Throne Hunters Book 4, Chapter 14

Eclavistra was gone, her fragrance fading, the warmth on her side of the bed turned cool. Vic stared sightlessly at the subtly glowing azure pool that filled the center of her cavern, its waters gently eddying and casting rippling reflections endlessly across the rough ceiling. His hands hung between his knees, his body ached from too much pleasure, but Eclavistra had taught him the cruelest of lessons, how pleasure could, when prolonged for too long, flip over and become torment.

Torment that had soaked into his soul and in which she had left him to stew.

When he blinked, he saw her in the darkness inside his eyelids. Saw her body arching above his own, writhing beneath him, bent against the edge of the pool, pressed against the cavern wall. Heard her husky laughter, felt her contempt, a contempt that only grew the greater he strove to satisfy her, to satisfy himself.

Hours had melted like candles, running together, becoming a fever dream of ecstasy and frustration. He’d never felt anything like it, and even as his body yearned for her delirium-inducing touch once more, to drown in her embrace, his soul recoiled.

Stupefied, naked, wrung out, he sat on the edge of her great bed, her altar, and stared dazedly out at nothing.

He’d had some intense bouts of lovemaking before, including his favorite marathon session with Velania and Desiree a few years back that had lasted almost three days under the influence of various drugs, but this… this had been a crucible. What had begun playfully, with teasing and provocations, had revealed itself in time to be a purposeful process on the demon’s part.

Vic’s shoulders sagged. Too late he’d realized he labored alone. That despite her moans and cries, her cruel laughter and mockery, she’d never been there with him, had at no point become vulnerable, had at no point been impressed with his prowess. His signature moves had failed to surprise her, his stamina to impress, his willingness to indulge in shocking acts to earn her respect.

He’d been an ingot in her hands, her body the furnace, and she’d melted him down to his essence and only then, when he was at this most raw and primal, had she pressed the Demon Seed into his brow and made him hers.

Vic shuddered.

His body ached, his tongue was parched, and his heart hammered, lurching along as if unable to reconcile itself to an end of his labors.

Oblivion.

He’d sought it between her thighs, as he had countless times before. The small death of self that came with each and every climax, the balm, the benediction that came after.

But unlike all the others, she’d been wise to his intent, and goaded him ever deeper into the abyss of nihilism. Had lured him farther than he’d ever gone, led him by the hand into the very foundations of his soul, and there showed him how cracked and worn and broken they were.

Bleak. That was how he felt. Stripped of illusions, irony, and wit. Their lovemaking had flensed him of his lies. And like an idiot, he’d not realized what was happening until it was far too late, trying instead to elicit gasps of pleasure with his elven tongue techniques, or the infamous Blockade Breaker he’d learned from Madam Mavelle herself.

And now?

She’d left him when her job was done. No doubt to leaven like dough in the oven.

Vic buried his face in his hands as a sob wracked his frame.

What happened when you stripped the locks away, when you left each and every door to the darkest memories in your soul cracked ajar?

The monsters came stealing forth at last.

He ground his fists into his eyes, clenched his jaw, and tried to turn from the images. The stark, blinding truths.

But there was no escaping them.

With a cry Vic lurched to his feet and began staggering about the cavern. He half collapsed against a carved pillar and pressed his brow to his forearm.

Memories. Old memories tearing open the sutures, the scars, and thrusting themselves into his mind once more.

His mother. Her cracked lips, her distant gaze, her beauty run to ruin, the men still lining up outside the door, uncaring of whether she had drugged herself to insensibility to dull the pain.

That sailor, hulking and dark in the alley, his hard, callused hands as he’d gripped Vic and held him down.

Laugher. Beatings. Hunger. Hunger so vicious it scoured the inside of his ribs, hollowed out his belly and filled it with acid. Watching from the shadows as people ate, as people walked arm in arm, the rich, the wealthy, the fortunate, the fat.

A spiritual hunger that consumed him, that drove him, that forced him to find brilliance where the only alternative was self-destruction, an early death amongst all the other waifs and orphans who hid in the shadows.

Words like knives. Words like a fencing rapier. The ability to draw blood with a well-phrased sentence. A mind honed to brilliance by the eternal whetstone of pain. The consequent thrashings, but no matter, he’d found his weapon, and few were quick enough to parry his blows.

