Crown of Steel (Chaos Awakens) (21 page)

Haley was clutching her dagger tightly in one hand. She would have drawn her axe, but she was wary of drawing the cursed weapon and maybe attracting the Trolls crawling through the mage's fortress. Haley wasn't even certain that was possible, or that the weapon worked that way, but it seemed like a stupid risk to take. Besides, she wasn't properly trained to fight with the axe. At least she knew how to use her dagger, even if it wasn't the first weapon she reached for on instinct.

The seemingly eternal upward spiral of steps stopped abruptly at the very next landing. The three companions slowed as they reached a small room. The door leading out into the fortress was closed and barred from their side, though there was no sign of whoever had dropped the bar into place. Beyond the door the sounds of battle were louder than ever. The roar of the Troll hoard was occasionally punctuated by the explosion of a mage spell going off, but the loudest sound was the screaming of men as they were torn apart. The mages were losing quickly. Some small part of Haley told her she should try and help them, that this time they were on the same side, but another part of her thought they deserved whatever they got. The mages had done her and her friends no favors. If anything, the trolls had been more helpful.

The strong, the ambitious, the powerful; they deserve to live. Haley, you should sympathize with your troll kin. We were cast out by the humans because we were different, because they didn't understand the quest for strength. You understand though. You've fought, and trained yourself to be strong so that you will never be hurt again. Power is the only thing the world really understands. You don't need to fear the trolls, Haley. You're one of them. You and Xandrith could both be with them. You needn't fear the future they're creating. You both could be a part of it. Think about ...

"Haley," Xan's voice cut over Haley's thoughts, blocking out the axe's voice. "I know that look, even through the mask. How long has it been openly talking to you?"

Haley shrugged. "A few weeks now, I think. I wasn't sure what it was when it first started. I thought it was my thoughts, but it felt too invasive, separate. I've tried to get it to be quiet, but it keeps pressing. It wants me to create some kind of pact with it."

Xan nodded. "If you give in and finalize the pact, it will start to gain more and more control over you. I know it's hard to resist but you don't need what it's offering. The power it offers is already a part of you. The bonesteel weapons can connect with certain magic seals, and they provide quick access to those seals by tapping their own pool of power, but they can't use that magic without you, the red mage. The troll weapons have no real power, just the ability to help you use your own talents."

Haley shrugged. "I know it's not safe to trust it. Sometimes it's just difficult to ignore."

Xan considered Haley for a moment. "I could break the connection between you and the axe."

Haley stepped back as though Xan had struck at her. "No, I don't want … I mean, I might still need it." Haley's free hand was now clutching the hilt of her cursed weapon protectively. The thought of losing the axe sent a terrified chill down her back and left her feeling vulnerable. "It makes me stronger, and we still have to escape from here so I might need it. We don't know what's going to happen on our way out, and ..." Haley was only too well aware that she was acting irrationally protective of her cursed weapon.

Xan raised his three fingered hands. "I would never part you from it against your will, but remember, the longer you keep the axe the stronger its hold on to you. There may come a time when you can't get rid of it anymore."

Haley found herself nodding numbly. "I know, but it won't come to that. I'm in control." She said the words, but she wasn't certain how true they were. She needed them to be true. She needed Xan to believe that she believed they were true because she needed him to see her as more than a child. When would that happen?

Xan considered her for a moment, his single gray eye piercing her and laying her open as though the mask wasn't providing a barrier between them at all. "Alright, I'll take your word for it." He said, and then his all too knowing gaze was gone and back on the door to the landing.

"We'll move quickly. If we have to fight trolls remember to strike for their eyes and then their neck. If you can decapitate them they'll die. If you see one bleeding and you can find a torch, throw it at their wounds. Their blood burns even if their skin doesn't. Once it gets inside them, they'll burn out from within and die. If you don't have to fight, don't do it." With that, Xan dropped the bar securing the door and stepped into the next room. Kassa was directly behind him with her sword drawn and at the ready. Haley came up behind them feeling strangely out of place. Suddenly she didn't feel like a regular part of the group anymore. She'd led the way into the fortress to find Xan, and yet now that she'd found him she was certain the other two were treating her like a child again. Xandrith was in no fighting condition at all, but he was moving her to the back too.

