dust surged across her body. But still she channeled more and more of her will through her hands, fending off the raging ocean.

But it wasn’t enough.

Nuria didn’t know what she could do to help the spell. She didn’t know what Vye was doing. But she knew how to help Vye.

“Landora!” she shouted over the din. “Help her!”

Nuria and Landora held their own hands up, buffering Vye, supporting her. Channeling their own will through hers. Landora called to the Twins, and Xerxes and Xanathos lent their own aide. Everyone was in this fight.

But it wasn’t enough.

The Tidal Wave crashed forward. Every inch it moved, it became heavier, more violent. Gravity was joining the fracas. Vye’s magical barricade was cracking...

“NO!” she shouted, redoubling her effort. And she felt it in her arm. A snap. Her bone had shattered. The black lines of death had begun to glow. It burned through her gauntlet, cracking her skin down her arm. The pain was immense, but she couldn’t let up. Not for a second.

She poured more and more of her soul and her essence into the barricade. The white-hot cracks in her skin crawled up her shoulder, tearing her apart from the inside out.

But it still wasn’t enough.

She needed more help. But she didn’t know who else could do anything to help her. There were no other mages she could think of on this continent, or even in this world...

---

“Vye, what are you doing here?” Frost asked. Now he was sipping tea by the fireplace. And Vye was standing in front of him, her hair blowing in the non-existent wind, her arm glowing with energy.

“I need your help,” she said. “I need to stop a tidal wave from destroying Anuen.”

“I don’t know how I can help you,” Frost said. “I haven’t been in the waking world for millennia.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Vye said. “You can support me. And I’m in the waking world.”

“What?” Frost stood, incredulous. “What are you talking about?”

“You’ve been able to affect me in the Dreamscape. And right now I’m half in the Dreamscape and half in the real world. You can lend your aide here, and I can channel that against the tsunami.”

“But that much raw energy... I don’t know what it will do to you.”

“That’s a problem for tomorrow.”

“Just get out of there! We can find another way to fight Grimsor.”

“Too late,” Vye said. “If I let go now, that wave is killing everyone, including me. You only have one chance, and that’s helping me win this fight.”

Frost paced his imaginary world. He had been out of the fight for so long, he didn’t know how to be part of a real conflict. But perhaps his wanderings through the realm of Dreams and the Land of the Dead had to come to an end eventually. Perhaps he was destined to lend his help, one last time.

“Fine, I’ll help,” Frost sighed. “Come on.”

“Wait.”

“I just agreed to help you.”

“I know, but you’re not enough.”

“What?”

“We need others.”

---

Vye floated above the earth. Her body soared higher and higher above the ground, as though she wanted to be eye level with the Wave itself. Landora and the others lent what aide they could, but they could all feel the fatigue washing over them. They had only just escaped the volcano themselves, minutes before this new fight.

But Vye could sense it, when Frost fought by her side. Nobody else could see him. But he floated there beside her. She was in a living dream. The real world, laid out before her, and her dream, of the same time and place, laid over it. With all the hidden truths that we hide in our minds.

Frost opened his arms and channeled his own will through Vye, and she became emboldened. The barricade was growing stronger and stronger. The Wave was getting heavier and heavier, but it wasn’t moving forward.

“Did you bring any help?” Vye asked.

“Here they are!” he shouted.

And on Vye’s right, she could see Halmir. He did not smile. Nor did he wink. He was just there to help. A ghost of the man who may have loved Vye at one point. But deep down in whatever was left of his soul, he knew he wasn’t going to let Vye lose this battle.

Vye took all the energy of the living and the dead. She molded it, shaped it, and blasted it out against the Wave. The cracks in her body crawled over her back, across her torso, down her legs, up her neck. The water was slowing...

But it still wasn’t enough.

“We need more help!”

And there was Michael, and Gabriel, and Sir Calvin. And though they couldn’t lend their aide in such a way as the mages could, still they stood behind Vye, and she felt stronger. And now she was glowing. The cracks in her skin had become her skin. They might win this one yet...

“We’re almost there!” Vye shouted. “We only need a little more!”

And there was Argos. Perhaps he hated Vye. Perhaps he wanted vengeance upon her. But the opportunity to stop his old friends, Selene and Helios, was too much for him to resist. He channeled his own will through Vye...

And she burst like a nova. Her hair fluttered in the wind, crackling like bolts of electricity. She had been transformed from a mere mortal. She was an Angel of Lightning. A Goddess of Storms.

And the Wave had met its match. It spent its energy, crashing against Vye’s impenetrable wall and receding back into the Ocean...

---

Vye found herself in the room with the fireplace again. But there was no fire. In fact, she didn’t know where the light was coming from. But she could still see. Johann Frost stood grimly before her. A sadness on his face she didn’t recognize.

“Julia,” Frost said, “You have to leave now.”

“Where?” she asked.

“Your body is forfeit,” Frost said. “You must do as I did. Escape your body. Come into the Dreamscape.”

“But the fight isn’t over.”

“It is for you?”

“Am I dead?”