Witcher Warrior Scholar Spy

“To cut through all horizons,

To destroy all obstacles,

To surpass the end of all things,

That is what it means to be of the Four.”

It was hours of trekking through the Deadwood Forest before Kuala led them through the breaking of the tree line and to the edge of the coast. It was unlike the beaches of Contraria, which were soft and sandy, and instead was rocky. Just like the rest of Quoral.

Arkim frowned, looking at the dirt and grime that coated the stones, before casting his eyes off to the horizon, gazing over the dark waves and searching for the island that housed the Grotto of Light. He had no expectation of finding it immediately—sure, he had seen drawings and maps and descriptions, but that was not the same as physically hunting down an island in a foreign land.

But there was only one way to go.

“We need to keep going east,” Arkim said, pulling on the reins of his horse, Kirby.

The steed came with the name, and Arkim found it endearing. It was a silly name, but the horse knew it well.

Taking the lead, Arkim scanned the horizon. Somewhere across the ocean was the empty island that once housed Contraria. It was too far to see with the naked eye, and it was likely up the opposite direction of the coast, away from where the Grotto resides, but still. Arkim knew where his home could be found.

Kuala took up the rear, scanning the treeline—waiting for what Arkim knew could be any number of threats coming from the Deadwood Forest. The damn foliage was toxic, not that there was overmuch of it, and only the most resilient of creatures took up in the forest proper, like the bakkin. The disgusting bat-like humanoids were absolute demons. Invasive as all get out, and able to eat almost anything: from toxic moss to literal rocks. Arkim hated the things, even if they lacked protection via their hide and were easy to fell.

“Keep an eye on the horizon; we should be able to see Lumo from the shore—not to mention the swells of the whirlpools,” Arkim called out behind him, using his Well to marry his voice to the wind that whipped around the group so that he didn’t have to shout.

He couldn’t hear the grunts of acknowledgement Kuala and Shen gave, but he didn’t need to. Arkim did not pause, did not falter, did not cower.

Were his palms still shaking from the trip over? Yes, of course. Arkim was hardly a combatant, and though he could wield a bow, that did not mean such exertion didn’t take its toll—both emotionally and physically. His hand, lacking several digits, ached with the force of the grip he’d had on the weapon. Meanwhile, he could still feel the indents on his fingers from where he pulled back the bowstring, and between his shoulder blades, his muscles ached from effort. Within his stomach, his Well was nearing empty, causing him to have to focus his mind on small magics. It would be hours before he could form a larger working. It took every bit of his Inheritance to force his mind to focus on the problem at hand.

Not to mention, Arkim’s silken shirt was stained with the emerald blood of a bakkin that got too close—and Kuala never did care much about the grotesque aspects of fighting, such as being covered in gore.

Don’t do it, it’s fine, you can go an hour without—

Arkim’s internal dialogue was cut short as he whipped his hand up to his chest and used the last of his magic to form a working that divorced the bindings of the blood from the pastel silk he donned. Soon enough, the still-wet stains fell away to the wind, and all that was left was the soft baby yellow shirt Arkim adored.

Well, adored was a strong word. Arkim loved all his clothes equally—it’s why he invested so much into them. But he certainly enjoyed this particular outfit. His traveling clothes were as fanciful as his court clothes, with metallic embroidery lining his pale slacks, and his leather boots matched the shining threads by virtue of being made up of tresh hide, a beast that originated from one of the Gods of the Forge.

Finally able to relax now that he was semi-clean, Arkim pushed Kirby harder, bringing his speed up from a trot to a gallop.

“What a waste of a Well,” Kuala howled in laughter from behind him. He shouldn’t have been able to hear her, but he could feel the magic on the wind and knew she’d copied his own trick of marrying his voice to the wind.

Ignoring her mockery, Arkim pressed his mouth into a flat line and went faster—all the while scanning the horizon.

His rose pink eyes never left the Horrid Ocean, and, a mere hour later, his attention bore fruit as he caught sight of a small island off in the distance. Atop the rocky outcrop was a larger pile of rocks, but, should they cross the strait to Lumo, Arkim knew they would find an opening into the Grotto’s protective cave system.

Pulling on Kirby’s reins, Arkim brought the horse to a stop. “We’re here.”

Shen and Kuala deftly pulled up behind him, bringing their own steeds to a standstill.

“Did you bring a tie-stand or must we use the treeline?” Shen asked, and Arkim’s skin crawled with the working.

“We should put them at the treeline anyway, lest a serpent rise from the sea and swallow them whole,” Kuala said, and Arkim hated that she wasn’t joking in the slightest. The Horrid Ocean was horrid for a reason, after all.

