Bacorium Legacy (18 page)

“Is Mother...?”

“Dead,” Ash said with finality.

Luca bowed his head. He'd expected that, but it was still disappointing to hear.

“What - what happened to her?” he asked quietly. His voice still carried in the large cavern.

Ash half-turned, looking at him over his shoulder. There was a look of contempt in his eyes. “He abandoned us. He left his wife and second son to die, so that he might save himself and his first-born.”

“That can't be it...”

“But it was. He left his three-year-old son behind, with his enemies closing in, and fled into the night with you. Don't you remember? That night, all those years ago - the fire...?”

“Who were these enemies?” Luca asked. “The Acarians?”

Ash turned back to the water. “Your father had many enemies.”

Luca stared at him. He did not move. Some amount of time passed, with nothing said.

“He was your father, too,” he said, breaking the silence. “Don't you care that he's gone?”

“I do care,” Ash replied. “I care in my own way. You mistake care for regret. I feel no sorrow that Lodin is dead. I feel my life is better without him. I care in that way - that I am glad to be rid of him.”

Luca was dumbfounded. “How could you say that?”

“It's easy for you to defend him. You were his favourite. Try to understand - just once in your life, brother - how it feels to be less than perfect. What it is like to have to live up to not only a father who threw you aside, yet is a paragon to everyone around you - but now an older brother who has come along and done in two days things that you could not in twelve years. That is how I can say what I say.”

“I didn't come here to blemish your name! I came here to honour the name of our father! The man to whom you owe your life!”

Ash did not turn around, but Luca could feel animosity coming from him.

“Lodin has never given me anything. Least of all my life.”

Realising he had made a fist, Luca forced the muscles in his hand to unclench.

“Brand told me things about you...” he said. “Things I didn't want to believe. He said that you're hated amongst the people here - these people who so readily accepted me. I didn't want to believe that.”

“These people? They haven't accepted you. They have accepted the idea of you - that you are the successor to Lodin's legacy. They expect you to defeat the Acarians and follow in your father's footsteps as a hero. Fail to do that - and they'll treat you the same way they treat me.”

“No - that can't be it. You must have done something else. They wouldn't treat you that way just for that. These people know you're not Father. Tell me what it really is.”

Luca's brother said nothing for a time.

“What happened to the student that died? Brand said that-”

He saw a flash of anger in Ash's eyes, as he spun on the heel of his boot. His hands found the neck of Luca's coat, and he pushed him back. Caught off guard, he stumbled back, catching his balance just in time to stay standing.

On instinct, his hand had found the hilt of his sword.

“Brand is a liar,” Ash spat. “Whatever he told you about me... It's all manipulations and lies. Don't listen to him. He's in the pocket of Allma. Whatever you say to him, it reaches Allma's ears. I did not kill that girl! It's not true. They set that up - to turn everyone against me.”

“What the hell are you saying?!” Luca exclaimed. “A set-up? You're paranoid!”

“Allma the first founded this temple with pure intentions,” Ash told him. “But in time, these things are always lost. This temple has become a mercenary organisation, tainted by the original Allma's grandson, and his greed. Even now, he schemes. You will be built up as the paragon that I could not be, while I will be vilified to make you nobler in the eyes of the people. I may not be a fighter, but I am no fool. My weakness set me outside the circle, and that is how I saw the machinations.”

Luca shook his head. “Brother, you've spent too much time in these caves. Your isolation is driving you to madness. You're seeing schemes where there are none.”

“Do not trust so easily -
brother
,” Ash said. “All these years you've been with Lodin, have you not seen the things that people in this world will do?”
 

That - he could not argue that. Truly, he had seen a lot of things that made it difficult for him to place his faith in humanity. He had seen people betrayed and murdered - over nothing.

But what Ash was saying was just too much. The look in his eyes - it was the same look he had seen once in a man on the brink. This man had lost it, and killed his wife and two children. It had taken three hunters to put him down after he'd begun his rampage.

