Bacorium Legacy (75 page)

The line - which he could now feel so strongly - was strained - farther than it should have been able to. For one sick moment, Luca felt like it couldn't possibly break, and he would have to be dragged along for the rest of his life.

But then it snapped.

Luca heaved up, vomiting a mouthful of blood on the ground. Then he shuddered, feeling like a naked child in the snow. It was cold. So cold. So very cold.

He hated the cold.

Breath came back to him, very slowly. A few long minutes passed - which felt like hours to him - and he gradually began to feel like himself again.

But something was missing. He felt alone, like a chunk of him had just been ripped away. He wanted to start running, to find her and wrap his arms around her and squeeze her until they were one person again.

He stood up, on unsteady legs. Gordon was staring at him, confused and terrified.

“Are you alright?! What just happened to you?”

“Em-Emila...” he said slowly.

Gordon simply stared at him, frowning. “Who...?”

Luca turned, to face the direction that he had felt the connection. It had trailed far away, down past the valley, and in the direction of the Grey Wasteland.

“Why?” he said aloud.

Why would she go to Acaria? It was the one place she swore she could never go to - what could possibly be in there for her?

“Luca, say something!”

He turned to Gordon. “I have to go to Acaria.”

The man looked at him like he was insane. “Why?”

“I don't know why she's doing it, but Emila is going there - I have to go to her. I have to protect her. She'll be killed on her own...”

“Luca,” Gordon said slowly, approaching him carefully. “You have to remember what's ultimately important. This girl may be important to you, but think of how many thousands of lives will be lost if you can't kill Zinoro. If you go to Acaria without a Rixeor Fragment-”

“To hell with that!” Luca shouted. “I'm going after her! You said I'll need you to get into Acarienthia, right? If that's true, then you'd better come with me. But with or without you, I'm going after her.”

And then he started off, in the direction he knew Emila had gone. Gordon stared at him for a moment, then sighed and reluctantly followed.

<> <> <>

“Luca!”

Selphie ran, rushing past the various men in armour making their way around the camp. She had been searching for Luca for nearly an hour, without so much as a sign of him. Now she ran, having caught a glimpse of familiar white hair.

But then the person turned, and she saw it was only Ash.

“Selphie...” Ash said. “Did you think I was my brother?”

“I'm sorry, I did.” She really was sorry. She knew he didn't like being compared with Luca. Looking around, she saw tents with red hearts, and robed healers tending to injured soldiers. She was at the medical area. She had been so exasperated she hadn't even realised where she was.

Selphie noticed Ash was standing beside a tent with his arms crossed. Now that she thought of it, Jared had been injured, and she'd sent Ash to look over him. So much had been happening, she'd completely forgotten. Suddenly, her worries resurfaced.

“Is he - okay?”

Ash nodded. “He's sleeping.”

She let out a relieved sigh. That was one thing she didn't have to worry about.

“You're looking for my brother?” Ash asked her.

“Yes, I am.”

“Well, I saw him briefly a while ago. He was looking for Emila. You know that wherever she goes, he follows.”

“Indeed,” Selphie said. Those two were inseparable - almost literally.

Ash scoffed. “Well, you might want to send out a search party. One of the scouts passed by a few minutes ago, and he said that he saw Emila making her way down into the valley.”

“What?” Selphie exclaimed. “Why would she do that?”

“The battle probably left a bad taste in her mouth,” Ash said. “She doesn't seem to have much of a stomach for bloodshed. You remember when we fought Trunda in that one town? She cried for hours after that.”

'Hours' was a bit of an exaggeration, Selphie thought. Emila had sworn never to kill anyone, and then broke that vow to save Luca's life. Her tears were justified.

“If she's running away, you know my brother is going with her,” Ash said. “We'll see soon whether he talks her into coming back, or she talks him into running away together.”

Selphie frowned as she thought about that. Perhaps her problem had solved itself. The battlefield was no place for a person like Emila. And Luca needed to get away from Halt as it was. If they ran away together, it would be for the best for both of them. Really, the timing couldn't have been more perfect.

