Blade of the Avatar/Blade of Midras/Chapter 2

=Ruin=

Content
“A beautiful day for a walk, isn’t it?” Aren said in a casual, if hushed, tone. He crouched slightly as he moved.

Syenna spared only a short, humorless laugh at the captain’s joke. “If death’s specter is to your liking, then yes, this could qualify as a beautiful day.”

The two of them moved with measured steps down the remains of the city’s main thoroughfare. Behind them, one side of the main gate was all that remained standing. Every other part of the city wall that once supported it was now thrown down. The smoke from the smoldering remains of a row of buildings on their right drifted across their path, making it difficult to see much farther in front of them. The abandoned shells of buildings looked silently down on them from either side of the road. At their feet, shattered stone and splintered wood were mixed with broken limbs. Stilled bodies occasionally stared back at them through sightless eyes. The main assault force had broken through here, and the extent of their brutality had been unchecked. The warriors had surged into the city like a tide, sweeping away anything in their path. Now the western part of the city was an abandoned landscape, its buildings empty of the living, and its rubble-strewn streets and alleys still.

Disquietingly still, Aren thought as he picked his way down the wide avenue. Keep talking, and you won’t have to think.

“Have you ever noticed how our enemies bleed the same color as our allies?” Syenna said as they passed another in a seemingly endless succession of crimson that stained the white cobblestones on the ground beneath their feet. The towering column of smoke from the barracks fire to the south still cast a shadow over the city’s remains.

“All the more reason they should be part of the Obsidian Light,” Aren said. “That’s what we bring to these squabbling, selfish, and disorganized tyrants in their petty little city-states: an efficiency, unity, and purpose they could never attain on their own. The price is paid in the lives taken on both sides— but how many more lives do we save, and how much more suffering do we relieve once these people are brought under Imperial Law? We silence the shouting chaos of dissent with order. That’s a proper peace.”

“I would agree that you have brought silence.” Syenna paused and looked around at the deathly stillness of the abandoned and smashed buildings around her. “I doubt the dead would be grateful to the Obsidians for quieting so completely their voices.”

“The dead no longer care. Believe me, I’ve tried talking to them,” the captain said as he stopped and then dropped down to one knee. At Aren’s feet before him were a pair of dead combatants, one clothed in the dark robes of the Midras Guardians, and the other in the armor of an Obsidian warrior. Each had died still locked in grip of their struggle against each other. Aren gestured at the two of them with the tip of his drawn sword. “Both of these men fought for something they believed in. Whether it was for or against some cause is not what impresses me.”

“What does impress you?” Syenna asked as her eyes searched the deep shadows beyond the shattered windows.

“That they valued their lives less than their duty to that cause for which they fought,” Aren replied. “That is something I can honor. That their cause happened to be in conflict with each other does not lessen the value of their lives, or the sacrifice they made for it. It was the price of their honor that both of them paid. And, on balance, it always ends up that one side pays more than the other in war. Our cause has paid less and won more. What I believe is that both of these men paid that highest price of all so the world might be a better place for them having been here.”

“You presume to speak for them, then?” Syenna asked.

“I presume to live for what makes sense of their deaths.” The captain stood up and stepped over the bodies with a long, careful stride. “Not that it matters to them any longer.”

They followed the road toward the center of Midras. The newer structures gave way to the more ancient ruins near the center of the city. They came to where the avenue ended in a circular plaza in the center of the town. Here it was evident by the carnage that the fighting had been the most intense. On the east side of the plaza, an enormous tree rose up out of the ground. It had once been part of a small garden in front of the doors entering the ancient temple. Now the gates into the ruins were missing, and the tree had overgrown the garden. Its thick roots had broken up the paving stones and cracked an ancient wall behind it. Broken scaffolding was strewn about where the recent attempts at restoring the walls and towers had fallen once more to the ground.

Syenna followed Aren into the shadow beneath the widespreading branches of the tree.

“The road is ruined,” Syenna commented as they quietly surveyed the streets leading to the north and south.

“But with an organized effort, that western avenue may be suitable enough for the general’s parade,” Aren observed as he sat down at the base of the tree. The silence was getting to him as well. “How long ago were these cobblestones put down, do you suppose?”

“They predate the Fall,” Syenna said with solemnity. “Avatars may have walked these paths.”

Aren chuckled.

“Do you doubt it?” Syenna glared at him.

“That there were Avatars or that they walked this road?”

“You choose.”

“Then both, actually.” Aren’s smile was all indulgence. “Myths to frighten small children into obedience… and to make sense of the Fall to equally bewildered adults.”

“The Avatars brought us purpose and a better way!” Syenna stated with unquestioning belief. “They brought us the Virtues!”

“For all the good it did them… or us.” Aren chuckled, shaking his head. “These legendary Virtues didn’t prevent the Fall and, for all we know, they may have caused it. And what are these great, vaunted ‘Virtues’ anyway? Everyone likes to talk about them, but no one seems to remember exactly what these Virtues were supposed to be.”

