Jackal Among Snakes

Argrave laughed enough that it seemed like everything was okay. But with blood pouring from his body in waves every time he threw his head against the wall, and his clearly involuntarily grunts and shouts of pain, Nikoletta could tell that everything was the opposite of okay. What he did caused pain great enough it was hard for him to even speak. Yet every time he crumpled, in perhaps half a minute he raised his hand up and cast that spell once again, renewing the process from the beginning.

She didn’t know the specifics of what he was doing to ascend to A-rank, as he hadn’t divulged that to her. In the initial confusion of it all, she, Orion, and Vasilisa had pleaded with him to stop, and then to take it slower, and then to take breaks. Even Ganbaatar, unaffiliated with them though he was, cautiously suggested Argrave ease up. None of their suggestions were heeded. Even the gentle cries of his fennec fox pets didn’t sway him from his task. Argrave blazed forth with an iron will, bleeding onto the shore again and again.

With his body still persisting despite the river of blood pouring from it, they settled into an uneasy acceptance of what he did. They tried to do their best to ease this period of intense pain for the king. Nikoletta found it incredibly difficult to watch, almost vomiting her meal as she watched… yet her concern for her cousin prevented her from looking away. She helped him the only way she could—keeping him from falling into the ocean, cleaning the black blood off his body. And all the while, thoughts poured into her brain one after the other. Questions, in truth.

Why? Why was he willing to do this? No matter what power he gained, was it really worth torturing himself in this manner? Nikoletta thought no one would be willing to do something like this—that no one could. Yet second by second, she was proven wrong as Argrave thrust his hand back into the veritable flame again and again, repeating that simple word like a mantra: again.

It was one thing to hear Argrave describe what was going to come, to see the symptoms manifesting all around the world of Gerechtigkeit’s advent. It was another entirely to see his conviction laid bare before her. He pursued this path to stop the calamity with conviction enough to turn his body inside out. And why?

She thought she knew the answer to that. Argrave felt it was his duty.

Nikoletta felt unimaginable guilt for her bitter attitude towards him these past few days. She had seen Argrave whole and happy, Anneliese at his side, his brother supporting him whole-heartedly… and felt what she recognized now was only base jealousy. With her sole parent missing, likely dead… with her strained relationship with Mina… she had acted foolishly toward a man who bled enough to turn the red ocean before them redder.

When Nikoletta realized she was crying, she felt ashamed. She’d thought Argrave had changed when she spoke to him again. And he had. Somewhere along the way, he’d gone from the man who smacked his head on the doorframe because he was too tall… to this. Someone bleeding for his country and for his people.

Argrave bent over, bleeding once again. Nikoletta held his limp body up as he got ahold of his faculties once again. As the distant horn calls of the ivory whales blew across the turbulent ocean in what was almost sorrowful lament, she felt a fiery resolve worm its way into her heart.

I must be more, Nikoletta told herself. I must be better. I am a young girl no longer. How many times must Argrave spill his blood for me to realize what is obvious? If I can do even half as much for him as he does for everyone… it might just be that we make it through this.𝙗𝒆𝒅𝙣𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒏𝙚𝙩

Nikoletta’s eyes settled on him firmly, not balking at the blood any longer. Every drop he spills here today is a debt we all owe, she reflected. And I will pay you back, Argrave.

#####

The elven god of flesh and blood, Chiteng, sat on his throne of ivory in solitude. The ocean of his creation crashed against his throne, sometimes splashing his feet. Still he sat, head leaning against his fist. He looked to be lost in thought. His existence was a lonely one, made only lonelier by the haunting calls of lament echoing out from the whales of ivory.

After a long time of complete silence, the god opened his eyes once again. His black pupils settled upon the distant island before him. The human man the others had called Your Majesty knelt there in the sand, staring directly at Chiteng. Then he raised his hand up, as if in toast. When he completed that spell of his… pain and blood erupted.

The human crashed down into the waves, likely having failed at whatever he had been trying to do. When he rose again, they pleaded with him, begged him… yet he did not heed their orders. Indeed, they heeded his absolutely, obeying him no matter how foolish what he did seemed.

And so the human crashed down into the sand again and again, trying and failing to manipulate an intricacy of the fundamental force of the world the humans knew as magic. But every attempt came without hesitation, and in every attempt he stared Chiteng in the eyes even as his salty black blood stained his vision.

Soon, the method that the human used began to change in subtle ways. On one attempt it was harsher—on another, more focused. On one it was reckless—on another, measured precisely. He was like an ant before a mountain, yet even still he traversed it looking for a path his small body could proceed. What was it for? His fellows? Or for himself? Nonetheless, he charged forth without an end in mind.

Even as minutes turned to hours, the human did not waver. He only said one word—again. Chiteng stared without passion, yet he did not blink as he watched all the same. He and the human stared at each other with unspoken messages. Slowly, Chiteng lifted his head off his fist, and sat straighter on his throne.

