Bellageist: Chains of a Demigod Part 5
Relentless battle and heartsickness
Chains of a Demigod
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8
Part 9 (coming soon)
Parts 1-4 Synopsis (2 minute read):
In a surreal, battle-strewn world that defies comprehension, Nyl evolves from a primal killer to a being wrestling with love and identity. In Part 1, she awakens in a savage world, her aggression fueled by unseen forces that punish weakness with fire. Guided by a metallic voice, she rises through brutal "scenarios," earning epithets "the Impetuous," then "the Ardent" and the promise of becoming "Basilissa." Her mind absorbs foreign knowledge as she wields increasingly advanced weapons, forming bonds with Garuna the Swift and Arcade the Unwavering. In Part 2, their trio slays a dragon, but Garuna falls, tended by a mysterious boy claiming to be her son. A king offers Nyl and Arcade vassalage. The companions reluctantly swear fealty and abandon Garuna.
Part 3 deepens Nyl’s turmoil. Her visions of metallic flesh hint at an unnatural reality, and she discovers jealousy when she catches Arcade naked with maids. At a feast honoring their victory, Arcade’s tribute to Garuna and a princess’s favor further ignite Nyl’s rage. Arcade chases her to a tower and tells her the secret he’s learned – the challenge may only be survived by one. A sunset confession of love, and his willingness to sacrifice his life for her, leads to a kiss – one which triggers the sun’s descent and a heartbreaking separation.
Part 4 thrusts Nyl into a prison overlooking a city. Garuna, now a dead queen on a throne, presides over an army and a court. Garuna’s son, Garun, now a man, recites crimes and executes red-haired prisoners – each one an echo of Nyl and Arcade’s flaws. Nyl reveals her presence and is brought before Garun. He condemns Nyl for his mother’s death and demands she repent.
Nyl does not. Garun summons Arcade and recites more crimes, but he also proves uncooperative. Nyl and Arcade’s answers enrage Garun, each indignation furthering his transformation into a tall and golden being. Arcade confesses to the sin of abandoning Garun’s mother, but will not reject his affection for Nyl, and Garun commands that Arcade be tortured.
Garun’s threat releases a furious power in Nyl. She transforms into a silver dragon and kills Garun. His mother Garuna rises, a corpse reanimated, unleashing magic that births twin granddaughters from Garun’s dead body: Luna and Runa. The twins thwart Nyl’s attempt to rescue Arcade. Wounded and overwhelmed, Nyl flees, crash-landing near a neighboring city as she reverts to human form, bloodied and broken, haunted by her grief and Arcade’s vows of love.
Nyl’s journey hints at a constructed reality where time is inconstant, the dead return to life, and through willpower a being is not limited to a single corporeal form. Between each sunset, the metallic voice’s cryptic messages - uniting with Arcade “ahead of the curve” on her path to "Basilissa" - suggest Nyl has purpose beyond mere survival.
Part 5 comes now. Nyl lies at a crossroads: will this new city offer salvation, or another battle and trial? Can she reclaim Arcade and unravel the nature of this nightmarish “game,” or will her grief and anger destroy her? The sun hangs, high and unyielding, ever in baleful judgment of the mortals below…
Chains of a Demigod Part 5
The thundering drumbeat of horse hooves. Shouting men. Calloused hands gripping her torn and battered flesh. Torchlit halls and caretaker murmurs. A bed of down pillows and silken sheets.
Nyl drifted in and out under waves of consciousness, like the ocean swells over a shipwrecked sailor.
Her eyes fluttered open, sticky with days’ worth of grime.
She no longer lay sprawled in the crater her draconic tumble had carved. Someone had washed her, but dry old blood still crusted the insides of her nostrils and chapped lips. She tasted dirt and iron, feeling nauseous. She burst into ragged coughing.
The coughing made it worse, adding tastes of sulfur, smoke, and brimstone. The sensation summoned visceral memories of her flight and battle as a dragon. Her stomach clenched unproductively in sickly disgust.
Her coughing fit ended, and the moment of weakness subsided. She regarded herself. The silver scales of a dragon no longer protected her. She lay naked atop sweat-soaked sheets. The memory of many wounds felt fresh, yet not a single scar marked her body. The more the bed-ridden grogginess receded, the healthier she felt.
She rolled out of the bed, felt spry on her feet. She searched the small room and found a wardrobe. She opened it and smiled – inside hung a dozen different flowery dresses - but also a single hooded linen gambeson made to pad a suit of armor. She pulled this garment out; it seemed shaped to fit a woman of her size and figure.
She squirmed her way into the suit. With the temperature, she would sweat in this garment, but she cared not – a gambeson brought the promise of battle and battle might distract her from many woes she hoped to bury.
She completed the outfit with calf-high stockings and leather riding boots. She left the room and entered a hallway. Painted portraits hung along the walls. Each picture featured the colors of dirt and steel with highlights in red and orange, images packed with blood, fire, and armored warriors. One warrior featured in all of them; a tall man wearing a helmet adorned with horns.
While the repeating figure remained anonymous in the darkness of his helmet, the many images reminded her of Arcade.
Nyl heard and followed the sound of voices raised in merriment. Whatever came next, she wished it involved vengeance against Garuna and her offspring, muttering: “I hope it’s not another feast.”
She rounded a corner and saw bright natural light pour from an archway further down the hall. The voices drifted from this opening.
