That One Time I Went on a Quest
Shadow of the Apex

Watching the scene unfold is like being audience to some obscure and nonsensical play about dragons and heroes; none of it seems real.

The bearded dragon towers over the field, its head a battering ram of bronze scales and ash-encrusted teeth. A yellow-tinged cloud, thick with the stink of sulphur, blows out of its nostrils with every breath.

The voice of Rutherford, a guttural drawl thick with cackling ember, is that of thousands of voices speaking at once.

‘Long have I waited.’

‘Long have I dreamt of the silence and craved it.’

‘You have come at last, herald of fire – a body of ash, reeking of wrath.’

Kathanhiel walks forward and, empathically, comically – even though it doesn’t look funny at all – levels a punch at the dragon’s flank. A dull thunk.

‘I’ve nothing to say to you.’

A phlegmy choking escapes the dragon’s lips. Laughter.

‘The Dark has tainted your heart, you who is meant to break it.’

‘Yet it matters not, for our fates are hewn in stone: to madness shall this mind succumb, and by fire the herald shall set it free.’

A sudden jet of flame bursts from Kaishen’s tip and engulfs a nearby corpse, setting it alight. Flashes of white run up the blade like glares in a mirror, fast and blinding.

Kathanhiel raises it to her face. ‘Soon,’ she whispers, ‘one last effort for your girl, what do you say?’

The sword calms – if such a thing is even possible – and as its glow simmers down to a gentle red the flashes fade into obscurity. They are not gone, only blended into the metal, pretending to be reflections.

Again the dragon laughs, booming and eerily lustful.

‘The sword of Ush’Ra grows restless, hungry.’

‘A weapon cannot feel,’ says Kathanhiel with bitter mockery. ‘You’re going to give me your head. That’ll be the end of it. That’s what we both want.’

The dragon trembles from the tip of its tail to the tendons on its jaws.

’What sorrowful denial. Strike me down for vengeance, glory, or for naught – it is in vain, for ere the rise of the new sun I will return, and the cycle will continue. There shall be no end to our game.’

‘But the sweet respite of that brief twilight – silent, serene, light unending – that is to die for!’

Rutherford pauses.

’Alas, such salvation is meagre for one eternal, immortal, freed of the blessing of death. The heralds come, they strike me down, the heralds come, they strike me down...yet the Dark is everlasting, unsullied by Ush’Ra’s blade.’

‘Dim are the days of Elisaad, of Allarissa before him, of Tiranus before her, of the world that was drowned in fire then swallowed in ice. The face of Ush’Ra is but a cast of grey, ever fading.’

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

‘Deny your fate, pitiful Kathanhiel; struggle, for that is your wont. I have seen your heart, and it is empty.’

A hand is tugging me by the sleeve. Haylis has returned with the barrels.

‘What’s happening?’

That casual-toned query does an excellent job at breaking the trance of terror. Too excellent. ‘Haven’t you been listening?!’

‘No I…at the beginning I was too scared, then it got kind of long and…kind of boring…’

’Boring?! That’s Rutherford!’

Her face turns white. ‘That’s the Apex?’

Argh, the pain. The broken arm is clamouring for attention. Incredulity seems to have woken it up.

‘No – Rutherford is speaking through that dragon, can’t you tell? Remember how their minds are connected?’

‘Why is it talking instead of eating us?’ she asks.

I don’t know is the only answer I have, but I don’t want to say it.

‘Maybe…maybe Kathanhiel has it scared.’

Yeah, scared. So many nights I have spent worrying over whether I would bolt at the first sign of a slightly enlarged lizard, only for a nonchalant Haylis to point out the obvious with a laid-back “What’s happening”: Kathanhiel is, once again, trampling all over the challenges barring her way.

How cruel it is that things are turning out exactly like before, when she had slaughtered those assassins. It’s as if I’ve been running from a bully my whole life only to have a giant stomp on him by accident. What am I doing here, standing in a street full of stomping giants, where to them every obstacle is the size of a bug?

The broken arm, it hurts so much.

‘I don’t get it.’

‘Don’t get what?’ asks Haylis.

‘Anything. Everything. Why are we here, listening to a dragon and an invincible dragon slayer having a chat? Why is Rutherford telling riddles? Why is Kathanhiel listening to it telling riddles? Why does she listen, when Kaishen can just…blows everything up? Why does she need us, when blowing dragons up is all she needs?’

It hurts it hurts it hurts.

‘Do you know what I’m talking about at all?’