But he’d known it was a dead end. You could entertain the dullards at another’s expense for only so long, be bought rounds and given free food out of the generosity of their amusement, their incredulity that a filthy little rat of a boy could cause City Watch or strong laborers or beefy sailors turn red in the face before a crowd, before the crowd itself turned against you.

Before you become indiscriminate enough to wield your rapier wit against anyone, everyone, the world.

It became a game.

How close could he push the most powerful people in the room, the bar, the market, to murderous fury, before they went beyond beating him to actually killing him in truth.

He’d been so light during those years. Free of all obligations, even to himself. Hunger made him delirious, permanently light headed, his body distant and the pains he lived with inconsequential.

It could have, would have ended then if he’d not traded blows with a master.

Vic closed his eyes against that memory, the pain twisting in his heart like a knife.

Master Brom. The retired swordmaster whose with was scintillating, and with whom Vic had engaged in an extended series of barbs and repartee that had astonished them both. The old man had truly looked at Vic, had seen the youth behind the dirt and bruises, and decided to take him in.

To give him a chance.

“No,” whispered Vic, grinding his brow against the pillar. “No, please.”

The memories unspooled, faster than he could track. Full bowls of food, a pallet in the storehouse, the first lessons with the blade, his own surprising talent, his wrist as fast as his wit, his eagerness to learn unmatched.

Two years of bliss.

And then he’d done something horrible. Something stupid. It had all gone wrong, and because of it he’d found Master Brom dead, head clubbed out of shape in the entrance hall of his home, the door still open, the thieves who should have only taken the old silver candlesticks having ransacked the house entire, and Vic’s gambling debt wiped away not just by stolen goods, but Master Brom’s life.

Tears scaled Vic’s cheeks. He’d not thought of Master Brom in years, but now the image arose, the old man’s body stretched out, his face warped and purpled, the blood.

Vic had retreated in horror, self-loathing, denial. Had lost track of the following weeks as he’d reeled from one bar to the next drug den, using his ill-gotten skills with the blade to kill anyone who took offense with his insults, his brutality, his callous indifference to decency.

He’d sought death, and again, failed to find it.

Color had leached from the world. The streets had become as familiar as the lines in his paths, and for a few years, when others were learning to court pretty girls, attending academies, apprenticing themselves to some steady trade, he instead learned the worst of what Flutic had to offer. For awhile he made coin selling his pretty face. Then he made coin by leading those same men and women into ambushes where hard-hearted associates would knock them out the moment they succumbed to pleasure. Then he began leading those associates in ransacking the homes of their victims, and for a glorious, wretched, abhorrent six months he flooded the fences and pawn shops with ill-gotten goods, flooded his pockets with coin, as he committed the very act that had gotten Master Brom killed.

Vic lost count of the men he killed, and for a while it seemed he dueled some idiot to the death at least once a week, his utter indifference to his own death spreading his reputation such that people eventually stopped challenging him altogether.

Till one night, one terrible, gaunt, decadent night, he’d insulted a young woman with beautiful black hair, and when she’d drawn her blade with surprising assertiveness, he’d laughed and drawn his own.

Only to be beaten to within an inch of his life.

But he’d said something, he didn’t know what, that had impressed Nessa before he fell, such that when he awoke he was propped up in a booth, a drink before him, heading pounding, the worst of his cuts bandaged, and Nessa watching him over her own third or fifth drink.

Vic’s harsh, raw gasps smoothed out.

What a terrible, enabling, glorious, gorgeous friendship that had been. Those first years. Them against the world.

Respect kept them from every tumbling each other, but they shared everything else. Slept in garrets, rented out the best rooms in the finest establishments when they were flush with coin, enacted the most daring heists, and stayed, mostly, just one step ahead of the City Watch and the law.

Nessa.

Vic sank into a crouch and pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes once more. Stars blossomed in the depths of the darkness.

He felt himself a husk.

A dandelion seed that had been blown his whole life upon the winds of misfortune.

And though he’d been blessed with talent, he’d never sought to right his situation. Always he’d used his inordinately skills to indulge, to sink deeper, to take out his pain on others.

There was no denying it now.

The Demon Seed burned in his core, baked away the pretenses, forced him to gaze upon the entirety of his life in a manner he’d never dared to before.

What might he have accomplished if he’d been given a chance? Wholesome parents, proper schooling, boundaries, discipline? If he’d respected Master Brom enough to walk the line, to keep himself away from the gambling dens? If he’d respected himself enough to lift himself from squalor and degradation?

He shook as a deep shudder tried to rent him in twain.