You need to prove yourself. You can't do that as you are now. Even with the little bit of help I can provide you now you're still too weak. We can be better though.

Haley closed her mouth tightly and thought inwardly at the presence of the axe.
I won't make that bond. I'm not going to lose myself.

If you don't bond with me, you're going to be the little burnt girl forever, and Xan will never see you as an equal. Listen to me, Haley. You know it's true. Look at them together.

Haley couldn't help but look at Kassa and Xan as they passed through the opening, shoulder to shoulder, not even glancing back to see if Haley was still behind them. She remembered the whispered words that had passed between the two earlier, and even more keenly she remembered all the time they'd spent together even before Haley had entered the picture. There was a strangely crushing pressure in Haley’s chest as though someone was stepping on her lungs. She found it difficult to draw breath for a second.

You're losing him.

Haley shook her head.
No, he was never mine. It wasn't meant to be.

Of course it was meant to be!
The axe version of her voice shouted so loudly that Haley felt as though the words were bouncing around in her head.
You are both sanguine mages, and you're both killers at heart. Xandrith and Kassa are the ones not meant to be together. Kassa doesn't understand what it means to be hurt. She doesn't understand the darkness that exists inside the two of you. She can't. She's never felt the pull of the noble troll blood. She can't know that power.

The words were so welcome, and so easy to believe. Haley and Xandrith were meant to be together.
I am meant to be with him because I can understand what he is.
Even as those words played back in her head in her own voice, she could tell they were just a wish she was trying desperately to believe.

Dreams are worth fighting for. Remember, and don't give in yet.
The voice spoke those last two statements and then disappeared back into the depths of Haley's mind, or back into the metal of the axe from which it had come. Haley wasn't entirely certain where it went, but she was happy to have it gone. Her mind was already a confusing place and she didn't need the words of the damned axe pushing on her emotions. She felt frayed. She strode through the door after the other two with her knife hanging limply at her side, all but forgotten in the palm of her hand.

The scattered bodies they'd seen up to that point were nothing compared to complete chaos littering the hallways beyond the stairwell. A gruesome battle had been fought. Twisted bodies, mostly human ones, lay in piles all along the corridors. They were crumpled and thrown away like litter in the streets, and the Trolls had spared no one in their progression. There were no wounded or injured to tend to. Every body that lay along the corridor or in one of the piles of corpses was mutilated and obviously well beyond life. Haley couldn't draw her eyes away from the disaster. It was so brutal and disgusting that it all felt unreal. She felt like she was living some awful story in which the monsters had already defeated the heroes, though Haley was hard-pressed to think of the mages as heroes. She could only make out the bodies of two trolls lying amidst the humans. Both were still vaguely troll shaped, but burned out from beneath their skin so that they smoldered and produced an awful stench from their amazingly complete husks of skin.

Kassa and Xan were moving forward steadfastly and Haley had to speed up to keep pace with her older companions. They hadn't stopped to gawk like she had, another sure sign of her inexperience in these tense situations. Though as far as Haley could tell, this was the kind of experience that would shock just about anyone. Perhaps her companions were the ones that were strange and not her. The sound of combat was getting louder. When they breeched the passageway between their current room and the next, they discovered why.

Combat may have been the wrong word. Haley, Xan, and Kassa stepped out into a large meeting hall packed full of trolls. The beasts were finishing off the last of the mages, ripping them apart, eating them alive, tormenting and torturing those still unlucky enough to be conscious. There was no battle left. If anyone was still casting spells, it was to no avail. The trolls were just toying with them now. As Haley and her companions entered the room the trolls closest to the door stopped in their brutality and took note. A whispering, hissing language seemed to flow through the room, starting from the nearest beasts and moving like a wave through the creatures.

"This doesn't look good." Kassa whispered between barely moving lips. 

"It could be worse." Xan said quickly, as though it were an ingrained reply. "There could be even more trolls, or maybe some of those nasty metal beasties from the Reach."