Nyl made her way to a balustrade. Below her spread a large table, a map, and the voices of hundreds of talking armed men and women.
A familiar, happy voice surprised her: “Nyl the Ardent!”
Nyl turned to see Arcade. She grinned reflexively and said: “Arcade the Unwavering!”
“Nay,” Arcade said. “I have seen a hundred battles, and I am now Arcade the Unstoppable!”
Nyl would have leapt into his arms, but Arcade had company. She could not be sure, but she thought he had just shaken two women off his arms.
The ladies stood back, their faces a mix of confusion and ire. Both had red hair, brown eyes, and other superficial similarities to Nyl in face and body. Both appeared to be warriors with their fit builds and martial clothing.
“Who are they?” Nyl said, suppressing a flare of jealousy.
“Now that you are here, they are nobody,” Arcade said through confident smile. He approached and reached to embrace Nyl.
Nyl leaned to catch a brief look of hostility on one of the women’s faces.
Arcade gathered Nyl up in his arms before she could comment on this.
“May I kiss you?” he asked.
Nyl wanted nothing more than to kiss Arcade’s handsome face. But something held her back. Heart hammering, she pressed hands to his chest to keep him at bay.
“You have changed.”
Arcade grinned. “For the better.”
Nyl noticed her companion’s eyes had changed color – passionate red irises regarded her now where there should have been icy blue. Arcade behaved differently, as well, his movements graceful and cocksure where once they had been economical and pragmatic.
She recoiled, the feelings disconcerting and at war with her lust. His broad shoulders, flaming red hair, and handsome face looked the same. She trembled a breath, unable to speak her mind.
“Nyl,” Arcade said, his voice warm, possessive, wrapping around her name like a claim. “How I have missed my stormy warrior queen.”
The honeyed words were too much. Nyl pushed Arcade away more forcefully, and he permitted the disentanglement.
“A hundred battles?” she asked doubtfully.
A brief look of hurt flickered across Arcade’s face. “You disappeared from my arms that night at the tower. Much has happened to me since then, Nyl. I lived lifetimes while you were gone, guided by the voice and its promises. If I performed certain feats, it said I would see you again. I needed only to forge myself anew.”
His face split into a wide grin again. “Come, let me introduce you to my people. Through them I hope to show you my worth.”
He gripped her hand in his and dragged her along, his stride bold, almost swaggering.
Nyl blinked in confusion. She searched the profile of his face, desperate for some anchor of familiarity. His eyes should be blue! Instead, they shone a vivid crimson, gleaming like embers. And last she had seen him, Arcade sat in chains, out of her reach, not a king of some castle.
“How did you escape?”
Arcade paused his walk and opened his mouth to speak. He crushed her hand greedily, as if she might slip away.
“I never left you,” he murmured cryptically. He refused eye contact and moved again, dragging her along.
Nyl turned to look at the two women. They followed at a distance like neglected hounds. When they saw Nyl, their sad faces became scowls.
“Who are you?” Nyl asked them.
Both opened their mouths to speak, but Arcade raised a hand to cut them off.
“Begone! Do you see you are not wanted?”
The women looked pained, disappointed, ready to protest. But Arcade increased his pace, still pulling Nyl, and the words died in their throats. They gave Nyl one last angry glare before Arcade turned a corner and hauled Nyl out of view.
Seeing they were alone, Nyl tore her hand from Arcade’s grip. “I do not like this. What happened to you?”
“We are almost there. You must come and see who you are to me.” Then, as an afterthought, he added: “To us.”
Nyl felt stubborn, wanted to hold her ground. But emotions still warred in her, her grief, her affection, this man’s resemblance to Arcade. She hated the way his gaze slid over her like oil, sheening her. Had Arcade been cursed somehow?
Whatever else had changed, Arcade’s warmth and adoration felt real, familiar. For a moment, she let herself believe this red-eyed man to be him. Her Arcade, unbroken, unchained, the stoic and chivalrous blue-eyed knight who had kissed her in the tower.
She followed him.
They took a stairway down to the map room Nyl had seen earlier. Arcade halted atop the landing and raised Nyl’s hand high.
“People of Arcadia!” he announced.
Nyl cringed at the hubristic name of this nation.
The men and women hushed and looked up. They seemed to recognize Nyl, or at least her significance – then erupted in cheers. They jumped up and down, an instant euphoria, then drew pistols swords which they waved in fervent salute.
Nyl smiled. She craved this adulation. She made no secret of it.
Arcade pulled Nyl back and regarded her with a predatory hunger.
She averted her eyes, again conflicted, her happiness polluted with disgust at his changes.
“Come, my love,” he said, sweeping her forward again down the stairs. “You are these people’s savior.”
The true celebration started as they exited the building into open air. Arcade’s people fired wheel-lock pistols into the sky to spread the news of Nyl’s arrival. Bells tolled, and more warriors swarmed the streets.
Arcade never let go of Nyl’s hand. They walked down a wide boulevard in impromptu procession, flanked by a parade of sergeants and officers, passing blocks of houses four stories tall. They moved toward the fortress-city’s heart; a sprawling inner bastion of towering walls and battlements bristling with sentries. Wildfire banners, red and orange, fluttered in vivid contrast to the leaden sky. Crowds thronged the cobblestone paths, roaring adulation that echoed from the stones. People tossed red roses and orange petals from windows, some with thorns. One better-aimed flower pricked at Nyl’s cheek.