“Let’s,” Arkim agreed, dismounting and beginning to lead Kirby to the nearest petrified tree. His feet slid on the rocks under his feet, and he could feel his heels sink into the sludge that lined the ground, but Arkim ignored it.

Well, he ignored it as much as he could.

“What’re we going to do about the whirlpools?” Kuala asked, following him with her own horse. Shen was close behind.

Arkim didn’t respond immediately. He had been thinking about it for the past few hours—the best way to approach it. Obviously, Olea must have succeeded in getting to the Grotto on her own, as she was nowhere to be found on the beach. Kuala had the strength to brute force it as well, her muscles more than strong enough to defy the Divine Whirls.

Perhaps Arkim and Shen could simply bind themselves to Kuala, and the woman could drag them to shore. It was Arkim’s first thought—and also the quickest one to be dismissed. Carrying two grown men would likely distract Kuala enough that she was unable to fend off the strength of the ocean.

His second thought, however, was slightly less inane. Shen could wield his fire and burn the ocean away, just for the thousand yards to the sea. Then, the three of them could simply run for it.

That, however, was quickly thrown away as well. Not the least because Arkim wasn’t actually sure that Shen had enough control over his newly formed Well to perform such a feat. One day, surely, he would. Shen himself had made the contract, had sacrificed more than Arkim or Kuala, and was a powerful mage in his own right.

Thus, his final plan was born.

“Lala,” Arkim called, beckoning the woman over. “Do you think you can do a joint working with me?”

Kuala looked from the coast back to Arkim, her face blank, before shaking whatever thoughts she’d been having away. “Yeah, but you’ll have to explain your thinking. I need to know what I’m marrying together.”

A sharp smile spread across Arkim’s face. “Nothing too crazy. How many bonds do you think you can form and control at once?”

Kuala hummed in thought, once again staring off at the horizon before focusing back on the man. “A dozen complex, probably. Why? How many do you need?”

Arkim twitched his nose and closed his eyes, running numbers in his mind’s eye. Then, he pulled up a working he used with his original Well quite often. It involved catching the breeze in time, and doubling it over and over again until the force with which the gust blew was hurricane-force.

“That’ll work,” he declared, raising his palm in the air and catching a gust of the coastal wind as it wrapped around him, causing his clothes to whip around. “You just need to keep yourself alive. Marry the wind to your skin. It’ll keep the air from collapsing your lungs while also making sure we can still breathe.”

“Why do I feel like I’m going to hate this plan?” Kuala grumbled, but nonetheless caught her own gust of wind as it swirled around her. Arkim caught a second wind as it circled Shen moments later.

“Keep close, Shen, I haven’t tested my range yet,” Arkim said lightly, as if he wasn’t promising something horrific to happen if his words weren’t followed.

Shen stepped as close to Arkim as the winds allowed.

“All right.” Arkim nodded. “Now, marry your shoes to the ground—lightly, just enough to use the smaller rocks as weights.”

Leading by example, Arkim forced the pebbles together underneath the soles of his and Shen’s boots, his working melding them together several inches beneath their feet.

Kuala huffed, stomping her foot roughly on the rocky shore and sending out a metaphysical ripple in the air. When she lifted her foot again, a solid rock came with it.

She gave the boys a wild grin. “Divorce is as much a part of marriage as anything else.”

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Rolling his eyes, Arkim motioned to the island off the shore. “Follow my lead. Don’t die.”

At that, both Shen and Kuala snorted. Then, they looked at each other and broke out into heavy laughter.

“I’d say jinx,” Kuala started once she’d sobered up, “but you can’t speak, anyway.”

Shen was visibly tempted to send a nasty mental image to Kuala, and Arkim could see it in the malicious glint of his eyes, but they were so close. One step closer to forming the new Illuminaria.

Clapping his hands, Arkim called attention back to himself—where he was standing at the edge of the shore, his stone booties keeping the water away from his boots, and the wind keeping the ocean spray off his clothes.

What followed, then, was supposed to be a simple affair.

The three of them walked, heavy-footed, into the edge of the Horrid Ocean. Their only saving grace was that the Grotto was protected by magics older than time itself. Older than Krohnic. Older than New Archonia as a whole, the continent merely millennia old rather than hundreds of millennia. Thus, no serpents split their protective bubbles—though several circled as if they thought about it. And no monsters of the deep surfaced in the shallows, though Kuala saw several fish with particularly sharp teeth eyeing them.

