For all about the situation that was still unknown to him, this could only be one person.
âYou must be Faraji, then." Either instinct, habit, or some inexorable entrenched other thing had Cyrus falling back on the neutral, almost-bored tone he'd long ago learned to use with the most unpalatable of Cassius's acquaintances. The ones who came to see the dreamer-boy do his tricks, to congratulate his master on his foresight while shooting each other knowing looks. Portending his fall long before it had ever happened, for he was not altus, and rumors would occasionally whisper about what else he was not. âHow kind of you, to grace us with your presence at last."
He was the closest to where the man stood, where he had Yda held, silent as she still was. He wasn't sure that was for the best. He wasn't armed any longer; he'd had to discard his blades to the floor to position himself in front of the golem in time. Even with them, he was useless at range, now, useless to act in any way but those his wit and the edge of his tongue left him. Maybe if he kept Faraji talking, he'd gain the information necessary to come up with another plan. Or enable someone else to do something properly clever and cunning. They were certainly capable.
Perhaps Zahra could simply shoot him quickly enough to end this before it began. A thin hope, but weren't they all?
Silence graced him, in return. The lordlingâs eyes trailed across them, before he jerked forward, pushing Yda closer to the ground. She yelped, hands catching herself from falling on her face, pushing herself against the force. Trembling. His smirk bared his teeth, thin eyebrows drawing together, speculatively. Beckoning a response. There was a cruelty there that spoke volumes; it made sense seeing how the Contee family operated here, certainly so if he was orchestrating things from the shadows, with a smile on his face.
âGood guess,â he reflected sourly. His tone lacked the same nonchalant resonance Cyrus was capable of mustering. His timbre belonged to someone who was on the edge, teetering dangerously close. An animal backed into the corner, showing its teeth in order to frighten, to subjugate into compliance. A man who had nothing to lose. A muscle jumped along his jawline, bunching there. Molars grinding against one another, as his gaze flicked from Corveus, to Maleus, and finally: Zahra. There, it rested. Lingered, uncomfortably.
He licked his lips, and tightened his grip, causing Yda to shrink beneath him. âYou shouldnât have come here.â Unblinking, Faraji hunched down, slipping one of his hands across the older womanâs face, smearing a line of blood along her cheekbones. Rough, uncaring. Her frailty meant nothing to him, that much was clear. He jerked her to her feet and pressed her against him, slithering a hand over her mouth. She hacked and coughed, spitting red, tugging fruitlessly. He angled her in front of him, so that firing an arrow would prove too dangerous a feat. The expression on Farajiâs face darkened. Desperate. Cyrus had seen that look before. Many times. A permeating fear, oozing from the pores. One that would allow no logical thought, no quarry and certainly no mercy.
Zahraâs movements seemed wooden as she dropped her hand away from her bowâs string, arrow still poised between her fingers, mouth set into a grim line. Her breath came out in a strangled hiss, frustrated. It was clear that she wasnât sure if loosing an arrow was such a good idea. If he moved, only a little, it would mean the difference between skewering him, or both.
âLet her go,â Corveus rounded to Leonâs side, daggers gripped tightly, âthis wonât end well for you.â
Another laugh. Bitter, angryâthis time, perhaps, feeling a tickle of betrayal. They were brothers, after all. It did not seem to surprise him, however, to see him here with people he did not recognize. The Game existed in Tevinter, as well. Though it was a bloodier affair. He exhaled sharply and gave his head a shake, breath puffing against the womanâs neck, âIâm afraid it wonât end well for you, either.â In one, swift motion, he hugged Yda tighter, opening his palms wide, blood pooling into small beads, small enough to sift to the side, and disappear onto the sarcophagi at their sides.
Maleusâs breath hitched, dark eyes fixed ahead of him.
The stone shifted, and crashed to the ground at their sides. Unnatural creatures. Four, in total. Skeletal hands, gripping onto the lip of the stone coffins. Their moans accompanied the cackling of their jaws, growing louder as they emerged. Corpses, in worn plates, carrying a variety of weapons. Axes, swords, a flail. Coming from their sides, in an attempt to flank.
Cyrus had never particularly needed blood magic.