Nyl’s wanted this, wanted the attention, the cheering crowds, a man like Arcade. But she wanted Arcade specifically, as she remembered him. Her mind churned with a storm of questions. How had he escaped? Why had his eyes turned red? What was this place?
The noise and fervor dislodged such thoughts before they matured into questions. She felt disquiet anger – here she was, trapped in yet another momentous situation leaving her adrift. How much more of this could she take? She balked, instinctually aware of artifice of her existence.
A bridge took them over a moat and beneath a grand, fortified gate. Beyond this inner tier of walls, the city’s heart opened into a grand plaza ringed by squat towers, their arrow slits dark and watchful. The space choked with people, their faces alight with a zeal that bordered on madness.
Arcade raised Nyl’s arm again, circling with her in tow so all could see, lowering her arm only to raise it higher and with a flourish.
Arcade looked every bit the hero, tall and strong in a suit of lordly armor. A tasteful sheen of sweat glowed on his brow. Nyl felt ridiculous in comparison, hair matted by bedrest and her body dressed in a padded gambeson.
Arcade clutched her waist now, fingers digging in deep enough to make her wince despite the coat’s thick linen filler. He leaned in, possessive, as if descending for a kiss.
She jerked back in avoidance. Arcade suavely diverted his approach into a cheek-rub against her brow. He patted her back. Nyl made to push away, but the crowd pressed them in from behind even as it parted ahead to clear the way.
A platform loomed at the plaza’s center, framed by wooden poles draped in crimson silks and gold-threaded tapestries shimmering in the muted light. Armored men in red tabards guarded its edges, swords at their hips. The plaza adjoined a building, the tallest and the grandest in the city, flush with stained glass windows and spires that scraped the sky. Its double doors banged open and creaked aside, each panel requiring a pair of strong men to push it.
A priest in flowing robes stepped forward from the building’s interior. A dozen children followed double file behind him, each carrying bouquets of red and orange flowers. The priest reached the center of the plaza, raised his arms for attention, and spoke, his voice booming over the din.
“Our lord and lady’s union is nigh!” he proclaimed, his words reverberating from the walls. “On this auspicious day, Arcade the Unstoppable weds Nyl the Ardent! Our lord’s flame, and our people’s deliverance!”
Nyl stiffened, her breath catching in her throat, a cold knot forming in her gut. She whirled on Arcade, incredulous, her voice cutting through the silence: “A wedding?”
Arcade dropped to one knee, theatrical in his grace. He drew forth a ring tucked inside his belt - an onyx band, heavy and ostentatious, its surface polished to a mirror sheen. A red ruby crowned it, glimmering like a fresh wound.
“Nyl, my friend, my flame, my equal. I have fought a hundred battles to find you again. Will you marry me?” he offered the ring in one hand, his other spread high behind him like an actor deep in a performance. His red eyes locked on hers, unblinking, soulful, a challenge beneath the sweetness.
The crowd hushed. Nyl felt thousand gazes bore into her, the weight of expectation pressing in physically, robbing her of breath. She recoiled, alien memories not her own flickering at the edge of her mind: marriage, a bond, children, death, a vow etched in eternity.
But this? A public spectacle, a trap, a gaudy trinket framed in velvet words by an alien tongue. Her anger flared: “This… this…”
She struggled to breathe, astounded at this manipulation, its tastelessness.
You cannot…
She could not get the words out.
Arcade’s face fell, a mask of sorrow so exaggerated it teetered on mockery, his lips trembling in a way that made Nyl’s skin crawl.
“I would do anything for you,” he said to the ground, voice dropping low, intimate, a whisper meant to draw her in. “Command me, and it is yours. Anything for your hand, Nyl. Name it.”
She hesitated, the weight of the crowd heavy, their silence a tightening noose. Her eyes darted to the ring, its ruby glinting at her, promising glory. But the moment felt empty. Arcade’s face - too smooth, too eager.
Too… perfect.
“I…” she tried to say, her jaw tight, her hands clenching into fists at her sides.
Arcade’s grin snapped back, undeterred, a predator baring teeth. But his eyes saddened…
Dimming? They did not look as red as before.
Arcade pulled a second ring from his belt - a simple band of granite, rough-hewn, unpolished, its edges biting. He held it up for the crowd to see.
“She demands one more trial!” Arcade shouted for the public. “Long have we battled for this day, but we are not yet worthy! Our dragon queen is right to test our strength one last time!”
“A promise ring,” he said more quietly. He grabbed up Nyl’s hand and slipped this lesser ring onto her finger.
The stone felt cold against her skin.
“I will earn your hand with glory. With deeds that echo through the ages.” He raised his voice again. “I will win such victories it will make the heavens weep!”
Nyl’s protest went unheard, the crowd exploding again in a tidal wave of sound. Nyl pulled at Arcade’s promise ring – as easily as it had slipped on, it refused to be removed. Men and women surged forward as she struggled with it, their hands grabbing at her arms, her shoulders.
They hoisted her into the air, laughing. She lost her grip on the ring and the purpling, abused finger within it. Some grinning fool stuffed a rose between her lips – this one sheared of its thorns, at least. She gagged, biting petals, their bitter taste flooding her mouth. She spat the desert weed out, her following curses lost in the uproar as celebrants carried her above their heads.