And then… the human did not collapse. His head sank down into his chest, and he spit out the last vestiges of his previous bloody failure down his ruined underclothes. Chiteng watched as an essence of magic—an essence he was well familiar with, having long ago mastered it—pooled into the human’s being. It was the essence of life—vitae. It was blood magic.

And then… the human lifted his head up again, looking Chiteng in the eyes once again as if in message. A triumphant grimace marked the man’s face. Chiteng’s stoicism wavered, and the debate in his head finally settled.

#####

Argrave stared at Chiteng in complicated embarrassment, feeling that his big talk earlier had been invalidated by half a thousand failures. He could practically hear the god thinking, ‘This is the guy that talked about taking down the Qircassian Coalition? What a joke.’

“Told you I’d get it eventually,” Argrave said lightly, cleaning out his mouth with his tongue.

“What?” Nikoletta leaned into his vision, grabbing hold of his shoulder. “You’re… is it…?”

“Yeah.” Argrave rolled his shoulders, feeling remarkably alive. “It’s over.”

Despite the intense pain and the blood pouring out from his body in volumes enough to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool, the elven realm’s innate healing ability had kept him whole. It enabled him to act with reckless abandon in pursuit of his goal. And that goal… he couldn’t quite believe it himself, but he’d reached it.

The biggest limiting factor, initially, had been pain. The pain shot up outwards through his body as though slowly building pressure. It became so intense it was almost unmanageable… and then he’d lose concentration, and the conduits of blood essence would return to where he’d wrenched them from. Perhaps ‘pressure’ was a good term to describe it—after all, just afterwards blood spewed from his body as though forced out. He was like a very gross espresso machine. His extraction time was far off the mark.

After his failures at brute-forcing the metaphorical conduits into place, he’d tried several different ways to fix things. He tried one at a time, five at a time, all at once again, keeping them in place… so many methods, and some of them repeated accidentally by failure of will or simple forgetfulness. Argrave found it was hard to stay focused with pressurized pain pushing against his skull, but perhaps that was just him.

In the end, the method that had worked was a combination of several. He anchored the conduits to his soul, and then used these now-anchored conduits to quickly monkey-branch down the line with the rest before they reverted. It made sense in Argrave’s head, but he didn’t think he could conjure words to describe it.

And… Argrave had done it. After the distinct and involved experience moving them, he was acutely aware of the constant siphoning of his essence away into these echoes. He held his hand up, willing this force forward…

A faint, dark red hand emerged from his, so faint it was almost indiscernible. The others around him said something, but he was too caught up in awe to pay them any bother. It was there. His blood echo was there. Though he kept calm inwardly, his Brumesingers were freed from their subdued state and sprinted about the shore in excitement, mirroring his emotional state.

“He isn’t even listening,” Argrave finally heard Vasilisa say. “By the gods, this man…”

“You’re right,” Argrave said cheerily. “Maybe I ought to clean out my ears. Bit of a blockage, there.”

When he stood and turned around, everyone stared at him with some mixture of disdain and relief. Nikoletta plopped on her back, and Ganbaatar shook his head in disbelief.

“You people look more tired than me,” Argrave said, then started to realize just how much of his body was covered in blood. “Maybe I should wash.” He looked back to the bloody ocean. “Don’t think jumping in there will help, though.”

“You’re… really alright?” Orion hesitantly inquired.

“Of course I am,” Argrave nodded. “Told you it’d be fine, didn’t I? Why do you think I came here, a tropical vacation?” He waved his hand. “I’m going to go wash myself with magic. Don’t look for me,” he directed them, then stepped for the tree line deeper in the island.

He walked a fair distance away until he was out of sight, looking back in paranoia. Then his happy-go-lucky persona crumpled, and he leaned up against a tree in triumphant exhaustion. He laughed, aggrieved yet pleased. He’d done it. He’d done something against what he knew of Heroes of Berendar. He’d carved a new way forward for himself. And going forward, he’d do just the same for the rest of this hellish place. He’d make a new way.

Argrave washed himself thoroughly with water magic. The crimson wasn’t especially easy to remove, and he gave up on the stains to his underclothes almost immediately. After a time, he returned to them wet. And waiting… one of the ivory whales pushed up against the shore again, almost inviting them to step on its back with its tail.

“It came while you were washing,” Ganbaatar informed Argrave. “I think… he’s made his mind up. Chiteng.”

“You can take a rest,” Nikoletta told Argrave. “I think you deserve that much.”

Argrave walked over to his pile of clothes and looked down at them, thinking her words sounded quite sweet right now. A rest seemed just what the doctor ordered. But he leaned down, picked up his pants, and made to put them on.

“Nah. I can rest on the ride over,” Argrave said determinedly. “That blubber has to be comfortable.”

Ganbaatar chuckled quietly, but he seemed impressed at Argrave’s willpower. Vasilisa chuckled loudly, but she seemed to think he was insane. Maybe they were both right.