Discordant Note | The Beginning After the End SI-Chapter 291: Wretched

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Nico Sever

The early nighttime air was crisp as I stalked through the camp. The stars gleamed balefully down from the heavens, and the thin sliver of visible moon mocked me like a hooded eye.

The soldiers I marched past shied away from me in fear as my aura trailed me like a dread cloak, but I didn’t pay them any attention.

Draneeve had come to me a few minutes ago, the mockery of a Retainer throwing himself to his knees as he informed me of Spellsong’s most recent actions.

Can’t he understand that this is my only chance? I thought angrily, my fingers clenching so hard that my nails dug into my palms and drew blood.

I looked across the massive river fork, my mana churning in my core. The mists swirled and danced with mockery, just like the stars and moon far overhead.

Grey thinks everything is so safe in his little kingdom, I thought with an angry sneer. He’s even flaunting Tessia about as if she’s some sort of trophy. Those damned Lance tethers are making him cocky and arrogant. But he’ll learn soon.

I scoffed, then turned back to my march as I moved through the sand.

It wasn’t hard to find Spellsong and Cylrit. Both of them were just outside their tents, gearing up for a long flight. The Retainer, it appeared, had finally woken up from whatever had put him down. He was clothed in light leather armor, appearing far more dignified than his last wretched state. His horns caught the light beneath his ruffled hair. He was stretching and rolling his back as he kept his red eyes turned east, utterly dismissing me. It was as if I didn’t exist to Cylrit, even though I was a Scythe.

But Spellsong? Spellsong turned to look at me with those arrogant, assuming eyes of his.

“Scythe Nico,” he said, nodding his head slightly. “We were just–”

“Leaving?” I accused, my brows furrowing. “When this chance is right in front of me?!”

Toren sighed. “Yes, we were leaving,” he said, his tone straining. ”We aren’t under your authority, but that of Seris. If you want our assistance with Lance Silverthorn, then you need to talk with her, not us.”

My intent billowed out around me as I stopped keeping my power in check. “Talking with Seris will take time; time I don’t have. So now that you’ve recovered, you will follow me across that river to capture Tessia. You don’t have a choice, Toren Daen.”

“I don’t have a choice…” the arrogant mage said, his brow twitching as my power washed around him. “Are you threatening me, Nico?”

I laughed, deep and mirthful. “If that’s what it takes for progress, then that’s what I’m doing. Agrona gave me the position of Scythe. Not you.”

Memories of training with Scythe Melzri stabbed through my psyche like hot needles, surrounded by the fog of the High Sovereign’s promises. I’d spent nearly two decades in this purgatory, slowly working towards my final goal to give Cecilia and me a new life, one that wasn’t tainted by Grey’s shadow. And it could be done soon. Tessia was across that river, and Spellsong could break her tether.

Spellsong. Toren Daen. The phoenix experiment. Agrona had spoken of him a few times, mainly in passing and with a smirk of wry amusement. The High Sovereign had mused on how his aetheric arts and progression of power were unseen amongst lesser mages. Those eyes had sparkled with each word.

But now that I was close to him, I couldn’t sense what was so special about him that made Agrona so amused. He was weaker than me, I could tell. Unlike all the Scythes of Taegrin Caelum, his aura didn’t wash over me like a tide and stamp the difference of power into my psyche like a brand.

He was weaker than me. Which meant he’d follow me or die, just like every Alacryan soldier on this side of the river.

Toren sighed, then turned to look at me.

Everyone I’d ever met in this world thought they knew me. Viessa had scoffed and turned up her nose during our training, utterly disdainful. She’d taken one look at me and deemed me a lost cause without any worth. Melzri tried to coddle me and act like we were family or something, the crazy bitch. Dragoth openly mocked me, saying that the position of Scythe was lessened by my mere presence. Seris simply observed with inquisitive eyes from afar, but I knew she thought me lesser, too.

It was only Agrona who truly understood me. Only he understood that Cecil and I deserved another chance, not Grey. Only he had our interests at heart.

And when I saw Spellsong’s eyes again, my hackles rose in irritation. Because deep within his burning pupils, he thought he knew me, just like all the others.

“You can’t keep me here,” Toren said in a simple voice. ”We’re returning to Seris’ camp between Carn and Blackbend. I am thankful that you allowed me to rest and recover in your camp, but that does not obligate me to follow your orders.”