They could take care of each other. Selphie looked to the tent that Jared slept in, and she left out another sigh. She was actually envious of them. They were free in all the ways she was not. Free to do what they wanted, to go where they wanted, and to be with each other - just as they wanted.

“Good for them, then,” Selphie said. Ash blinked, a bit surprised to hear that response.

“You're not angry?”

“No. Things were about to get bad for Luca here. That's why I was trying to find him, so I could warn him. But if he and Emila have left together, then that's great.”

“But - I thought you hated Luca for betraying you at the Elder Hall.”

“I was angry, sure,” Selphie said. “But my father talked some sense into me.” Funny, that. Just a few days ago it had been the opposite.

Ash stared at her with a strange look on his face. Selphie suddenly felt uncomfortable. She was about to excuse herself and leave, when she heard the sound of a voice groaning. From within the tent, a voice was calling her name.

She gasped, “Jared...!”

And then, the mask came off. Her emotions flowed freely, and she threw open the flaps of the tent and ran inside. Relief at concern that she'd hardly realised she was burying flowed forth freely, and tears ran down her face as she embraced him.

And outside, Ash stood by himself, trying to ignore the sounds Selphie made as she embraced Jared. He clenched his fists in a jealous rage, and walked away.

<> <> <>

“So...? What do you think?”

Luca stared down at the circle in front of him. Carved into the ground, it stretched out for nearly half a kilometre in each direction. Half a day ago, the Acarian army had been warped from some unknown location to this very circle, and had almost wiped out the Saeticians. Now, however, there was nothing. No horn was blown as the two figures had descended the long hill and crossed the empty lake. And no mana had swelled up when they stepped on it.

Gordon patiently waited for an answer to his question.

“I'm still new to this,” Luca told him. “I don't really know how these circles work. All I had to go off was one my father had sketched on a piece of paper that I haven't seen for months. So I have no idea how to use the teleportation spell to follow it. However...”

“However?”

“I'm not sensing any mana in this at all. I should be able to feel something, if it's an artifact that's used for magick weaves. But there's nothing. Not even a hint of resonant mana.”

Gordon thought for a moment. “They must have disabled it. Serpos knows you can use the teleportation spell from seeing it in the battle. He would have told Zinoro, who would have severed the link to prevent you from using it. The circle is big enough that you could have used his own tactic against him, and warped a whole army through.”

“It makes sense...” Luca replied.

Speaking of severed links...

He turned and looked out over the Grey Wasteland on the other side of the empty lake. Save for the mountains far in the distance, and the vague outline of ruined cities, it was empty. Nobody lived in Acaria. Only monsters thrived in such desolate places, living in holes and emerging at night to hunt humans or - more often - each other.

The tether was only supposed to be able to hold for a kilometre, so at the time it was broken, Emila shouldn't have been much farther from him than that. But she had left as soon as the camp had been set up in the hills, which was hours ago. Therefore, the tether must have grown stronger since they had last tested it. Which made sense, as it had hurt a lot more breaking than the time when he'd first met her, and he had tried to run away.

It was strange, no longer being linked to her like that. He had grown so used to the constant sense of partial company he felt. He was left starkly alone without that, even though there was an actual person standing only a few metres away from him.

And if he hadn't felt vulnerable enough already, he knew that now that the tether was broken, he no longer had the invulnerability to death he'd had before. He could be killed just like anyone else.

“We're not going all the way to Acarienthia,” Luca reminded Gordon. “If we can catch up with her, and bring her back with us, then we might not even encounter a single Acarian.”

“Let us hope so. Without a Rixeor Fragment, you can't possibly beat Zinoro.”

Luca turned back to Gordon. “That's kind of strange, though. Someone with a Rixeor Fragment can't possibly be invincible, because the swords pass to new masters. If someone with a Rixeor Fragment was unstoppable, then nobody else would ever be able to obtain it.”

