GODSWAR: The Mask of Ares, Chapter 2

Well, let's face it, Aunt Vicky knows her niece pretty well, so yeah, she's gonna try that thing...

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Chapter 2.

Urelle drifted down through the air, the airwing enchantment fading away. Still, that's brought me almost half a mile from the house. Should be enough.

She was still furious, though a part of her – an increasingly annoying part of her – was starting to sound like Auntie Victoria and telling her that this was a really bad idea. Still… "They could have trusted me!" she muttered, as her toes touched down on the leafy floor of the Forest Sea.

"Like your aunt could trust you to stay in your room?"

At the voice from behind her, Urelle gasped and spun, fingers already grasping the fabric of reality before the fact that she knew that voice penetrated. She lowered her hand and banished the threatening glow, staring at Ingram Camp-Bel. The little lavender-haired youth was leaning on his anai-k'ota casually, as though …

…as though he'd been waiting for her.

Belated realization of his words struck, and she felt a hot blush on her cheeks. "That's not—" She bit back the words. "I didn't say I was staying in my room," she said after a moment.

Ingram nodded. "No, I didn't hear you do so. But given that you aren't allowed outside the estate defenses after full dark, the expectation that you'd stay was reasonable."

"Not your business!" She turned and stalked away, farther into the forest.

She didn't hear his footsteps, but a sigh behind her made it clear he was following.

"And how did you find me this fast? You can't fly!"

"That's true. But I've had to deal with flying things more than once. I saw you leave the window—"

"I was cloaked!"

"To normal sight, yes." He tapped the peculiar goggles on his face. "Not to what the Founder called 'infra-red.' There, you still glow like a beacon."

That was a pointed reminder of the fact that magic was only as useful as your understanding of the rest of the world. The Camp-Bel's "Founder" had left the clan a lot of interesting technological devices. "Ugh. Still, I was flying."

"Yes, and that was certainly the right tactical choice. Quester can jump and glide, but not fly, and without warning he would never have been able to reach your altitude and catch you." He was walking next to her now, and even as he talked, his gaze swept across the entirety of the forest, watching. "Still, you relied on being able to evade sight and physical pursuit too much. You traveled in a straight line, telling me where you were going; since we have traveled together for quite a while, I had a good idea of your current achievements as a wielder of magic, so I guessed how far out your airwing would run out, and sprinted there at top speed."

That told her a lot about just how fast Ingram was. He sure doesn't shame the Camp-Bel name.

Of course, she knew that from their journey here. At first she hadn't been able to pay much attention, but she did remember the first time she'd seen him. He'd looked in the carriage, where she was sitting – immobile, unable to think of anything except horror – and stepped in, waiting until she finally found the will to turn her gaze to him.

Then he'd said: "I am Ingram Camp-Bel, Zarathanton Guilded. Lady Urelle Vantage, my companion Quester and I will protect you on your journey. I promise and pledge to keep you safe."

And to her utter astonishment, he had. As she had allowed herself to emerge, slowly, from the second great loss of her life, she remembered flashes: Ingram and Quester battling a massive figure of stone, a thing born of corrupted elemental power; Ingram dueling one of the half-human, half-demon guards at the border of fallen Dalthunia, a tiny, lavender-haired waif before the nine-foot soldier, but a waif who evaded every blow as though made of smoke and dreams, and then struck with the force of a smith's hammer, staggering the soldier; the anai-k'ota coming apart into multiple chain-linked sections and whirling, singing and humming a song of death as the young Adventurer cut his way through a swarm of elikzia ants. Even Aunt Victoria had murmured her appreciation of his skill once. "That young man will go far," she had said, "if he doesn't get himself killed first."

And he's here to protect me again. From the Forest Sea.

It penetrated, then – that she was in the Forest Sea, the jungle that enveloped much of the central portion of the continent, a wilderness from which even trained Adventurers often did not emerge.

That part of her that sounded like Auntie was definitely louder. And the angry part… was a lot more like the worried part.

She looked over at Ingram, and now she could see the tension in him, his body ready to launch like an arrow from a bow. "Where's Quester?"

"He had to stay back. We're guarding the house too, after all."

By Myrionar, I probably am an idiot. "I can't believe you outran my airwing."

"Airwing's not that fast compared to other flight tricks, and you were fighting a headwind," he said, sounding at once proud and embarrassed. He glanced at her. "Can we go back now?"

Urelle let the rest of her anger fade. But there was still something else left: necessity. She had to ask a question and discover if there was an answer. "Not yet. But… could you come with me?"

His tension eased the slightest bit. "If you have to keep going? You can't get rid of me."

Urelle let a tiny giggle escape – it might have been the first laugh of any kind she'd had since Rion had died. "Okay. Somewhere ahead there's a clearing. Kyri found it. I don't know exactly how far, but she ran to it when she was upset."

"You want to find the same clearing, in the dark? Your sister's a big woman; if she was running half-berserk she could've gone a long way that night."

"I know." She sighed, then grasped reality gently, muttered the words that focused her will, and a faint glow emanated from her, illumining the space around them without making them blind to the rest of the shadowy dark beyond. "Easier to see now. And you can see in the dark already. I think we can find it. I have to find it."

Ingram shook his head. "Kyri being called doesn't mean you will be. And location wouldn't mean anything to a god, would it?"

"It means something. Otherwise why would gods focus on temples? There's some that only manifest in their temples."

He shrugged. "We can try. I'll give us two hours to find this clearing. Don't know how we'll be sure it's the right one."

"If I find it I'll know. Not," she added as he gave her another look, "because I assume Myrionar will answer. Because Kyri broke her Balance necklace when she was there. She didn't throw it away, but there's going to be a piece – a link or two – of the chain still there."

