Chapter Rutherford's Wish

We reach the Kalarinth Citadel just before dawn. No more dragons had sprung in our way, which made climbing up this massive mound – so much smaller it looked from a distance –marginally easier.

The entire building was hewn from the black mound as a single piece with an absurd density of diamonds embedded within its walls, their lustre dulled by a film of black dust. Fist-sized crystals, practically unheard of even in the richest of Vassal States, number in the thousands. If all this is converted into money the Realms would probably break more terribly than any destruction dragons could sow.

Dozens of lofty spires, all miraculously intact, surround the Citadel on all sides. Struck by the feeble light of the winter dawn, their monotonous black walls radiate a kaleidoscopic array of colours that shimmer like towers of stained glass.

So beautiful.

The gateway to the longest day of my life lies before us: a gaping black hole easily big enough to fit four little giants walking abreast. The entrance is wide open, yet sunlight could not illuminate the interior. A glassy reflection makes it hard to see what’s inside, kind of like the black tent at the Stone Graves.

There is a pile of rubble right by where we stand. Judging by the giant toes, this is the remnant of yet another statue; the way it’s positioned in front of the gate, it looks as if it was built to bar the way. Kathanhiel pulls me to a stop in its shadow.

‘Take a moment to consider your options. Once we go in there is no –’

I don’t know what expression I could’ve had to make her stop talking, but she’s smiling that same old smile again. ‘One more thing.’ She holds out her hand. ‘I must fulfil my vengeance by slaying the Apex, or I wouldn’t…it wouldn’t be right.’

I give her Kaishen. The jumble of words in my head refuse to line themselves up with any coherence; there is so much I want to say but couldn’t. Ten years she has waited for this day, and in her head, how it’s going to end must have already played out a thousand times. What am I supposed to say to that? What am I supposed to do?

As her hand closes around Kaishen’s grip tendrils of molten steel wrap themselves around her fingers, fusing flesh and metal. Hiding beneath her shirt are countless red lines spreading web-like across her skin; I had first noticed them in the forest, but since she hasn’t brought it up neither have I. They are supposed to have faded, especially with all the suppressant she has taken.

As we draw close to the Citadel gates, I look down at my hands. They’re not shaking at all. Unsurprising, since my head is too full to fit in fear. What is it filled with, exactly?

I glance at Kathanhiel’s face. She looks calm, determined. There is a veil before her eyes. I don’t think she’s here anymore. In her mind, she must be going home.

As soon as we cross the threshold, the world changes. Seems like whichever little giant that had built the Stone Graves also had a hand in this gateway. The bitter cold turns into humid warmth – humid, even though for the entire night this building had looked to be on fire. We have walked into the middle of a massive and seemingly infinite hallway that stretches left and right into thick grey mist. On the opposite a wall – carved out of pure white marble – are alcoves after alcoves filled with curious-looking debris: ruined helmets, shattered armour, and broken halberds that if intact would stand as tall as the ramparts of Iborus. All made of stone.

‘The sentries are long gone,’ Kathanhiel says. ‘Follow me. We are close.’

Our footsteps make feeble echoes. The winter palace had many such grand and foreboding corridors, but in the Citadel there are no portraits adorning the walls, no murals carved onto the ceiling…nothing but barren stone chiselled in obsessively straight lines.

The grey mist parts at our approach, revealing even more mist in the distance. Does this hallway go on forever? In fairy tales they always do. But soon enough an archway appears on the right, and through it – no strange murkiness this time – there is a massive staircase leading up, giant steps made for giants.

Climbing again.

Not two steps later comes the sound of finality – the entire building trembles with it:

the sickly, laboured breathing of something enormous. Rutherford.

At the end of the staircase is another archway, unadorned by so much as an extra brick. Wind is howling through it, thick with the bitter, nauseating stench of flesh decaying and burnt.

That breathing again, halting and uneven, stopping for minutes at a time.

Annnd the shaky hands are back. Fear didn’t run away after all; all it took was some loud breathing to wake it up. Every fibre of my being is screaming that going into that archway is a bad idea, the worst idea in the history of ideas, and if I turn back now I’ll instantly feel better, so much better, because all this dragon slaying nonsense is none of my business, I signed up to cook and carry stuff and do legwork not this, this These last few steps.

