"We both know you will die an old woman, shouting orders at weaker men while your young mistresses sit around you feeding you sugared dates and hoarding my wine."
WHAT: Fighting in the Salt Mines, like one does, and then saving your childhood best friend with your newly discovered star magic, like you do. WHERE: The Salt Mines during the final attack! WHEN: Today, March 26 WARNINGS: Mentions of blood and injuries STATUS:Complete!
“Do not let me leave here without a book of some kind,” Ostyia said. Her casual, idle tone was probably more appropriate for strolling down the aisles of a market rather than combing every inch of the Salt Mines looking for corrupted Vultures, but Ostyia rarely let on how she was actually feeling about anything. The trepidation, unease, anxiety, fear, and fatigue were all swept away in the face of something to do, and they were washed away in a monsoon flood when it came to Serefin’s well-being. She had to be on the highest of alerts--even though Serefin had people who cared about him and would fight with him, no one else understood the Vultures. Ostyia had been tutored in magic by one and even she didn’t fully grasp all that they underwent to come out as they were. The corrupted Vultures were whispered about, the boogeymen of their nightmares, except the light would never scare them away.
She would not let Serefin face them alone. She would not let Serefin face anything alone. Not because of his magic, not because of the reminder of his half-brother, not because he was still her Prince even without a kingdom, but because Serefin was Ostyia’s best friend. That was the beginning and the end of any discussion.
She tapped the flat end of her blade against her bottom lip, considering. “No, definitely at least three. It should be worth my trouble.” Ostyia supposed they could have asked Ashe for the dynamite she was so fond of, to blow the place sky high. But neither one of them would be satisfied until they knew for certain that there was no chance the corrupted Vultures were still in Vallo. Ostyia came armed to the teeth in spells, blades, and persistence, but even being in the Mines had her short hair bristled like a frightened cat.
“No, five books.”
Being inside the Salt Mines was like every horrible childhood nightmare come to life. He had sent Nadya in because he hadn't been bothered to slink into its dark, putrid cavern. There were no screams of anguish or immediate sounds of torture, but that didn't mean that it hadn't happened here, wouldn't happen again. Serefin wanted to be done with this whole business, but much like Ostyia, he needed confirmation that not a single corrupted Vulture existed. Hence, his presence in the caves—even if they had been separated from the others.
He wanted her to move faster through the labyrinth-like cave. Serefin did not care about the books inside.
"I'm not carrying them," Serefin replied, his attention diverted to the ceiling, around corners, a balmy sweat slicking over his skin. He was both hot and cold, and he didn't know if that was simply a spell or the building unease that they were about to stumble upon something heinous.
"And we cannot linger. The defense team is spread out in here. Any wrong move and they could take us all down under rubble—" Ah, that was it now, claustrophobia. The last time he was underground, the tsarina had driven a blade through his chest. And yet here he was again, a dagger at his hip and stars at his fingertips. Calling them seemed deceptively easier now, and Serefin did not know if that was a bad thing.
There was a crash to their right, and Serefin turned and backed purposely toward Ostyia. Battle habits were hard to break even when he was without the magic that drove him through. A low hissing, followed by a tck-tck-tck echoed off the stalactites.
"There's more than one," Serefin said, dangerously low, to Ostyia over his shoulder.
Ostyia held up a hand to stop Serefin from saying anything further. She knew, she heard, she quelled the visceral reaction she had to yank Serefin down the hall and sprint away. The inside of her arm dripped with blood thanks to the dagger, one clean slice for a spell. It was a small price to pay for magic, Ostyia had told Jacob it was an innate part of them because it was. Her magic was sharp, refined, smooth and clean like the edge of a knife blade. But it was a tossup for Ostyia as to whether that knife would cut her straight through instead.
