13. Last Stand

thirteen

Adrian sensed Kali's aura before he saw her. She hadn't tried to shroud it, and the weight of it crashed into him…though not as much as it once would have thanks to his rigorous training. Sure enough, all he'd had to do was wait a couple days for her to come to him.

Something about her aura felt off, and he realized what when Blazewing crested the trees ringing the clearing he'd chosen for their showdown. Of course Kali wouldn't tramp through the forest on foot—not when she had a winged daemon to bear her in style.

Get ready, Adrian sent through his bonds.

Lockrod replied with an impression of bared fangs from his hiding place among the tree boughs while Heartrender chirped softly and rubbed against Adrian's leg. All the pieces of his plan were in place—time to put them into action.

Lifting his hands in surrender, Adrian made a show of cowering in the middle of the clearing. "You can have the daemon, the journal, whatever you want. Just please, don't hurt me!"

It wasn't hard feigning fear when he knew how easily Blazewing could incinerate him from above. This was the riskiest part of his plan. Would Kali take the bait, or would she simply order her daemon to roast them alive?

He released a pent-up breath when Blazewing spiraled down to land. So far, so good. The daemon paused its descent a few paces above the ground so that its master could unmeld from her Fusion. Then, it returned to the air, circling overhead as a silent sentry.

Kali looked much as she had in the meadows outside Hillvale. She wore the same silver tunic, with Serenity Corp's spiked crescent moon pinned to her chest. Her icy eyes measured him, and he took a savage pleasure in the thin scar marring her once pristine beauty. Healers might have been able to restore her vision, but he'd still left his mark.

If she saw past the shroud he'd used to partially mask his aether, she didn't let on. "Adrian. I'm glad you've come to your senses."

He bowed his head. "I've spent months hiding in the forest, living off scraps and constantly looking over my shoulder. I can't take it anymore. All I want is for my life to return to normal."

Kali smiled coldly. He didn't have to feign a shiver. "If it were up to me, you'd never leave this forest. Not after the trouble you've caused." Her left eye twitched, her smile fading. "Fortunately for you, my superiors want you alive. Relinquish Serenity Corp's stolen property, and I will oblige them."

Alivewasn't the same as unharmed, and he doubted Kali was as forgiving as she claimed. Still, he had a role to play.

"Go on," he said, gesturing to Heartrender. "You're her problem now."

Heartrender trudged forward. Keeping her eyes fixed on the daemon, Kali unclipped a cylindrical device from her belt that pulsed with a strange configuration of aether. Whatever it was, Adrian didn't want it anywhere near Heartrender.

Time to put his plan into motion.

He kicked a mound of dirt by his feet, spraying it into the air. An instant later, Heartrender replicated it at a massive scale, flooding the clearing with an illusory dust cloud.

"Really, Adrian?" Kali said, her professional composure cracking. "Whatever game you think you're playing, you're way out of your league. Blazewing, bombard them!"

Adrian performed a partial Fusion so he could see through Heartrender's eyes. The shift in perspective remained disorienting, but he'd practiced navigating like this extensively since his bout with Seymour. He took advantage of Heartrender's unobscured vision to creep toward Kali.

Above, Blazewing swooped to execute Kali's shouted order and collided with something in midair. Adrian suppressed a chuckle. Lockrod's Unbendable Rod had worked like a charm, its aether practically invisible if you didn't know where to look.

"How did you do that?" Kali demanded.

He didn't answer, continuing his cautious approach with Heartrender. When he drew near Kali, he instructed Lockrod to manifest a rod for him and swung it at her head.

The Serenity Corp agent reacted faster than he expected, pivoting to catch the blow on her forearm and shove the weapon aside. The movement threw him off-balance. He recovered quickly, but Kali had already spun left to circle behind him. She jabbed blindly in his general direction, forcing him to retreat and parry. They exchanged several furious rounds of blows. Adrian landed a strike on her thigh and received a bruising punch to his ribs in return.

Spirits below! Even blinded by dust, Kali was more than a match for him. A sudden warning from Lockrod sent him scrambling back right as flames erupted from a nearby fireball. Without Lockrod to harry it, Blazewing must've recovered enough to carry out Kali's original orders.

That gave him an idea.

He searched the ground for a suitable stone and tossed it at Kali, arcing it so it passed above the dust cloud. Sensing his intent, Heartrender anchored a Mirror Image of herself to the rock. As he'd hoped, Blazewing responded by launching another fireball. Kali sputtered a string of expletives as it detonated almost directly on top of her. From what Adrian saw through Heartrender's eyes, the flames singed her hands and face but had almost no effect on her silver garments. They must possess at least a basic aetherforging to strengthen the material.