In their travels to the farthest corners of Bacoria, Luca and his father had seen a few things like that.

The position his brother had been placed in - where everyone around him treated him with contempt and disdain - that could certainly bring someone to desperation. Ash could not accept his failure, and he needed a reason that things had turned out the way they had. So he had created a conspiracy to justify things to himself.

“I do not hate you, brother,” Ash continued. “I understand well enough that we are not defined by our parents. I do not hold the mistakes Lodin made against you. So tell me what it is you've come here for, so that I can decide if I will grant it to you.”

“I came here to meet you,” Luca said. “You're my brother, and the last of my family I have left. I came here to meet you - and to get answers. I could not just believe what Brand said about you. I felt there had to be more.”

“More...?” Ash muttered, raising an eyebrow. “You mean answers? I've told you already what happened. And you called me a madman for it. What are you expecting? Continuing to ask the same question just because you aren't satisfied with the answer - well, that is the true definition of a madman. So tell me what it really is you're after.”

“Dammit, I just wanted-!”

He couldn't finish. He bit his tongue to stop himself from saying it. That all he had wanted was one member of his family back.

But he could see now that wasn't going to happen. Ash had no prospects of friendship in his eyes. He watched him warily, like a monster watches a hunter who stood at a distance - carefully, waiting for the moment when they attack.

Ash watched everyone that way, even his own flesh and blood.. So there it was, the real answer to his question. That was why everyone in the temple hated his brother - because his brother hated everyone else even more.

A tense moment passed. Luca watched him, waiting to see if there was anything he had so say.

There wasn't.

So Luca turned, and started to walk away.

“Don't trust anyone, brother,” Ash said to his back. “Not Dori, not Brand. And not that girl who follows you, either.”

Luca stopped.

“Don’t talk about her. You know nothing about her.”

Ash laughed. “What’s there to know? You think you can trust her? You can’t trust anybody. It’s just the two of us and the world, Luca. She’ll betray you just like all the other sycophants in the temple!”

Luca's lips curled into an angry snarl. His hand, still resting on the hilt of
Siora
, tightened around the sword so tightly he felt like he could break it. He drew the blade out of the sheath as he spun around, and charged at the person on the other side of the room.
 

He had snapped. It had just been too much. Too much disappointment, too much anger.

“Luca!”

Ash drew his own weapon, one of the temple's wooden training swords, and he tried to move aside. He was quick - under normal circumstances he would have dodged his attack - but there was nowhere to flee. He was trapped between Luca and the cliff overlooking the subterranean lake.

Luca brought his blade down in a heavy blow. Ash parried as best he could. His wooden sword shattered pathetically beneath Luca's steel blade.

“Gah!”

Ash moved quickly, ducking down and rolling between his legs. With skilled agility, he rolled behind Luca and rose up. Luca turned around and swung his sword again. Ash dodged the steel blade by a hair.

“Stop!”

Luca felt a surge of mana rise from his brother, and the next thing he knew, he was struck by a blast of wind powerful enough to knock him off his feet.

It registered in his mind that he was falling, but he knew he would hit the ground in a moment. That moment did not come. Instead, he saw surprise in his brother's eyes as he fell past him, and then the cliff.

Luca didn't fall that long. It was only about fifty metres to the water.

He struck the surface of the lake and was lost in a confusing vision of dark water. He sank deep into the water, and his feet briefly touched the bottom. Taking advantage of this momentum, he kicked at the rock beneath him, and rose up and away from the inky blackness.

Luca's head broke the surface and he gasped. He couldn't see anything, because there was no light where he was. He tread water as best he could. He had never been a great swimmer, as he had never had much time to learn, but he knew the basics at least.

Eventually, he gained an understanding of his situation. The insurmountable cliff was before him, covered in slippery, jagged rocks that nobody could climb. If he were a a ground-form user, he could have simply used magick to craft the rocks into a ladder or stairs. But he was light-form, and that had no use in this situation. The lake was bordered all around like this, so there was literally no way out from where he was.

