Chapter 40 - Aren.
Aren stood beside Aurey's motionless body, while several meters behind him Fray was slowly rising from the ground.
A broken nose and a dark stripe of bruising along his cheekbone bore the mark of the blow, and his right prosthetic was frozen in a half-extended position.
On the opposite side, considerably farther away, Schtance stood on one knee, pressing the severed stump of her prosthetic against her side.
Before Aren, a few steps ahead, Kyle sat, and beside him Aris stood frozen in place.
Blood from his nose kept dripping onto the trampled earth at his knee, but Kyle noticed neither the pain nor the burning in his cracked ribs, unable to tear his gaze from Aren as the recent events came back to him.
The guard stood in the half-open doorway, having just finished his report, while Ulrich Thorne was already turning away, allowing the news no room to settle.
"Gather the best warriors, leave the rest to keep order in the city. We march to Aurey's aid immediately." He gave the order sharply.
The guard bent into a bow, barely straightening before Kyle said his name.
"Lord Thorne."
Ulrich turned, unhurried, shifting his gaze from the doorway to Kyle. Aris raised her head, and the guards at the entrance exchanged glances with matching bewilderment.
"Allow us to come with you." Kyle said.
The cell fell completely quiet while Ulrich looked from one to the other in silence, and Aris pressed her lips together, finding nothing to say.
Kyle gave Ulrich no time to respond, continuing before he could get a word in.
"I understand what you want to say…but I will tell you what I told the queen. We have come with no intention of harming your kingdom, unlike what the Aisengardians in all likelihood want. I, as do many others who serve this world, am deeply troubled by what is happening to the Unified Field, because one way or another its consequences will reach all of us. And even now... I am beginning to feel more and more that something is happening in that forest, something the world has never seen before. And whether you believe me or not, I am here to help save both your home and ours."
Ulrich did not rush his reply, holding Kyle with an unreadable gaze, while Aris watched Kyle with poorly concealed concern, in no hurry to add anything.
Kyle did not wait for the pause to stretch.
"Your queen... she understands this too. I believe it is one of the reasons she chose to go into the forest herself. And besides... I am more than certain that even with two Aisengardians you cannot manage without support."
Ulrich tilted his head slightly, not taking his eyes off Kyle, then shifted his gaze to Aris. She met him with a brief silence, clearly at a loss for words.
"But this will not cancel the trial for your violations." He said, his gaze moving to Kyle.
"Of course. I am ready to pay for my own mistakes."
Ulrich gave a short nod, then turned to the guard still standing at the entrance.
"Carry out the order, and find two more horses."
The guard gave a short bow, turned, and left the cell without a sound. Ulrich moved to follow, but before his silhouette disappeared in the doorway, Kyle asked one more question.
"Tell me... what did the Aisengardians and the queen learn that sent them all into the forest?"
Ulrich stopped with his back to him, stood in silence for several seconds without moving, then turned slowly and laid out the gist in a few short phrases.
Kyle listened without interrupting, his eyes not leaving Ulrich while he spoke.
When Ulrich finished, several seconds passed before Kyle spoke.
"A dark-haired young man... with tattoos?... Named Aren?..." He repeated slowly, the full picture not yet assembled in his mind.
The next phrase went unfinished, because the image hit him before he could complete it. He remembered Aren, handing him a parcel from Ingrid.
Then came the memory from the height of the skirmish on the plain.
The earth vibrated beneath him with every blow, his head pulsed with a dull ache, and Kyle pressed his palms into the wet soil, trying to stay on all fours and gather whatever scraps of strength remained.
Aurey was falling back under the combined assault of both Aisengardians, the guards dropping one after another, and all Kyle could manage in that moment was concentrating what remained of his strength on keeping the wounded alive.
Suddenly a shudder rolled through his entire body at once, striking every nerve from his heels to the crown of his head, forcing him to double over with a ragged exhale before nausea surged sharply to his throat. He clenched his teeth, then lifted his head with effort, feeling the Unified Field as if pulling itself into an unimaginable density toward the Great Forest.
