"Remember it, vremyonni!" she called out. "Remember the power! Rashemen may yet have need of it!"
The first splashes of falling bodies broke the water, and she was gone, the voices of her captors gone with her. In a daze, Bastun lowered his eyes and stared at the hilt of the Breath, studied the strange hands, his own fingers wrapped tightly around this fulcrum between worlds.
"It is done," he muttered, and yet he knew it could not be true, briefly imagining having to repeat the words every morning for eternity. The thought broke through the separation between will and flesh, and he pulled at the blade. Ice cracked and split as the sword shifted. The runes along the Breath flared, and he felt the walls he had built around his humanity begin to crumble. Pain flared behind his eyes, and he tugged harder, his new strength breaking the magic's grip. The walls of the Shield flickered around him, indistinct and transparent.
He rose and braced his feet on either side of the embedded Breath, straining and staring into the storm-laced skies above. Dark-winged angels, fiendish minions of Levistus, dived from their heights and fixed him in their black-eyed stares. The Breath glowed with a brilliant white light, and it felt as though he were tearing a limb from his body as the blade began to slide free from the clinging ice.
Flashes of darkness, stone, and lightning danced before his eyes. Black wings surrounded him, enveloped him in soft, downy feathers that reeked of perfume and death. Scarlet lips whispered in his ears, promising unimaginable pleasures and ancient secrets.
He fell away, tumbling backward as if struck. A cold stone floor arrested his fall. The Breath clattered and clanged as his arms fell out to his sides. Ilythiiri runes squirmed in the ceiling above, their magic fading once again into dormancy. They settled back into their patterns, entwined inside the knotwork of the Word's symbols. Bastun's head rolled from side to side. He stared at the walls and the mirage of power that swirled through the chamber.
Sitting up he raised the Breath before him, its once simple blade now filled with an unholy power. He stood carefully, looking upon the Word and the Breath with new eyes. It was more than a mere portal or gate; its influence still curled and swam through his body. Closing his eyes he felt something new. Reaching out with his thoughts he could sense the high walls of the tower, each stone in its foundation, every open door and errant breeze as if the Shield were an extension of himself.
The eastern walls, mostly a shell now as their interiors had crumbled long ago, warmed slightly as the first gray light of a winters dawn tried to penetrate Shandaular's mists. Much closer though, he could sense another presence on the Shield's walls.
Bastun's body moved with a preternatural strength and balance despite the mess of his thoughts. Part of his mind focused on descending the stairs, keeping alert, and finishing what he had begun-what had begun long ago. The rest of him felt a mess, a jumble of emotions, questions, and doubts. His cheeks were cold, a few tears freezing before they could roll away, but he could not determine for whom they fell.
Ghosts flitted by as time rolled in random directions around him. The memories of the Shield were his memories, though the details were fleeting as if the stone were alive and forgetting things as it aged. The past was all that remained, the only life left for the crumbling fortress to live. There was a kinship between he and the Shield that he was loathe to admit, but he could not deny it.
He recalled his first arrival at the gates, staring at the high towers and walls. He had been so eager to get inside and see for himself this place he had known in tome and scroll. Now, he only wished to escape. He had forged his peace, with KefTrass and himself, in blood and in ice, and had buried pain and regret in the deepest hell he could find.
The length of the walls and the various towers of the Shield spread out before him, and he found himself outside. Predawn light lit the eastern sky, glowing across the ocean of mist that rolled and eddied just below the battlements. Leaning on those crenellations, staring out across the ruin of Shandaular, stood the youngest son of the Nentyarch.
Serevan, his faced half-ruined with flesh slowly creeping backward into death's grimace, did not turn at Bastun's arrival. The prince looked upon a city that was not burning, not dying, but dead, a cursed shell of the city he remembered.
"Time is broken," Serevan muttered as Bastun approached. "The empire is gone. My father is gone."
Bastun paused at the prince's words, keeping the Breath before him as he eyed Serevan.
"You know this?" he asked, his voice resounding with the same power it had taken in Stygia. It echoed and vibrated through the wall, and the prince turned. Pale brows furrowed over the icy, lidless eyes.
"Yes, wizard," he rasped. "I have always been aware of time's passage. Trapped in my own mind, forced to relive the past, to witness my own foolishness. An eternal nightmare, a dream from which I cannot awaken."
Silhouetted by glowing mist, he turned away from the battlements and stared up to the top of the northwest tower, the cradle of the Word. Behind him, Bastun could only see darkness within the watchtower where he had left Thaena and Syrolf. No sound came from within. The pang of alarm he felt became a chill down his spine. He tilted his head at the odd sensation and regarded the cold prince thoughtfully.
"You opened it," Serevan said, still gazing upon the weathered stone of the tower. He did not ask, merely stated a fact that both of them knew, could feel in their bones. "Athumrani sought vengeance when he betrayed me and sacrificed himself. He found it. Did you find what you were looking for?"
"Yes," he answered without hesitation, then reconsidered the question. His own past, his own ghosts, were quiet within him. The tetrible weight of life on his shoulders had lessened, and the future seemed less an escape than the freedom he had sought. A dull ache tested in his knuckles, the gleaming blade of the Breath still in his hand. The sword, so heavy before, was nothing to the strength he felt now. Something of Stygia's touch remained, hiding beneath his skin, and he found a hint of regret slipping amidst his scattered thoughts. "And… no."
"Hmph. Sacrifice, the purest currency between devils and men," said the prince, and he gazed upon Bastun through orbs of ice in hollowed sockets, his rictus grin growing as the ravages of undeath reclaimed flesh and separated it from illusion. "One never truly knows the price until it is paid."
Bastun was never more aware of his own heartbeat than at that moment, staring into the ruined face of Serevan Crell, pondering the meaning of sacrifice and its price. Faint wisps of steam escaped from around the edges of Bastun's mask, and he breathed a little deeper. His pulse quickened as the air between them grew thick, whatever strange truce that had caused them to speak to one another ending as quickly as it had begun. The prince edged his body sideways in a fighting stance, his tattered cloak and white hair stirred in a morning breeze.
"We must end this here, wizard," Serevan said, his voice now more hollow than before, rumbling out from a withering throat. He drew his thin blade, joints cracking with frozen flesh. "I want what I came for."
Bastun stepped back, raising the Breath.
"You still mean to have this?" he asked, staring from the sword to the bleakborn. "After all that you have seen?"
"I see the world that is and the world that was," the prince replied, glancing once again at the weathered stone and mist-covered landscape of the city. "I cannot deny the fate that was handed to me-but truth be told, I much prefer the dream."
The thin blade darted quickly and Bastun parried. It came again and again, each slash ringing strident tones on the Breath as Bastun backstepped. He had fought this battle before and lost, the memory of the wound in his side still painful, though nary a scar now remained. His breathing came quicker; his pulse raced. Magic seemed slippery and evasive, his thoughts turning to chaos as ghosts flitted past.