Chapter 53 - Archon of War.
The garrison's warriors had gathered in Solum's main square, surrounding the Twelfth Detachment and their flying mounts. Olen, Admiral Cassius Vern, and Irvis stood in front of the formation, and a little ahead of all of them stood Archon Lucia Radiant, holding Aren off the ground with one hand, her fingers clamped around his throat.
Admiral Vern kept his hands behind his back, watching the scene with icy calm, glancing now and then at Irvis, who stood nearby with gritted teeth and clenched fists.
Olen stood apart from the detachment, next to the admiral, and his face carried the same tension as Artus and the rest of the Twelfth Detachment's fighters.
Lucia tightened her fingers further, cutting off his air. Aren gritted his teeth, gripping her wrist, feeling his vision blur as darkness crept in from the edges.
"And this pup beat the Basilisk King? What nonsense," she said, looking at him, her face sunk in shadow, from which the yellow irises of her eyes glowed.
When his heartbeat reached its limit, Aren decided to stop holding back, aware of the risk to his own life.
He looked at Lucia with fury, and her pupils narrowed in response. He let go of her wrist, wrapped his hands in magic claws, and lunged for her wrist, aiming to sever her hand.
Lucia unclenched her fingers from his throat and returned her hand to its place within a fraction of a second.
The next instant she twisted her torso and drove her foot into Aren's side with such force that his body arched from the blow. It flew sideways, tore through the line of warriors, and slammed into the barracks wall, raising a cloud of dust inside.
The warriors knocked down by Aren's body were rising from the ground with groans, while Lucia straightened up after the strike.
Olen and Artus froze, eyes wide, not yet able to grasp what had happened in that single instant.
Everyone froze, staring at the cloud of dust in the breach in the wall, where soon a silhouette emerged through the settling dust. Aren stepped out of the breach, covered in dust and grime, wiping blood from his lips with the back of his hand.
He looked at the Archon with undisguised anger, letting his arms drop and clenching his fists.
"No one interfere. He's mine." Lucia ordered, stepping toward Aren.
Aren tore the remains of his shredded leather armor and tunic from his torso, baring a body covered in runic tattoos, and took a fighting stance.
Lucia kept walking at an unhurried pace. Her gaze bored through Aren's eyes, pressing down on him with the weight of her aura and the energy streaming off her.
He stood motionless, waiting for the moment to counterattack and running through the possible forms her attack might take, while the Archon watched him with the same cold calm as before, keeping the same slow rhythm of steps.
Suddenly, Lucia tore away from where she stood in a powerful burst, and a shockwave rippled outward from her in rings.
She shot forward with an acceleration that tore the air apart and crashed down on Aren, who instantly threw up a magic shield.
Lucia's fist smashed through it with a single blow, without losing speed.
Aren managed to twist his torso, and the fist went past him, slamming into the stone wall of the damaged barracks.
Lucia spun with her own momentum and struck with the back of her other fist, and Aren only managed to get his forearms up in time.
The blow threw him dozens of meters, dragging his feet along the ground as it bled off his speed.
Before he could even lower his forearms and look up, Lucia's palm had already covered his face and driven the back of his head into the ground, after which she dragged him across the surface until he came to a full stop, leaving a torn furrow behind her.
Lucia lifted him by the head with the same grip and drew back her fist for a blow to the body.
Aren grabbed her wrist with both hands and slammed a powerful kick into her head, his leg sheathed in white stone.
But looking at her through the fingers clamped over his face, his eyes went wide, because Lucia's head only rocked to the side from the blow and swung back.
She closed her eyes, exhaled, and rolled her head, working out her neck, then opened her eyes again, their yellow irises glowing out of the shadow.
"Is that all?" she asked.
Aren wrenched his wrist free of her grip, and behind his back giant magic wings unfurled, spreading to their full width and immediately beginning to gather an electric charge.
With one sweep he released bolts of lightning that tore through Lucia and across the square within a radius of several dozen paces.
The garrison's warriors recoiled with a murmur of surprise, though they stood at a safe distance, while Aren shot into the air, finally free of Lucia's grip, and hung there above the ground.
Amid the settling dust and dying sparks, Lucia appeared, shielding her face with her forearm and flinching slightly from the electric shock.
She lowered her arm a little and looked at Aren, her eyes flaring with an even brighter yellow aura.
"Not bad," came from under her forearm.
Lucia lowered her arm and looked at Aren.
"Go on then, pup, show me what you've got"
"I don't want to fight you..." Aren began, but Lucia surged at him on a powerful explosive burst from underfoot, closing the distance in a fraction of a second.
Aren lunged aside, and her strike went past him.
Lucia spun with a fresh energy pulse from underfoot and immediately landed a spinning kick.
The blow caught Aren's shielded side and hurled him into the next barracks, punching through the roof.
In the same second Lucia shot into the air after him, pushing off with a third pulse.
"H-how is she doing that?" Artus muttered.
"There are special photocytes in the soles of her boots. She uses them to create powerful energy pulses," came a familiar voice.
