When he finally woke, head pounding and damp with sweat, night had fallen. The cloudless sky gave the moon a perfect stage to shine bright, illuminating the world below. Instinctively, Casek’s eyes searched out constellations and stars he knew, and a lump formed anew in his throat as he saw all too few remained in the sky.
“You remember there being more, yes?”
Idris’ voice startled him, snapping his attention back to ground level. Casek was lying on his bedroll before a pleasantly warm fire, their small camp fully set up without his help. Raelynn slept soundly in her own bedroll near to them, and Idris was perched on an upturned log beside him, peering down at him like a child might stare at an injured bird they’d found.
“I wasn’t sure whether my brain was playing tricks. There are whole constellations I’m sure should exist, and when I look, they’re either gone, or it’s just one or two stars left. It was the first thing I thought about when I woke, too. The stars are going out. Whatever that means.”
“That, at least, is not lost knowledge to us. We have star maps from your time and before. Initially, they were assumed to be fantasy. But Oreia has stood for several centuries. In that time, we have seen just that. Stars fade to grey over decades, before winking out. One by one they disappear, slowly, but relentlessly.”
Casek swallowed. It was the truth he’d remembered the longest, before even his own name had returned to him. That did not make it any easier to digest, however. Entire stars, no different from their own sun fading and dying to nothing, winking out of existence itself. It had been known for many hundreds of years that Feres was one world among many orbiting their sun, dependent on it for light and heat and life.
How many worlds had died with those stars, all their life frozen and starved to death alone in the dark?
A new, more morbid possibility struck him almost as soon as he’d processed the first.
“We aren’t the only ones,” he whispered, voice hoarse. “The Shadowspawn are consuming other worlds—other stars.”
“The thought has occurred to us, though we Binders rarely spoke of it. People outside of the corps don’t fully understand how little hope we truly have, and it is difficult enough to keep them fighting. It would be disastrous to lay even more misery upon them.”
Casek wanted so badly to deny the truth of it. There was no real evidence of a link between the Shadow and the stars disappearing, after all. It just so happened that both things were occurring at the same time. Correlation, not causation. Unhappy coincidence. It would have been nice to exist with that delusion, if only for a while.
He knew it was a lie. The same way he knew his own name, or how to wield a blade. He knew the two happenings were tied together, that the ever-hungry Shadow had stretched themselves across the stars, consuming all they found until nothing remained. That Feres was just the latest of untold worlds unfortunate enough to find themselves within reach of its appetite.
Idris noticed his train of thought, reading the expressions play out across his face as one might a child’s. “You remember something of this?”
“Not…Exactly. There’s nothing concrete, just a certainty of truth.”
Idris grimaced, an odd look on someone usually so composed. “When you collapsed, the suffering you have endured, remembered or otherwise, was quite apparent. Either the people who detained you were inhumane monsters of a kind rarely seen, or else you and they were being driven on by a fear so great that any foul deed paled compared to the reality of facing it. I find myself once again apologising to you, Casek. I had not intended to make you relive such awful memories. Merely to help you understand why you are as important as you are.”
Casek allowed the fire to crackle softly for some time before he answered. Idris was a difficult man to trust. He believed the older man had not meant to stir old memories, or cause him the pain he had, but there were things being left unspoken. Logical conclusions that Idris hoped that Casek could not reach.
You should kill him, before he gets the chance.
The voice was so subtle, Casek nearly wrote it off as an intrusive thought, even as a shiver ran down his back.
He will hurt you. You know. Hurt him first. Kill. Kill him. KILL—
Casek hissed as a lance of pain flashed through his mind, alongside the oily taint of the Bel’gor’s magic within him. Its tendrils reached out towards his consciousness, a constrictor snake looking to catch its prey unawares. Fury flashed through him, both at the Shadowspawn’s attempt at taking advantage of a potential weakness, and at Idris’ dishonesty.
Stolen novel; please report.
His power surged dangerously, and he focused it into a spear point within him. The precision strike carved away the tendrils reaching for him, and he surrounded the severed limbs with his own magic, cycling them into his own well of power. The Bel’gor’s presence howled, railing impotently against the theft, and Casek opened his eyes, sweating slightly, but triumphant.
“Binding a Bel’gor before you’re ready was a risky decision,” Idris said softly. “It is a pity you had scant other options.”
Another time, when he was more composed and less exhausted, he might have been able to hold his tongue. But the words were slipping out before he had time to control himself. “And what about when we arrive in Oreia? How many options will I have once I’m inside your city?”
