Wolves of Empire [EPIC DARK FANTASY] [Book One Complete]

Five

Estrid

Varanos, Kalduran

23rd of Tabus

Estrid sliced her blade in a lethal arc, the steel singing as it clashed with her opponent's. She flinched backwards, the shockwave rippling along her arm, and danced around a retaliatory strike that would've sheared her nose off.

As she prepared to seize back the offensive, her assailant opened his free hand, presenting his palm. Only a hasty and ill-performed dodge saved her from the bolt of crackling magical energy he fired at her. The fizzling projectile pricked at her skin as it glanced her flank, an echo of the spasming sensation she would've suffered had the lightning bolt struck home. It dissipated a heartbeat later, snuffed out when her attacker closed his fingers around his palm.

By the time she recovered herself, her opponent's blade pressed against her neck.

"Shit," she said, spitting into the dirt at her feet.

"Shit indeed," was the reply. "You are very dead, Elerius."

She threw her sword down more petulantly than was warranted and stepped back with her hands raised in mock surrender. "I just can't bloody focus on anything but your sword. I was never trained to combat magic as well."

Her opponent sighed as he stooped for her weapon. "This is actually the point of these lessons, believe it or not."

She scoffed and snatched the blade from him. "I don't understand how you can do it so fast. If I want to use my magic, I need to put myself into a trance. Not convenient on the battlefield."

"Practice," Borso, her bulky, shaven-headed opponent, replied. To demonstrate, he showed his palm again and, without the slightest trace of effort, sent a small snake of lightning slithering towards her. "You were never allowed to practice your aasiurmancy in the Imperium, hence your struggle with it now. It takes me two seconds to conjure my lightning, but it took me a decade to reach that point."

"What I'm hearing is: I won't gain any real expertise in this until I'm a frail old woman."

Borso chuckled. "I can't picture you ever being old or frail." He gestured down to himself. "Besides, I'm two decades older than you, and I don't look half bad."

Though she snorted her amusement, she couldn't disagree with him. Technically sixty-five years old, Borso's mastery of a single strand of aasiurmancy—thundermancy—allowed him to look half that. He'd never achieve the immortality of those on the Varkommer, but he'd easily surpass a century. She, with her scant magical skill and infrequent uses of her inherent pyromancy, looked younger than her forty-six years, but she'd be lucky to extend her lifespan at all.

"If it makes you happy, continue to think that," Estrid said, pacing forward and slapping his back.

Aside from her mentor in all things aasiurmantic, Borso was also her masantra, her second-in-command. When she'd first defected to Drasken twelve years ago, Borso had been acting kandras of her army—the Dasjurans—having assumed the role after his superior's death. When Estrid had been offered the title, she'd expected her new second to begrudge her. Instead, he'd seemed relieved to no longer hold sole command of ten thousand men, and had since become her most steadfast friend.

Borso swept a hand over his shaved scalp. "I'm the finest looking man in Kalduran and you know it."

"If I lowered my standards, sure."

He made to return her over-enthusiastic backslap, but she moved out of the way and smacked the flat of her blade against his flank. His leather training vest ensured it did little more than make a sharp noise, but he feigned injury and rocked sideways.

"I want to see some pyromancy," he said after straightening.

"And I want to see you on your arse with my sword at your neck, having fantastically bested you, but we can't all get what we want."

"You picture my arse often, do you?" Borso replied with a sly grin. He waved aside any further snide comments. "You've been on leave for several months now. I imagine you've spent most of that time honing your magic?"

"I'm out in my garden in my dressing gown for hours every day, concentrating so hard my brain smokes with the force of my thinking."

Borso saw right through the lie. In truth, she'd tried at aasiurmancy many times in Volėnis, calling to mind everything he'd taught her when they trained together. But she'd failed so pitifully, she was glad only her housekeeper bore witness. Thirty-four years of her life had been spent suppressing her pyromancy, knowing the Imperium would strip her of her titles and make of her a glorified slave if she ever nurtured her magical strength. Even coming to Drasken, a nation so entrenched in magic it was literally ruled by it, hadn't helped; her fear of the repercussions for practising aasiurmancy meant she'd neglected it for too long.