Most difficult steps of my life.

Crimson light filters through the myriad holes in the high ceiling, illuminating a hall so vast its far walls are lost in the shadows. There are no pillars, no partitions to interrupt the infinite space; the low, rumbling groan that permeates the air sounds like the mourning of a hundred giants.

So this is the Seat of the Wardens: a great, empty belly in which all creations are left to rot.

And rot they have. All over the floor, from one distant shadow to the other, is a numberless hoard of machines, statues, little houses, little suns burning inside glass containers, bizarre trinkets of sizes so great the broken bits form a small hill or so small they are more trivial than grains of dust, rows upon rows of steel soldiers wielding great halberds, piles upon piles of gold, silver, obsidian, obsidian daggers, swords, great mountain-cleaving axes, gold-plated arms that hold said enormous axes, armies upon armies of diamond-carved giants, tumbled all over the floor like so many discarded dolls, half-buried in precious trash…

In the middle of it all, nestled upon a throne of obsidian shards that seem to have been melded together, is a dragon so disproportionately huge that it…it couldn’t possibly be alive. Its majestic head, from which sprouts a misshapen tumour of horns, is almost as big as its body, which is little more than a withered husk of ribs and peeling scales. The forelegs it has splayed upon the mountain of ancient junk are essentially bones wrapped in skin, the wings attached to them shredded and discoloured like the sails of a storm-beaten ship. Its tail, long enough to wrap itself around the body twice over, is all bone.

The Apex, Rutherford, the mind behind so much screeching death, the scourge of the Realms and all things that live, looks like a skeleton from which all but the head had long decomposed.

From the broken balcony that seems to ribbon all the way around the wall, Kathanhiel and I stand still for a while, watching it in silence. There comes the breathing again: the many orifices on its snout – all nostrils, looking like fish gills – flutter at the intake of air, followed by a wet gurgling, the sound of lungs filled with water. Then, exhale, and a great plume of fire runs from its nostrils, its slack jaws, its hole-like ears, and washes over the hoard of stuff like a red flood, the heat almost unbearable even from up where we stand.

That puts the situation in perspective. There is no pitying such a creature no matter how tormented it looks: that half-dead sneeze could easily incinerate two hundred people.

Kathanhiel, her face an unreadable mask, speaks up: ‘Under its right wing – do you see?’

I squint hard. There is…something small squirming underneath, human-sized…

Rutherford’s voice crashes upon the balcony like an invisible tide, shattering the already crumbling masonry. It isn’t a big fall. Kathanhiel lands on her feet; I twist my ankle on a stupid rock and roll over three times.

Bad start. Can’t run away now even if I want to.

She pulls me up. ‘See me through to the end,’ she says, her voice quivering with emotion. ‘I need you, Kastor.’

Together, arm in arm, we approach the magnificent head, which is larger than the whole of an Apex candidate. Rutherford turns to face us, sending a river of junk cascading from its jagged throne. Its neck strains, flaky, withered-looking scales shedding everywhere – a quick turn and its spine might snap altogether.

Kaishen rises in her hand, flame spitting along the length of the blade and crawling all over her body.

‘I have come to grant your wish,’ she says, her voice so very bright.

Rutherford laughs. This place has boundaries after all; ten thousand times the dragon’s mad cacophony resonate within the vast hall, turning its hoard into a floodplain of loose debris. A massive helmet with three glowing ridges slams into my midriff and all of a sudden everything’s slipping: the ground, my feet, the little fluttering of courage that had timidly chosen to stay –

Kathanhiel stabs Kaishen into the avalanche, and a cone of fire erupts between two tumbling statues, instantly fusing them together into a massive shield. Countless objects pile upon it, the metal ones sticking fast, the rest parting into two thundering streams. Blistering yellow-red lines race up from the base of her neck, ensconcing her lips and jaw like a twisted pedestal, as ridges of fire rise all over her treated shirt.

‘My lady!’

‘Don’t stop me,’ she says, her eyes locked onto Rutherford’s with chains of hatred. ‘This is what I have to do.’