Then he saw, at that moment, deep in the forest, at the Great Tree itself, a broad column of white light strike the dark sky, cutting through the cloud cover before slowly fading.
Beside him, Ulrich Thorne had gone still, shifting his gaze from that distant point of the forest back to Kyle.
"What... was that just now..." flashed through his mind, finding no answer then.
The images receded all at once, returning him to the plain, to his knee in the trampled earth and the blood on his chin.
Aren stood far ahead, silent, with black runes along his forearms.
Kyle had sensed that energy from the very moment Aren appeared on the plain, but only now, with the adrenaline gone, did its full weight settle in. Something enormous, dense, heavy, belonging to a different order of things than anything he had ever encountered.
"Aren... who are you... and why... do I feel... this monstrous energy in you?...", the thought circled in his mind.
Aren took his first step forward, moving toward Fray with a slow, unhurried stride.
Through his special sight, he could see ordered energy circulating through the artificial channels beneath the Aisengardian's skin and through each of the metal plates, dense, compressed, strictly confined within permissible pressure.
A voice surfaced from memory, the Titan's voice, which had spoken in his consciousness back at the Great Tree.
"You have already begun to understand how to use your energy, but you will need more time and experience to reach full control. I will give you knowledge of how to transmit it, and a special sight, through which you will be better able to understand its nature, its essence...and its meaning. I will open the third eye within you." Bjorg-Var had said.
Fray exhaled slowly, transforming his arm into a barrel with a loud crack and visible effort, then fired.
Aren raised a small shield of blue energy before him, fully absorbing the charge, then kept walking forward.
The Vector forced his arm back into the damaged hand, then lunged forward, driving his mechanical fist at Aren's face.
Aren stepped to the side, but Fray, having calculated the direction of the dodge in advance, swept his leg after him, driving the mechanical boot with a dull impact and a blast of air into the white stone that had formed in a thin layer over the right part of Aren's side.
Fray's eyes widened, and Aren answered with a punch, which the Vector met with a sidestep, immediately releasing a steam-energy pulse from his shoulder joint.
Aren evaded each attack with a precision built on the familiar rhythm of the Aisengardian close-combat school, catching the pauses between sequences and slipping out of the kill zones before his opponent could finish the sequence.
At one point a charged mechanical fist did reach Aren's face, but at the point of contact it met Aren's hand, which had stopped the fist along with the shockwave.
Magical energy wreathed his palm and fingers in the shape of claws, reaching to Fray's elbow.
Ulrich, Aris, and Kyle involuntarily widened their eyes, unable to look away from the spot where Aren's hand held the mechanical fist in a dead grip.
Aren withdrew the claws, but did not release the grip, holding Fray's mechanical arm in place, his posture unchanged.
Fray tried to strike with his free hand, but Aren intercepted it too, not shifting from his position.
The Vector tried to push him off with a kick, but before he could complete the motion, a hard spasm rolled through his entire body, locking his limbs with an irresistible, mounting force.
The prosthetics trembled at the joints, and the crystals between the damaged plates blazed brighter, emitting sharp sounds of overheating.
Aren watched the Aisengardian coldly, tilting his head slightly to one side.
Fray struggled to stay on his feet while his body convulsed under the mounting strain.
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"Wh...what are you..." He managed with difficulty.
Aren did not answer, shifting his gaze from Fray's face to the crystals visible deep within the damaged plates of the prosthetic, then continued methodically feeding his concentrated energy into them.
The crystals trembled in their sockets, and electric discharges ran along their edges, growing denser with each passing second.
The muscles of Fray's face tightened in extreme effort, and his faltering breath turned into a barely audible hiss.
"S...STOP!! AGHH!" He cried out as one of the discharges struck his neck hard.
Suddenly Aren sensed a threat behind him, released Fray sharply and leapt back, as Schtance brought both legs down into the exact spot where he had just been standing, landing on her knees with heavy, ragged breath.