“They were lost to us in the Fall,” Syenna said with conviction.

“A rather convenient loss,” Aren said. Something down the western street caught his eye, a flash of light on polished metal. “And why is it that those who do remember them only remember Virtues that profit them? If they don’t know a Virtue off which they can make money, then they seem perfectly willing to make up a suitable one that can. Our hope doesn’t lie in the failed past, Syenna.… It lies in the future of one voice, one truth, one thought, one purpose, and one destiny: that is us. Our destiny is the only one that counts.”

“Because you bring order to the world?” Syenna asked.

“Because we bring order to the world.” Aren nodded.

“This city brought order to the Midmaer Plain. It brought your straight lines, order, and purpose,” Syenna observed with a toss of her head toward the ruins. Then she put her hand on the trunk of the tree. “Yet this tree still stands here, Captain, after all the battles raged around it. Its roots break up the stones. Its branches push over the walls. This tree and the trees from its seeds will be here long after the stones have been crushed into sand and the walls erased beneath the enduring force of its nature. This wild and natural thing will always defeat the order of these walls, Captain, given enough time.”

“And yet our Obsidian sorcerers command nature itself,” Aren countered. He was enjoying the challenge Syenna so often provided him. “They shape it to our will.”

“Like the elves?” Syenna cast a cool, dark eye in the captain’s direction. The lift of her brow indicated to him that she was fully engaged in their fencing words.

Aren scowled as he picked up a fragment of broken stone and tossed it casually across the plaza. “What about the elves?”

“Your Obsidian sorcerers used their powers to shape them from enslaved humans,” Syenna said as she leaned down toward him in the shade of the tree. “They did the same to create the satyrs and the fauns. They have even unleashed magic to raise the dead from their graves. Who knows what they might try next? All of it done that they might more fully serve the cause of the Obsidian Light.”

“What’s your point?” Aren fixed his vision on the bright flashes of light he could see down the ruined roadway they had just passed over. It was getting closer.

“My question is whether they have souls,” Syenna said.

“Souls?” Aren looked up in surprise.

“Yes, souls,” Syenna reiterated.

“You’re joking!”

“Is there something remaining in them that rebels against your control and your order,” Syenna pressed on. “Do they have a will of nature that makes them want to be rather than simply exist? These monsters your empire is shaping with their magic may become something more than just animals in a harness to do your bidding. If they can think, then what happens when they start thinking for themselves? They might think they don’t want to follow your straight lines. They might determine a ‘greater good’ of their own. Have you ever considered that—”

“Wait,” Aren said, holding his palm up. He stood slowly, his eyes fixed down the road.

A lone warrior was approaching. He was clothed in the dark robe of a Midras Guardian. His hood was pushed back, revealing his shaved head. Aren knew from previous encounters that the tattooed sigils that began at the center of his forehead ran continuously to the back of his neck. They were supposed to delineate the miraculous capabilities granted to the individual Guardians by their priestess. The magic appeared to have failed this particular Guardian, as he was bleeding from a long gash at the side of his head, yet his ice-blue eyes remained fixed on Aren with a fanatic single-mindedness as he approached. His short sword bore similar markings to the tattoos down the blade. It flashed in the sunlight. The tip of it swung listlessly before the Guardian as he staggered toward the captain and his guide.

“What does he want?” Aren asked. “He’s alone.”

“Guardians are never alone,” Syenna said under her breath. She reached a hand slowly across her body to wrap her long fingers around the hilt of her sword. “And they never come at you from the front.”

Aren glanced around from where he stood by the tree.

He was startled to see a figure through the sundered temple gates.

There was a beauty about her despite the dark smudges on her skin and the haggard look to her face. She wore the tattered remains of a robe that showed her to have been a priestess of the lower ranks. Her dark hair was disheveled and in a hopeless tangle, but she carried herself with a clear, confident poise that beamed through her countenance despite her physical appearance. And there was a deep sadness about her too, which startled Aren. Her large, watery eyes looked back at Aren with a fixed, pleading gaze.

Aren watched as the woman shifted that gaze upward past where Aren stood. The strange priestess gave a start and then disappeared into the darkness of the ruins beyond the temple entrance.

Aren turned to follow the woman’s gaze to the rooftops on the far side of the plaza. A crooked smile came to his lips. “I think we should be more concerned with what’s at our rear. We might consider a hasty offering in their temple.”

Syenna drew in a breath, her grip tightening on her sword. “Must you always offend local customs everywhere you go?”

“Only the ones I don’t know about,” Aren said. “Ready?”

“Yes.”

“Now!”

Aren and Syenna turned as one, dashing past the tree toward the broken doors of the temple beyond. Aren had taken only three steps before he heard the whistling behind him. He dug in his booted heels and turned his shoulder into Syenna’s body, halting her flight.