One nightmare after another…
A bell tolled from a tower, sharp and insistent, different from the celebratory ringing before. The sound sliced through the revelry like a blade, slaying the noise. The men carrying Nyl put her down softly.
Heads turned skyward to the walls.
A sentry appeared and shouted from the ramparts: “The enemy approaches! To arms!”
Arcade’s subjects reacted instantly, the celebration ceasing as men and women ran this way and that. At first it seemed like chaos, but Nyl detected order and purpose. All these citizens doubled as warriors, apparently, their faces grim and roles predetermined.
Nyl’s pulse quickened, her hand itching for a weapon. She might be growing to hate these “tests,” but if she must face trials, she preferred them to be battles.
She met Arcade’s look. His red eyes gleamed, a wildfire igniting behind them. His grin widened into something feral.
“Does Garuna’s army attack ?” Nyl said.
“They take the field at last!” he said gleefully. He clapped a hand on her shoulder. “Our day comes closer!”
Nyl ignored his insinuation. “Is. It. Garuna? Answer plainly.”
“Yes, yes,” came Arcade’s hurried reply. “But does that matter? What a fight it will be!”
Nyl balked, realizing a suspicion in that moment: is he is a mirror of me? Fury and glee, selfishness unchained…
But no. She could not possibly look like… like that… she had boundaries, principles! She wished to ask him the city’s layout and what their plan would be to hold it: “Are we to-”
But Arcade already turned from her to greet the approach of his captains. “Muster the army. Leave the wagons and cannon behind. We go to meet them at once!”
Both men saluted and jogged off to execute the simple order.
“What?” Nyl blurted. “Why? This is a grand citadel. Let us hold the walls and rain death upon them like we did before!”
Arcade laughed, a barking, belittling sound. “Cower behind stones? No, Nyl. We will meet them in the field. Glory awaits! I will not hide from Garuna. She rejected me for my liveliness, my vigor, my willpower! Today I - no, we - will demonstrate her error! I will prove myself worthy of you! I will carve your name into the flesh of a hundred men!”
Arcade’s audacity took her aback. She felt a flicker of admiration, the moment quickly overrun by rising dread.
“You are not Arcade,” she said.
“But I am!” he protested fiercely, averting eye contact.
It is almost like he expected this accusation…
He squeezed her shoulder again, fingers digging possessively. His eyes looked wary and weary for a moment. There was that dimming again, as if the redness came from some inner fire.
“You freed me from her tyranny,” he said. “My love for you, my thirst for victory - it is enough. It has to be enough. For so long I…”
Arcade’s voice trailed off.
Nyl squinted at him, wary of more theatrics. But now that his people’s eyes were not upon him, he seemed far more genuine.
“What happened to you?” Nyl asked. She saw a piece of the Arcade she remembered, despite his madness.
“You freed me from my shackles,” Arcade said decidedly, as if repetition were an answer. He recovered his bravado: “I will crush them, Nyl. Then we will share our stories over wine!”
He vaulted onto a horse. Nyl had not seen the animal brought forth, the whirlwind of events erasing the clop of its approach from her hearing.
Arcade drew his sword and raised it high. “To battle! For Nyl! For glory!”
Nyl bristled: “I must fight as well.”
He smirked indulgently, clearly seeing her need, arguing rhetorically anyway: “It is my battle, Nyl. This victory will be my gift to you.”
Nyl glared at him: “I am not a trophy to be won.”
Arcade relented with a sigh. “Join the reiters. They are my best. I wish I could go with you, but I must command the army. Uran!”
“Yes, sire?” A charming bald man on a horse trotted over from a group of horsemen assembling nearby.
“Take our future queen to the armory. Have her join Tranix’s men. Horse and steel suit her. Give her pistols and a sword, and whatever else she wishes.”
Uran nodded then looked to Nyl, sizing her up. His eyes widened in recognition.
“What?” Nyl weathered his stare.
Uran frowned and said: “I forgive you.”
“For what?”
Uran seemed to wait for Nyl to recognize him. When she did not, he sighed and said: “Nothing. Come with me.”
Uran set his horse moving. Nyl jogged to keep up.
“Fight well, my love!” Arcade called out from behind her. He kicked his horse into motion.
Nyl followed Uran through a city teeming with armored riders and marching men.
They found her armor, weapons, and a horse. Nyl smiled as she hefted a solid cuirass onto her breast, and her adrenaline surged.
An hour later, the double portcullis rose on clanking chains. The city’s double wooden gates swung wide, hinges groaning under their weight.
Arcade’s army rode out.
A plain stretched vast and open before them, a sea of wind-rippled grass. Above hung the baleful, unyielding sun, its light harsh and unforgiving.
Arcade’s army - some fifteen thousand strong - spread across the uneven ground. Pikemen in mass-produced munition armor held the center, their seven-meter ash shafts a forest of glinting steel tips. Men and women with bucklers and broadswords sprinkled the ranks of spears. And in the center of each square, red-caped soldiers clutched long-barreled arquebuses.
All the men and women of the foot soldiery wore foppish hats over metal skullcaps, many adorned with a feather or two. They also wore fashionably torn tabards draped over their breastplates. If not for their weapons and the open slashes across their chests displaying the shine of armor, they might have looked like a horde of barrel-chested guilds-people out for a stroll.