Of course Haylis is shaking her head. I don’t even know what I’m talking about. I never have any idea what anyone is talking about.

While I’m indulging in my little rant, the main actors are still immersed in the act.

‘Enough of this,’ Kathanhiel says as her liquid armour slowly drips to the ground. Splat. Hiss. ‘Tell me where lies your roost and I will grant you peace, the peace you so crave.’

With great effort the dragon lifts its head. Blood is gushing out of its mouth now; the presence of Rutherford seems to be killing it.

’How you must lament the hours of waking, Kathanhiel; how you must long for the solace of dreams, so that which was lost may falsely return. I too have once dreamt. Like all else, they fade.’

Kathanhiel freezes. ‘You remember – what you took from me. You remember.’

The unsteady warble in her voice has gotten worse. Glowing streaks of melted steel are cascading from legs, and underneath it her skin is riddled with yellow-red cracks that divides her skin into dozens of serrated pieces.

‘The one who came before, he whose words had once scorched my mind...I do not recall his face, nor his name.’

Kathanhiel staggers, as if receiving a blow to the gut. Then she utters three words; they sound dreadful, as if torn from the depth of her heart with broken fingers. Her back is turned to me; I wish I could see her face.

She says: ‘Give him back.’

The earth rumbles. ‘The sword of Ush’Ra had claimed his fire. This you already know – for aught else do you hold so dear?’

Kaishen moves like lightning. In a blinding flash its tip burrows into the underside of the dragon’s jaw, sinking all the way to the hilt. A second later its face erupts in blue fire, turning those impregnable scales into hot crystalline dust…yet it is still talking, for Rutherford’s voice – that humourless acrimony echoing across the burning field – thrums in the very air.

‘Tantrums of hatred…tears of love...how sweet their tainted music! Show me the conviction of your vengeance, herald of fire; come to me, and in your suffering I shall delight. Fail, and I lay claim to all that squirms under the sun; succeed, and in the fleeting silence we unshackle souls from the Dark.’

‘Ah, it begins! It begins! The game, the everlasting cycle, the false salvation of Ush’Ra! This is our fate! This is why…we are alive.’

With a great sigh the dragon shudders, and becomes still with its final breath.

For an eternity Kathanhiel stands before its smoking corpse, shaking her head as if possessed by denial. She’s completely naked now, with a puddle of congealing metal at her feet. Naked and trembling.

’No, no you don’t. We’re not done. How dare you resort to silence?!’

Kaishen, bound to her hand in a gauntlet of embers, comes down in a fiery arc and sinks into the dragon’s bleeding snout. Blood rains upon her face, her neck, her chest, sizzling on contact.

’Ten years I’ve waited, ten years, alone all this time I’ve waited and waited and waited for this moment and you spout nonsense in my face – despicable. DESPICABLE!’

Kaishen rises up. Kaishen falls down. The dragon’s right eye disappears under a steaming red fountain.

’Damn you! Damn your stupid Dark! Damn your fate and cycles and stupid quests and endless games! Dragons, dragons, dragons, how clever you are – how clever to forget about everything everything everything that has ever wronged you then complain about having lost! Despicable!’

Kaishen comes up. Kaishen falls down. A great wing falls by the wayside, severed into three pieces.

’I won’t stand for this. I won’t. Watch, O great immortal and eternal: I’ll take your head and the head of all your brood until your filthy spawn is wiped from this earth. Then we’ll talk. Talk! No – no no no no, I’ll laugh in the face of your oh-so-precious immortality until you regret taking the one I love. You’ll apologise, won’t you, O wise wyrm?! Oh you will, you will stop this nonsense and beg for your life, because you’re a COWARD! COWARD!’

She’s laughing and crying and lashing out with all the fury in the world. She’s naked, her skin red and cracked, she’s covered in the steam of vaporised blood and the stink of the dragon’s gore and she’s weeping as if her heart had been torn into pieces.

’I’m not done. I’m not done! You listen to me, coward – I don’t want this life. I don’t want your life. You took away the only thing I’ve ever wanted and now there is nothing, nothing, and you dare come before me with your – your clever riddles and expect to get what you want. No. No. Doesn’t work that way. First you beg.’ Her knees give way, and Kathanhiel falls to the ground hugging Kaishen to her chest. ‘Give him back, Rutherford, Elisaad, Allarissa, Tiranus, whatever thing you are. Give him back. Give him back. Give him back.’