As the avalanche subsides, Rutherford lifts its wings – so feeble-looking they are, as if a strong gust could rip them apart – and a figure rises from beneath it. There are tendrils of bluish smoke rises from his head, as if his skull is burning from inside out. His ill-fitting crystalline cuirass looks almost exactly like the one Kathanhiel had – must have been picked out from the hoard. That dark sabre he’s holding, however, has not changed one bit.

The fused statues are cast aside as if they weighed nothing. As Kathanhiel’s eyes happen upon her adversary, Rutherford’s voice rises in lustful eagerness.

There is a cloud of stink around his body…was the food mule carrying –?

No, it doesn’t matter now. Kathanhiel is already charging forward, Kaishen blazing, and her silent foe has raised his sabre. The clash of steel rings across the vast hall, tinny and dull. They are duelling before Rutherford’s widening grin as if the rest of the world has ceased to exist.

That weird smoke is pooling around his head; a moment longer and he won’t even be able to see out of it. He hasn’t said a word, not to me, nor to the woman whom he had taunted so ceaselessly the last time they met. His face is completely blank; considering how animated he had once been, it looks so very wrong.

That smoke…as if the inside of his skull is on fire…

‘What did you do to him?’

I just addressed Rutherford. I, Kastor, the clueless esquire who is slightly more useful than before but is still pretty useless, have voluntarily started a conversation with the Apex.

Those yellow eyes turn my way.

‘Why? What’s it to you?’

It’s as if I’m talking to a person. Take away the talk-in-your-head thing and the throaty rasp of its speech, Rutherford is That’s ridiculous, isn’t it? This an ancient being is older than the mountains and the earth…but the hesitation in its speech is so distinct and intimately familiar; it’s the tone of not wanting to explain complicated stuff to an inferior mind.

‘The Dark wills…? No. You’re lying.’

Rutherford’s nostrils flare up. An amber-like luminescence is swirling in its pupils. I’m less than twenty paces from its massive incisors yet the Apex is somehow less intimidating than ever.

I…don’t think it’s talking to me anymore.

A loud clang. Talukiel’s dark sabre hits on the ground two inches before my feet, and as my body reacts to the fact about two centuries later by leaping back, Kathanhiel’s constricted voice rings out:

’

I look up just in time to see Talu’s head tumbling from his neck. Those weird tendrils of smoke dissipate within seconds. Kathanhiel is frozen before the headless body, shoulders heaving, Kaishen quivering in her hand. Her lips move, trying to form words that the tears rolling down her cheeks have taken away.

’You…made him…

.

She turns to Rutherford with the ire of the sun in her eyes.

The hall is trembling again. This time, Rutherford’s laughter doesn’t end.

It all happens so fast.

Every orifice on Rutherford’s head opens up; its jaws pull back with unnerving speed, revealing three rows of deadly teeth each as long as a spear. Its barbed tongue rolls into the back of its throats and materialises a blue sphere the size of a star; air begins pouring into its jaws in a raging torrent, carrying with it countless objects scoured from the junk-ridden floor. A giant-sized golden bust tumbles right into the sphere and is vaporised in an instant.

My legs move on their own. Kathanhiel’s right there. Have to reach her before – no, she’s raising Kaishen above her head, the blade already glowing: dull red, orange, yellow…now brilliant white. A flash of blue; her treated shirt is incinerated, burnt away like paper. Already a pool of lava gathers around her feet. No, please, don’t go through with it, don’t do it don’t do it don’t do it, let me, let me it’s my responsibility now the heralds acknowledged me so please let it go if you don’t let it go you’ll die, One step. Two. Three. Four. Moving so slow, too slow. There is so much useless trash in the way. The blue sphere is overflowing from Rutherford’s throat. My cuirass is on fire. My hair is on fire. The influx of air wants to pull me into its throat but my feet are half-glued onto the metal junk. My arms – red lines are all over them. Whatever Kaishen had put in me is responding to the gathering heat.

Almost there. Almost there. One more step. Hang on you stupid Apex don’t you breathe fire yet, don’t you do it when I’m the one who’s supposed to fight you not her, don’t you dare – no, no no no no no, you stupid dragon ‘NO! KATHANHIEL!’

