The Forsaken Hero

”Wind’s Speed.”

I muttered the name of the spell as I clasped Fable’s head in my hands, imbuing him and the rest of the soldiers in the Nexus, with magic. He shifted restlessly as the mana flowed through him, and I slipped on his back, wincing as a painful jolt ran through the sunpurge. The heat trickled up my side as Fable kicked off the ground, but I held a cry back with gritted teeth. The Last Light Company had yet to fully exit the courtyard, and I didn’t want them to worry.

But every stride of the great wolf sent a tingle of fire up my side. I’d been ignoring it since the battle began, but it was impossible to miss the rising heat. Places I hadn’t hurt before were burning, the scar slowly itching up my side. It hadn’t been noticeable at first, but as the battle dragged by hour after hour, Elinore’s fears materialized. I’d done everything she’d warned me about, from physical exertion and battle to using sixth-circle arrays.

The cold, lingering winter wind whispered across my face, sending a shiver down my spine and tail. My defensive wards had been broken in the battle, and I lacked the strength to recast them. It was the strangest feeling, to have my soul brimming with mana and yet be unable to use it. Sustaining the link with the shard for three, maybe four hours had nearly destroyed me again. If the anomaly hadn’t returned when it did...well, the advance of the Sunpurge would be the least of my worries.

It had been all I could do to cast Wind’s Speed, a final effort to aid the soldiers in their retreat and Fable in our hunt for Korra. It was a relatively simple fourth-circle wind spell Jenna had taught me during our long journey through the canyon. As Fable streamed through the streets, his steps were strong and graceful, seemingly carried by the winds themselves. Long, streaming wisps of pale blue light traced our path through the city, lingering for a few seconds after our passing before fading away.

”Get us a view,” I said, leaning low over Fable’s neck.

His chest rumbled in affirmation. I had just enough time to tangle my fingers in his fur, gripping him tightly, before he leaped off the streets and onto the roof of an abandoned shop. The ceramic tiles cracked as he bounded again, this time landing on a three-story inn. We climbed from building to building like stairs, eventually leaping onto the towering, curtain-like walls of the inner keep. A few soldiers still defending their posts tried to attack us, but Fable let out a concentrated blast of his aura and convinced them to retreat.

With a final leap, we soared atop on the upper towers, landing gracefully right below the flag of Brithlite, a symbol of Alverin’s presence in the city. Fable snapped the flagpole with a casual swipe of his back leg, letting the banner tumble into the city below.

I followed the flag’s descent for a second before it vanished into one of the many plumes of billowing smoke rising from the courtyard surrounding the keep, then turned my gaze onto the city itself. The entire city was acting like someone had put a boot through their anthill and small, dark shapes scurried in all directions. Shouts and screams ascended on the wings of the cold, winter wind, filling my ears with the sound of fear and loss. The small, dark shapes of people filled the streets in a panic, fleeing in all directions as rumors of the skirmishes and battles throughout the city moved unchecked. Occasionally, the glint of steel caught the dying light of the sun, attracting my gaze to a patrol or company of soldiers rushing somewhere.

Our long, extended fight in the heart of the keep had given many an early warning of the horrors to come, but tens of thousands hadn’t had time or instructions to evacuate. And now, as another force of darkness swarmed against the outer walls, it was too late.

I searched beyond the city walls, and let my tail relax as I found a large body of armored figures amassing a few miles east of the back gates. Several long trains of marching moved to join them, most coming from the canyon. I followed the line until I found the rim, and my breath caught in my chest.

The sight that met my eyes was beyond incredible, matching the raw, unfettered beauty of the Starfall that had held me spellbound. When the ice spirit said he created a path, I certainly hadn’t imagined this. Perhaps I should have, given the enormous amounts of mana I had sensed shortly before he came to my rescue, but still!