A dozen arrows stabbed the ground in front of them, forming a curved pattern before the temple doors.

“Go! Go now!” Aren propelled Syenna ahead of him. The shafts of the arrows splintered under their boots as they rushed through the missing doors. Aren had already drawn his sword as he passed into the ruins of the temple.

The hooting calls of the Guardians followed them as they plunged into the shadows of the hallway. Aren had once heard a pack of wolves on the Midmaer Plain as they pursued their prey. The sound of the Guardians was entirely too similar.

The ceiling overhead had collapsed in places, allowing sparse sunlight, filtered through the ruins above them, to fall into the hallway. The hall ended in an empty alcove with branching hallways to either side. Syenna slid to a halt at the alcove, Aren nearly running into her from behind.

“Which way?” Syenna demanded.

The priestess glanced back at Aren from the end of the left hall, vanishing from view as she fled.

“She’s gone this way!” Aren called to Syenna.

“Who?” Syenna called back.

Aren was already running down the hall toward where he had just seen the priestess. She would know her way around these ruins, he thought. She knows the way out.

Aren could feel Syenna at his heels as he burst into the large open space. He could only guess at its function. It was several stories high, and its roof was missing entirely. Two galleries ran around the second and third-floor spaces circling the room, each choked with vines that wound around the pillars of the colonnade.

The dark robed forms of several Guardians ran along both galleries overhead, searching for a way down to their prey. One of them stopped, pulling a bow from off his shoulder.

Aren glimpsed a flash of priestess robe in the dark archway to his right.

“That way!” he yelled, shoving Syenna toward the arch.

Again he plunged into the darkness after her. Syenna cried out. Aren heard the cacophony of her armor and weapons crashing ahead of him, and in moments he nearly fell himself as the hall suddenly ended in a steep, downward stair. He descended in quick steps.

“Are you all right?” he called, his eyes quickly becoming accustomed to the reduced light. There were fewer breaks in the ceiling here, making the available light sparse.

“Yes,” Syenna called back to him from below. “But I think I’ve broken my pride.”

“Well, at least it’s something easily repaired,” Aren replied. The calls of the Guardians sounded closer and louder in his ears. “Keep moving!”

Syenna was running in front of him. “There’s more light ahead.”

They passed into a small circular chamber. The room was nearly thirty feet high, with a domed ceiling. Part of the dome had collapsed, allowing light filtered through leaves of vines and trees to spill into the room.

“The Guardians!” Syenna said in hushed tones.

“I know,” Aren whispered into the sudden silence. “Their calls have stopped.”

A second archway opened on the far side of the circular room. Syenna stepped through it, Aren right behind her.

He reacted instinctively to the motion to his left.

Aren’s blade rose, parrying the blow from the Guardian lurking at the side of the arch. Aren stepped back and then quickly thrust in riposte. He felt the blade slide along the Guardian’s armor and under his robes, but he followed up with his armored left glove to the Guardian’s face.

A quick glance revealed Syenna in a similarly desperate battle with a second Guardian. She had managed to draw both her sword and main gauche dagger. The dagger had trapped the Guardian’s blade as she slashed at him with her sword.

The Guardian before Aren staggered back against the ancient wall. The unstable structure shifted behind him, a number of remaining tiles tumbling down from the groaning ceiling overhead.

The Guardian tried to push away from the wall, but Aren kicked him hard in the chest, sending the man once again to stagger backward, shifting the wall stones even farther.

Syenna’s main gauche was still locked with the second Guardian’s blade. She twisted him around, her own back now to the opposite wall.

Aren could hear shouts of more Guardians approaching from the plaza beyond the entrance. He reached for the Guardian wrestling with Syenna and, gripping him with both hands, pulled him backward and away from his guide. Aren then threw him with all his strength across the narrow hallway and into the body of the first Guardian still struggling to regain his balance.

Aren reached out, gripping Syenna’s wrist as he plunged farther into the hall.

The weight of the two Guardians fell a third time against the wall. It gave way, the stones bowing out and then collapsing completely. The ceiling overhead cascaded downward, crushing and choking the entrance.

Aren continued to run down the corridor, Syenna’s wrist firmly in his grip. Faint light shone in shafts from the breaks in the ruins above them, bleeding into the hall where they were now being choked with dust.

The rumble of the collapsing ruin walls continued to be heard down the corridor from which they had just come.

“Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Aren laughed.

“It wasn’t so good either, Captain.” Syenna coughed. “I don’t think they were out to kill us.… I think they wanted to take you prisoner.”

“Well, I’d rather they didn’t. Who would find a route for the general’s parade if they did?” Aren smiled. The rumbling down the hall increased. “All we have to do now is circle around through these ruins and…”

The hall suddenly shook.

The stones beneath their feet gave way.

They were falling into darkness.