As they walked into the Horrid Ocean, they settled at the bottom of the shoreline. Even in the shallows, the ocean grew deep quicker than Arkim had expected, and within a dozen steps, the pressure on the air bubbles was daunting. When Arkim looked about him, the cloudy water obscured how far down they’d truly gone. All Arkim could do was trust in his memory and continue in the direction of the Grotto, while also keeping track of when they were approaching a whirlpool.

The Divine Whirls shifted, attacked them, buffeting their air bubbles, but Arkim locked down his will, forcing his bonds to remain. Unfortunately, by doing so, he lost concentration on the bonds beneath his and Shen’s feet—sending them buoying up through the ocean and at the whim of the whirlpools. Kuala, who was only a few feet behind them, quickly released her own bonds and jumped to follow them.

As the whirlpools sent them spinning, Arkim tried to keep his wits about him—which was proving monstrously difficult when his stomach began to turn. He swallowed thickly just as he and Shen were spit out of the whirlpool and sent flying. Away from the Isle of Light.

“Dammit all,” Arkim hissed just as Kuala burst from the top of an incoming wave.

“Well, what now?” she called, looking from Arkim to the Grotto, growing ever farther away as the three of them drifted further out to sea.

Arkim swallowed again, this time out of anxiety rather than nausea, but his thoughts were crafting plans and throwing them out at a rate of dozens per second.

“Try to control your wind so it is angled behind you,” he said suddenly, then cut his eyes to Shen as he did what he’d instructed Kuala to do. “Put flames at the edge of our wind. Use it as a make-shift pulse to direct us back to the Grotto. Can you do it?”

Shen nodded, summoning a flame colored a sickly green, and then sent them speeding back toward the Grotto.

Arkim called out when he saw a whirlpool, which direction to shift, and how hard to push the flame. And, within half an hour, they were safely on the sandy shore of the Isle of Light, home to the Grotto of the same name.

Unlike the coastline of Quoral, the Isle of Light had true sand—soft and gentle against Arkim’s palm as he finally was able to brace himself as he emptied his stomach. Shen held Arkim’s long hair away from his face, an amused smile on his face despite his furrowed brows.

When Arkim finally stood back up, he was disgusted with his stomach contents and quickly kicked sand over the chunk-filled puddle.

“Ugh, let’s just go in,” he ground out, storming toward the cavern entrance.

As he went past Kuala, she gripped his arm tightly, causing Arkim to stop mid-stride and look at the woman questioningly.

“You and Shen need to recover your magics,” she said simply, worry in her eyes.

Arkim took a deep breath, hating that, for once, Kuala was using her brain when they were so close.

“Fine, but it’s not like anything even lives in there. It’s too dense in power for anything to truly thrive,” he grumbled, pulling out a cloak from his storage ring and laying it across the sandy beach.

Beside him, Shen settled on the free portion of the coat. Kuala didn’t bother and laid right in the sand.

“Still…” She sighed, taking a swig of the waterskin on her hip. “Better safe than dead. Shen, send a bird?”

Nodding, the Spy did just that, and the small blue bird sped off into the moss-covered cave that functioned as the entrance to the Grotto.

“Yeah,” Kuala’s expression was unreadable, “that tracks. Well, at least we know she’s close by. Rest up, boys, we’re gonna have a day.”

Arkim wanted to groan, but he didn’t. Of course, Kuala wouldn’t even think that anything was amiss so far, as if the bakkin and the whirlpools and the serpents were normal. No. Something was happening. And Arkim was already having a day of trying to figure it out.

Still, he couldn’t deny that any power was good power when it came to traversing the Grotto. You never knew when a Godling would manifest, he supposed.

Arkim and Kuala bickered back and forth, Shen staying out of it as he recovered his Well. To speak required power they’d asked him not to expend.

Eventually, an hour passed, and while it wasn’t enough to refill all of their magics, neither was it too little. So, they stood, and Arkim refrained from wasting a working on cleaning himself up. He had sand stuck to his boots—and his palms. He grimaced.

Well, it’s not going to take very much power, he thought to himself as he spelled the sand to the wind.

Arkim saw Shen and Kuala both pretend not to see, but if they weren’t going to say anything, then neither was he.

“All right,” he said jovially, “who wants to go first?”

Kuala held up one hand; the other was wrapped around the hilt of Wrezgul.

“Don’t flatter yourselves. Just because you got us over here, doesn’t mean you could take on a Godling.” Kuala paused, a sharp grin forming. “Unless you want to test your mettle?”

Both men quickly stepped back, Arkim’s face paling at the thought of having his limbs severed from his body in the way one Godling had done to Kilkua when Kuala was small. Kuala had returned changed from that hunt.