She could've, upon first arriving in Kalduran, enrolled in an aasiurmantic college and received the basic training of every Drasken combat-mage. Five years, or thereabouts, and she would've mastered her pyromancy and perhaps other branches besides. But then she wouldn't have been made kandras, and she couldn't consider a life outside the military.

"Show me what you can do," Borso prompted.

Estrid gazed across the training ring they occupied, embedded within a small field of fenced-off circles on the edge of her army's city barracks, itself camped on the northern outskirts of Varanos. Because the spring campaign hadn't been officially declared, only a handful of her officers were currently training, the rest yet to be recalled from winter leave. Still, she felt the weight of their judgment.

She'd commanded the Dasjuran army for twelve years now—almost as long as she'd been an arch-general back in the Imperium—and though they'd accepted her, she felt lacking, as if she still needed to earn their approval.

Which she wouldn't do failing at magic in front of them.

Borso, who knew her too well, grasped her train of thought. "It's just us two right now. No one else is looking."

She lowered herself to the floor and crossed her legs, elbows resting on her knees. She closed her eyes and banished her surroundings, focusing only on the soft murmur of her breathing and her heartbeat's gentle thrumming. Her world shrank to the expanse of black behind her eyelids.

Reaching inwards had once been impossible for her. It was still a struggle now. Raised as a soldier, she perceived the world in its physical reality. Here, an infantry company in battle formation. There, the steady rise of a hill she could hide them behind. A sword in her hands, real and solid. The hardness of the ground beneath her as she marched.

Aasiurmancy was a negation of that.

One had to think in abstractions, she'd been told. Ignore the physical in favour of the metaphysical and shape the world to your whims.

She focused on the impenetrable darkness and found the faint pulse of light that represented herself, her soul. Reaching for it inspired a muted pain; she screwed her eyes shut so tight her forehead ached. With an imagined twist, she severed the light from her body and was thrown back out into daylight.

Her form sat beneath her, locked in trance. Tendrils of light illuminated it, some rooting her to the ground, others flickering out into the air.

Around her, Varanos had transformed.

No longer a physical entity, Estrid couldn't perceive the world as such. Instead, she saw only the aasiur, the energy, that composed everything, flickering out as a mass of interconnected and impossibly complex strands. The world had been stripped back to its core components, to life's ethereal building blocks, to bones without flesh.

In place of the crowds clotting Varanos's streets, she saw tangles of light, every soul a tiny sentient sun drifting through the labyrinthine streets. Unreality dimmed the city itself, casting it as if Estrid viewed through a dirty window. An impenetrable tapestry overlaid everything with the gossamer quality of aged spiderwebs, merging with the solar-bright aasiur in a way that diminished neither: the Shroud, the metaphysical division between this planet and everything beyond.

The Shroud was soft as velvet but impassable as a sheer cliff-face. Unrestricted by so concrete a concept as distance, it always lay within reach of Estrid's ethereal self whenever she entered this trace. She grasped the ghostly fabric with unreal hands and unpicked its unreal threads, the sensation of its touch bizarre in how ordinary it was. To her untrained mind, the process was laborious.

Beyond waited Incendura, the Gnostic Plane of pyromancers. Borso had told her there were nine knowable Gnostic Planes, each linked to one of the nine aasiurmantic branches, but instinct anchored her to this one. Every mage was similarly anchored, and only through intense practice could they tear themselves from their original Plane and broaden their aasiurmantic horizons. Hone all nine branches, and a mage gained true immortality, like those in Drasken's upper echelons.

She emptied her mind and stepped beyond the Shroud. Incendura's embrace welcomed her.