"Stop, Blazewing!" Kali shouted. She flared her aether, recalling the daemon.

Adrian didn't wait to see what she did next. Lockrod, to me! Heartrender, dismiss the cloud!

Trusting his daemons to follow his lead, he charged Kali. By the time he'd reached her, the dust cloud had faded, allowing him to cancel his partial Fusion with Heartrender and focus fully on the brawl. Heartrender stuck to Kali's flanks. She was joined a few moments later by Lockrod from his treetop perch. Their joint attacks distracted Kali, allowing Adrian to thwack her ribs with his Unbendable Rod hard enough to break a lesser daemon master's bones.

Kali staggered back. "I see you've been training since our last encounter. Clever, disguising your full aura so you appear weaker." Her eyes narrowed. "But it makes no difference."

"Really?" He pressed his attack, landing another solid blow to her thigh that left her limping. "Because by the look of things, I'm not the one who's out of their league."

"Enough!" Her remaining composure melted away as aether enveloped her. Shadowlash materialized at her side an instant later.

Adrian's chest tightened. He'd hoped to overwhelm Kali before she resorted to summoning her other daemon. Unfortunately, however, prudence had overruled her pride.

Shadowlash lunged forward. Before it could reach him, Heartrender superimposed several illusory copies atop his torso. The enemy daemon hesitated, unable to tell which dodging Adrian was the real one. When it struck, its snapping jaws passed harmlessly through a decoy.

He tried to whack the daemon's skull with his Unbendable Rod, but Shadowlash blurred into shifting shadows, and his blow connected with nothing but air. He barely evaded the tentacles that lashed at him in retaliation.

Heartrender, Lockrod, to me!

His daemons swung around Kali to come to his defense. The Serenity Corp agent made no move to stop them. Now that she'd given up on defeating Adrian herself, she appeared perfectly content to relegate the work to her daemon. That suited Adrian just fine.

Unfortunately, Shadowlash didn't seem to need any help to best them. Its ability to become incorporeal at will rendered their physical attacks worthless while its own thrashing tentacles were almost impossible to avoid.

Retreat, Adrian ordered, frustration weighing on him. They'd already lost whatever initial ground they'd gained via the element of surprise. They needed to fall back, regroup, and devise a new strategy.

Under the cover of another illusory cloud, Adrian scooped up Lockrod and used a partial Fusion with Heartrender to navigate away from Shadowlash. They'd barely gone a dozen steps when Kali recalled Shadowlash and summoned Blazewing. The fiery daemon soared above the cloud and resumed blanketing the area with fireballs.

So much for cover.

Dodging the explosions as best he could, Adrian ran back toward Kali. If he was going to be pelted by fire, he at least wanted to ensure she suffered some collateral damage.

As he drew near, Kali turned to face him. Enough of his shroud must've faded for her to track him by his aether. Blazewing vanished overhead, Shadowlash reappearing an instant later.

Adrian skidded to a halt, narrowly avoiding a tentacle swipe. Spirits below! If they pulled back, Blazewing could burn them out of hiding, but if they stayed close, Shadowlash would pummel them to pieces. Kali had them at her mercy.

"I can do this all day," she called, her tone mocking. "You may have grown since our last meeting, but you're still nothing compared to me."

Spirits take her, she was right. Even with both his daemons manifested, he hadn't been able to best her while she was fighting alone. With her daemons, she was unstoppable.

Heartrender chose that moment to flood his mind with images. He struggled to sort out her meaning while avoiding Shadowlash's blind attacks through the illusory cloud. When he finally understood, he grinned. Shadowlash was nigh invincible, and Blazewing remained out of reach overhead…but only after Kali summoned it. Even she couldn't manifest a daemon more than a few paces away. That might be just the opening they needed to turn the tide back in their favor.

Adrian feigned retreat, dodging away from Shadowlash and using his two daemons to cover him. As he expected, Kali recalled Shadowlash and summoned Blazewing.

Now, Lockrod!

The Unbendable Rod vanished from Adrian's hands, reappearing anchored in the air above Blazewing. The daemon collided with the horizontal rod, straining to push past it and rise into the sky. Adrian poured aether into a Surge to bolster Lockrod's technique. Simultaneously, he infused Heartrender with still more of his aether as an Enhancement. Gritting his teeth at the strain, he had her dismiss her Mirror Image to clear their vision.