It was, to his mind, a tool like any other. It, like so many things, derived its nature not from anything inherent, but from the hands of its wielder. In his rather astounding arrogance, he'd learned to regard it the same way he regarded lyrium: as the compensatory measure of a lesser mage, one who could not quite manage the outright power necessary without it. That was, in some sense, the use it was put to in the Imperium: a dark, illegal supplement, the sort of thing meant to give one Magister just enough of an edge over the other. Both blood and lyrium were external sources of power, as a Magister's use of it was rarely ever limited to their own blood.
But he'd learned it as faithfully as he'd learned the rest of what Cassius had taught him. And so he knew what Faraji's actions meant. The way he smeared blood across Yda's mouth like thatâhe was readying a hemorrhage spell. It would surely kill her, her blood a sacrifice to fuel further magic.
He shifted forward onto the balls of his feet, pushing off the cracked stone ground and launching himself into a sprint.
Romulus intercepted one of the skeletal figures, blocking its axe on his shield and thrusting up with his pugio, the blade connecting solidly with the undead's jaw. The bone splintered and fell away, leaving only the top portion of the face behind, though the creature didn't seem slowed by this at all. Several more blows came in, forcing him to dodge to get around to its side. Rather than swing again with his blade Romulus grappled and forced the skeleton down to the ground, spearing his blade down into the ground between ulna and radius of the axe-wielding arm. The skeleton struggled to free itself and keep striking at him, but Romulus was already lighting his marked hand, and lifting towards the back of the undead's skull.
On the other side, Leon had taken one of the skeletons to ground as well, slamming the skull against the jagged stone, uneven where the golem had landed earlier. It wasn't long before the cranial bone was shattered, just as much the work of his grip as the broken tile beneath. No doubt age had made the bones brittle.
Zahra lifted her bow in time for a flail to come smashing down, locking her in place. She took a step backwards, back bowing against the force, only long enough to snarl. Ironbark cutting against steel. It hardly roundedâa fact she quickly took advantage of. She pushed against the cackling creature, and managed to shove it closer to one of the rocky crevices, though her attention lay solely on Maleus, who seemed to be leaning forward, gravitating towards Yda and Faraji. She pushed harder, driving her shoulder into it, until the wailing skeletonâs foot found air, scrambling for purchase.
It fell into darkness, cracking against the side of the stony walls, until only the clattering of broken bones ended its inhuman howls. She had turned, hands clawing at the air, towards her brother, eyes drawn wide.
âMaleus! Maleus, noââ a strangled cry, a plea calling out from behind Cyrusâs shoulder.
Maleusâs daze had ended in a frantic, scrambling sprint towards Faraji, feet slapping hard against the cobblestones. Heâd bounded down the stairs, and hardly seemed to notice that Faraji had, indeed, seen him. He was coming off from the side at an angle, but there appeared to be no way to stop his advance. No way to stop himself from hurtling forward. His momentum carried him. Wild, desperate motions, tumbling him onto the ground, before he clawed his way back to his feet and heaved himself closer, words inaudible. He, too, seemed to notice the implications, the bloody hand smearing across his motherâs lips. So long spent with those who abused those sanguine powers, how could he not?
The older woman tripped and fell, rattling the chain behind her. Thin hands began to claw at the collar of her frayed dress, scrambling at an unknown assailant. As if it were too tight, too constricting. Her eyes bulged, and something wept from the corners of her eyes. Blood. Her own. She seemed unable to draw herself back to her feet. Too weak to stand. Another line of red dribbled from the corner of her lips, and dripped off her chin. Flecks stained her knees. A violent, hacking cough seemed to take hold of her, forcing her onto her hands. Her fingers raked against the stone floor. There was a splattering noise, as blood spilled from her mouth.
With another peculiar gesture, Faraji turned towards Maleus, hands held out wide, as if to encompass them both. A laugh bubbled out. Crazed. He had not noticed Cyrus, however. Or perhaps, he did not care. He flicked his wrist once more. A ribbon of crimson pooled, congealed into something that resembled a stalagmite; though it did not remain so, the form swelled and constricted, settling into a rigid blade. An ugly tool, meant for cleaving. For raking through flesh. An ironic, destructive weapon. It tore through the air, towards Maleus.
Which one of them is to die, Cyrus?
