The Two

Avii held the crushing weight of the stone and debris atop his shoulders, preventing the world from caving in around him. As he did, his armour hissed and whined, the magical runes glowing brightly as the arcanzcore quickly drained with every passing second that he bore the weight of the earth. Beneath him, pressed between his chest and the ground, the man he had risked it all to save stared up at him with the horrific visage that had been carved on his face by a lifetime of cruelty.

“Go.” Avii groaned, nodding his head forward to the opening his sacrifice provided. “Crawl!”

But the man was too tired. Too tortured. His body remained frozen beneath Avii, watching with relief as the world closed in on him. He was broken, ready to die, and Avii could see it in his eyes. In the way his body lay against the stone. He yearned for the sweet release of oblivion. But Avii was not ready for the end, not now that he had found another. And he would not let the man escape so easily.

With a cry, Avii pushed against the earth. He felt his muscles strain and rip as metal groaned against the unimaginable weight. After surviving years deep within the shafts of Mount Maldain, he would not perish in some Kovik Peat Mine. So, with a mighty thrust of his arms towards the ceiling, he lifted earth and flaming wreckage high. His cries echoed out as he held the world aloft and with as gentle a kick as he could muster, pushed his kin free of the collapse.

Diving forward, Avii cleared the falling earth as it tumbled back into place. In an instant, dust shrouded the room, blinding his vision and covering him in a cloud of fine particles that stuck to his blood-soaked body, muddying his armour beyond recognition. He waited for a while, bracing for aftershocks like those he had experienced in his youth, but as the world began to settle and his vision finally returned, he instantly transitioned into a trained search and rescue mindset. With a twist of his head, he could once again see the Maldainian whom he had saved. Only now, his broken body rested motionless on the stone floor.

Avii began to move forward, pausing his step as a pained wheeze from behind caught his attention. Quickly shifting his gaze, he noticed a man crushed between stone and debris. His face was badly burnt, looking more corpse than Kovik as he clawed at the boulders in a failing attempt to free himself. That was when Avii noticed it, just beyond his reach, the bottle of thick crimson liquid. It was just small enough to fit in the palm of his hand and topped with a cork sealed by wax. He knew what it was, because it had been used on him plenty of times to bring his tired soul back from the brink of death.

The nation of Kovika was not one of holy veneration, for they did not worship the pantheon of Gods as the Estarians did. The men and women of their cursed nation believed in something far crueller, instead following the black practices of Devils and Daemons. Because of this accursed devotion, they did not have access to the healing magic of the divinity, but this did not translate to them being without means to bring back even the most mangled body from the edge of oblivion. Healing potions distilled from the crimson blood of tortured souls filled the bottles, the wax bearing a sigil meant to keep the unholy magic bound until it was needed.

With a quick leap forward, Avii took the bottle from the rubble before the slaver could reach it. In an instant, the broken gaze of a damned soul turned his way. The look in his eyes begged the question of why he would take away the one thing that could save him. But Avii felt no remorse. A soul for a soul after all. And he would gladly trade a thousand Koviks for a single one of his people.

“Give…it…back.” The man wheezed, blood pouring from his charred lips as he weakly reached for Avii. “Release…it…you dirty…mu-mu-mu—”

“Rot in the very hells you worship.” Avii hissed as he stepped back. “Kovik fiend.”

Ignoring the dying coughs of the wretched man, Avii rushed to the side of the Maldainian where he placed his hands to the cage that kept the slave’s eyes open and mouth peeled back. The tortured soul stared back up at him, glossy gaze forward and body as still as a corpse.

“No!” Avii cried, handling the man quickly as he searched for the pins that kept the head guard in place. “No, don’t die! Don’t die on me!”

Ripping the bolts free, Avii tore the torturous cage from the man’s skull, blood spraying from where it peeled away flesh and making his hands slick in the moments before he fiddled with the bottle. The already fragile glass slipped as he worked to liberate the cork, and as it tumbled to the ground, he barely managed to catch it in time. He couldn’t waste a single drop on anything but the lips of the Maldainian.