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Her metaphysical self, unable to process the sight of a Gnostic Plane, perceived it as an infinite expanse of reds and oranges and yellows that rippled with the quality of a fierce sunset. Like when worldstriding, there was no floor or ceiling, no up or down, no perception of anything but the motive colours and the fantastical energy they represented.

An eternal heat assailed her, neither comfortable nor painful; she imagined herself at an inferno's nexus, its chaotic roar deafening, its force snatching the breath from her lungs, though the sound and the pressure was her own frantic mind. The sickly-sweet smell of magic thickened in her throat, as real as anything could be just then.

The aasiur bathed her as she opened herself to it, suffusing her with transcendent power, filling her with fire until she was heavy with it.

Freeing herself of Incendura's grip was always the hardest part. Linger too long, allow too much aasiur to fill her soul, and her mind would be torn asunder, its dismembered parts absorbed into the Plane itself.

Still, she wrenched herself away and seeped back through the tear she'd sliced into the Shroud. It closed behind her, healing as Tanas's worldstriding portals did.

The waking was a revelation when her soul and body reunited. She jolted, sucking in a huge lungful of breath, her limbs tingling with the presence of magic. Red now tinged her vision, as if a small flame had been lit within her skull.

Borso regarded her expectantly.

The aasiur pressed against her, bloating her, filling her as water in drowning lungs. On shaky legs she rose, arms raised, palms flattened. An image of a firestorm dominated her mind's eye, an unconscious thought she'd not conjured herself. It sharpened until it seared itself into her vision.

Akin to bathwater rushing down a drain, the aasiur she'd collected surged into her palms, guided by the firestorm's mental image. She tried to shape it as it flowed through her, tried to picture a more controlled burst of fire. Instead, an epic conflagration soared tens of feet skywards, hot enough to beat her face. It billowed outwards, blossoming from her hands and fanning out into the air.

Her soul emptied; she felt drained of blood and energy. By the time a final tendril of fire spat from her outstretched hands, her knees were aching to buckle.

Borso moved to her side as she swayed and clasped her shoulder.

"How long?" she muttered.

"You were gone two minutes," he replied.

She cursed in defeat: two minutes to make the journey to the Shroud and fill herself with magic, when Borso could do it in a heartbeat, between sword blows. And what had her wasted minutes achieved? An uncontrolled fire she couldn't make obey her. About as useless in battle as no fire at all, when she could just as easily strike down her own men.

"The power's there," Borso noted. "You just need more control. The more you do it, the quicker it is, until you can conjure without even closing your eyes."

Estrid skimmed the neighbouring rings. Though her officers made valiant attempts to not stare, they'd all seen her unconstrained firestorm.

"It's better than you were," Borso added.

"An untrained mule is better than I was."

He flashed a smile. "That's ridiculous: animals can't do magic."

"That just further proves my point."

He made a playful swipe at her, and she spun on her heel to dodge it. As she swept around, she almost slammed face-first into a solid form.

"Baltanos, sir," Borso said, snapping a salute.

Estrid mirrored his gesture as she stepped backwards, but Aladar waved her away. The Baltanos looked down at the sword he clutched in one fist, having no doubt brought it with him, and then across at Borso. "Master Farkas, could I steal your kandras?"

"Of course, sir." As he paced away to overseer their officers, Borso flashed her a half-smile.

Once alone, Aladar ran his free hand along the length of his bared blade. As plain as its wielder, it was a weapon he rarely had cause to free, and Estrid knew he trained only infrequently.

She hadn't seen her superior since their conversation in his estate two days ago. The image of him ranting to himself, calling himself a monster, had lodged itself in her mind and refused to be banished.

"Why was I the only kandras you told of your envoy's death?" she asked before the silence between them could become uncomfortable. "You didn't invite the other three?"

"Because you're the only one I trust."

"What about Elek Danukos?" she asked, naming the youngest of Kalduran's four kandras.

"What about him?"

"He commands Kalduran's largest army. He's regarded as your heir."

"Is he? By whom?"