It wasn't the same, this choice. Not the same as that one. He knew this, in the intellectual way he knew many things. But in his heartâif he had oneâhe felt it as a version of the same. An iteration. An echo. That moment would echo and reverberate throughout the rest of his life; he knew that now.
Him? Or her? You must decide, lest both lives be extinguished.
The last time, the moment was deliberate, and his choice was meant to be the same. He was supposed to experience every single second of indecision for the agony it was. Become keenly acquainted with the heft of holding lives in his grasp, with the terrifying weight and exhilarating power of it. This time, it was instantaneous. There was no time to deliberate, between the merits of his life and her life and Cyrus's own life, which may well hang in the balance, too. All there was time for was instinct and reaction.
Choose.
If anyone had asked him, he would have said his instincts were attuned to self-preservation before all else. He wasn't sure if it would have been a lie or not. Certainly it had been true once.
But when he chose, it was to veer into the path of the blood-spear headed for Maleus. Without weapons or a chance to block, he was helpless to do anything but throw his body between weapon and target. It hit him square on, lancing right for the center of his chestplate and colliding with a heavy impact. At first he thought that would be itâthe breath was knocked from him and he skidded backwards, yet the enchanted steel protecting him held. But then the spell surged, fueled no doubt by the sick energy of Yda's death, and with a splitting screech, the armor cracked, the lash piercing it like a shell, finding yielding flesh beneath with enough force to burst out the other side.
There was a scream coming from the opposite direction. A howl. Zahra. For her. For him. Maybe. It sounded far away to his ears, as if it were echoing in a tunnel and crumbling away to nothing. Dust and ash. Further away, still.
Pain registered on a delay, whiting out his vision for what felt like long minutes. Cyrus didn't quite feel the impact of hitting the ground when his knees buckled; all he knew was that when he could see again, indistinct though it was, he did so from the floor, his head lolled to the side and Yda's slumped corpse right in the center of his field of vision. Faraji was there, too, but with no more death to fuel his spells, Cyrus knew distantly that the Magister would be little match for the others.
Unless, of course, his own death served to empower the man's magic as well.
Was he going to die?
Did he still want to?
He wondered. And then the world went dark, and he wondered no longer.
âYou must be Faraji, then." Either instinct, habit, or some inexorable entrenched other thing had Cyrus falling back on the neutral, almost-bored tone he'd long ago learned to use with the most unpalatable of Cassius's acquaintances. The ones who came to see the dreamer-boy do his tricks, to congratulate his master on his foresight while shooting each other knowing looks. Portending his fall long before it had ever happened, for he was not altus, and rumors would occasionally whisper about what else he was not. âHow kind of you, to grace us with your presence at last."
He was the closest to where the man stood, where he had Yda held, silent as she still was. He wasn't sure that was for the best. He wasn't armed any longer; he'd had to discard his blades to the floor to position himself in front of the golem in time. Even with them, he was useless at range, now, useless to act in any way but those his wit and the edge of his tongue left him. Maybe if he kept Faraji talking, he'd gain the information necessary to come up with another plan. Or enable someone else to do something properly clever and cunning. They were certainly capable.
Perhaps Zahra could simply shoot him quickly enough to end this before it began. A thin hope, but weren't they all?
Silence graced him, in return. The lordlingâs eyes trailed across them, before he jerked forward, pushing Yda closer to the ground. She yelped, hands catching herself from falling on her face, pushing herself against the force. Trembling. His smirk bared his teeth, thin eyebrows drawing together, speculatively. Beckoning a response. There was a cruelty there that spoke volumes; it made sense seeing how the Contee family operated here, certainly so if he was orchestrating things from the shadows, with a smile on his face.
âGood guess,â he reflected sourly. His tone lacked the same nonchalant resonance Cyrus was capable of mustering. His timbre belonged to someone who was on the edge, teetering dangerously close. An animal backed into the corner, showing its teeth in order to frighten, to subjugate into compliance. A man who had nothing to lose. A muscle jumped along his jawline, bunching there. Molars grinding against one another, as his gaze flicked from Corveus, to Maleus, and finally: Zahra. There, it rested. Lingered, uncomfortably.