Artus turned and saw Dex, his face serious.
"Normally such small photocyte crystals don't produce that much energy in a short pulse. Only if the input energy is enormous enough. And our Archon of War—she's a Level III Conductor," Dex went on, raising his head toward the barracks where Aren had fallen and where Lucia had flown in after him.
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The dust inside the wrecked barracks was settling, revealing Aren back on his feet, starting to cover his body in white-stone armor and form energy claws.
Lucia, for her part, was walking toward him at a slow pace, without a single scratch on her body, her white uniform coated only in a layer of dust.
The only source of light in the barracks remained a shaft of daylight through the breach in the roof, and the face of the approaching Lucia lay in shadow.
Aren could make out only the frightening calm with which she walked toward him, and the way her hair swayed with every step.
He gritted his teeth, spread his magic wings again, and shot upward, smashing through the roof and leaving a second breach in it.
Lucia stopped beneath the breach and picked up a small photocyte shard off the floor, a fragment of the ceiling lamp Aren had smashed in his fall.
She raised her eyes to the second breach and closed her fist around the shard, forming a long energy spear that resembled, in shape and behavior, a bolt of yellow lightning.
She drew her arm back and, with a loud, snarling exhale, hurled it through the breach.
"...she can turn even a speck of photocyte into a murder weapon." Dex finished.
Aren was looking down at the barracks from above and spotted the spear of yellow lightning flying at him.
He barely managed to dodge, his eyes following the projectile as it shot past.
Just as he began turning his head back toward the barracks, Lucia's fist was already slamming into his stomach, and Aren's body folded again and was flung back nearly a hundred meters by the shockwave.
The attack wasn't over. While Aren was falling, Lucia launched after him with a fresh explosive burst, quickly closing the distance.
Aren quickly came to his senses, beat his wings, and let loose a volley of lightning at the Archon.
Lucia went up on an explosive burst, soaring high above him. Then she came down on Aren with a final pulse, accelerating to supersonic speed, the whistle of tearing air trailing behind her.
The blow punched straight through one of his wings.
Finding herself beneath Aren, she immediately shot up higher and seized his other wing. Raising her foot, she fed energy into the photocyte in her sole again, and the explosive pulses drove both their bodies, sending them spinning through the air at an ever-increasing speed.
Holding Aren by his remaining wing, Lucia spun up to such a speed that their bodies blurred into a ring of light.
She let go and hurled him at the ground.
The body slammed into a limestone shelf outside Solum, throwing up a wall of dust and rock debris many meters high.
Lucia immediately pushed off with a fresh blast toward the same spot and kicked with all her strength, creating a magic explosion that raised an even bigger wall of dust and sent a shockwave rolling across the stone wasteland, reaching all the way to Solum's walls.
The dust settled. Lucia looked down with a calm expression while only a cracked crater remained beneath her foot, and Aren's body wasn't in it.
"And you're a tough punk." she said, turning her head to the side.
Aren could barely stay on his feet, coughing blood onto the ground while his white-stone armor crumbled off his body in pieces from the damage he'd taken.
Lucia straightened up, looking at him with the same eyes, glowing yellow.
Aren breathed in ragged gasps, a dull ache in his head.
He couldn't tell whether it came from his mind restructuring itself around a new opponent, the way it had during his first clash with Schtance, or from Lucia having driven him into the ground several times over.
She's... too fast... too tough... and the force of her blows is monstrous , Aren thought, hoping to buy enough time for his body to close up at least some of his wounds.
"What, not used to shattered expectations? Thought that because you beat a beast-god, you could handle an Archon too?" Lucia began, straightening up and turning to Aren.
"Unfortunately for you, unlike a mindless beast-god, I know how to analyze and anticipate your attacks... your dodges... adapt to them and make you react exactly the way I want you to."
Lucia moved toward Aren again.
Slowly backing away, Aren remembered a conversation with Kyle and Edith in the garden.
"Though the Archon of Light stands at the head of the Republic, you should be especially wary of the commander-in-chief of its forces, Archon of War Lucia Radiant," Magister Kyle said, looking Aren in the eye.
"Is she a strong warrior too, like you, my queen?" Aren asked, glancing at Edith, who sat between them.
Edith laughed quietly, took a drag on her cigarette, and exhaled the smoke.
"Partly, yes. Except she's far stronger than me, and her temperament is... difficult," Edith replied.
Aren rubbed the back of his neck, thinking about the difficulties waiting for him when he met Lucia.
"The queen is right. Lucia is terrifyingly strong and just as clever. She wasn't nicknamed the Archon of War for nothing—she's as skilled a commander as she is a fighter. Try not to make her angry," Kyle added.
"Wait... if you, my queen, are one of the Pleiades, and Lucia is stronger than you, does that mean..." Aren began.
Kyle smirked, leaning back in his chair, and gestured with a look for the queen to answer herself.
"Yes. She's one of the six Pleiades too," Edith replied.
Aren raised his eyes from the ground, looking at Lucia, who now stood a single step away from him.