Fray lay on his back, convulsively clenching and unclenching the fingers of his intact hand, barely holding on to consciousness, then with effort rolled onto his side and aimed the damaged prosthetic straight into the sky, transforming it into a barrel.
The shot struck out as a powerful steam-energy stream, tearing a wide gap in the cloud cover and holding it for a full ten seconds while the earth around trembled faintly from the exiting force.
The prosthetic slowly went dark, the crystals between the plates cracked and dimmed, losing their former glow, and the barrel at the tip melted slightly from the residual heat.
Schtance shifted her gaze from Fray to Aren, then began rising from her knees with fury, clenching her only intact hand, but before she had fully risen, a voice came from the side.
"Enough." Edith commanded.
Everyone raised their heads at once, barely believing their own eyes.
Queen Edith, Alistair, Bernard, Bram Wellard, and the rest of the survivors were descending from above on ethereal kestrels, silent in the broad sweep of their wings.
Several of the arrivals hung in the grip of the birds' talons, with obvious discomfort.
Among them was Askir, firmly seized in the talons of one of the kestrels, while Arswald, leaning over the bird's back, looked down at him from above.
"HEY! HEY DON'T CRUSH ME! CAREFUL, GODDAMN IT! HEY!" Askir yelled, struggling uselessly in the grip.
Arswald spread his hands, clearly finding no way to explain the desired thing to the bird.
"HELL IF I KNOW HOW TO EXPLAIN IT TO HER! HEY, BIRDIE! THROW THIS FOOL ASIDE!" He bellowed.
Before the kestrel touched the ground, it opened its talon, letting Askir fall face-first into the mud, then landed beside him with unhurried, indifferent dignity.
Armund jumped down with Arswald, then immediately doubled over and vomited on the ground, after which he straightened slowly with a rasp in his throat.
"Like I'll ever... agree to something like that again..." He said hoarsely, not lifting his head.
Ray descended from the kestrel last, landing without a single unnecessary movement, his face perfectly composed.
The queen and Alistair dismounted and moved forward, stopping a few steps from the Aisengardians. Alistair drew his blade, dulled from the previous fight, pulling it from its sheath with a clang.
Schtance and Fray, barely back on his feet, kept their gaze on the queen as she took her last step.
"I believe you understand what you need to do right now...and what awaits you?" Edith said.
Alistair covered his body in a magical shell, and Bernard, leaping from the kestrel in turn, took position beside him, axe in hand.
Fray slowly looked at everyone gathered around, pausing on each in turn, then turned to Aren, who stood ahead in silence with a cold, composed expression.
He clenched his teeth, eyes fixed on Aren, then spoke quietly, without turning his head toward Schtance.
"Parøklar"
[Get ready.]
Suddenly, he reached to his abdomen and tore the fabric away with a sharp motion, exposing a metal implant running along his side in several plates. One of them had a small opening, from which Fray extracted a matte stone with a glowing rune engraved into it.
Aren and Alistair reacted at the same moment, lunging toward the Aisengardians from two sides.
But Fray had already thrown the stone at his feet, crushing it under his mechanical foot, while Schtance in the same instant grabbed his shoulder.
A magical wave struck out as a dome, hurling Aren and Alistair back with hard, driving force.
The dome enclosed the Aisengardians, raising within itself a vortex of flickering runic silhouettes that cycled through one another in chaotic, accelerating succession.
Through the spinning, Aren saw their gaze, cold and direct, turned on him from the very center of the vortex.
The dome collapsed, leaving behind only a small crater in the earth.
The clearing fell silent, and every last person kept their eyes fixed on that spot, still holding the warmth of the recent discharge.
Several seconds passed before Askir lifted his head from the ground.
"Shit...they just...vanished?..." He wiped the mud from his forehead.
Edith exhaled slowly, her gaze fixed on the place where two people had stood a moment before.
"A teleportation rune. Where did they even get their hands on that?..." She said.
Bernard lowered his axe, shifting his gaze to the crater, from which the spent air still drifted.