Reiters rode horses on the flanks, braces of wheel-lock pistols gleaming on their chests or the sides of their saddles. Sabers rattled against their thighs, their mounts snorting as they cantered wider to make space for the foot soldiers flooding the middle. Groups of lancers followed the reiters, men with lighter armor and 5-meter-long spears. They rode upon noble coursers, animals well-suited to chasing down enemy cavalry.
Nyl rode among the reiters, two pistols strapped to her chest in a leather brace and two more stowed in saddle-holsters. Their walnut stocks gleamed, and their barrels felt heavy with the promise of smoke and thunder. Nyl’s borrowed mare, a sturdy bay with a scarred flank, rolled along at a gentle trot as smooth as could be. Her ears twitched and her puffy breaths and snorts signaled her recognition of tension in the air.
Nyl looked over her shoulder to spot Captain Tranix’s bannerman and keep in formation. Earlier, upon meeting the captain, he had given her the same look Uran had – half-disturbed, half glad.
Nyl had shrugged, not recognizing him. She cared not who he thought he was, or who commanded this unit. She wished only to fight.
The man remained wary. But on the balance, the captain seemed relieved to have Nyl on his side.
Nyl kept to the front row. Her new comrades seemed happy to let her take the vanguard. She heard them converse quietly, the word “dragon” repeated often, but the trot of iron-shoed horses concealed the content of their murmurs.
She felt confident in her supernatural strength, her immunity to fools and the wiles of tyrants.
But transforming into a dragon?
Was this something she could do now? She knew no world other than this one – yet she saw the cracks, had witnessed its unreality. Who was she to question the fantastical in such a place?
Nyl remembered aches from her battle and fall. Images and sound of gunfire encroached on the present. She recalled the taste of dragon fire and the scream of a hundred burning men. Her gut clenched in a moment of terror.
But the weakness passed. The memory seemed so implausible she almost believed she had imagined it. She did not think she could repeat that feat, and this thought somehow comforted her. Blood pounded in her ears and her heart sang for violence. This time she would hopefully not be the sole target of a thousand guns.
She adjusted her grip on the reins and shivered under her armor, a chill jolting her limbs newly awake. Despite the dragon’s might, she had come very close to death. Even if she could do it again, she feared repeating the feat.
A rider galloped down a hill towards the army. The man drove his horse through the lines, seeking his king Arcade, Nyl assumed. He disappeared into the horde of marching men.
Soon after, Nyl heard music. Trumpets and sacbuts tooted signals. Hands rapped upon buzzing Tabors, and snare drums rolled a martial beat.
Information flooded Nyl’s mind. Acting on knowledge not her own, Nyl tuned out most of the instruments, singling out the trumpets that commanded the cavalry:
Canter.
Her horse recognized the trumpet call and accelerated before Nyl commanded her. Nyl leaned forward in the saddle regardless, eager to meet the foe. The reiters and lancers outpaced the footmen who quickened their step.
Nyl’s view stretched as the cavalry crested the hill. Beyond the rise stretched a flat, rolling valley, and further, another hill.
And upon this opposing hill: Garuna’s army.
Again, the trumpets sounded. Thousands of horses rumbled to a halt, and so did Nyl’s.
Wind rustled grass and rippled banners. Horses snorted. Armor clinked. Sunbaked dust, weeds, and horseflesh scented the air.
Nyl squinted, pressing a hand to the brow of her helm to shield her eyes. She attempted to peer through the bright summer haze.
In the distance stood ranks of tercios. Garuna’s army appeared smaller than Arcade’s, especially lacking in cavalry. Nyl was no fool - she searched the surrounds. She saw nowhere for a hidden detachment to hide. Gentle plains stretched fifteen kilometers in all directions. Still, Garuna’s army might have hidden riders at a greater distance and beyond sight.
The tromp of footmen made its steady way up the hill behind her. Marching feet and musical instruments encroached on the quiet.
Before the infantry fully caught up, the trumpets sounded – and Nyl’s well-trained horse accelerated again. They cantered straight at the enemy. Nyl sat deep in her saddle, held the reins high and light, could sense the beast’s intelligence. She let the mare do her thing. Meanwhile, Nyl reviewed the opposition.
These were not normal men, but tall, golden-skinned soldiers arrayed in tight, unyielding ranks. Unlike Arcade’s army, which seemed one-fifth female, the enemy formation consisted entirely of males. Their pikes bristled like a forest, steel heads dull in the ashen light, backed by arquebusiers in naked breastplates and curvaceous morion helmets topped by rigid, saurian crests.
Behind the men rode Runa and Luna, twin sentinels in golden armor, their oversized halberds held at canted angles as if raised in distant accusation. From the hafts of their weapons trailed long blue banners embroidered with gold symbols. The twins’ horses looked alien and skeletal, their movements stilted, clanking like machines. The beasts’ eyes glowed a dull blue, and while the color was wrong, the horses’ eyes and artificial flesh reminded Nyl of her unsettling glimpses in the mirror.
Beyond the twins swayed a palanquin borne not by men, but by animated statues. The giants moved ponderously, each step grinding and deliberate. Upon the palanquin sat Garuna, dead and regal, her lifeless limbs gripping her throne’s arms.