Because that was the heart of it, wasn’t it? Why bother saving something that had no value?

Why seek to lift something out of the mud if that was where it belonged?

No wonder he’d always seen life as an unending series of cons, for he himself was his greatest mark, his prized fool, his endlessly gullible target. Never try for something truly better, because should you dare step out of the alley shadows into the light of day, all your finery, your frippery, will reveal itself for mud-smeared rags.

And you?

You’ll see that same hollow-cheeked waif in the mirror, the broken boy, the beaten child, the terrified hole that no love had ever filled.

Vic wrapped his arms around his head and squeezed his eyes shut.

He didn’t want this. He’d come here to help his friends, to get them to the 27th Level, to perhaps spend a few delightful days fornicating with a heavenly demon and then walk away empowered like Harald, capable of anything.

Not this.

But he couldn’t turn his mind’s eye away from his weakness. His broken soul.

More memories. Endless moments where he’d chosen hilarity over sincerity, mockery over vulnerability, disdain over trust. An endless series of sullied pearls on the necklace of his life, with only his wit and swordplay keeping him one step ahead of destruction.

He felt himself a cracked gourd. A shattered plate. He was dust and broken patterns.

Anger sparked within him.

He might have been a fool, a bully, a monster, but he’d never been… he sought the right word. An idiot? Credulous? Weak?

But each word, as he tried it, revealed itself a truth.

He had been weak. Idiotic. Blind. Credulous of his own lies. He’d spun a great glittering web of a life based on denial, bitterness, and brilliance.

And with this realization, that web, his most precious construction, his lifelong endeavor, fell apart.

It could no longer serve him once recognized. Once seen.

Which left… what?

Who was he, once you flensed away the lies? Once you carved out the rotten spots, baked away the pain, whittled him down to his very essence?

What was left?

Who was Vic without his coping strategies, his deflections, his hedonistic indulgences?

Hours passed.

An eternity.

Vic sat, arms roped around his knees, hollow-eyed. An empty vessel.

And finally a truth offered itself to him.

Behind every lie, every crime, every act of self-sabotage, every duel, all the effort he’d put into deceiving himself by excelling at the worst things, had been an engine. A mechanism that refused to let him lie down and die. He might have steered its energies in all the wrong directions, but that drive had propelled him. Given him the vitality and vivacity to thrive almost anyone else would have died.

Vic considered that truth.

There had been countless, countless times when he could have given up. Ceased to struggle, to let the world pull him under and end his life.

But always he’d fought on.

Why?

Why had he put up with so much pain?

At the heart of his hedonism was a basic joy in living. In another’s embrace, in a bottle of wine, in riding a stolen carriage at suicidal speed, in doing too many drugs, in those wild and febrile nights when anything seemed possible, even redemption.

What kept him going was the terrible hope that perhaps, one day, he’d escape his demons and emerge, not forgiven, not shriven of his sins, but able to enjoy something pure, something good, for its own sake—and not turn it toward some advantage.

The hope that he might one day surprise himself and suffer some terrible loss that would steal him of his defenses, leave him naked, leave him ready to embrace the future as a child again, as—

Vic squeezed himself tight, words failing him, inadequate, unable to capture that tenuous, beautiful force that had caused him to never quite give up on himself.

More time passed.

Without realizing what he was doing, he crawled to the edge of the azure pool and slid into its cool waters. For ages he floated on his back, weightless, emptied out anew.

But in his Cosmos now burned a new force. A new mistress that refused to let him be.

So finally he rose to standing, the water hip deep, and scooped his wet hair out of his face. Stared bleakly at the great portal that led out of the cavern to the rest of Eclavistra’s domain, a portal he’d never crossed.

He couldn’t remain here forever.

But who would he emerge as?

Harald had been blessed with Insatiable Void, a Divine Soul Rank, and a new Soul Ability. He’d stepped back into Flutic a new man, filled with such terrible purpose that nothing had stopped him yet.

But Vic?

He considered himself. He felt light, cleansed, hollow.

Curious, he summoned his Window.

Soul Nature: Lacerating Insight
Soul Rank: Divine
Soul Ability: Elegy of Truths

He felt a flicker of surprise, but it was quickly gone. Of course. His lip curled in a sneer, but he couldn’t sustain the derision. Curious, he summoned the descriptions.

Lacerating Insight: Your vision pierces the world. Yourself. Others. Power. Purpose. Your understanding becomes a graveyard in which lies, pretense, and even hope comes to die.