My aura swelled around me as black spikes of oily metal thrust from the ground at my feet. My hands ignited with soulfire as I took a step forward, ready to make my point if I needed to.

“You don’t understand, Spellsong,” I snarled, black fires erupting around me as I glared at the man. “You don’t have a choice.”

But then I froze, my eyes widening as I felt a sudden, sharp pain. I grunted as something pierced my chest, parting my mana barrier and the soulfire surrounding me like an aura without even a blink.

I looked down, blinking in utter surprise at the blade poised over my sternum. A weapon of folded, crystalline mana ignored the hellfire pulsing around me, the tongues of blackness licking at the edges and trying to destroy them.

But my fires couldn’t seem to find purchase on the weapon. Wherever they met the summoned blade, a strange humming frequency disrupted and pulled at my control, before flickering orange fires tore apart the lingering remnants of my soulfire.

Sweat beaded down the side of my face as I sensed how close that sharp tip inched toward my mana core. I hadn’t even sensed the blade being summoned, nor perceived its passing through my flesh before it was already poised over the nexus of my power.

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Spellsong’s eyes narrowed as he stared at me consideringly. “You mistake temperance for weakness, Nico Sever,” he said, his voice cool as frostfire. “I have been patient and respectful to you beyond what is deserved. But when I told you that you couldn’t keep us here, I meant that you. Could. Not. There is no world in which you stop me. Do you understand?”

I grimaced as I glared at the mage, unable to move forward for fear of spearing my own core, but also burning inside. I remained silent, staring down Toren Daen as his hands tensed on the hilt of his saber.

My eyes slowly widened as I stared deep into Toren’s burning eyes. I could sense it there, as he held that saber. The scales shifted deep within his mind.

He’s going to kill me, I realized suddenly, my aura flaring as blood trailed down my shirt. The crazy bastard. But if I die, Cecil will never get her second chance!

The sound of the distant camp fell away as the world seemed to focus on just us two for a moment. My breathing shuttered as I remembered being Elijah again. Weak, weak Elijah, who couldn’t do anything himself. Weak Nico, who could never save Cecil from the Enforcers.

Weak Nico, who saw his death approaching because he prodded the sun. Always, always too weak.

A pale hand settled on Toren’s shoulder, breaking the rising tension. “We must go, Spellsong,” Cylrit grunted. “Master Seris waits for us.”

Spellsong turned to look at the Retainer, working his jaw. “Thank you, Cylrit,” he said with a sigh. “You’re right.”

Toren let the blade in his hand dissipate, before turning away.

Turning his back on me.

Before this, I might have called him foolish. He opened up his back to a volley of bloodiron and soulfire death, immediately after threatening a Scythe.

But as dark fires flickered around the spot on my chest where Toren’s blade had pierced, quickly healing over the wound and sealing the cut near my core, I realized the truth.

He was like Cadell: so sure and confident in his power in relation to mine that he knew he could turn his back on me. Showing me his back was the same equivalent as showing an insect your back. Nothing I could do would hurt him.

There were rumors that the Breaking of Burim was caused by Spellsong fighting off an asura. I hadn’t believed it before, of course. But now, I wondered.

“We’ve kept Seris waiting long enough,” Spellsong said, looking up at the sky. Cylrit had already started lifting up into the air.

The mage spared me one more complicated glance as I stood there, seething inside and gnashing my teeth. “What?” I demanded, feeling humiliated just like I’d always experienced deep within Taegrin Caelum. “What do you want to say, Toren Daen?”

The young man didn’t respond for a while, the wind whipping at his hair. “It’s nothing,” he finally said. “You wouldn’t be able to listen to me anyways.”

And then he rose into the sky, following after Cylrit as they sped eastward.

—

As night fully enveloped the warfront, I glared across the water. Alacrya’s piteous soldiers had tried to punch north again and reach past the illusory mists, but they’d been gunned down by elves hidden deep within the fog. Steamboats had been sunk, before being pushed back by spell and gunfire.

Gunfire. Grey had gone and stolen another thing from our past lives, acting as if it was his to give. The musket barrels that peered out from the dense forests and picked off any mage that strayed too far from our Shields told me all I needed to know.

When Agrona had begun to disassemble the Dicatheous, I’d known immediately what model engine it had been based on. After all, I’d had the blueprints for the old steam engine for years over my bed in Wilbeck’s orphanage. When Grey and I had bunked together there, he’d memorized it eventually.

But he didn’t truly know it. The design was inefficient and outdated. I could have helped Agrona improve it greatly to modern standards.