She grabbed Serefin’s shoulder and shoved him to a corner, forcing herself in front even though Ostyia was physically smaller. It was another way for people to underestimate her or see what they wanted to see. A page already torn out of her codex, Ostyia’s blood fell onto the runes inscribed there. “Quiet,” she muttered, her breath coming out in an icy puff.
Ostyia’s lack of peripheral vision meant that she had to work harder and smarter, and rely on other senses to balance what she didn’t have. She waited, so still and silent it was as if the spell had been to turn her into a part of the cave. But no, it was so that the only sound heard was the scratching of claws on rock, closer, closer, faster, faster, they could detect magic, especially Tranavian blood magic--
Her hands shot out to either side, she pulled the cold coursing through her veins and manifested it in two bursts of ice. One slammed into a Vulture straight in the face, the head coming clean off from the force and cold. Another caught the other around its spindly legs, Ostyia rushed forward and pulled a short sword off her calf, one slice to the left side, one slice to the right, and it too met its death. She wiped the brackish blood on her pant leg and replaced the sword. “I do not miss this, by the way.”
Just because he was without his blood magic did not mean he was useless against their approaching enemies. Serefin was not thrilled about being shoved into a hiding spot. He understood her reasoning, always wanting to take the first blow for him, but Serefin was getting tired of people putting their neck on the line for him, without giving him a chance to do the same for them. It felt uncomfortable, it made him feel helpless. It had often been the reason he and Ostyia tended to fight.
But now was not the time for a fight with her, not when she was blasting icy daggers and taking out another with her short sword. Serefin did not make the same mistake he did in the forest: he brought two daggers this time, though he felt woefully underprepared with him. Not when his mentor was a knife fanatic, and his lover was insanely competent with blade-wielding.
Serefin peeled himself out of the corner Ostyia pushed him into, a sour note to his expression. "I do not either," Serefin said, whispering low as to not attract too much noise. "Not if you're going to continue to be the sacrificial front line, I will not watch you or anyone else be injured on my account." He nudged the body with his foot. "There will be more—"
And a blast of fire roared from behind a rock formation, narrowly missing the both of them. They would not be so lucky twice.
Ostyia looked primed to argue. To her, it was a matter of her own helplessness, this world she didn’t understand, Serefin’s magic stolen from him literally overnight, she couldn’t control that but she could control how she responded and what she did. And if what she did, what she willingly chose to do was watch out for Serefin because he was her friend and not out of a sense of obligation, then why was it wrong?
But what came out of her mouth instead was a Tranavian curse. Serefin’s ‘will be’ had quickly turned into the present.
The spell still fresh and crisp in her hands, Ostyia sealed one side of the tunnel in a sheet of ice--it would do little against the heat that would surely come again, but it bought them precious seconds to come up with a plan. Not that their choices were outstanding: stand and fight or take the fight further down the tunnel where they might run into more Vultures and be overrun on both sides.
Off of her back Ostyia pulled a cat o’nine tails. She wrapped another spell around the handle, dripped blood on to it and with a flick of her wrist the whip made a sharp crack on the ground, suddenly increasing in length and growing inches of barbs along the thongs. They slithered and writhed as if it came to life. “We fight or we run,” she said. “Your call.”
Serefin weighed the options. There was a chance—half of one—that instead of running into more Vultures further into the mines if they tried to escape, that they would rendezvous with another team inside. Back to the fighting, back to Jacob and Evie the rest of the defense groups. But the place was large, all-encompassing. They couldn't follow noises, because there was no guarantee it would be friendly. With Ostyia's magic, the barbs growing out of the weapon, Serefin closed his eyes in a brief moment of concentration.
Time felt like it was moving in stops and starts—a moth, then another, a dozen fluttered out of nothingness and hovered like a halo around his head. Serefin didn't want to run anymore, he didn't want to give up, and he certainly would not let anyone suffer on his behalf when he could help.
"We fight, Ostyia," was his only warning before, reality coming back into full speed.