“Lovely,” whispered Vic. “I’d like a refund.”

The fact that his Soul Rank had elevated to Divine only caused a flicker of interest. He’d have been insulted had it been anything less. But what of his Soul Ability?

Elegy of Truths: If you desire it, you may utter a devastating observation whose power and veracity disarms and destroys those who seek shelter behind its obverse.

Vic pondered the description. He’d always had that ability, to skewer fools, to tear away pretensions. Was this, then, some supernaturally elevated version of that facility? Great. He was going to make friends everywhere.

Vic climbed out of the pool and moved to the ancient wardrobe in which hung Eclavistra’s outfits. He sorted idly through the hangars until he found a black silk robe, and this he pulled over his sodden form, tying off the sash methodically as he pondered his new self.

Harald had exited the Dungeon drive to go on runs, get all sweaty, and impress Sam with how many sandbags he could carry. But what motivated Vic?

He thought of his urchin-self, all the small friends and street buddies he’d seen destroyed by fate and fortune, churned up by the hunger of Flutic’s streets. Thought of his mother, who’d died, he’d heard, of a drug overdose in some flophouse. Who might she have been if given a chance at a different life?

What, was he going to turn into a champion for the poor? He scowled. Could there be anything more pathetic? Life was hard. You either fought to survive, or you failed.

Or so he’d always thought.

But now he looked at it all again, but with a point of view updated by years of living on both sides of the divide.

Always he’d placed the onus on the individual. If he’d found the ability to survive at any cost, than so could anyone else. But he’d succeeded at what cost, and what had his ‘success’ even looked like?

No.

Vic rubbed at his jaw. He’d seen how wealth facilitated the lives of the powerful. How even the hardest working of tradesmen often had no chance of bettering their lives.

But honestly, fuck becoming a bleeding heart radical who’d go wash the feet of the downtrodden and protest for change. Let the Mother Church preach that kind of humble action.

No.

If there was to be change, it wouldn’t come about by seeking to help the poor. They were already broken and stunted by being raised in poverty, forced to commit radical deeds simply to survive, blinded by ignorance, haunted by trauma.

If there was to be change, it had to happen at the top.

The Twilight Crown.

Vic paused.

A handsome, virile, witty king wearing the Crown could effect some serious change, couldn’t they? Or, if said witty fellow couldn’t get the Crown itself, if they were ideally positioned next to the person who wore it, they could do some serious damage to the systems that oppressed the majority of the city.

That appealed very, very strongly to Vic.

Oh, but there was so much in need of destruction. So much corruption, so many closed circuits of wealth-making, so many elite idiots in need of being brought low.

Yes.

That was a cause he could get behind.

A presence manifested behind him, standing, no doubt, in the archway.

Eclavistra.

His patroness.

“I trust your time alone has been salutary?” Her voice was different, stripped of its now obviously artificial seductive overtones. It was the cold, clinical tones of a very dangerous, very powerful being who’d make a wager.

“Passingly so.” He turned to look at her. She wore a sober outfit of black, white and lavender that did little to hide her natural voluptuousness. But she was no longer weaponizing her beauty, and for the first time in his life, Vic found himself unaffected by obvious feminine charms. “I was about to ring for room service. All that fornicating has left me starving.”

Her smile was wry and failed to touch her blank white eyes. “I see the Seed has found fertile ground.”

“It’s weird, I’ll grant you.” He moved forwards. “It’s not the first time I’ve been inseminated, but its definitely the most productive. I find myself harboring all kinds of new and dangerously exciting ambitions.”

“As you should.” Her voice warmed with satisfaction. “So I shall unleash you upon the world. Where is it you wish to go?”

“Hmm.” He pretended to ponder, but the answer was obvious. “My friends.”

“But of course.” She studied him, then inclined her head in mock servility. “I shall be watching, Vic. Make me proud.”

“I don’t know about that,” he said, tone serious. “You take your pleasure where you can get it. For my part, it’s time to cease amusing myself and get to work. There are a lot of changes I wish to see made in short order.”

Eclavistra’s portal opened to one side, lavender and white, filling the air with its faint thrum of power. “Then you had best get to it.”

“See you around, darling.” Vic’s smile was hard. “You were a fun romp. Not enjoyable, exactly, but it’s been far too long since I learned something in bed. For that you’ve got my thanks.”

And before she could answer, he stepped into the Portal, and was gone.