Unless...

“Brother!”

From up above the cliff, Luca saw as Ash heaved a large pile of rope over to the edge. He tossed it over, and fed the rope until it was within arm's reach. Luca swam over and grabbed on with both hands.

And then he realised something that had previously escaped his notice.

“My sword!” he exclaimed.

His father's sword.

Luca let go of the rope and checked his belt, under the surface of the water. The sheath was there, but it was empty. He hadn't put the sword away - that meant...

He felt a chill, and it had nothing to do with the freezing water.

Luca swam away from the rope, and back to where he guessed that he had been. It was impossible to know for sure. Not that it mattered, anyway. The dim light that filled the cave disappeared immediately under the surface of the lake. All that was down there was darkness.

“Luca, what are you doing?! Take the rope!” Ash called out to him from the cliff.

“Father's s-sword!” Luca gasped out as best he could, trying as he was to stay above the surface. “I-I have to find Father's...!”

“Forget about that!” Ash called. “Get out of there now! There's a beast down there!”

Luca barely heard what he said. He couldn't think about anything other than his father's sword -
Siora
- and how foolishly he had lost it. He held his hand up and gathered his mana into an illuminating orb. Once it was ready, he threw the orb down into the water, where it quickly sank to the bottom like a stone. He took a deep breath, and dived.
 

The orb's light helped, but not much. He couldn't see very far past where it had landed. He tried to use his mana to get the orb to follow him, like he had in the cave, but that attempt ended quickly in his flailing desperation. It required a continuous flow of mana to follow after him, and it was impossible to do that while holding one's breath.

How long could he hold his breath? Would the Soul Tether let him stay conscious underwater? To what extent did its life-preserving abilities reach?

The scholarly part of him considered the chance to test this, but he didn't care about that. He had to find the sword, and at the moment, he couldn't see where it was in the small aura of light.

Apparently, it didn't matter. He began to feel light-headed, so he kicked off the bottom and gasped for breath back at the surface.

Luca only allowed himself a few seconds of breath before he threw another orb down into the lake and dove once more.

Half a minute of frantic searching passed, and he still did not see the sword. He was starting to panic.

He began to rise for air once more when he saw something terrifying.

Some kind of -
thing
- was swimming towards him. It wasn't quite a fish, but rather like a giant serpent slithering through the water. It's eyes were staring right at him.
 

There was no way Luca could defend himself. He had no weapon, his light-form magick was almost useless in the water, and he couldn't move away fast enough to escape. As he swam away as quickly as he could, he threw a blast of raw mana in the giant eel's face. It blinked and stopped for a moment, but it's ugly face was barely scratched by the attack.

Still, it gave him enough time to break the surface. He gasped as he emerged, and he saw Ash atop the cliff, still holding the rope from above.

“Hurry!” Ash called to him.

This time, Luca listened to him. He swam as quickly as he could, propelled forward by the currents caused by the eel's movements.

Luca reached the rope and grabbed on. As soon as he did, Ash started to pull up. While Ash was pulling him up with the rope, he used his legs up push himself up from the rocks, whenever he could.

The eel's head broke the water, and it watched him. He had already moved too far away though, so it couldn't reach him.

At last, Luca grabbed onto the edge of the cliff and pulled himself up. He collapsed immediately beside Ash, his breaths heavy and his arms and legs tired from the swimming and climbing.

Ash said nothing - he only wrapped the rope up and held it over his shoulder.

When he felt a bit better, Luca rose to his feet and looked down at the lake. The eel was still watching him from down there. He felt a rush of anger at the thing that had nearly made a meal of him, and he raised his arm, gathering his mana to thrown needles at it. Ash stopped him by grabbing his wrist.

“Wait,” he said.

The light that peeked out from the cavern ceiling was blocked out as something massive swept down from the top of the cavern. A wind like a hurricane blew around them. Luca had to shield his eyes from the cloud of dust it kicked up.