Another spell from another Vulture hurtled toward them. Serefin ducked, the moths following behind him in a trail of wings. He didn't have time to explain, but he would later. When death wasn't a possibility and they would knock back a ridiculous amount of wine. For now, the space filled with stars winking into existence, and Serefin didn't take his attention off the dark corridor where the flutter of wings and the deafening scrape of talons on stone approached rapidly upon them.
Ostiya nodded once, no hesitation, no reluctance, no question. Typically she liked a plan, typically she learned everything she could, typically Ostyia was playing three games of chess against tic-tac-to. But she was good like this too, moments when they were backed up, literally back to back against opposing forces. Her loyalty ran deep, she would not falter. “We fight,” she agreed, just as the ice wall shattered into millions of shards.
One of the many, many things that made the Vultures as terrifying as they were was their way of a hive mind. Taking that time they had, no matter how small, no matter how much they needed it, had consequences. Where there had previously been two or three Vultures corralled in, now there were ten that poured in.
The Vultures were faster spellcasters because they bled constantly, an effective ramification from the experimentation that turned them into what they were. Ostyia was a blur of movement, spells and swords and her whip. She bounced off of walls, used them as leverage to flip up and over, slid on the floor, anything to stay away and keep moving. She had been trained as well as any Tranavian and she worked twice as hard as any, but she had her limits. She whirled around with her whip. It wrapped around the neck of a Vulture and Ostyia tugged at it to dig in. The ground shook underneath her feet in response, she lost her footing, the Vulture yanked her in even as it was dying.
The reason became clear. Ostyia was pulled into a rock wall, straight onto a jagged spike that had magically formed.
Serefin lit up the cave. It seemed like a strange thing to do, wanting the give up the cover of the dim light and use shadows as a distraction. But the stars, they were more than that now. Serefin had seen what they could do if he thought it, if he meant it. It was magic without magic, a penance for what Nadya had broken and stolen away. If he was going to receive a gift from the banished gods, Serefin vowed to never let them take it back.
The terror swam in the eyes of one of the corrupted Vulture before Serefin burned them right out of his skull. Another threw a crackle of lightning, slicing through a cloud of moths rather than the soft skin of Serefin's side. They were a flurry of magic in the cramped space, but somehow he lost Ostyia in the mess. It was the noise she made, impaled on the new rock formation that drew his attention back to her.
He hit the ground, pain lacing up his nerves—he was not unfamiliar with the torture spell he had often used on Kalyazi prisoners. His fingers curled into a fist, against the agony, against the magic, calling the stars to him in an unconscious movement. And in a burst of blinding brilliance, the remaining Vultures dropped, smoking craters where their heads used to be.
Dangerous, the voice inside his head, his voice, chided. You are dangerous, Serefin Meleski, without control. He couldn't think about this now, he was just instinct, grasping for survival in battle.
Unable to catch his breath, Serefin crawled to her, taking her face in his hands. "Ostyia, not like this. I will not let you die to Vultures."
There was pain, but Ostyia was used to pain. Used to having to focus on anything but pain, used to having to push through it, used to compensating--but this time she couldn’t. This time, she was pinned like some specimen prepared for examination. “Like how then?” Ostiya asked, in some vague semblance of humor. Her breath was labored, it came out in harsh, wet gasps. “I am curious.” Her next comment would surely have been something about how Ostyia would have pictured it surrounded by beautiful women who had to take off their clothes in their grief! Had it not been interrupted by a bloodied cough.
She held onto Serefin’s wrists. “You should go. There will be more coming, and you can find the group that came down here. Meet up with them. Finish off the Vultures, close up the Mines. Have a drink.” Leave her. Serefin wouldn’t, Ostyia knew, because she would have never left him. Not after everything they had gone through, literally blood and bone and war and court politics and expectations and inside jokes and late nights pouring over battle plans and terrible tutors and the moments of peace that were so few and far between.
