Crimson Ascension

"Abyss take me, I killed him!" Elevalein shouted back in the camp. His voice quivered like someone ready to flee, the horror not only audible but tangible.

Shit. That can't be good. Finn cursed under his breath and abandoned the watch. Why did I leave Draves alone with that useless creep? His friend seemed to trust the Evoker, but how could one trust a fully-bred Sovran? Draven had to know better. You could never trust one of them.

Finn infused his body with hexion and ran. He leaped over boulders with enough strength to shatter the ground upon landing, but felt no pain. Only regret. It was hard to distinguish Draven from the man spoken of in prophecies, the unparalleled Empyran who was supposed to support the Haven when no one else could.

Draven was the last Archon; Finn no longer questioned that, but he was also so much more. A boy who lost his family. Someone who immersed himself in training to distract himself from the tragic life of a miner. Finn knew his pain all too well. If there were a way, he'd take the burden off Draven's shoulders.

But he couldn't do it. He might joke about being a genius, but his talent was lacking.

You better not have died, dammit. You're better than this!

Elevalein held his brother on his arm, face pale like he had seen a dead man walking. But Draven didn't move an inch, not even to breathe. His body was frozen, like the flow of time had stopped around him alone. Finn touched his neck, under the jawline, with two fingers, trying to feel for a heartbeat. There was none.

That gave him pause.

The hunting knife on his belt came out in a swift motion. Finn cut the tip of Draven's finger, bypassing Elevalein's protest. The wound didn't bleed, like a dead man, but it closed moments later.

"His soul vanished! I was careful, I swear it. On my mother's soul, I swear it—"

"He isn't dead, stupid. He made it." Finn finally let himself breathe. Not dead. "He's in the corridor. Leave him be now, or are you gonna cry? Abyss take me, man, get a hold of yourself. It's embarrassing."

"Not dead?" Elevalein's shoulders sagged as if a huge weight had been removed from them. "Thank the fucking Maker."

"Have you not been paying attention? If it were up to that guy, Draves would be dead and buried." Finn shook his head, but a trembling smile broke through.

So that's how it looks. Arzhan probably shit his pants when you did that. Dammit, I almost soiled mine.

He looked at Draven with a puzzled expression. There was no way of knowing how much time would pass inside the Sixfold Corridor; the currents of time were no longer stable in the halls carved in obsidian. One moment in the Haven, or in the Old World, might very well be days there. Finn had no way of knowing.

No one did.

"We will only bring him back if we got no other alternative, got it?" he asked Elevalein, even though the Evoker had no means of finding Draven's consciousness. To his surprise, Finn caught himself trying to comfort a Sorvan.

"Thank you, Finn. I… don't know what I'd have done if another one had…" The Evoker shook his head, placed Draven lying on the floor, and walked away. "I'll… watch the perimeter."

I'm getting soft. He snarled through gritted teeth, remembering the man whom he had gone to such lengths to find. The Silver Flame Inquisition knew where Draven was; Finn had told them in Varn'Kess. It was the only way to draw his father away from their ranks—the most wanted person in the Haven wasn't a bait that bastard would ignore.

It shamed him that he'd sold off his friend's whereabouts, but he had no intention of letting the Silver Flame Inquisition get to him. He'd die before letting any of them touch Draven. It was the least he owed. Still, every day that passed, every moment he had to hide that betrayal, he felt sick to his stomach.

Would Draven understand? Probably. He knew how he felt about his father. But would he forgive him? Finn didn't know. Not knowing ate him alive.

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"Dammit, Draves." He sat beside Draven's unconscious, soulless body. "We're all messed up, aren't we? I never thought I'd miss Myra. Corvanis is a bastard, so he can go eat coal, for all I care, and the old man is a professional backstabber. But Myra… she was just like us."

"I know I told you we had the power to change things. But do we? Can we really change anything at all?" It was stupid. Draven couldn't hear him. It was perhaps for that reason Finn kept talking, letting out the things he'd never let another living soul hear. "I just want it to end already. Things were simpler back then. Miner good. Sovran bad. Now it's all black and white."