"Like I already said, I don't care why you're here or what your queen wrote. Protecting the Republic and its people matters far more to me than your personal mission. You broke our order the moment you set foot on our land, and that's enough to understand: nothing good will come of your presence here."
The tiny photocyte in Lucia's ring lit up and formed a knuckle-blade as long as a forearm. She drew her right arm back past her left shoulder, ready to behead Aren.
"Besides, you'll have to pay for disrupting the stability of our land. That's just how things work here. Accept your fate."
"Enough." A deep voice rolled down from the sky, echoing.
Lucia froze, still staring into Aren's eyes, then took a deep breath, withdrew the blade, and released her grip.
Aren dropped to one knee.
Looking up, he saw an enormous white flying whale descending from the sky, and off its back a tall man in long, loose white robes dropped heavily to the ground.
Unlike most Heliosians, he had golden hair and beige skin, and his face was dotted with tiny golden flecks, like a scattering of freckles with a metallic sheen.
"Aurelius." Lucia greeted him, turning to face him sideways.
"Lucia. Explain what's going on here."
"I was giving this outsider a little test."
A test?! She was about to kill me! , Aren thought, looking at her profile.
The Archon of Light looked over the battered stranger, blood running from his mouth and nose, a red puddle darkening beneath his feet, then turned his gaze to Lucia's unreadable face.
His own face set into a stone mask the moment he realized how far her words were from what he was seeing.
"He brought it on himself," Lucia added.
"What do you mean..." Aren rasped.
"Lucia... for God's sake, don't be so—" Aurelius began, closing his eyes and pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose.
"He killed a beast-god," she cut in.
Aurelius froze. He took his fingers from his face and raised his eyes, looked at Aren, studied his runic tattoos, then turned his gaze back to Lucia.
"You're certain?"
"The report and the witnesses confirm it."
Aurelius looked at Aren again and stepped closer.
"What's your name?"
"Aren... of Waldruhm."
"Of Waldruhm?.. What's the purpose of your visit?"
"I... came for knowledge... I want to learn... to find answers to my questions... to know the truth," Aren answered hoarsely, coughing between words.
"The truth about what?" Aurelius asked.
Aren said nothing, shifting his gaze from the Archon of Light to the Archon of War. Lucia stood behind him, watching Aren with a piercing, analytical coldness.
"...about who I am," Aren answered, lowering his head.
Aurelius didn't move a muscle, continuing to watch him in silence.
"You really killed a beast-god?.. The Basilisk King?" he asked.
Aren nodded without raising his eyes from the ground.
"Why Helios?"
"Because you... have deep knowledge of Pandorum..."
Lucia's eyes narrowed, and her fingers dug tighter into her folded arms.
Aurelius slowly lowered himself to one knee.
"Do you know that through Pandorum, one can learn what kind of person stands before you? If the eyes are the mirror of the soul, then Pandorum is the door that lets you step inside," the Archon of Light said.
Aren raised his head and looked him in the eye.
The Archon raised his hand and slowly rested it on Aren's shoulder, then closed his eyes.
Aren felt nothing while Aurelius's fingers tightened further on his shoulder, his brows drawing together ever so slightly at the bridge of his nose.
Lucia unfolded her crossed arms, feeling the air around them grow heavier, her eyes fixed on the Archon of Light's back.
Aurelius opened his eyes and immediately released Aren's shoulder.
He rose slowly to his feet without a word.
"Aurelius?" Lucia called.
The Archon of Light stood motionless, not answering for a while, staring off somewhere ahead.
Lucia couldn't make out the expression on his face, but she sensed that something in him had changed.
"Take him to the medics and treat him. Then send him to Midar, to the Temple of the Sun," Aurelius said.
"Are you sure? We haven't sorted out enough details yet."
"I've learned enough. So please, do as I ask."
Lucia took a slow, deep breath, glancing at Aren, who was looking at her with a hint of confusion, then exhaled deeply, closed her eyes, and turned her gaze away.
"As you say."
"Thank you," Aurelius answered.
He turned and headed toward his whale without even glancing at Aren, and leaped onto its back, then rose into the sky.
Lucia stepped toward Aren, looking at him with clear revulsion.
"Get up."
Aren lowered his head and, with a ragged breath, began slowly rising, feeling sharp pain echo through his entire body.
Lucia rolled her eyes, turning her head away, and put her hands on her hips, waiting for Aren to finally straighten up.
Once he was on both feet, he still struggled to keep his back straight, while Lucia walked around him and headed toward Solum.
"You can stand on your own, so you can make it to Solum too. I'll be waiting for you in my office," she said, after taking a few steps.
A sharp, powerful leap and a burst of magic energy from underfoot threw her into the air, and she flew forward, using the same explosive pulses.
Aren stood where he was, watching Lucia recede into the distance, his jaw muscles clenched and his lips pressed tight.
He stood alone in the middle of the stone wasteland, barely able to stand, under orders to make his own way to Solum, still about a kilometer off.
"Fuck."