As my fingers close around her shoulder – so thin now, so frail – the world turns white. Open eyes, close eyes – no difference. They burn anyway. The inferno swirls around her upraised arm, pouring endlessly into Kaishen’s blade.

Pain, then beyond it. My fingers are burning upon her skin; flesh, bone, gone in a flash. In my skull, a stampede, a wild buzzing that grows louder and louder. Can’t think. Can’t feel. Only one thought left, the lowest of the low, baser than instinct.

But Kathanhiel isn’t moving. Her voice, speaking so very faintly:

‘Help…me…’

During those nights on the highway, as the six Apex candidates had her immolated, I was cowering in Oon’Shang’s shadow and dozing off. When she found me in the aftermath, under the rain of ash, she should have struck me and called me a worthless scum. That’s what I deserved. Instead, she gave me the Bane of Dragons.

When Talukiel had slit my throat at Iborus, it was supposed to be the end. As he charged at her – the toughest opponent she has ever faced – she threw Kaishen away to keep me alive. What else did I do that night? Lying on a bed. Riding a horse. Watching people give their lives.

And now, at the final stretch, all I can think of is running away.

No.

I refuse.

She’s burning. I am too. Kaishen is bucking wildly, as if trying to flee from her grip. Reaching up against the intolerable heat, I put my hands around hers.

The heat. The weight. The scouring of everything inside my body, the influx of a thousand red-lettered words smeared all over my head.

it screams – no, me.

screaming.

Kathanhiel’s knees buckle. No, she can’t fall now, not when her wish is right here, Got to take more of the heat. Got to tell Kaishen to put more weight on me instead –

Am I laughing out loud? I am, aren’t I. That thought is so childishly inept.

‘Is this what you want, Kaishen?’ I yell at the sword. Everything’s so bright, so loud. Can’t even hear myself. ‘For Kathanhiel to die the same way you did?! Then give me the heat and let her live!’

Ah, it listens.

My body, ripped apart. Rutherford’s flame turns it to ash. Then, in that very instant, Kaishen puts it back together. Incineration. Restoration. Dying and returning over and over again. Of course there would be cracks on the skin – it’s like putting together a shattered vase. Cracks are a part of the process.

The heat. Unbearable. How many times have I said that? How many times have I said that then bore it anyway?

Kathanhiel is amazing, to have withstood this purgatory of death and rebirth all by herself. There are no ghosts of past heralds coming out; they are nowhere to be seen. Ah, I get it now – that’s why she calls it Kaishen, so in moments like this she would not be alone.

But she’s alone no longer. I am here.

‘She’s not alone!!’

Am I thinking or yelling? Screaming or whispering?

’I’m here!

’

Now this is a painting of heroes: two little humans, bathed in the ocean of fire spilling from the dragon’s jaws, their hands entwined upon the magical blade and raising it high in unwavering defiance, declaring to all forces that be their will to live.

An eternity passes.

Then, at last, the great light begins to subside.

In our hands Kaishen is a galaxy of stars, as if all the light this world has to offer have been gathered inside this metal stick.

‘Kastor?’

Kathanhiel turns to me, her eyes blazing. Her body’s glow almost matches that of the sword; her skin, radiant like crystallised fire, is shrouded in a web of blinding white. Glittering flakes, like shards of silver, are cascading from her back.

Mustering up a smile takes all the courage in the world. ‘I…I think we did it.’

The Kalarinth Citadel is scoured clean. Not one speck of dust remains of the great hoard that had this placed suffocated. Before us, smoke bellowing from every orifice on its head, Rutherford is collapsed onto the charred floor like a tortured corpse, shrunken, the lustre gone from its scales. Its voice has become mumbling and indistinct:

Its eyes, oozing white pus from the corners, are brimming with Kaishen’s light. The Apex seems entranced. So quiet now its laborious breathing, almost entirely gone.

I try to walk forward and find my legs trapped knee-deep inside the floor. Can’t think about that right now; Kaishen is getting heavier by the second and Kathanhiel has closed her eyes. Bits of cinder are shedding all over her face, as if...as if she’s falling apart –

‘What is this all for?’ My voice…like a dozen people yelling at once through a metal tube. Nothing makes sense. Why did it turn out like this? Why is Kathanhiel dying in exchange for killing a monster that can’t be killed, when her life is worth a million times more than this pitiful, miserable creature, whose only desire is for us to kill it?! I don’t understand.