Haylis is standing there slack-jawed, a luxury I cannot afford.

All the idiotic ramblings about why I’m here and why she would never need me have pulled back into a corner, cowering.

She doesn’t need anyone to fight in her stead, because she can handle it; she doesn’t need her esquire to do anything, because she is can do everything ten times better. What she needs – the only thing the hero of the Realms, slayer of Elisaad, will ever need – is for someone to ask how she is doing so she can smile and say: “Well. I’m doing perfectly well…and I’m lying.”

Yet, intimidated by her brilliance, no one dared to approach her.

No one?

Move it, stupid legs, stop standing around.

I crawl to Kathanhiel’s side. The heat baking off her skin is nigh unbearable; the cotton lining on my gauntlets turn black as I wave my good arm in front of her. She doesn’t see me. Her voice has turned coarse, and with each word her cry becomes a bit weaker, a bit tireder.

‘Give him back…give him back…give him back…’

The glowing cracks have sunk deeper into her skin. Under the fire of night she looks like a woman of clay, hardened yet more fragile than flesh.

I kneel next to her, skirting around the puddle of molten metal around her feet. The broken arm doesn’t seem to hurt anymore. ‘Rutherford is...is...is gone, my lady, but I’m…I’m –’ Breathe Kastor, breathe, you can do it, you have to, this is the moment, ’– but I’m here. I’m here for you and…and so is Haylis. We’ll help you. Whatever you need.’

‘It’s no use.’ Kathanhiel looks at me, her face shrouded in steam as her tears turn to ignorant vapour. ‘He has gone to his hearth in the evergreen, and left me behind.’

The details aren’t important right now. In time, when she feels like it, she will tell me, perhaps over a cup of camomile tea.

‘My lady, what should I do? Tell me so I can help you.’

She looks down at the sword clutched against her chest.

‘I don’t need you. Kaishen is the only one I need.’

That feels like a hammer blow to the face. ’But…but I need you.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Because you’ve cursed yourself,’ she says quietly, ‘a curse that will tear you apart, when the one you love is overcome by the burden of your adoration.’ Her eyes turns to meet mine. ‘I hope that day never comes for you Kastor. It invites pain unending.’

‘But that’s why you chose me to be here isn’t it?’ I say to her. ‘You chose me because I…because I love you.’

Nothing prompted that. It came out of my mouth as if the fact had been self-evident all this time. How else could I have spoken in front of that crowd? How else am I still here, surrounded by dead dragons, asking after the wellbeing of another when my own arm is folded backward?

That word seems to wake her up from whatever spell that had taken hold. Her eyes struggle for a moment, dithering back and forth between the present and who knows when. Then they turn to my left arm, which is hanging all twisted and weird as if unsure how many joints are inside the elbow.

‘You’re hurt,’ she says, noticing it for the first time.

‘What?’ The pain hits like a dragon in the gut. ‘Argh. Yeah…’

She extends a hand, flinching as the touch of a finger burns a smoking hole on my leather jerkin. The sad sizzle of smoke drifts into her nostrils and – in an act so extraordinarily ordinary – she sneezes into the nook of her elbow.

‘What…what am I…this is no time for self-indulgence,’ she says, smiling even as more tears vaporise on the corners of her eyes. ‘Thank you, Kastor.’

I open my mouth to tell her that I’m happy to help but nothing comes out. A great weight collapses inside my head, a massive pile of books that’s been propped up with one quivering arm all this time, and the world suddenly feels light as a feather. Too light, actually. It appears to be folding inward.

‘Haylis? Haylis! Are you alright?’ Kathanhiel yells as she spins around. ‘Good, thank the Maker, quickly, bring those barrels – and go find the medicine box!’ Her eyes fall upon the little giants. ‘Tell Oon’Shang to lie down and keep still – I can cauterise her wounds but her brother needs to stop tying those useless tourniquets. Tell them!’

The world does a sudden cartwheel.

Nice job. Give yourself a pat on the back. She’s back and everything’s going to be fine. Have a breather, think of a…a nice place. Like that day in the palace garden. What a great day that was, a dream coming to life…

So stupid. Should have knelt down and kissed her hand instead of…whatever spilling tea on yourself was. Wish she could dress like that again, in the casual white skirt and sleeveless doublet, her scars old and faded, triumphs of a bygone age. That’s what she is meant to look like: a victorious hero, enjoying a peaceful life.

Not this…not this….

Wait, now’s not a good time to sleep…there’s stuff to do…

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