The Cursed Inheritance

The gale howled across temple wreathed in smog, wind thick with scent of ash and blood. Alaric lay in shambles, battered body, mind ablaze with questions.

Battered hand, fisted around the hilt of sword, the runes shimmering in faint light of low moon. The stranger stood before him once again out of the shadows, silent, his shape menacing yet somehow known to him.

"Who are you?" Alaric rasped, his burned throat dry and ulcerated.

The hooded one did not reply immediately. He moved slowly, the frayed edge of his robe flowing behind him like fire.

Still covered by its hood, but its voice when it spoke neither young nor old, male nor female—it was both and neither.

"You bear a sword that never would have been in this world," the figure said to him. "A sword forged against destiny."

Alaric's fingers tightened their grip on the handle of the sword. "And what does it mean?"

"It is that your journey is just starting. Despite the fact that you already did know." The figure leaned forward in the direction of the dark road ahead of the ruins. "No turning back. Just forward."

Alaric gasped ragged breaths. He'd known, as he'd driven the blade into Magnus's cheek, that he'd learned something that he couldn't learn. But now, and angry, and forced to look at what he'd done, he could feel it choking in his airways.

"Name yourself," he growled.

The figure twitched, and pushed its hood higher and forward.

Alaric's breath caught in his gullet.

She was a woman—emptied her face, pale, and glowing coals of embers scorching her eyes. She was branded with the razor from brow to chin, and black hair streaked with silver lay on her face. What he did not want was otherness, drenched in tears and exhaustion.

"My name is Seraphine," she told him. "And I used to walk where you walked."

There was a spark of cunning in Alaric's head. He'd heard the name, with fear and in a whisper. A man who'd escaped death herself, a rallying cry on the wind.

"You're dead," he snarled.

A curl of lip curled onto her face. "Death and I have an understanding."

Alaric thrust the sword back into its hip scabbard, but did not relax by so much as a fraction of an inch from guard position. "What do you want?"

Seraphine's gaze turned cold. "Because you won't be able to kill Magnus yourself. You beat him on the battlefield, but it was trial. He'll return, stronger, better trained. And next time, you'll have only rage to keep him from you."

Alaric gritted his teeth. She was right. Magnus had vanished into the shadows, but that in no way indicated that he was not there. If anything, not being seen would make him more powerful.

"Then show me," Alaric snarled. "If you can kill him, then show me."

Seraphine stopped, then nodded. "So we depart at dawn. You have much to learn, and little time in which to do so."

Alaric gasped, his shoulders lifting and falling as he fought the battle exhaustion in the darkness. He'd emerged victorious in the battle, but lost the battle. In order to be able to free his mother's spirit from whatever had claimed her, in order to be able to seek vengeance on the creature that had destroyed everything he loved, he had to be stronger.

He was on the beach, where dawn was splitting only two pieces of darkness.

His walk was just starting out.

---

Night lay before him, moon low along the horizon and casting long bony shadows out into nothingness. Alaric's muscles were complaining at every step, yet still somehow managed to live up to his own expectations despite it. Lack of sleep was a bad habit he had no chance of breaking.

Seraphine interrupted, face a puzzle. "Your sword—it speaks to you, doesn't it?"

Alaric winced, then nodded. "Not words. More. a presence. A sense."

Seraphine's exasperated sigh. "That sword was forged out of something other than metal. It's tuned to the master's intent. But the tuning can shatter if your will shatters."

Alaric's furrowed brow. "Then I won't fail."

Seraphine's scornful smile. "No, you won't."

She pointed to a line of weathered stones in the rear of the ruin. "Rest while you can. Train at dawn."

Alaric growled, to remind her that he was able to do it now, but his body had other plans. The heavy drag of weariness crept in a little bit more yet, and he shrugged in defeat.

Among the rocks, out to sea of blue beyond the wide curve of sky, memories sprang to the forefront of his mind. To gladness on his mother's face, to treachery in his father's hand, to Magnus's chill at parting. Inner fires burned the fiercer around him.

---

Restfulness was no longer a place in this world any more. The instant he unbent, visions of the future rent him with titanic ferocity. The sweet, cheerful smile on his mother's face twisted into terror as she was dragged away from beside him. The cold, empty shine that replaced his own eyes, the man who so woefully replaced the father that he felt he should be. The roar of laugh, scream-like and thunderous, which he heard boom out from Magnus deep into the forest, vibrated with black promise of war to be waged.

He sprang up from his feet at dawn, released finally from what had been. Seraphine stood, whetting a sword with careful deliberation. She did not look toward him when she spoke:

"You'll have to leave the past behind if you're going to live."

Alaric's face was ruthless. "I don't want to live. I want to win."

Seraphine struck him then, something cunning flashing across her face. "Good. Well, let's away."

She took him deeper into the dead, deeper into trees in the back. Soddy ground stank awful with it, yellowing away from other things unseen that were screaming down trees. They said nothing until they reached a clearing of ash and black ground, stripes and splintered pieces of old wars spread out on the ground.

Seraphine stood before him. "Your sword is powerful, but power will not be enough to save you. You need control. You need discipline."

She came out of the darkness to him, the glint of her knife in the blackness. Alaric had only time to raise his sword to take the blow, the shock running up his arms like a bucket of icy water. He backed a step, parrying just in time, as she struck the blow again.

"Too slow," she snarled, feigning movement to the left, charging hard to the right. "You're too used to trusting your instincts. That'll kill you."

Alaric snapped his jaws with a weak snap, parried a blow. "Instinct was all I had."

"Then it's time you learned something else."

She teased him hour after hour to his endurance, urged him on to attempt once more, strive harder, shave finer, consider before she would smile upon him. She derided him for each mistake that he made, mocked him with her glimmer of light, her knife that never cut but was ever at the ready to behead him at any time.

By noon, Alaric was probably sweating buckets, his muscles grumbling. But beneath the exhaustion, something was changing. A new sharpness, a new bruteness of motion.

Seraphine observed him, nodded. "Improved. But not yet."

She drew out her knife and stood back. "Rest. Tomorrow we'll proceed."

Alaric snarled at it all. He simply fell onto the sidewalk, panting. The street lay out in front of him, as far as it did, but he had begun.

And he'd keep going until he'd had his revenge.