He hadn’t wanted to play this card yet, hadn’t wanted to reveal he had guessed already what would happen to him in Oreia. Escape, should he choose it, would have been so much easier had Idris continued to believe him happily ignorant.
The binder’s mouth opened, then snapped shut again as those piercing eyes passed over Casek once again. Weighing. Calculating. There was a movement in his throat before he spoke again that Casek was convinced was Idris swallowing the lie he’d been planning to tell.
“We need the truth of you, Casek. What you are. Your connection to the foci, and you link to the Other. Without that knowledge, humanity will eventually be ground into nothing, and the Shadow will consume it all. Our sun, just another star winking out in the lonely dark. Those answers have to come at any cost.”
“Back to being strapped to a table it is, then,” he said bitterly through the lump in his throat. “Back to the pain.”
Idris bowed his head, but he did not relent. “You have already suffered so much to provide humanity a chance at survival. If what I suspect is true—that it is your blood which allows the foci to function—then your sacrifice is the only reason we have survived as long as we have. I do not desire to cause you any more pain, or to detain you against your will.”
“But if that’s what needs to happen to get what you want out of me, then you’ll do it.”
“Without hesitation.”
“I could always end it before you get the chance. The pain I remember, I’m not sure I could face again.”
Idris’ eyes narrowed. “I suppose you could. The blood I’d be able to harvest wouldn’t be ideal, and we’d be forced to hope what I could drain from your body and transport would be enough. But I do not believe I have to worry about that, Casek.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because whether or not you remember it, you are the kind of person who would volunteer for this for the sake of humanity—for the people you care for. Your memories might have been stolen away, but in even the few days I’ve known you I’ve witnessed that this part of you is etched into your very bones. I don’t need to coerce you, or drag you in chains. I don’t even need to convince you—your choice has already been made. You will come with us to Oreia happily, and you will agree to whatever needs to be done because that is who you are,” Idris said, staring him dead in the eyes. Then, he smiled sadly. “In that way, you remind me very much of Taran—and that is the highest compliment I can give you.”
Casek ground his teeth in frustration, but had to concede that Idris had been right in almost everything he’d said about him. He had volunteered so that he might save the world. His motivation to fight was so that he could protect those he cared for—and as recently as he’d woken, he’d still come to care for Raelynn and Tauph a great deal.
To guarantee their safety, he would gladly give his life.
“You’re right,” he said, staring into the dancing flames. “I will do what needs to be done, and do it happily. I’m not thrilled about the pain, but what’s one more sacrifice?”
Idris shot him a pitying look. “If there was anybody else—any other option—I would choose to use them. Between saving my daughter and what you’d already been through, you have done more than enough.”
“But there is nobody else,” Casek said, a forced smile on his face. He sat up, ignoring the pounding in his head and stretched out his arms. “Why don’t you get some sleep Idris? I doubt I’ll be doing much of that tonight. You and Raelynn might as well get to take advantage of that.”
“Understandable. Don’t push yourself too much—we have another long day of travel ahead of us tomorrow, and the return journey to Oreia is always a dangerous one.”
Casek nodded his assent, and Idris settled down in his bedroll on the other side of the camp. Hours passed in front of the fire, and all the while he watched Idris as he slept, until he was certain the man was fast asleep. His choice had been made the night before, but Idris’ confirmation of his suspicions had reaffirmed it.
He had chosen in his old life to sacrifice for his world and his loved ones—it was also true he would do so again, gladly. Idris had been wrong about one thing, however. This new world, though built upon the bones of the one he’d fought so hard to protect, was not his.
No home or family inhabited it, and he held no memories of the people that remained.
One day, perhaps, it could be his, but that would never happen if he wound up once more imprisoned in agony with no say in things, no matter how good the cause.
He stood, grim purpose shaping his expression and silently gathered his things. Of course he would help and fight as best he could, he wanted a future here, one not made up of constant fights for his life. But if he was going to forge that kind of future, it would be on his terms. He was done being dictated to. Done being told how and when he could help, who he was allowed to fight for.
Choosing his footing carefully, he crept around the fire to Idris’ things, picking out one of the glass vials the man carried with him in his pack for creating medicinal poultices and removing his own belt knife. Without a sound, he sliced his palm, and allowed as much of the crimson liquid to seep into the vial as he felt he could risk before stoppering the container and placing it upon the sand in the beach and writing a note amidst the granules.
With one final glance towards the still-sleeping Raelynn, Casek clenched his fists and turned his back, before disappearing into the blackness of the woods, a low satisfied hiss ringing around his head.