With a satisfying pop, the cork was finally freed, and Avii lifted the man’s head. Carefully, he poured the liquid, waiting a moment after the first drops fell to ensure he didn’t spit any of the life-saving elixir back up. But his body remained limp.

“Come on!” Avii yelled, tears forming at the corners of his eyes. “Come on! No! Stay with me!”

He tipped the bottle back, draining the remainder of the liquid into the man’s mouth. Waiting in a tense silence, Avii watched as the fluid slowly disappeared, dripping down the back of his throat until it was all gone. But nothing came of it. No movement. No breaths. No sounds. All that remained was silence interspersed with the tumbling of pebbles and the occasional crackling of dying embers.

And as tears began to form, cutting rivers through the dust-caked blood of his cheeks, Avii watched as the man’s chest lifted slightly. In an instant, lips and tongue regrew as teeth returned and wounds healed. Metal rods protruding from flesh still marked where the cage had been bound to the man’s head, but the infections surrounding them had since healed. Seconds passed, then minutes, and before long, a wheeze revealed life.

“I—” He struggled to speak, this likely being the first time in many years since he had been able to do so. “I’m alive?”

“You are brother,” Avii spoke, still embracing the man. “You are alive and no longer alone.”

“I…It—” He smacked his crimson-painted lips. “It does’in ‘urt.”

“I’ve given you the crimson draught. Your body is healing. Give it a day, and you’ll feel better than you have in years.”

“B-But why?” He asked, raising an arm and looking at it. “Why ‘elp a mule like me?”

“Because brother,” Avii replied, wiping a hand across his chest to clear the blood and dust from the scratched letters. “We are the same. We are Maldainian.”

The man’s eyes grew wide as he shifted from Avii’s gaze, his armour flaring with magic as he attempted to sit on his own. Slowly he reached up, wincing as he touched at the bolts in his skull before looking to the healed scars atop Avii’s shaved head.

“Im-impossible.” He muttered, slowly reaching out and touching at Avii’s face. “You-you’re real? You’re really a Maldainian?”

“I am,” Avii spoke, his voice becoming raspy as the emotions welled up inside of him. “I’m from the homeland. I survived. We survived, friend.”

The man’s hands slid down to Avii’s shoulder, resting against the armour as he took the sight in. His expression was one of relief, as though the weight of the world had been suddenly lifted from his very soul. Though no smile met his regrown lips and the broken gaze did shine with joy, Avii knew the expression well. It was the feeling of hope. A feeling he felt the day Estaria saved him from the Kovika camp he had been held hostage. It was a hope of a brighter future.

“My-my name was—is Jonas.” He finally spoke. “I was the son of a travellin’ merchant from Ill’fallnah. I was in Kovika with’em the day o’the fall.”

Avii’s heart dropped at the thought of a Maldainian boy being under Kovika enslavement since the beginning of the end. Even for Avii with his hardened soul, ten years had been an unimaginable strain that pushed him to fantasize about death. The fact that Jonas, easily ten years younger than Avii himself, had survived all thirty and still had the will to speak made the mule aware of his strength of character.

“My name is Avii.” He finally answered. “I hailed from the capital—from Alcetra. I worked the mines, and I was there that day. I—”

“You…”

Avii watched the look in the man’s face shift. That weight that had disappeared returned with a heaviness unlike before. As though an unexplainable burden had suddenly fallen upon his shoulders. Lips twitched with horror as his eyes became wild.

“You!” Jonas cried out, his hands quickly wrapping around Avii’s neck as the runes of his bindings flared to empower him. “You were the one they spoke of? You were the one who was there?”

Gasping, Avii reached up to grab at Jonas’s hands as he dug weathered thumbs into his windpipe.

“You!” He continued, his grip tightening and cutting off Avii’s airway. “You did this to our people? You are the Demon of the Mountain?!”