The High Sovereign claimed it didn’t matter. It wasn’t a priority. I should focus on my training and my eventual fight with Grey.

And now he thinks guns will save him, I thought with a sneer, watching the far bank with dark ire. I could go over there right now and tear them all apart. With my Vritra-blooded arts, I could melt away the mist and tear apart Tessia’s protections.

But what if Grey pulls the tether? I asked myself, restraining the ever-present rage. He killed Cecil. He’d kill Tess, too, if it saved his pathetic self from justice.

Grey, always the same cockroach. He’d even revealed his true colors to everyone, too, making himself King again. I should have expected it. He’d only ever become King in our first lives for himself, too.

I was torn from my thoughts as a purple pane of energy fuzzed into existence beside me, just deep enough in the shadows that the legions of troops far behind me would be unable to see it. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as a wave of domineering power washed from the portal.

Agrona’s personal enforcer stepped from the portal, the clank of his footsteps snuffing out the fires of my thoughts. His bone-white hair reminded me of a graveyard as he swept his apathetic red gaze across me. The chiseled gray marble of his features rejected the moonlight high above like a reaper. In one gauntleted hand, he held a tempus warp, still humming with mana. The other, a horn as white as the moon and glimmering with veins of orange and purple.

I restrained the shiver that welled up from within my core as his curdled blood gaze pinned me to the ground.

“Cadell,” I snapped. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Nico,” the stoic sentinel replied. “My actions and whereabouts are not your concern.”

I uttered a guttural snarl, the events of the past few hours building to a raging crescendo in my head. “Not my concern? Not my concern? Agrona promised me a chance to fight Grey. He promised me a chance to recover Tessia. And you are supposed to be the one that–”

The night became silent. It hadn’t been silent before—in the far distance, soldiers chatted, crickets chirped, and the sounds of scraping earth and intermittent gunfire cast the world in noise—but then Cadell’s intent washed out of him like cold frost.

His aura wasn’t suffocating. It could be if it wanted to, of course, but as the mana creeped up my legs and arms and into my chest in a slow, chilling path, I thought I knew what winter truly was like: the kind that slowly took everything from you. Not because it wanted to, but simply because it could. Because you were too weak to push past the cold and hunger and fear. This was the frostbite that took only the frail and broken.

And compared to Cadell, I was weak.

I was wrong, I thought, shivering. I shouldn’t have compared Spellsong to Cadell. Nothing can compare to him.

“Agrona delivers on his promises,” the sentinel of dark steel said in a tone as empty as his soul. “The Vessel will be retrieved in due time, but the introduction of her as a Lance creates complications for the process.”

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“I know,” I bit back into the summer air, noting that my breath was freezing over as it left my lungs. “But we should have a solution to that! Spellsong broke Lance Olfred’s tether, and he was just here earlier! He flew back to Seris’ camp a few hours back, but if you command Seris to give him to us, then there’s nothing she can do!”

For the first time ever, I thought I saw a flicker of interest wash across the immutable stone of Cadell’s features. He clenched his gauntlet around the white horn in his hand, drawing it into a dimension ring. “Spellsong was here, so soon after his fight? He makes good time.”

“But if we could just–”

“The matter of Lance Silverthorn’s bindings are being seen to. King Leywin’s defenses are not as impervious as he thinks they are, and he bears the weaknesses of every lesser. It is not an issue.” Cadell loomed over me, his mouth twitching down into a frown. “Spellsong is not your concern.”

“Then give me a timeframe,” I demanded, my impatience growing. “I can’t wait a hundred years like Agrona, and he doesn’t know Grey like he thinks he does.”

“When I have ensured Scythe Viessa has correctly followed orders throughout this war, then you will get your confrontation.” Cadell turned, looking toward the tent that Toren and Cylrit had exited from. He breathed in slowly, seeming to expand with the motion as the ambient mana trembled. “So you will wait, Nico.”

The horned man ignored my fuming rage, instead funneling more mana into the tempus warp in his hands. Another portal slowly fuzzed into existence in front of him. “I will be back. Do not act rashly.”

And then he was gone, leaving me alone like a dog let off its leash. And as Cadell’s words rang through my head, I felt my head creak towards the far bank.

Agrona wasn’t taking this seriously. Cadell wasn’t taking this seriously. Seris wasn’t taking this seriously. If I didn’t do anything, this chance would slip through my fingers.

I needed to act.