He licked his lips, and tightened his grip, causing Yda to shrink beneath him. âYou shouldnât have come here.â Unblinking, Faraji hunched down, slipping one of his hands across the older womanâs face, smearing a line of blood along her cheekbones. Rough, uncaring. Her frailty meant nothing to him, that much was clear. He jerked her to her feet and pressed her against him, slithering a hand over her mouth. She hacked and coughed, spitting red, tugging fruitlessly. He angled her in front of him, so that firing an arrow would prove too dangerous a feat. The expression on Farajiâs face darkened. Desperate. Cyrus had seen that look before. Many times. A permeating fear, oozing from the pores. One that would allow no logical thought, no quarry and certainly no mercy.
Zahraâs movements seemed wooden as she dropped her hand away from her bowâs string, arrow still poised between her fingers, mouth set into a grim line. Her breath came out in a strangled hiss, frustrated. It was clear that she wasnât sure if loosing an arrow was such a good idea. If he moved, only a little, it would mean the difference between skewering him, or both.
âLet her go,â Corveus rounded to Leonâs side, daggers gripped tightly, âthis wonât end well for you.â
Another laugh. Bitter, angryâthis time, perhaps, feeling a tickle of betrayal. They were brothers, after all. It did not seem to surprise him, however, to see him here with people he did not recognize. The Game existed in Tevinter, as well. Though it was a bloodier affair. He exhaled sharply and gave his head a shake, breath puffing against the womanâs neck, âIâm afraid it wonât end well for you, either.â In one, swift motion, he hugged Yda tighter, opening his palms wide, blood pooling into small beads, small enough to sift to the side, and disappear onto the sarcophagi at their sides.
Maleusâs breath hitched, dark eyes fixed ahead of him.
The stone shifted, and crashed to the ground at their sides. Unnatural creatures. Four, in total. Skeletal hands, gripping onto the lip of the stone coffins. Their moans accompanied the cackling of their jaws, growing louder as they emerged. Corpses, in worn plates, carrying a variety of weapons. Axes, swords, a flail. Coming from their sides, in an attempt to flank.
Cyrus had never particularly needed blood magic.
It was, to his mind, a tool like any other. It, like so many things, derived its nature not from anything inherent, but from the hands of its wielder. In his rather astounding arrogance, he'd learned to regard it the same way he regarded lyrium: as the compensatory measure of a lesser mage, one who could not quite manage the outright power necessary without it. That was, in some sense, the use it was put to in the Imperium: a dark, illegal supplement, the sort of thing meant to give one Magister just enough of an edge over the other. Both blood and lyrium were external sources of power, as a Magister's use of it was rarely ever limited to their own blood.
But he'd learned it as faithfully as he'd learned the rest of what Cassius had taught him. And so he knew what Faraji's actions meant. The way he smeared blood across Yda's mouth like thatâhe was readying a hemorrhage spell. It would surely kill her, her blood a sacrifice to fuel further magic.
He shifted forward onto the balls of his feet, pushing off the cracked stone ground and launching himself into a sprint.
Romulus intercepted one of the skeletal figures, blocking its axe on his shield and thrusting up with his pugio, the blade connecting solidly with the undead's jaw. The bone splintered and fell away, leaving only the top portion of the face behind, though the creature didn't seem slowed by this at all. Several more blows came in, forcing him to dodge to get around to its side. Rather than swing again with his blade Romulus grappled and forced the skeleton down to the ground, spearing his blade down into the ground between ulna and radius of the axe-wielding arm. The skeleton struggled to free itself and keep striking at him, but Romulus was already lighting his marked hand, and lifting towards the back of the undead's skull.
On the other side, Leon had taken one of the skeletons to ground as well, slamming the skull against the jagged stone, uneven where the golem had landed earlier. It wasn't long before the cranial bone was shattered, just as much the work of his grip as the broken tile beneath. No doubt age had made the bones brittle.
Zahra lifted her bow in time for a flail to come smashing down, locking her in place. She took a step backwards, back bowing against the force, only long enough to snarl. Ironbark cutting against steel. It hardly roundedâa fact she quickly took advantage of. She pushed against the cackling creature, and managed to shove it closer to one of the rocky crevices, though her attention lay solely on Maleus, who seemed to be leaning forward, gravitating towards Yda and Faraji. She pushed harder, driving her shoulder into it, until the wailing skeletonâs foot found air, scrambling for purchase.