Her son Garun, likewise dead, rode alongside the palanquin. He looked utterly ridiculous - sewn to his saddle, spear and shield bound to his hands with ropes. A muscular, bronze-colored breastplate gleamed over his pallid gold skin. He wore an enormous helmet, a martial-looking contraption that looked more like a hybrid art piece of castle and garden than headwear.
Garun’s head lolled heavily with the sway of his horse. Two golden soldiers rode at Garun’s sides, prodding the dead man’s head and body with pronged bidents - a comical maintenance necessary to keep his corpse upright on his horse. The men fumbled with him even as Nyl watched, Garun leaning too far forward and pitching the oversized helmet onto the ground, revealing a mop of rotten and wispy hair. One of the men dismounted to collect it, stuffing the roots of mangled plants and flowers back into the helmet’s sockets and returning it to Garun’s head.
Nyl opened her mouth to jeer, limbs and belly tight with hatred - but then she saw a fifth person that stole her breath. If she had not been mounted, Nyl would have frozen with shock. Nyl stared, mouth agape.
There stood… Arcade?
Her lover and companion. Normally the tallest in a room, Arcade looked of average height compared to the statue-people and the fantastical caricatures of Garuna and her descendants. Arcade looked haphazard, dressed in ill-fitting armor and a general’s cape, as if tended to in a hurry by unpracticed servants. He stood perfectly rigid, swaying implausibly at the front of the palanquin like some kind of hood ornament. He appeared tied to the spot, but Nyl saw no bindings restraining his upper body, only chains at his heels.
How had Arcade gotten over there? Why was he with Garuna’s army?
Were there two Arcades?
Nyl looked over her shoulder and searched the mass of men cresting the hill behind her. She saw a thick pack of knightly guards and signalmen but could find no sign of the red-eyed Arcade among them.
“Who is that man on the palanquin?” Nyl asked nearby soldiers.
“The enemy?” one answered, confused. He wore bright red rider’s gloves.
Nyl pressed: “Is that not your lord Arcade?”
The men to her left and right leaned forward and shielded their eyes from the sun.
“There’s an uncanny resemblance,” another said, a man with two red feathers in his hat.
“Aye, I see it,” said Red Gloves. “But that is not our king. Our lord rides at the rear with his guards and messengers. When his army is committed, he will join the thickest fighting.”
Nyl felt encouraged to be surrounded by “whole” individuals capable of intelligible speech. She recalled Arcade’s observation at their first meet that these “whole” ones became common in the more advanced “scenarios.”
“What is Arcade’s relation to Garuna?”
“They were married, once,” Feathers said.
“Arcade married a corpse?”
“She did not always look so dead,” Gloves explained.
“And it is not the strangest thing our lord has done,” Feathers said affably. “Rumor has it he neglected her, preferring warmer company at night.”
“Silence in the ranks!” boomed a sergeant, one of Tranix’s men. “Focus and listen for signals!”
Nyl persisted: “Why? How long did this marriage last? What ended it?”
“It lasted a long time,” Gloves said.
“I left my wife and children to follow Arcade into exile,” Feathers added.
Nyl heard a disruption in the ranks, saw a mounted sergeant bullying his way forward.
“My future queen!” the man said, apologetic. “Please do not distract the men!”
A trumpet blared, swallowing Nyl’s response with its insistent call.
“Charge!” Tranix bellowed from somewhere in the pack’s center.
Nyl leaned in and squeezed her thighs as her horse took off. The animal built up speed at a steady pace, fixing her long snout forward and snorting. Eyes wide and darting, she matched the thundering gallop of her fellow equines.
The speed blew a gust over Nyl’s face, air flowing in rivulets through gaps in her helmet. Wind found her hair and teased it out, long flaming tassels streaming from beneath her helm.
The foreign Arcade drew Nyl’s eye. From her saddle he appeared a vibrating figure, caught by slices in the airborne moments between iron-shod hoof-strikes.
The “other” Arcade erupted into mechanical motion. His limbs jerked and flopped as if tugged by invisible strings. He raised an arm at a sharp right angle and instruments thundered in response; taut drums, blaring sacbuts and shrill trumpets. Bannermen likewise snapped signals, yanking and heaving flagged poles with such precise and synchronized aggression that their whipping could be heard over the music and the gallop of a thousand horses.
The marching golden pikemen halted in lockstep, their heels cracking the air as one. They lowered a thicket of pikes, fifteen glinting points for every charging horse. Golden hands cocked hundreds of flintlocks. Gunmen presented arms like toy soldiers, holding them at right angles at their shoulders without bending their eyes down to aim.
Nyl’s witnessed the wall of steel and fire awaiting them and her heart lurched. The weight of the threat seemed to cross the distance and physically poke and prod at her guts. She suppressed the fear, consciously steadied her breathing. She let the horse have her reins and withdrew pistols from the brace over her chest. She thumbed their locks to a firing position and mentally measured the pace of her galloping horse.
Armored tassets flapped upon the sweat of her hips and thighs. She shut out all distractions, and the world muted, slowed. Drums clamored mutely, trumpets sounded underwater. A banner dropped, and the enemy arquebusiers pulled their triggers.
Guns ripped out in a crackle. Lead balls buzzed the air. Nyl’s world became a blizzard of stinging hornets. She heard men scream and horses whinny and tumble. Pockets of dirt and grass erupted before the charge, little geysers sprinkling the field. Hundreds of lead balls fell short, others sailed high.