Estrid supressed a frown. Either Aladar played at ignorance to goad her into sharing the opinions of her fellow kandras, or he was genuinely unaware that, however unofficial, Elek Danukos was seen by all as his eventual successor.

Her reply was a non-committal shrug, which Aladar seemed to accept. He raised his sword in challenge and deflected the lazy parry she threw at him. He stumbled with her next, almost failed with the third. Perhaps he trained even more infrequently than she'd assumed. Or maybe he was distracted.

"The Imperium has agreed to meet at Dujaro to negotiate," Aladar said into the pause. "We all know it's pointless, but it's a formality we must oversee."

He pushed forward before she could reply. Again, she prevailed, having to pull back her retaliation lest she sail past his guard and disembowel him.

"I would like you by my side," Aladar added, "as my successor."

Her reply clotted in her throat with shock.

"The only reason Elek inhabits that role now is because I never saw the need to officially name an heir. But now there is a need, and you fit the role." He speared his blade into the dirt between his feet. "I want to use this campaign to test your suitability, but I already know you'll prove me wise in choosing you."

She stuttered. "But I'm not Drasken. Not even Kaldurani. I wouldn't be accepted. The army I command is only ten thousand strong."

Aladar raised calming hands. "You are my choice. The Kommer of War has agreed with me on this." He cocked his head, gaze intense. "Are you prepared to wage war against your old friends?"

Estrid nodded, unable to voice the words lest she find them a lie.

In truth, beyond a few individual exceptions, she'd happily take the field against the Imperium. She'd reap immense pleasure in marching her army into Empyria itself and slaughtering the Caetoran and his family in their palace. But the ones she'd left behind were like family, more so than anyone she knew in Drasken. As much as she owed Aladar and Tanas, as much as she liked Borso, as much as she respected the other kandras and the distant Varkommer, they weren't family.

Her family, had she never fled her homeland, would be the Boratorrens. Endarion, the man she'd almost married, and his daughter Daria, who was, in almost every way, her daughter, too. There was also the arch-general who'd succeeded her in her home Reign of Quendinther, who was still secretly loyal to her.

"They aren't your people anymore," Aladar said, his words knives to her thoughts. "They all serve a ruler who would frame us only to destroy us."

She nodded again. "I know. But it's hard to let go of what could've been."

"I understand."

Estrid almost snapped her disagreement; he couldn't understand, not wholly. He had Tanas, who was all the family he needed. He hadn't watched his parents and siblings executed in front of him, their crimes fabricated, the evidence against then planted. He hadn't been forced to turn away from the man he loved for fear of being assassinated. He hadn't been stripped of his right to bear children because he was an aasiurmancer.

She clenched her jaws and fended the thoughts off. It was unfair to compare herself to him.

"One day, Estrid, you might sit on the Varkommer," Aladar continued. "If you hone your aasiurmancy, you could become immortal. You could even be elected Keizerin, one day."

What's the point if I'm alone?

She said nothing.

"I don't know which direction this upcoming campaign will take, but we, like all soldiers, live to serve." He reclaimed his blade and brandished it. "Be thankful we serve better masters than the Caetoran."

He pulled his arm back to strike, then froze. His eyes glazed like a drunk's and his teeth chattered. Estrid knew what gripped him even as his arms spasmed, his knuckles flushing white around his sword's handle; a wordless grunt spilled from his clamped mouth as he swung in a haphazard arc. He was no longer present, replaced instead by this mad, hallucinating version of himself.

"Leave me alone," he hissed. "I'm not what you think I am."

His next slash contained all the fury and force of a man twice his size, yet his body barely shifted. The blade whipped the air, carving a wicked circle around him as he pivoted against an imaginary foe.

"You won't have me," he cried. A ragged chuckle ripped through his throat. "Yes, I will. I needn't do anything at all."

Estrid glanced around the rings, finding them empty, Borso having apparently ushered the officers away so that the Baltanos could spar with her privately. She considered rushing away to find someone, to fetch Tanas, maybe. But Aladar could easily injure himself in her absence. Easily kill himself if he turned his steel inwards.