‘Who came up with this stupid game?’ I yell at Rutherford’s withered face. ’Was it Ush’Ra? Did she make you live forever so people would have to come and kill you over and over again? Why would she make an arrangement like that? Tell me! You You’ve lived through it all you’ve seen everything so tell me The great hall rings out with my pitiful scream – ‘tell me…tell me…tell me…’ – like it’s the cruellest joke in the world. Silence follows it.

Didn’t think Rutherford was going to respond; thought it would just lay there and die because that’s obviously the only thing it cares about. But then –

Its voice is low, sorrowful.

Then recall what he had said on the highway, and mimicking its pretentious riddle-filled speech has never been less satisfying:

Memories, fear, anger, love...the winds of the mountains have carried them away, never to return. In their place there is only The Dark.”’

Smoke plumes from its mouth in a weak A sad excuse for laughter.

Then it looks at me expectantly, as if I’m meant to agree.

What a blatant liar.

’What are you even talking about? There is no ! We kill you! We don’t kill you ’ There is little time; Kathanhiel is slipping against me and if she doesn’t get help soon –

Kaishen, as if responding to that thought, drags my arms forward in a brilliant arc. As soon as it did that Kathanhiel begins to fall, for her hand is still attached to the grip. There is so much cindery dust on her back – can’t brush them off, can’t, if I do she might shatter like glass –

Hands still over hers, I lower my arms over her shoulders to trap her between them. And now if she falls, we fall together.

I look up at Rutherford again. No more arguing. Arguing isn’t going to solve anything, the same way that, back at Iborus, Rukiel and Tamara telling Kathanhiel to get over herself wasn’t going to magically return things to the way they were. I can yell at it, scream at it, stab it hundred times between the eyes and nothing will change. Kathanhiel would still want to come back here to kill the next Apex, and Rutherford would still play its games and beg to die. An unbreakable cycle of misery.

No one should live like this.

‘The Dark is the emptiness, isn’t it?’

I watch Rutherford’s eyes narrow.

‘How long have you lived like this, forgotten your purpose and unable to die? No wonder you want to destroy the world – why not? It’s something to pass the time. A game to play, like you said. But it’s not just you that feels this way…not just…’

‘I know what it’s like. Before Kathanhiel found me there was no purpose in my life. A lot less exciting than your circumstance, sure, but the feeling’s the same; that if I could just lie down and die the world wouldn’t blink an eye, and that had somehow seemed perfectly fine. It wasn’t fine. I hated feeling like that all the time: the sun always shines so brightly yet everywhere I look there are only puddles of Dark. I never want to step in them yet they are always in the way. Always. Couldn’t walk two feet without drowning.’

I can feel Kathanhiel’s gaze; she has stirred. Rutherford is listening, its eyes locked onto mine.

’I would like to think that Kathanhiel was the one who saved me from that but…I had to sign up first. No recruiter came to my door. I snuck my application into the courier’s bag when he passed by my house. It was a far-fetched thing – no one’s ever looked at me– but did.

Do you know what I felt, when I met her for the first time? It’s was like I’ve been reaching out all this time, all this time, trying to get away from the Dark, wanting to not feel that purposeless dread anymore and suddenly she is there to catch my hand, acknowledging that yes, it was right to have struggled all this time, and yes, ’You’re so much luckier than I, Rutherford. You’ve had a purpose all along. I keep thinking, Ush’Ra was a giant, so why would she make a sword for humans? Why did she have it interact with dragon fire, the very thing you say you have to preserve? There is a purpose for you, O great dragon – I don’t know what it is, but it can’t be spreading aimless chaos in the Realms. It can’t be. You know if you kill us all you would really be alone. Forever.

‘I get it, the longer you live the tougher it is for your body to hold back the Dark, and you want to die so you can start over fresh – have a chance to feel better. But this…nihilism…is not a solution, and you know it. You have to reach out first. “Better” doesn’t come around on its own.’