“Ladies first, of course,” Arkim forced out, half-hiding behind Shen.

Shen knocked into Arkim’s shoulder lightly, reassuringly.

Kuala simply shook her head and stepped into the entrance to the Grotto, a cave-like maw that was lined with the remnants of shattered crystals.

Following behind Shen, Arkim allowed himself to bring up the rear. It would be fine. The maps of the Grotto filled his mind, and Arkim realized quite quickly there was a problem. The cave was dark. Frowning, Arkim looked into the depths of the cavern, unable to make out anything in the distance.

Then, everything was cast in a flickering green light from a hovering ball of flame above Shen’s head. Shen didn’t say anything, but Arkim was thankful the man had found such a useful Well.

Ahead of them, Arkim saw a fork in the road. Oh, ugh, he thought, a grimace building on his face. He heaved a heavy sigh and stepped past Shen.

“I am the one who has the map,” he admitted defeatedly as he stepped close to Kuala, nearly running into her back. “It’s left here.”

The cavern walls never seemed to change, and the sound of crystals crunching underfoot was the only echo besides the occasional call from Arkim of a “right,” “left,” or “center.”

Ultimately, nothing delayed them, and they made quick work of getting to the Grotto.

Arkim frowned, listening to the lapping of the lagoon that was taking up half the cavern.

“Shen, cut the light,” he commanded, stepping toward the lagoon.

As the green light faded, nothing replaced it.

It was…empty.

The Grotto of Light had gone dark except for a single thread of light emanating from the center of the cavern. There were no flowing lines of power, no formations of crystal shining like the midday sun, no—

There was nothing.

“What—” Kuala started, then cut herself off before hissing, “Gods dammit.”

Arkim could only curse under his breath.

Sticking out of the sandy ground was a dagger of pitch black. It was a thing each of them would recognize. It was the dagger that Olea had carried religiously after turning eleven. And atop it was a half-dozen shining blue birds that lit the space up with a dim, yet ethereal light.

Shen’s birds.

“Why are they—”

“Well,” Shen slipped into their minds, “that would be because that knife is soulbound to our Witcher.”

Arkim turned on Shen, narrowing his eyes. “How do you know that?”

Shen didn’t smile; his eyes didn’t have a glint of mischief. There was simply guilt. And anger, though Arkim couldn’t place where it was directed.

“She can call it at will,” was all he said.

Taking a shaking breath, Arkim approached the dagger.

“Your birds. Is she—” Arkim couldn’t bring himself to say it. To think, Is Olea dead? Has she condemned us all with her?

Pausing in his approach, Arkim swallowed thickly. There was only so much loss he could take. To lose it all at once? All because of the woman he once called friend? It would be too much.

Kuala, however, was releasing a feral growl as she shoved past the stopped Arkim. She ran to the dagger, ripping it out of the ground and letting it fall to the wayside. Shen’s birds fluttered their wings, but they simply followed the dagger.

As they settled upon the fallen blade, Kuala began digging into the ground barehanded. Arkim sighed. Kuala was always willing to do the dirty work.

After several silent moments, wherein Shen stayed back and Arkim approached, both watching Kuala as tears fell from her eyes and her face contorted in a mix of rage and grief, she stopped abruptly.

“She’s not dead. Not yet, at least, though she best hope I do not see her before she sees me,” came the wrecked voice of the woman as she pulled out several items from the sandy hole she’d made.

One was a ring, emblazoned with a skull and sail. The Dreknot crest. The second item was a black leather piece with the same imagery, simply larger. And the next was a vial of blood. The fourth and final item was a note.

Arkim ripped the note from Kuala’s hands and unfolded it. He began reading it aloud.

“To the Two that should be Four: I am not sorry, nor will I ever be. Let the kingdom rot, let it fester in time. Let it disappear into the annals of history. Your Witcher.” By the end of it, Arkim’s voice was shaking, barely above a whisper.

Arkim whirled around on Shen. “What does she mean—the two?”

He felt the illness Shen used to speak move, but Arkim never heard the man’s mimicked voice. Instead, he felt the illness striking at his mind.

Arkim furrowed his brow, focusing on the bulwark that kept his mind secure and reinforcing it, when, suddenly, Kuala screamed. Collapsing to her knees, she fumbled for Wrezgul.

But it was no use, Arkim was sure of it.

Shen was already in their minds.

He’d been there the whole time.

With a sigh, Arkim looked at the man in question. As he did so, he felt a wave of power explode within his mind.

Shen’s visage flashed in and out of existence.

Then, Shen was no more—nor were his birds.

That was the moment Arkim fell to his knees and allowed his mind to collapse in on itself.