She waited for his next violent strike, then ducked under his guard and punched his wrist. He released his blade and turned his focus to her, one hand grasping at her bare hand. She expected him to struggle against her, use her arm to unbalance her, but instead he froze again. The grip that enfolded her wrist was gentle, almost coaxing.

Without warning, her vision blackened. The courtyard around her suddenly became a yawning void. The howling Abyss pulsed in her head as it pulled her into its malevolent embrace. She hurtled through nothingness, the darkness flowering ravenously before her, consuming everything.

Then the blackness faded, dirtied by the essence of reality washing back over her like waves over a rocky shore.

She no longer tumbled through oblivion but stood within what she first assumed was a sandstorm-beaten desert. An angry wind buffeted her, and she smelled the harsh aroma of ash in the air. What she took at first to be sand whipped up by the maelstrom dissipated into a dust cloud laden with cinders and swirling with smoke.

After several panicked heartbeats, the wind and the engulfing cloud died, revealing her surroundings. As far as the horizon, and certainly beyond, the ground was rocky and dark, desiccated obsidian. Dark shades of bloody red and poisoned green stained the sky, as if the atmosphere itself laboured with a fatal disease. There was a foetid stench now, a scent Estrid, as a veteran, knew intimately.

Death.

Death saturated this place. Not a barren desert never inhabited, but rather the long-extinct ruins of somewhere that had once flourished and been savagely devastated.

She stared around herself, searching for landmarks, finding nothing beyond lethal juts of rock shaped by a ruthless wind.

It was nowhere she was familiar with. She knew of the southern continent of Dunstria, with its fierce and impassable desert beneath the inhabited land along its northern coast. She knew also of Shaeviren, an ugly, hostile planet she'd once travelled to when rescuing Endarion from his torture. She knew of the land north of Drasken, felled by the Cataclysm millennia ago, now inhospitable.

None of those options seemed to fit.

Nowhere on the continent, in the world, in the Vast Infinite, even, seemed to fit.

A shape distinguished itself against the corpse-like backdrop. Formless in its sheer size, its malevolence oozed from it as pus from a rotten wound. She stared at it, its edges blurred by heat and sand and ash and death, and felt an iron fist squeeze her chest.

She saw her own demise within the black depths of the outlined monster. Saw the violent details of it. Saw her shredded body, her blood painting this unnamed desert, her dying screams stolen by the wind. She fixed her eyes upon the beast and knew its intent and trembled in terror.

It wanted not just to end her life, but to unmake her as completely and horrifically as possible.

A flicker of hot breath across the back of her neck made her jolt; she jolted herself all the way from the apocalyptic landscape back to the barracks in Varanos. She awoke with a shuddering inhale, finding herself still standing with Aladar's hand clasping her own.

Tanas held her other hand, a deep and troubled frown marring his expression. He set his free hand on Aladar's, stroked his fingers with his own. The Baltanos's eyes cleared, a comatose man roused by the simplicity of a lover's touch, and he released Estrid.

Aladar fell into his consort's arms, and Tanas bore his weight with ease. "Whatever you saw, disregard it," Tanas said to Estrid as he cradled his husband's shoulders.

"How do you know I saw anything?" Estrid asked, her tongue shaping the question of its own accord; her mind was still firmly rooted wherever Aladar's enforced vision had taken her. The Abyss, the desert, the monster. "Has it happened before?"

Tanas shook his head and began coaxing Aladar out of the ring. "It's part of his episodes. I don't know how he makes others see what he sees."

"That's not madness," Estrid replied. "That's not even magic. It's…."

"It's nothing," Tanas insisted.

Tanas left without another word, Aladar a heavy burden draped across his shoulder, and Estrid was alone. The whisper of the monster's breath on her neck blazed brightly on her skin, more insistent than any mundane vision. It convinced her that Tanas lied.