Nyl did not need to look, knew the enemy volley had been early, ineffective. The first rank of enemy gunmen twisted aside to step back, the second rank shouldering forward to produce a second volley.
The enemy’s second volley would come too late. Nyl’s cavalry galloped hard, shrinking the distance in seconds. Nyl leveled her two pistols, aimed despite the impossibility of missing, and fired.
Three golden heads burst, fountaining blood, one of Nyl’s lead balls smashing through two men. A fourth fountained blood from his neck, her shot deflected downwards off a helmet or skull.
Hundreds of other pistols cracked out to Nyl’s left and right. She stuffed her guns back in their braces with the efficiency of one with ten-thousand practice runs, the expertise foreign to her, instantly assimilated into reflex from an orbit outside her mind. She drew the unfired pair from her saddle even as her golden victims fell, three headless, the last stoic-faced, clearly uncaring that he died.
Nyl aimed and fired again. She had no time to witness the effect of these shots, her horse wheeling to the side early – apparently the beast had less daring than her rider and wished to turn from the pikes.
Nyl cursed as the beast collided with one of its neighbors. She squeezed her knees tight, the beast nearly pitching her as she scrambled to maintain her balance. The collision careened both rider and horse towards the pikes.
More shots cracked out, the second rank of cavalry finding openings as the first row turned away. Men died and pikes wobbled. Hafts smacked each other or dropped in clatters.
Many spearpoints fell out of Nyl’s way, their holders injured or slain. But others remained. Nyl, barely hanging on, urged the horse to scamper away.
A drooping pike spooked her mount. The animal jumped. A second pike wandered Nyl’s way, thrusting at her face. Nyl ducked under it, the act nearly breaking her grip on her horse. She tangled her fingers in the animal’s mane of brown hair, barely holding on, almost dropping a pistol.
Her horse ended its leap, a hard landing. The saddle horn punched into Nyl’s belly. She grunted as her breastplate absorbed the impact and slammed the air from her lungs. Again, it was all she could do to stay mounted.
Nyl sucked hard, her lungs squelching back open. She let out a gasp so ragged it sounded inhuman. She coughed and recovered her bearings – the horse galloped away now, and by some miracle Nyl had held on.
A lengthy flood of horsemen still rushed the other way. Ranks of charging and wheeling riders unleashed an unrelenting blizzard of point-blank pistol shots. Very little fire came in answer, the dense formation of golden men disintegrating, falling over each other in mutilated tangles of armor, weapons, and blood.
Nyl hooted with excitement, the dread of her nearness to gunfire and pikes transforming into a glorious thrill - the euphoria one can only experience in combat. She delicately reloaded her pistols on the gallop, another fine-tuned alien skill sucked in by her magnetic mind.
She looked over her shoulder and saw the foreign Arcade flop about like a marionette. Musical signals blared again. The ground already rumbled with galloping horses, but now it shook anew. A horde of gold-skinned riders carrying lancers now flew across the battlefield, racing to cut off Nyl’s retreat.
Nyl’s brain screamed a warning. She almost dropped her powder horn from absent-minded panic. She looked away from the threat. Superhuman or not, her saber would prove a paltry defense against a lancer’s charge. She focused on the reload – perhaps she might shoot her way to safety.
The enemy lancers closed. They lowered then couched their weapons, a carefully balanced, angrily charging forest of 5-meter hafts capped by wicked points.
Seconds from impact. Nyl hurried to load a third gun.
The lancers did not come within a hundred meters. Lost in the sound of guns, horses, and dying men, Arcade’s own lancers swooped in interception of the enemy cavalry’s charge.
Horses swep0t by or crashed into each other. Steel-tipped poles picked men from clean from their saddles like steaks on skewers. Men died by the hundreds in an eyeblink – followed by barely controlled chaos.
The counter-charge diverted the enemy like a crosswind, surviving riders wheeling about to chase their killers from ahead or behind, forming a bloody vortex of lance and horse. Some horses got stuck in heavier traffic, their riders drawing sabers and hacking at the nearest man wearing enemy colors, their mounts bucking and kicking for freedom. Lancers in wider parts continued mad dashes to and fro, trampling armored corpses and leaping over mounds of horse-flesh, jousting each other or picking hapless sword-wielders off from the edges of the jammed melee. A whirlwind surrounding a boiling lake of steel and blood.
Nyl’s sighed in relief. She had reloaded three guns so far and pushed her knee into the horse’s flank. She obeyed her command, slipping into the stream of reiters racing back to fire upon the footmen a second time.
This red-eyed incarnation of Arcade might by flamboyant and reckless, but to his credit, he knew the business of war. Nyl wondered where he was, if he had joined the fight yet.
Reloading her pistols early, and surrounded on all sides by charging reiters, Nyl experienced another strange moment of calm in the storm.
Two Arcades…
Could the red-eyed Arcade be a stranger, an actor? An insert created by the “gods” of these game-like trials?
But Nyl thought she sensed authenticity under the theatrics, within the bravado. Despite her disgust at his changes, Nyl felt pulled to the red-eyed Arcade. Felt a familiarity she thought only a lover could feel.