"They are scouts, Edith. It is to be expected that Aisengard provided them with special means of extraction." He answered.
Edith frowned, continuing to look at the same point with a thoughtful, taut expression.
"You saw those runic combinations in the air?... No one is capable of that except the inhabitants of the Shogunate. Unless they obtained that stone through special trade connections and the smuggling that persisted until the Aisengard Incident." She added, then turned her gaze to Master Kyle, standing in silence to the side.
Kyle held the pause, taking no hurry with his reply.
"The underground dealings of the Trade League are no concern of mine." He said.
Edith looked at him for several more seconds, her expression unchanged.
"Right, of course."
Then she shifted her gaze to Ulrich Thorne, who held himself apart with an impassive air.
"Was it you who released him?" She asked.
Ulrich lowered his head slightly, holding a pause before speaking.
"Yes, my queen. It was an important decision, and the best one."
Edith slowly raised her head, letting her gaze pass over the bodies of the Order's knights lying to one side and the traces of destruction around, then turned her head and saw Aurey.
Noticing he lay without movement, she ran toward him, not slowing.
"AUREY!" she called out.
Dropping to her knees beside him, she examined him with trembling hands, quickly running over his face, neck, and chest in a few rapid movements, then tore the dented breastplate from his chest and pressed her ear against it.
Through the fabric came a faint but clear heartbeat, steady and uninterrupted.
"He will be alright." Aren's voice came from behind her.
She turned, raising her eyes.
Aren was looking down at her, his posture unchanged.
"I shared my energy with him, so his body has already begun the process of recovery. He will live."
Edith held several seconds of silence, then exhaled slowly, returning her gaze to Aurey's face.
"...thank you..." She said, without turning her head.
Aren lowered his head for a moment, then turned to Bernard, who was watching him with a faint, difficult-to-read concern.
Then he addressed the four kestrels holding themselves a few steps away.
"You are free. I need nothing more from you."
The giant birds swept their wings as one, lifting a whirl of leaves and debris from the ground, and everyone standing nearby covered their faces with their hands.
Four silhouettes rose into the sky, turning in one wide arc toward the mountain ridges at the western edge of the Great Forest, then vanished into the heights.
Later, at the southern gates of Ockhaven, the people had been waiting for several hours. The knights on the wall held their positions in silence, answering none of the questions from below, and the gates themselves remained firmly barred.
In the back rows someone spoke in a low voice about the smoke that had risen over the Great Forest earlier in the day, and about a fire. Others murmured about rumors that were gradually finding confirmation, rumors that the Aisengardians had attacked the Queen's Sword right here in Ockhaven, and that the best warriors of the Green Order along with the queen herself had left for the Great Forest several hours ago.
Elara stood in the crowd with Leo, Selma, and Erik, not knowing what to do with her hands.
Leo stayed close, not letting go of her wrist. Erik stood in silence beside Selma, occasionally glancing at her face, and Selma herself did not take her eyes off the southern gates.
Elara looked at the closed gates, tightening her fingers around Leo's wrist.
"Aren…Bernard…please…let you both be alright…" She whispered to herself.
A few moments later one of the knights on the wall straightened sharply and gave a signal below. The guard at the gates drew a breath, and his voice rang out over the entire square.
"OPENING UP!"
The massive gates moved with a slow, drawn-out creak, and the entire square held its breath at once.
The first through the widening doors was Edith, on horseback.
The square erupted in cries, but the joy lasted only until each person could make out the queen's face, after which the cries began to die out in rows, from front to back.
Behind the queen came the first cart, its bodies lying still beneath cloaks, and the surviving warriors of the Forest Watch who walked alongside it held their heads low. Alistair rode behind them, his gaze not raised.
Then a second cart came through the gates, and the mood of the square dropped further.
In it sat Kyle and Aris, at which those standing nearest the edge immediately began whispering the name.
At the far end of the cart, unnoticed by anyone on the square, Aurey lay unconscious.
Then from the gates came four on foot, and the square began to change at once.