Nearly half of the space between the two mountains that acted as sentinels for the city was frozen. Not just with frost, but with thick sheets of arctic permafrost that had to be at least a few feet thick. In the center of it all, looming high above the city walls, was a majestic spire of ice. The sheer scale of the formation was beyond comprehension. It was larger than many mountains I’d climbed, rising from the depths of the canyon and jutting into the sky like a spear raised against the heavens. The bloody red light of the Demon Gate behind bled through the massive, translucent ice shard, combining with the light of the setting sun to dye the entire world red.

It didn’t take more than a glance to analyze the lingering remnants of mana and infer what had happened. The Last Light Company had fled to the rim walls, but with the demons attacking the narrow, fortified path to the top, they had no way to ascend. The ice spirit used this mountain of ice to form a new path, possibly even using the growth of such a stunning formation as an elevator, carrying the whole company to the top at once.

Using a ninth-circle spell, or maybe it was a technique, in this way was...inspiring, to say the least. Some part of me wondered what the demons and soldiers thought upon witnessing this act of sheer power. Even Soltair would feel small in the shadow of this mountain, and for a second, I regretted not allowing the ice spirit to take action against our enemies. But the thought didn’t linger long as I realized just how devastating this would have been if it were meant as an attack. Just this act alone, used simply to save a handful of soldiers, would be enough to plunge the entire city in eternal ice, killing the hundreds of thousands still in the city. What if it had actually intended to fight?

It was a heavy, sobering thought, one that I didn’t have time to ponder. And so, blinking the awestruck stars from my eyes, I turned to the armies fighting for control of the main gate. The demon host had followed the Last Light Company up the mountain of ice, bypassing the narrow, heavily guarded climb up the canyon wall. This allowed them to gather en mass before the gate, seemingly intent on overwhelming the guards with numbers alone.

It was a suicidal tactic with no thought to the lives of the demons on the front lines, reminding me of the swarm tactics I’d seen employed in the Gates. And, similar to those experiences, I fully expected the demons to have a few tricks up their sleeve to use when the human defenders expected it least.

The combined armies of Brithlite and the Church fought outside and atop the walls. Their archers and mages made great use of the titanic stone fortifications, lobbing spells and imbued arrows in the writhing mass of curse, blade, and fire demons below. Much of the army had been too large to fit within the walls of the city, so attacked the demons on their flanks. They were greatly outnumbered, but just as the church predicted from the beginning, the human soldiers were of better quality than their demonic scion counterparts, allowing them to hold the line with seeming ease.

Between the frenzied panic of the civilians in the city and the slaughter without the gates, the whole world was brimming with madness and chaos. It was more than a little overwhelming to a timid spirit like myself, and I shrunk deeper into Fable’s fur. I had caused this, and yet...I had done what I had to. Instead of guilt, or even horror, I just felt sadness. For Sari, and the innocents who had done nothing to deserve this.

The words of the arbiter rang in my mind, driving out all doubt. This was war, and in war, there were sacrifices.

For some reason, his memory brought a sense of calm to me, and I took a breath. I was here for a reason, not to gawk at the coming destruction. The feelings that I had struggled to explain to Bethiv and Orion came back with full force, and I closed my eyes and calmed my rapidly beating heart. A moment later, I gasped as mana flowed into my soul, stinging like hot water over a fresh scrape.

The pain was intense, but I pushed through it and forced my mana into the depths of my soul, finding the coiled warmth of the Oracle of Eternity. Since the moment my staff had awakened to drive off the god at the Shard of Omniscience, the ability had felt...alive, no, that wasn’t it. More like ’awakened,’ the word the Shard loved sticking in front of my abilities. The feelings and impressions it left me with were how I knew the soldier would die when he was choking me, and that I needed to find Korra.

After a few moments, I let my eyes flicker open. I leaned over Fable’s back and peered down into the city below, forgetting, for a moment, just how high up this tower was. He shifted after a few moments, an impatient growl in his throat, but I calmed his with a soft stroke between his horns.

”There,” I said, pointing down to one of the tiny city blocks far below. ”She’s there.”