"You better come out strong, Draves, you cheating bastard. I'm not enough to change things, but maybe you will be." Finn chuckled. He hadn't felt this relieved in ages. It was odd how just a few words, sentiments he knew well enough, could lighten his mood once spoken out loud.

The bandage on Draven's face shifted, the first hint of movement in the minutes since he had entered the Sixfold Corridor. Finn unbandaged his face, eyes half-closing from the expected reaction to seeing a rune, half-opening for the expectation that never died. Maybe he'd see it if he focused well enough.

But what he never expected was not to see anything.

The rune was gone from Draven's face, like it had never been there in the first place. But that wasn't possible. Draven was not the most experienced Mender out there, but his ability to regrow other people's limbs was unheard of—most deemed such feats impossible. Yet he, the Archon of Blood, hadn't been able to mend that scar.

Now it was gone.

Finn smiled and nodded. He'd expected nothing less. In front of him was a man who could defy common sense, and when doing so, thought nothing of his impossible actions. Who knew? Maybe Drave had already become a Greater Eminence in the corridor, perhaps even become an Ascendance.

They only needed to buy him enough time.

***

Finn had noticed the black cloud in the sky one day ago. At first, he had thought it was some sort of twisted art performed by the deft claws of the creature that hunted them, but now he wasn't so sure. The Ruler of Shadows grew closer, Elevalein had told him as much, yet it approached from a different direction from the cloud.

Abyss take me, Finn thought to himself. That thing was no cloud, no art, and he had no desire to find out. Dark lightning crackled in the twisting mass, striking the ground on occasion with booms that could be heard from a distance. Each time the ground shook, Finn sped up his pace further.

Draven's unconscious body was strapped to his back like a sack of coal, while Elevalein walked ahead with a limp and a missing left hand—courtesy of one day fighting desperately for his life. He spoke no words, and for that Finn was glad. He needed not hear how little of a help he was in this forsaken place.

Wounds riddled Finn's body. Not one inch of it was left unmauled by one hexbeast or another, but he credited his skill with the sword for not having lost a limb—a petty win, if any. Four of his ribs were cracked. One of his wrists was strained to the point of being unusable. Exhausted, wounded as he was, he'd die to the next hexbeast that ambushed them. And it was all Elevalein's fault.

Fool, Specters are nothing but echoes of what people once were. Why do you cling to your dead brothers, let them control your hexion, put you—all of us—at risk?

It had not taken long for the truth to be revealed. The Evoker had preserved the fading wills of his brothers instead of erasing them, and they now exacted the price. A body with three distinct wills fighting for dominance of the dwindling hexion in his core. Sometimes, Elevalein won. More often than not, his brothers' childish tantrums prevented him from using any Arts at all.

"Let's… stop here. For now." Elevalein whispered with fading strength.

"Here?" Finn had to double-check his surroundings. They were in the middle of nowhere, exposed were it not for a few dead, dried up trees that were spaced out scarcely around them. "I don't think it's wise—"

Elevalein's eyes widened as his voice trembled out of his lips, "How?" He roared, extending his arms outward as a cloud of green mist expanded to encompass Finn and Draven. "It's… here. It tricked me. I thought it was further away. I sensed it, damn it!"

"Ashes! We need to go. We need to get a better place to hide—"

The shadows squirmed on the ground, twisting, revolving like writhing ink, and as if drawn by the careful hand of a painter, pooled into an unassuming spot ahead of them. The surface of the shallow, dark liquid was disturbed as small ripples built up momentum until they trembled with the same terror that made Finn's heart leap out of his chest.

A black-furred, clawed hand burst out from it, puncturing the ground and using it as leverage to pull the rest of its body out. The creature had a pair of horns adorning its head like a crown, black fur covering its body with a lusterless shine, and claws that cleaved stone with a frightening ease.

Finn set Draven's body in the ground, not uttering a whisper. Elevalein's Art held before, if barely. It would hold now. It had to! Five days. Five days since Draven had dived into the Sixfold Corridor. Not enough time—the gap between Ascendance and Eminence was greater than Reverence and Eminence—but it would have to be enough.

Draves, you better be ready. Finn let the pull of Daesvor drag him to land, the land of dreams, where he'd use his memories of Draven to find his way to wherever his consciousness was.

You better be ready, or we're all dead.