She saw his mouth quirk upward. "Ah. And you're familiar with her necklace, so you can use that connection to sense the remnants. Okay, I'll accept that. Still, two hours. No more."

Urelle gave him a brief bow, acknowledging both his limit and his tolerance.

They spoke little afterward; they'd already made more than enough noise. No need to attract any more attention, at least until they reached their destination.

It wasn't long before she started following in Ingram's footsteps; the boy was experienced in moving through the jungle without leaving traces, and he knew the general direction better than she did. I've spent … a lot of time studying, not so much in my other training. She wasn't incompetent – Lythos wouldn't have tolerated it – but she knew, just from watching Ingram duck below a branch smoothly, never touching it with even a single strand of his lavender hair, that there was a world of difference between learning a thing, and doing the thing in the real world.

Still, he turned to her at one point and gave her a quick smile. You're doing well, that smile said, and maybe something like it's all okay, too.

She smiled back, trying to convey two kinds of thank you in one expression. He's easy to smile at, she thought, and wondered at the thought.

There were scuttlings and strange, hollow, echoing calls in the distance, and whispers of other sounds in the dark. Once something snarled, a ripping, ringing sound, and began a charge, but she unloosed a quick, sharp barrage of pure force in its direction and it turned and fled; some time later, Ingram pulled her back and gestured, showing her the nearly-invisible, ghostly thread dangling from far above. "Forestfisher," he mouthed, and she shuddered, seeing the wet glitter of the toxic line and imagining the huge, long-legged spider-thing waiting above. They gave it a wide berth.

At last, the undergrowth thickened, as it often did at the edges of the forest where light could penetrate, and they broke through into a wide, starlight-silvered clearing. "This had better be it," Ingram murmured. "It's been an hour and a half."

She nodded, then closed her eyes. She brought the vision of Kyri's Balanced Sword pendant clearly into her mind, then envisioned each of its links, glittering silver in her mind's eye. Then she reached out into the clearing, calling Reality to echo Vision.

Three glittering sparks answered her; she ran forward, knelt, and caught one up before the eldritch light faded. "There," she said, showing it to Ingram.

"That… okay, that's impressive. I'd have thought it would take longer. You just ran right up and picked something the size of a grass-grain off the ground. You were right, we found the right place. And we probably shouldn't have, so … good luck."

She nodded, feeling her heart beating faster – she wanted to say with anticipation, but now that she was being honest with herself, with fear and maybe guilt, too.

I'm here now, it's a little late to be thinking maybe I shouldn't have come at all.

She looked around, trying to decide where…

And there it was; a depression, a crushed place in the thick leaves and grasses covering the clearing, with the indentations of two knees so clearly visible she could imagine her sister, sobbing in rage and sorrow and heartbreak.

Urelle swallowed, then, standing with one foot where each knee had been, raised her eyes and saw the Balanced Sword, the stars representing the Sword and Balance twinkling brightly and immutably down. She reached inside her shirt and brought out her own Balanced Sword and raised it to its stellar mirror above.

"Myrionar, I lost no less than my sister!" she shouted, and her voice echoed across the clearing, making Ingram jump. "My mother, my father, my brother, my faith in the Justiciars who betrayed us! Now you send my sister away alone? What justice for me, for Aunt Victoria who has cared for us, protected us? If Kyri is the first of the new Justiciars, then let me be the second! She is a warrior, I am a wizard! There will be magics ranged against her, and someone has to protect her!"

She raised the symbol higher. "You asked her to have faith, be true to You – I will do the same! Just…" and suddenly she found no more anger, no more fine words, only worry and truth: "…just… let me protect my sister." Not be the one who has to be protected. "Let me do something to help."

The clearing was silent, save only for the distant movements of the forest creatures. She stood there, pendant held aloft, for long minutes, waiting. She focused on the stars, begging, pleading, demanding that there be an answer.

But no answer came. The warm wind blew gently but impersonally through her hair, the stars glittered, as distant as ever. No spectral voice spoke, no thoughts came unbidden, no signs.

She let her arm drop at last and sagged to the ground, feeling tears start from her eyes and desperately tried to suppress them. But she couldn't; now she knew. Kyri would walk her road alone, and have to face the Justiciars by herself. Face whatever had made their corruption possible by herself.

Leaving her alone.

A gentle hand touched her shoulder. "I'm sorry, Urelle."

She reached up and gripped Ingram's fingers. "It's… not your fault."

"No," he said. "But it still hurts to see you sad."

She sniffled. "Auntie didn't want me to do this."

"She was probably afraid this would happen," Ingram said. Then he chuckled.

"What's funny?" she demanded, a dim spark of combined anger and curiosity breaking through her worry and grief.

"She was probably also afraid that this wouldn't happen. That Myrionar would accept you."

"But that's…" she started to say stupid, but stopped.

"Yeah," he said. "Worried you'd be hurt by not being accepted … and even more worried how badly you'd be hurt if you went down the same path."

She glanced up, saw conflict on his face, but when his eyes met hers, his resolve firmed. "Look. You and Kyri, you're the last family your aunt has in the world. You're not alone. You still have her. If you go…" He shrugged. "Sometimes you do have to go," he said after a moment. "But don't ever forget how precious it is to have a family that loves you like she does."

She heard something behind that – an echo of pain and regret that told her Ingram had either never had that, or had somehow lost it. Stop pitying yourself, Urelle, she told herself firmly.

She stood up and glanced once more towards the Balanced Sword.

For an instant – just one instant – the stars glittered warmer, a red-orange like a perfect fire in a fireplace, and she felt a phantom caress on her face, a touch of lips on her forehead.

The message needed no words. She knew she was not Chosen – not for this, anyway. But she knew Myrionar had heard her. And that she was still loved.

She blinked back new tears and turned to the south. "Let's go home."