Haley frowned and lightly poked Xan in the ass with the tip of her knife. "You're an idiot!" She snapped a bit more loudly than she’d meant to. The assassin jumped, grabbed where he'd been poked, and looked indignant. He looked like he was about to retort, but a human voice rose up over the Troll speech.

"Friends, I see you've made it out of the dungeons. Very commendable. It must have been difficult." All three pairs of their eyes snapped to the man speaking. It was an elderly man maybe in his seventies, and he was dressed in a fancy black robe with fine embroidery in deep shades of red lining the sleeves and neck. He had a grandfatherly face with wrinkles in all the right places to indicate that he smiled a lot, but his eyes told a different story. They were just brown eyes, but never had Haley seen a human with such a cold and detached stare. Even as he smiled out at them, his white beard and smile-wrinkled face looking as though he was welcoming his grandchildren to come sit on his lap, his eyes made him look like a sciarwolf about to sink its teeth into their throats. The fact that he was standing amidst the trolls, apparently unharmed and unrestrained, was even more ominous.

"Shidsane, you can't know how happy I am to see you here!" Xan's tone of voice indicated that he was telling the truth, though only darkly so. He'd been hoping to get a chance to rip this very man apart. The tension in the air was intense, like a gray sky hanging over a silent wood just before a thunderstorm breaks out. It was an apt comparison.  The assassin was ripping life force from the trolls unfortunate enough to be too close to him, which was a lot. Taking from so many sources was easier than draining one troll entirely. "I am going to tear you from existence." Xandrith growled.

"Stop it now!" Shidsane yelled, holding up a finger before him. "If you dare attack me I will unleash this horde on you and yours, and no amount of power will stop them all from tearing you and your friends apart, Xandrith! Drop your magic. If you hurt me, it's over for them." He pointed at Haley and Kassa. "You can kill me, certainly, but is taking my life worth your friends? Is it?"

Haley could see Xan's mind working. She could see the fury in his face and the whirl of the magic as it spun through him, ready to be spent in any method of his choosing. He wanted so badly to kill Shidsane. A dark part of Haley wanted him to do it. Trolls be damned, it would be nice to see Shidsane struck from the world for what he had done to Xan. Even if that meant her life, Haley could hardly hold it against her mentor. If any man had ever deserved death, it was Shidsane.

"You brought these trolls here?" Xan asked as the magic continued to swirl threateningly around him. "You gave the Order to these creatures?"

Shidsane shrugged, for just a moment looking weary. "I am old Xandrith, for a human. These creatures, as you call them, are our ancestors. They are not stupid, and while they seem savage, they have their own civilization. Their magic is far beyond ours. For my help, they have offered me a chance to learn their secrets and to live far beyond what I would have left as a human. Why should I turn that down? I've served the people my entire life. My magic, my very life, has been burned to help others. Now it is my time to help myself. Our world is dying. The trolls know this, and they are ready to move on to what is next."

"The trolls are evil. They embrace the end of not just humanity, but of creation. There is no place for anyone or anything in their future." The forces around Xan were swelling again. Haley could see some of the magic slipping into Xandrith himself as he used it to heal himself. The patches of missing skin grew back before her eyes, and even the thumb on his right hand sprouted anew. It first jutted out as a rugged spike of bone before being enwrapped in muscle, tendon, nerve, and flesh. From where she stood it looked remarkable, but it wasn't the healing that drew most of her attention. The magic building around Xandrith had an explosive aura. He'd gathered so much to himself that he looked like he was wrapped in a cloak of light. Haley took a step back, though she hadn't intended to do so. She'd never seen so much magic in one place.

"You are part troll yourself, Xandrith! What right do you have to call them evil? They would embrace you as a brother if you would only give up your stupid resistance. Look at you! You're almost one of them anyway." Shidsane was trying a new tactic, but it was clear Xandrith wasn't interested. The black mage shrugged. "It doesn't matter. You can kill me here and now, but if you do you and your friends die as well. There are two-hundred trolls within hearing of this room and out of reach for your draining magic, then another three hundred that will be quickly assembled if you strike me down."