Discordant Note: Crescendo | TBATE

Chapter 302: Ashes to Ashes

Thank you to my beta reader and editor, GlassThreads!

Seris Vritra

Those asuras waited, each like a captured thunderstorm. I heard no words and felt no more changes in the ambient mana, but still, I knew. I knew what they were waiting for. I knew—on some instinctual level—what was about to happen.

The treaty was broken, and there was nothing that would forestall the fury of the heavens themselves.

Plans and contingencies rumbled through my head at fevered speed as I pulled myself to my full height. My fatigue vanished like a veil of fog beneath the summer sun, the unrelenting, scorching heat scouring it all away.

"Run to your king, Aya Grephin," I said quietly, my hands shaking. "Go. Now. Before the sky falls."

The candlelights spaced across the room slowly fizzled out, the very air tearing away their life. Shadows slowly coated Lance Phantasm, but I could see the fearful look she sent me.

"Go," I said more harshly, forcing myself to walk past her. "This is your only chance. It might already be too late to deliver this knowledge."

She didn't say anything. Her jaw trembled. Her hands tightened. But finally, she acquiesced. Mist wrapped around her from the floor, tendrils rising from the stone to whisk her away.

The asura should let her pass, I thought through the haze of that King's Force. But me... I am a different story.

Cylrit finally managed to pull himself together as I stumbled to the door. "Seris," he said quickly, nearly stumbling over his words as he rushed to my side. "We need to evacuate. The asura cannot—"

"Go to the dungeons, Cylrit," I retorted, not looking at him as I limped through the dark hallways. "The asura will not let us flee, and my troops are caught in the aura below. They will suffer and die if we do not do something. So go to the dungeons. It is our only hope."

I do not leave bodies needlessly in my wake, I reasserted, tasting iron on my tongue. I do not sacrifice without cause.

Cylrit's gauntleted hands clenched. His blood-red eye shimmered with indecision, some conflict warring inside. "Seris," he said quietly, "You... cannot do this. You can escape now. We can leave this behind. If you don't, then... Then they will kill you."

"They will try," I said sharply. I spared my Retainer one steady, assured gaze. "Have I ever led you astray, Cylrit?"

The man—who had been my companion for decades now—swallowed. Something in him was changing in the wake of Toren. I could see some of it there: questions he had never allowed himself to ask, rising to the surface like oil separating from water.

I laid a hand on this unmovable soldier's arm, hoping to try and convey some of the confidence I felt. Some of the hope. Fear pervaded every inch of my cells, but it was a fuel I could burn for the drive I needed. I needed Cylrit, now more than ever, to be that pillar of unwavering strength he had always been.

Even if it tore him apart inside.

I remembered the last time we had had a conversation so daunting. I had made a misstep, approaching something that should not have been touched. I had told him that I could never be what he wished for. My Retainer had retreated from my words, as was only wise.

But as his resolve slowly solidified and he nodded, I saw that unspoken emotion harden him, in the same way my fear and hope guided me.

"As you wish, Scythe Seris," he said with resolve more solid than black diamond, wasting no more breath than was necessary. "I will bring help."