It fell into darkness, cracking against the side of the stony walls, until only the clattering of broken bones ended its inhuman howls. She had turned, hands clawing at the air, towards her brother, eyes drawn wide.
âMaleus! Maleus, noââ a strangled cry, a plea calling out from behind Cyrusâs shoulder.
Maleusâs daze had ended in a frantic, scrambling sprint towards Faraji, feet slapping hard against the cobblestones. Heâd bounded down the stairs, and hardly seemed to notice that Faraji had, indeed, seen him. He was coming off from the side at an angle, but there appeared to be no way to stop his advance. No way to stop himself from hurtling forward. His momentum carried him. Wild, desperate motions, tumbling him onto the ground, before he clawed his way back to his feet and heaved himself closer, words inaudible. He, too, seemed to notice the implications, the bloody hand smearing across his motherâs lips. So long spent with those who abused those sanguine powers, how could he not?
The older woman tripped and fell, rattling the chain behind her. Thin hands began to claw at the collar of her frayed dress, scrambling at an unknown assailant. As if it were too tight, too constricting. Her eyes bulged, and something wept from the corners of her eyes. Blood. Her own. She seemed unable to draw herself back to her feet. Too weak to stand. Another line of red dribbled from the corner of her lips, and dripped off her chin. Flecks stained her knees. A violent, hacking cough seemed to take hold of her, forcing her onto her hands. Her fingers raked against the stone floor. There was a splattering noise, as blood spilled from her mouth.
With another peculiar gesture, Faraji turned towards Maleus, hands held out wide, as if to encompass them both. A laugh bubbled out. Crazed. He had not noticed Cyrus, however. Or perhaps, he did not care. He flicked his wrist once more. A ribbon of crimson pooled, congealed into something that resembled a stalagmite; though it did not remain so, the form swelled and constricted, settling into a rigid blade. An ugly tool, meant for cleaving. For raking through flesh. An ironic, destructive weapon. It tore through the air, towards Maleus.
Which one of them is to die, Cyrus?
It wasn't the same, this choice. Not the same as that one. He knew this, in the intellectual way he knew many things. But in his heartâif he had oneâhe felt it as a version of the same. An iteration. An echo. That moment would echo and reverberate throughout the rest of his life; he knew that now.
Him? Or her? You must decide, lest both lives be extinguished.
The last time, the moment was deliberate, and his choice was meant to be the same. He was supposed to experience every single second of indecision for the agony it was. Become keenly acquainted with the heft of holding lives in his grasp, with the terrifying weight and exhilarating power of it. This time, it was instantaneous. There was no time to deliberate, between the merits of his life and her life and Cyrus's own life, which may well hang in the balance, too. All there was time for was instinct and reaction.
Choose.
If anyone had asked him, he would have said his instincts were attuned to self-preservation before all else. He wasn't sure if it would have been a lie or not. Certainly it had been true once.
But when he chose, it was to veer into the path of the blood-spear headed for Maleus. Without weapons or a chance to block, he was helpless to do anything but throw his body between weapon and target. It hit him square on, lancing right for the center of his chestplate and colliding with a heavy impact. At first he thought that would be itâthe breath was knocked from him and he skidded backwards, yet the enchanted steel protecting him held. But then the spell surged, fueled no doubt by the sick energy of Yda's death, and with a splitting screech, the armor cracked, the lash piercing it like a shell, finding yielding flesh beneath with enough force to burst out the other side.
There was a scream coming from the opposite direction. A howl. Zahra. For her. For him. Maybe. It sounded far away to his ears, as if it were echoing in a tunnel and crumbling away to nothing. Dust and ash. Further away, still.
Pain registered on a delay, whiting out his vision for what felt like long minutes. Cyrus didn't quite feel the impact of hitting the ground when his knees buckled; all he knew was that when he could see again, indistinct though it was, he did so from the floor, his head lolled to the side and Yda's slumped corpse right in the center of his field of vision. Faraji was there, too, but with no more death to fuel his spells, Cyrus knew distantly that the Magister would be little match for the others.
Unless, of course, his own death served to empower the man's magic as well.
Was he going to die?
Did he still want to?
He wondered. And then the world went dark, and he wondered no longer.