Mara woke to the sound of rushing water nearby.
Her head felt hazy. Her body – like it was encased in treacle.
She struggled to her feet and only dimly recalled what had just transpired. Above, she could see the burning hole in the side of the Arkona castle tower that the mad mage had carved to make his escape. Below, her paws felt grass and gravel crunch. Grey gravel.
She was on the lip of the first layer of the Ashfall mountains. And around her were the scattered ruins of a place that was – unfortunately – very familiar.
Caer Krea…
No sooner had the thought occurred to her that she felt a swish of air coupled with the distinct twinge of magical energy nearby. She turned just in time to meet the fireball that had been launched at her face, and managed to summon an Arcane Shield with enough speed and dexterity to extinguish the attack completely.
As the embers of the fireball died, her foe was once again revealed.
Panting, drenched in sweat and dirt, the Greycloak magi stared at her with pure, unrelenting hate.
“You.”
He said the word like it was a curse he was hurling at her face. His scorn was far more potent than his magic.
And yet he was weak. His single arm was barely steady. The shards of broken, crippled flesh that remained of his left one dangled limply from his body. He swayed like a red leaf in the wind, ready to collapse any moment.
And she found herself willing her body forward to him. Even though she knew there was nothing but killing instinct in him now.
“Please,” she said. “You don’t have to do this.”
His eyes widened and his arm shot out, grasping at nothing but dead air. His depleted mana made him nothing but a cripple, but Mara wasn’t sure he even realized that. The mad glint that came over his face and eyes, and the bloody smile that tugged at his lips, told her that perhaps he was hallucinating seeing her burning before him right now.
“All…die,” he snarled.
Why? She telepathed, edging closer, unperturbed. Why does it have to be that way?
She saw him clutch his head firmly, moaning like a pained child. Like someone she knew.
Like Rory and his friend whom she’d hurt. Right now, he looked so much like them. Just confused young boys who were clutching for meaning, finding it in the wrong places.
Stop, she asked him – forcing the thought to echo in the corners of his mind as gently as she could. She’d never – never tried this on a human before. She had to proceed with caution. For his sake, and for her own.
Because as she probed at the dark corners of his mind, she felt the darkness reach back into her. She saw that he had memories of this place. She saw in his mind the scores of his brothers that had once marched up and down these gilded halls. She felt the pride that had swelled within his breast when he’d gone out on his first monster hunt, then his first Hybrid hunt. She felt the primordial fury that gnawed at his heart when he’d heard the Archon had slain Carliah Argent in cold blood, and that he was coming for Lucent next. She looked through his eyes as he volunteered to guard the acting Viscount.
And then she’d seen the Archon’s coming – everything that had been done to Lucent and the people who had resisted there.
And her eyes wouldn’t let her believe that the things she saw were done by Mr Ethan…
“Enough!”
She felt his hand grab her throat. The force of his body against hers push her down onto the ground where she tried to wriggle free of him, still in the throes of his dark memories. So much hate. So much desperation – the singular agony of a man who was dying – it was more than she’d ever felt in the mind of another.
“Little…bitch,” the magi raved, spittle frothing at his mouth. “You – and all your kind!”
She couldn’t fight. She felt her throat close up – catching the word she wanted to say. She felt her legs kick out of their own accord underneath him. And for a moment she thought she could see the angel he loved so much appear behind his head, ready to carry them both off into oblivion.
Why? Why do –
“Why do we hate you?!” he roared down at her, spitting blood to mat her fur. “Because it’s you…or us!”
His grip tightened. Her vision grew dim.
“You…you – or u-!”
The sound of stone smashing against bone stopped his shouting.
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“I – ah!”
The stone came down again, held by hidden hands.
“Fu-!”
One more time. And this time – bone cracked and splintered apart.
And Mara watched as the last Greycloak on Argwyll fell dead beside her.
The figure above, meanwhile, dropped the bloody chunk of Caer Krea she had pried from the ground and knelt beside the fallen man. Slowly, with sorrow, she closed his twitching eyes.
“So shall the Wicked rest
Brothers in blood, Brothers in ash
Returned to Grey stone.”
Mara heard the voice. She saw who it was.
Before the Praise-Singer flashed her strange, sad smile again, Mara let the darkness take her once more.
***
“Little lass! Little lass!”
Morning came with cleansing rain.
After the chaos of the last Greycloak assault in Argwylian history, the heavens had opened to wash away the blood of the fallen. The Hybrid soldiers had breathed a sigh of relief to hear that the forces of the enemy were repulsed – with only a few ordinary human militia stragglers still running amok among some of the outlying farms on the Gobrin border. In time, such men would ultimately give up the fight and head back to the desert, where they would live out the rest of their lives in exile. The last vestiges of the old order had been wiped out overnight. Not a single Greycloak invader surrendered.
As the rains swept through their hard-one surface home, the Hybrid defenders focused their efforts on cleanup of the bodies not washed away into the sea or buried in the depths of Sanctum. Others attended to the wounded – both human and Hybrid. Yet other more politically inclined Hybrid statesmen had already started penning speeches in human tongue that would explain this dark event as the last attempt of the old order to gain a foothold in their lands. Now, such an order had been wiped out.