Kaishen is burning up my hand, the heat crawling up into the back of my eyeballs and staying there. The weight, oh Maker the weight, if it wasn’t for Kathanhiel’s hand beneath mine I wouldn’t be standing at all.

Have to finish talking. Have to make Rutherford understand.

’I have a proposal. I know you’re eager for this to end. Kathanhiel too – no matter what I say she’s going to kill you, because it is purpose.’ She’s still looking at me but I can’t – can’t look back. ’But I know you remember the last herald. You remember Kaishen. So please…please, when you come back again, in a different body, with a different name, please remember what I have said, and go find out what you have forgotten – what Ush’Ra had meant for you to do. I’ll help you. I’ll come to you and if you’ve forgotten about it I’ll remind you, and if you want only to die again I’ll be up for another contest, but please, , for your own sake, make an attempt. Try to remember. Try to get the Dark out of your head. If you keep trying and trying and trying, one day a herald will come…and she will set you free.’

Never have I talked so much, ever, let alone to a dragon!

Rutherford is completely still. Its eyes are half-shut, its breathing shallow and fast…yet its body is refusing to die. Emaciated limbs, shredded wings, bone-thin tail, unable to stand on its own legs – by all rights such a creature shouldn’t be able to survive no matter how much food is delivered into its mouth.

But it is hanging on with such resilience. Its body is demonstrating what its ancient mind has long chosen to repress – that at its core, the Apex wants to live.

Did – did it just say –

Kathanhiel and I bury Kaishen between Rutherford’s eyes, all the way to the hilt. The Apex offers no resistance. The blade is turned like a key, and its eyes begin to glow an ardent white. The fire that had poured forth returns to the head of its master with lethal glee, and with one final sigh, a wordless speech to welcome the endless bliss it has ever yearned for, Rutherford becomes still.

That sickly breathing rises feebly, one last time, then fades into silence.

Did it really take my rambling to heart, or did it agree merely to get this over with? For now, there is no way to know; sooner or later, a year or ten or a hundred from now, an Apex candidate will be chosen to become the next host and that tortured mind will return to the Realms. Will it remember what I said, or will this quest play out all over again, ending in the same place?

No. I won’t let it. I will keep reminding that stubborn dragon until it sees the light.

Sunset.

The gateway of the Kalarinth Citadel is bathed in a sea of gold, and its forest of spires are shimmering once again like rainbows trapped in pyres of glass.

By the waning light, those red cracks on Kathanhiel’s skin look several inches deep. She is crumbling, and this time it appears to be her entire body. I set her at the feet of the broken statue, and attempt to say something funny. Nothing but a gaggling yelp comes out.

‘Thank you, Kastor. You did better than I ever could.’

She’s smiling again. How can she smile like that when I’m bawling my eyes out? It’s unfair. Unfair.

‘Keep holding onto Kaishen, my lady. It’ll…keep you…’

But the sword looks dim now. It is slipping from her grasp and I have to keep my hand wrapped around hers so she can hold it still. Her skin feels dry and jagged, drained of moisture.

‘Kathanhiel,’ she says.

‘W-what?’

‘You called me Kathanhiel.’

My tears paint clear little circles on her cheeks, but only for a moment, for the instant they spill onto the red lines all over her skin they turn to vapour.

Why? Why does it have to end this way?

‘You can go now,’ I hear myself say words I don’t want to say. ‘Kaishen is waiting for you at your hearth in the evergreen, the cabin with the red door. He’s waiting…waiting for you to come home.’

‘You don’t want me to, do you?’ she says softly. ‘I can see it in your face.’

I shake my head until the world is a blur. ‘I’ve…I’ve no right...it was your wish all this time, and now…and now…’

‘You remember what I told you, the last thing Kaishen had said to me?’

I remember. ‘He wants to you to want to live.’

Kathanhiel gazes out at the sunset, her eyes shining gold. That smile on her face – it looks…different. No more flawless pleasantness. Her lips are split ear to ear in a wide grin, same as the one that young woman had, the one with the long hair who stood next to me in the Scouring and called me a weakling. The expressions looks more than a little bit scary, but it suits her – the grin of a lion.

Quietly she says: ‘I think I will give that a try.’