“That's true - but you haven't seen what Zinoro is capable of,” Gordon said. “He's the greatest swordsman I've ever seen. Serpos is a deadly fighter for sure, and he could never come close to beating Zinoro. How many of the acolytes have you beaten?”

“I killed Dreevius,” Luca muttered. But even that had a silver lining. A weakling like Dreevius had managed to stab him through the heart twice. A normal person would have been killed twice over. Trunda had beaten him three times - in Serenite, by the waterfall in Reven, and at the inn. He never had been able to match him. And Serpos - he had needed the help of Brand and Wiosna to beat him, and even then they had just barely managed to destroy the orb. The man likely could have beaten them all in a straight fight.

“Even with a Rixeor Fragment, it would take a greatly skilled warrior to beat Zinoro,” Gordon said. “Now there is the prophecy, which is why Zinoro was so determined to kill you before - but it's only a potential future that you kill him. It's not a guarantee to rely on.”

Luca put his hand on the sword at his side. “I've got my father's blade, the teleportation spell he left me, and his unique style of swordplay. Essentially everything I have was left by him. My father killed Zinoro's father - and then Zinoro killed him. If history is to repeat itself, then I will be able to beat him.”

“Let's hope so - because I feel a conflict between you two is inevitable.”

With those words hanging in the air, Luca and Gordon continued on their way, headed towards the Grey Wasteland in pursuit of Emila. And as they went, Luca continued to ask himself the same question. Why was Emila going to Acaria?

What could possibly be there for her?

Chapter XXV

The Will to Power

For a countless distance, a lone figure made her way quickly through the desolate nothingness that was Acaria. Two figures followed her, as they had for two days, keeping a careful distance to avoid detection. They hid behind whatever they could find - hills, boulders, and the even the occasional dried tree or abandoned farmhouse. The progress they made was agonisingly slow and difficult, but it was necessary.

For the woman they were pursuing was not Emila.

“By some miracle of the fates, I think we've managed to avoid being seen,” Gordon said to Luca in a quiet voice. There was no need to speak so quietly - there was no way their target could hear them from over half a kilometre away. They were hiding behind a boulder while Verra was stopped to rest for a moment.

Luca frowned, glancing back the way they had come. A week and a half after setting out from the camp, they had made a lot of distance into Acaria. Without the tether to magickally tell him where she was, tracking Emila had been difficult. For the first few days, they had managed to keep a trail going by following the occasional footprint or by simply making logical decisions on which path she had likely taken. But the farther into Acaria they went, the harder that had become. The winds grew strong, and the dirt at their feet looser - footprints became rarer and rarer each day before disappearing altogether. Without clues they were forced to make every decision off a guess, and after a while Luca was certain they were going the wrong way.

The trail went cold, and for a few days they had wandered at random, with Luca growing increasingly worried with each passing hour. And then, by pure chance, they had found a set of footprints. His hope renewed, Luca had followed the new trail with vigour. And eventually they led him to a hill overlooking a valley, where Luca had spotted a woman with black hair travelling. Overjoyed, he had almost run down the hill to her, and shouted Emila's name, when Gordon had stopped him, and pointed out the woman they had found was wearing black, not white.

And then, for the next two days, they followed Verra.

“Why can't we just attack her and be done with it?” Luca has asked at one point in his impatience.

“She killed Marcus, if my theory is correct,” Gordon had told him. “If that's true, then she must have his Rixeor Fragment, which she would be taking to Zinoro. Anyone with one of those is a force to be reckoned with. But even without one, she's still dangerous. A single touch is all she needs - and you're done.”

Luca thought about that. Verra used inverted healing magick to afflict her enemies with deadly, irreversible conditions. He had seen the effects of it on Marcus himself. According to Gordon, she needed very little time to prepare this. Truly a dangerous person to fight up close - she had little fighting ability, but with such deadly magick, she didn't need it.

He began to feel an ache forming in his forehead. A buzzing sound filled his ears, like the sound a crowd makes when many voiced speak in unison. He could almost make out words through the haze, but they were too quiet and incoherent.

“What is it?” Gordon had asked him.