Arswald, Armund, Ray, Askir. The names moved through the crowd one after another, and those who for half a year had been considered dead on the Sacred Hunt were now recognized, alive, at the gates of Ockhaven.
From the crowd, women, children, and men began tearing forward, all with the same disbelieving faces, pressing through strange backs toward those four.
The first to reach Arswald was a young woman, who collided with him chest to chest, and they merged into an embrace and a kiss, arms not letting go.
His wife and son pressed through to Armund. His wife held him first, his son pressed in after, fisting the fabric of his jacket in both hands, and all three stood in silence, their shoulders shaking with sobs.
Through the crowd, Askir's brother made his way to him. He stopped a step away, swallowed, clamped his upper lip, a single tear rolled from his eye, and then he punched Askir in the face. A few seconds later they were holding each other tight, saying nothing.
Ray's father walked up to him in silence and held him tight, wordless, while the eyes above his shoulder slowly filled with tears that still refused to believe what they were seeing.
Elara, Leo, Selma, and Erik stood with caught breath, eyes fixed on every new face coming through the gates.
And then Elara made out Bernard among those arriving last.
She broke forward with a cry, pushing people aside with both hands and not looking back.
Leo darted after her, and behind him, without a word between them, Selma and Erik moved too.
Selma pressed through strange backs, seeing only her own hands ahead of her, pushing one person after another aside.
Each palm found another back, pushed it, immediately found the next. She heard nothing, felt none of the pressure of the crowd, none of the foreign elbows, and in her chest a warmth was rising, dense and certain, growing stronger with every step.
On her face appeared something that had not been there seconds before. The thoughts that had been held tight since that morning began slowly releasing.
Elen. He was here, close, just a few steps. She felt it through her whole body, through every beat of her heart, without explanation and without doubt.
She already pictured his face, filled with the same relief as hers, and in her head rang his not-yet-spoken "Mom" and in that moment, for the first time in a long time, a smile began appearing on her face, tears welling in her eyes.
Suddenly she ran into the back of Elara, who had stopped sharply, and could not understand why she wasn't moving.
Selma looked to the side, trying to understand what had stopped Elara, and froze.
Behind Bernard, one step behind, came Aren, carrying someone's motionless body in his arms.
Selma looked at the body being carried, gradually recognizing in it the golden hair, the leather shoulder guards, the old armor with its notches and marks of battle.
The world around her lost its color, gradually, over several heartbeats, graying from the edges to the center, until no sound remained, no saturation.
The only color distinguishable in all that emptiness, beyond black and white and gray, was red.
Bernard met her eyes, then immediately looked away, stopping where he stood with a straight, stone back and clenched fists, unable to move. While Aren walked straight ahead, his gaze empty and lowered, not raising his head.
Selma stood where she had stopped, not having moved a single step, her arms hanging lifeless at her sides.
He approached her slowly, knowing with certainty who she was, then stopped.
No one around spoke a word while Selma looked over the lifeless, partly burned body of her only son, then slowly raised her disbelieving eyes to Aren.
Aren met her eyes with a hollow, heavy gaze, unable to say anything for many long seconds.
"He…saved me…twice…at the cost of his own life…" He said.
Selma drew a trembling breath, continuing to look at Aren, not daring to lower her eyes toward what rested in his arms, every part of her rejecting what she knew.
"I…I couldn't…" Aren continued, his voice trembling, his head lowered.
His arms trembled with emotion, and tears slowly began to form, while the next words came with a mounting, tearing effort.
"I couldn't…save him…I couldn't…he…wanted to come back…he…"
Selma pressed her palm sharply to her mouth, holding back the cries breaking through, and stepped back as she did.
Aren did not raise his head, his tears falling from his face onto Elen's body.
Elara pressed her mouth with both hands, tears streaming down her wrists and palms, and Leo and Erik wept beside her, holding nothing back.
And at that moment the square at the southern gates of Ockhaven rang with a cry of grief that defied all words, feelings, or thoughts.