The Greycloaks were no more.
If Mara had been more inclined to storytelling, she might have made something of that fact, and the fact that she’d woken up in the ruins of their old headquarters. Instead she sat, legs crossed, and stared at the tiny unmarked grave Agna had dug for the last Greycloak.
Through the night, Agna had sung gentle ballads which she’d barely heard as she slumbered. Some of them she didn’t understand. But the poetry – the way the words moved – that had made her finally wake up with a strange sense of peace settling in her brain.
And then Borlor’s shouts just below the ruin told her such peace wouldn’t last forever.
“Why do you not go to him?” Agna asked beside her.
Mara locked eyes with the aged human woman, tracing the dozens of creases set in her face – the small spots where the Greycloak’s blood had still not dried.
“Why did you help me?” Mara asked in return.
“You would rather I allowed the Grey One to slay you, child?”
“No but – he’s human. And – I’m a Hybrid. And we were fighting.“
“I did not see fighting last night,” Agna answered bluntly. “And I did not see human or Hybrid. I saw the innocent grapple with the wicked. If I had not intervened, the wicked would have prevailed.”
“So you made a choice between the two?”
“…yes.”
“Why?”
Agna pursed her lips. Mara’s question would have seemed obvious to anyone else – but the old woman was astute enough to understand what the child was getting at even if she herself couldn’t quite articulate it. She – a Praise-Singer – had chosen violence freely. It was not a choice she’d made before, and it was not one made lightly.
“Because it felt right.”
A cool wind blew through the decrepit, weather-worn roof beams above them. Borlor’s voice once again whistled through the smashed windows and broken walls where they sat, and yet Mara was interested in no one but the woman who sat, world-weary and alone, beside her.
“I tried to stop him,” she whispered. “Because it felt right. But – it’ll never work, will it? We can’t help them all. Not even Mr Ethan could help them all.”
Agna eyed her curiously, following the little Hopla’s eyes to the unmarked grave they were obsessed with.
“No,” she said quietly. “No one can. Perhaps there is one Path out there that fits everyone, Mara. Perhaps there is a road that truly leads to peace for all. But if there is, these old arms are not long enough to reach it.”
She felt the tiny shudder the Hopla girl then gave, and decided to make another unlikely choice.
“But that does not mean you should not try.”
Mara looked at her, hiding the tears pricking at her tired eyes.
“Even if it is painful,” Agna continued. “I saw - I see in you a goodness that goes beyond the strength of your magic and even your Mr Ethan. You wish to heal this world not because it benefits you, but because it feels right to do so.”
Agna reached over and caught one of the girl’s tears on her withered finger.
“That is enough,” she whispered. “It must be.”
Outside, the downpour continued.
“Little lass! LITTLE LASS!”
Mara let out a little sniffle and rose, dusting off her robe and giving the grave of the Greycloak one last look.
“You could still come with us,” she said.
Agna smiled. “These old bones are not long from the ground. Soon, I shall return to the earth, where those of the old world belong.”
“LITTLE LASS!”
Mara hesitated for a moment. When she turned away from Agna, she thought she might not say anything more. But the sight of Raxel’s grave somehow spurned her on.
“There are people I can’t reach because of who I am,” she said. “People I can’t sing for. I can talk to Hybrids. I can talk to people who know me. But there are humans that won’t ever hear me. And I won’t ever hear them.”
Agna knit her brows. The girl was speaking almost like a Praise-Singer herself.
“Who will sing for them?” she asked the aged woman. “They have their own songs. They have their own words. Don’t they deserve someone who will listen? Someone who can tell their story, too?”
They shared a look that neither could read. All Agna knew was that this Hopla was not the same one she’d met a day or two before. In the short time they’d been apart, things had changed within her. Had been changed. Though not for the worse.
Mara gave a stiff bow as Borlor screeched his lungs out again.
“Thank you, Praise-Singer Agna,” she said. “I won’t forget your words.”
She hesitated briefly at how awkward this sounded to her before nodding and skittering down the hill towards the scouting party that had come for her.
Agna watched her go in silence, feeling the small trickles that the rain had been reduced to lightly come to rest on her pallid skin.
“The dawn shall break, soon,” she said. “It will be time for a new song.”
But her voice did not swell. Her breast did not leap in anticipation of lyrics. Instead, she watched the Hopla run down to meet her people, watched them scold her, worry over her. Watched the massive, hulking chimera lie down so she could rub its belly and watched the Salamandrike-rat duo give her a gracious bow more becoming of any knight she’d ever seen.
Unconsciously, she found herself smiling. And then she found herself mulling over the words of the Hopla girl who had extended her the hand towards a new Path.
All of a sudden she felt her whole body quake as she rose, legs trembling from the sudden movement, and looked down on the kingdom of Men and Hybrids that was laid out beneath these old, forgotten walls.
And she started walking.
The Greycloaks are finished. Dawn rises over a new Argwyll, and we're back with Ethan et al in the final arcs of the story. But there will be one more death before this story is done. The question is - who?