Ostiya squeezed his wrists, once. “You are so much more than you think. Than what anyone else thinks. I am happy to be your General, but being your friend is the greatest honor.”
"Blood and bone, will you stop talking, you're making it worse," Serefin said in a rush. "We both know you will die an old woman, shouting orders at weaker men while your young mistresses sit around you feeding you sugared dates and hoarding my wine." It was a joke, a horrible joke. As Serefin assessed the damage he could tell it was worse than it looked. He knew she would see the panic in his expression, that hard line between his brown when he knew the solutions were dwindling by the second.
It had been one of his worst nightmares on the battlefield, and now there was no war and yet it was coming true.
As his hands came away dark and stained red, he finally brought his attention to her face. If he was going to watch his best friend die, Serefin wouldn't be a coward, turned away from death. "What would you say to me? Stop catastrophizing? Stop catastrophizing. I won't hear it, Ostyia, I won't." He touched her face with his bloodied palm, his brain trying to find an answer. Anything. All his magic and all these new powers were useless if it couldn't save the people that were the most important to him.
A star winked near the corner of his eye. A moth and then another landed on her temple and in her hair. Intention thrummed down his spine, and unconsciously he was drawn to the dazzling lights dancing around them. As his fingers reached to pluck a star from the air, Serefin asked in a hoarse whisper, "Do you trust me?"
“I would be drinking it, not hoarding it,” Ostyia countered, if only to continue the banter that made up so much of the way they communicated. Anything else meant she’d be forced to look at Serefin and see what he didn’t want to say. She didn’t want him to say it either, not for her own benefit. Not for her own benefit, but for Serefin’s, who had already lost so much. And he’d stay until the end, stubborn fool.
Ostyia felt a calmness settle over her, or as much as could be expected, she supposed. Acceptance. She hurt, but the pain was growing further and further away, a drowsy, fuzziness clouding her senses. Tired. She was so tired. She wanted to sink into the warmth, give in to the heaviness of her limbs and her eye.
Serefin was asking something. She focused on his face and his hands toying with something. “You ask a question you already know the answer to.”
"Stay with me, Ostyia, just a little longer," Serefin said, his voice wavering. With the star in his hand, he could only seem to remember the destruction they caused, the need for offensive tactics. But he also knew, deep in his trembling bones, that Jacob was right. Stars were hazy, indistinct, a bright spot of energy that only lacked intention toward what was needed. If this worked, Serefin was never letting him say he knew nothing about magic again.
Serefin lifted Ostyia's head gently, with a tenderness he reserved for so few people, and slipped the star between her lips. She didn't need to swallow, she didn't need to do much of anything—this was Serefin's want, this was Serefin's desire and purpose working its magic to save his best friend. The glow lit up her mouth, down her throat, and disappeared.
Please, please, please was the looping mantra in his head. If he couldn't save her, Serefin knew that he truly was a failure, and no amount of magic was going to be able to prove it otherwise. T had only been a stopgap, covering up the imperfections that would remain.
Ostyia’s eye closed.
It happened at the exact moment the star’s radiance vanished, one a consequence of the other, but which?
Her consciousness narrowed, went thinner and thinner, the world growing smaller and darker. She didn’t want to go, but didn’t know how to stay. But she wanted to. The tunnel vision grew to just a pinprick of light, so bright it was impossible to ignore. Like it alone was holding off the darkness as a physical barrier. No, it seemed to say, in a language she both knew and couldn’t understand. Not divine, Ostyia had no use for the gods even now, but something else. Something that resonated in her very marrow, in her blood. Magic.
Ostyia didn’t feel the rock formation sliding back into the earth, her bones, muscles, tissues, ligaments, skin, being knit back together. She did, however, feel the ground against her back, steady and solid, felt Serefin’s hands trembling. She took a breath.
Her eye opened. Blue, skeptical, sharp like a knife, but laughing, somehow.
Alive.
“Did you say something about sugared dates and wine?”