But the other Arcade, the one commanding Garuna’s army – Nyl felt a familiarity for him, too. That Arcade, almost certainly blue-eyed like she remembered, had clung to his love under threat of torture. He had beheld Nyl’s transformation to a dragon with wonder in his eyes. But he had also not resisted, not with actions anyway, passively accepting his role as prisoner and making no effort to come to her when she battled Garuna’s men.
Could they be one and the same? Two sides to the same coin? Nyl had seen Garuna’s dead body stand and unleash strange witchery, reincarnating her dead son as a fellow figurehead and instantly birthing a new generation of warrior twins. Had she somehow bewitched Arcade? Split him in two, then set them against one another?
A red-eyed braggart at her side, swaggering and loud. And that puppet yonder, would he still be blue-eyed? He stood rigid and cold, his silence a stark contrast to bluster of the one at her back, the man of theatrics and insistence of marriage.
Her mind reeled, a storm of questions – what if she had chosen the wrong Arcade to side with? These merciless trials and their unknowable rules – what detail had she missed? Did she condemn her true lover to death by allying with his crass doppelganger?
Recent events moved so fast, explosive incidents piling atop one another before she could reconcile the first. Could she have slowed this down with the right question? Taken a different course entirely? What would become of Arcade if this red army won? If they lost? What would become of her?
She vastly preferred the old Arcade. But how could this flopping conductor on the palanquin be him? Perhaps he acted against his will. Or perhaps he was trapped or fooled into his current role. Did he think he fought in rescue of Nyl?
Battle loomed and left no time to unravel her circular riddles. Riders immediately ahead fired their pistols and wheeled aside. A wall of smoke and dust at the head of the charge blocked her view. Nyl’s horse galloped through it, expanding her view.
A highway of carnage greeted her eyes. A road paved with fallen weapons and blood-soaked, golden bodies. At the other end of this road – the other Arcade, signaling from atop Garuna’s macabre palanquin.
Pikemen rushed from the sides, attempting to plug the gap the reiter’s caracole had driven through their lines.
This is my chance to end this mystery, Nyl thought. She yanked the reins, squeezing her knees assertively, directing her stubborn horse away from the wheeling turn the warhorse had been trained to make.
Horse and rider charged down the bloody gap. Blank-faced golden men with swords and bucklers ran to block her path – she shot two through their faces with sequential trigger strokes. She stuffed the smoking guns into their braces then yanked her other two free.
A lead ball pinged off her breastplate, knocking her back against her saddle. Her horse slowed, shy of the men ahead, and also misinterpreting her shifting weight as a command to decelerate. She raked her spurs along the mare’s hide and the beast redoubled its gallop.
Nyl ignored the swelling pain under her dented cuirass, took aim, blasted down another two men. Her horse leapt over another two men, its hooves crashing into a third, crushing his head and chest, his blood splattering a starburst upon the dirt through rents in his flattened armor.
Nyl drew her saber and deflected the slash of a footman’s broadsword in the same motion. Her parry helped her heave her blade over the head of her horse. Arm arced high, she brought it down with all her strength. Combined with the gallop of her horse, her sword struck with terrible force, ringing with a wet crunch. She chopped a man’s helmet away along with the top his skull - a crinkly bone which spun away like a flap of eggshell.
Nyl retained her grip through the numbing impact. She brought the weapon over to her left again in time to smack away the tip of a thrusting pike. Her sword bit deep into its wooden haft but rebounded from the metal rod slotting its center.
Her sword arm flailing behind her, Nyl leaned back to dodge another pike. Something caressed her right shin, ricocheting from her greave. Her horse whinnied and hot fluid splashed Nyl’s leg. She caught a glimpse – a sword or pike had slashed the mare’s ribs before passing over her leg armor. Nyl knew not the injury’s seriousness, but the animal bled a great deal.
The mare charged on, though, and together they cleared the opening through the enemy line. At this distance her sharp eyes confirmed it – the enemy commander had blue eyes.
“Arcade!” Nyl felt her heart might leap from her throat.
“Arcade!” she repeated. “I am here! Cease this slaughter!”
The blue-eyed Arcade did not respond. His feet remained planted while his body jerked this way and that, still orchestrating the battle.
“Arcade, I return!” Nyl tried again. She stood in the saddle, precarious, one foot in line with the other while she gripped her horse’s hair.
“You fought well today,” Nyl told her mount. She sincerely hoped the mare would survive.
Then she leapt with all her strength.
Two of the giant statues carrying the palanquin raised lethargic hands. Nyl scrunched and twisted in the air, narrowly escaping one’s clutch, rebounding from the knuckles of the other.
She sailed past them, the toes of her boots barely catching the lip of the platform. She stumbled, pawing at its swaying surface, rising to an unsteady stand, saber in hand. She felt air blow at her back and skipped forward gingerly, a granite hand smacking the spot where she once stood, one of the giants attempting to crush her.
“Arcade! Answer me!”
She saw the chains and manacles wrapped around the blue-eyed Arcade’s ankles. Could she sever it, free him, determine who was the real Arcade?
In the corner of her eye, Nyl saw Runa and Luna circle their horses, the twins charging towards the palanquin.
Nyl’s sword, nicked and bent with abuse, might yet part the iron of his chains. She raised the weapon for a two-handed strike, then swung.
The sword shattered to pieces.
“Arcade!” Nyl begged. She reached out to grab him…
Continued in part 6.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8
Part 9 (coming soon)
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