Heartrender leaped onto Kali's struggling daemon, followed a beat later by Lockrod. As it had before when cornered, Blazewing crackled with wild flames. The unshaped aether wasn't enough to incinerate either of Adrian's daemons outright, though their pain reverberated through him.

Unable to recall her daemon while its aether was in flux, Kali could only watch in frustrated fury while Heartrender and Lockrod tore it apart. When Blazewing died, Adrian reveled in their victory. One daemon down, only one to go.

Then, he noticed Kali's thin smile. Spirits below, she'd been waiting for us to finish Blazewing off! Before he could shout a warning, a freshly summoned Shadowlash crushed Lockrod beneath a mass of shadowed tentacles. His aether already thinned by Blazewing's flames, Lockrod burst apart, flowing into Adrian to regenerate.

A sharp pain stabbed through Adrian an instant later. At first, he thought it was a physical reaction to losing Lockrod. Then, he spied the metal jutting from his flesh. Kali had taken advantage of his distraction to close the short distance between them and ram a dagger—perhaps the same one he'd stolen during their last encounter—through his chest.

Vaguely, he heard Heartrender's anguished yowl as he staggered to his knees.

Kali loomed over him. Her face split into a self-satisfied smirk. "It's over. Order your daemon to stand down."

Tears blurred Adrian's sight as his vision wavered. He was fading fast. Given time, his aether could probably mend the wound in his chest, but there was no way he'd be able to keep fighting in the meantime. He thought of Crastley hiding from Serenity Corp for years. Of Seymour helping him escape Hillvale. Of his parents and their noble sacrifice. When it mattered most, all of them had held fast to their convictions. How could he do any less now?

Mustering what strength remained to him—along with some extra aether fed to him by Heartrender—he shook his head. "No," he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

From the tightening of Kali's lips, he knew she'd heard him. She gestured at Shadowlash with her bloody dagger. "Subdue his daemon. Hurt it if you must but keep it alive."

Tentacles writhed across Shadowlash's back. A dark haze enveloped its body as it dashed forward. Heartrender bared her fangs and readied herself to meet the daemon's assault head-on. Illusory copies sprang up around her to help deflect Shadowlash's attacks.

She won't win.

Adrian knew this truth down to his core. Unlike the ferocious daemon bearing down on her, Heartrender excelled at distractions and battlefield support, not direct combat. His heart ached at his daemon's readiness to give her life for his, and he bowed his head. How many times had he sacrificed Trailseeker to save himself? Perhaps it was time he balanced the scales.

Heartrender, return!

His daemon shimmered into a cloud of aether right as Shadowlash slammed a pair of tentacles where she'd been. Kali's daemon skidded to a halt, clearly unsure how to respond.

"You spirit-cursed fool!"

Kali's eyes blazed with barely restrained fury. She took a step toward him before jerking to a halt. She breathed out, visibly composing herself. When she looked at him again, she wore a mask of cold indifference.

"I told you my employers want you alive. They're…curious about you. Release your daemon, and I'll deliver you to them, safe and sound." She took another step, brandishing her dagger still dripping with his blood. "Refuse, and I'll capture the daemon when it unmelds from your corpse."

Adrian stubbornly set his jaw while his addled mind raced for a plan. It'd be hours before Lockrod recovered enough to be resummoned. Could Heartrender outrun Shadowlash? Not that it mattered—he was fooling himself if he thought he could sustain a full Fusion right now. But maybe she could at least save herself.

The orderly flow of his aether rippled. He gasped, clutching at his chest—not at his stab wound, but at something deeper within him. Spirits above, what's happening? It had been weeks since he'd struggled with his aether, and it had never felt like this.

Aether burst from him in a blazing penumbra of blue light. For a moment, he feared he was dying. Then, the light cleared, and his eyes widened as they locked on Heartrender standing beside him. She'd unmelded herself.

"No!" he shouted.

He reached for her, flinching at a spike of agony from his wound. Heartrender cast a sad look back at him. Reassurance mixed with dread through their bond as she padded forward until she came to a rest at Kali's feet.

"It seems your daemon has more sense than you do," Kali said. "Still, I suppose I should make sure this isn't another of your tricks."

In a swift motion, she bent and jammed something into Heartrender's back. His daemon went rigid. The bond between them shrank, and for a horrified instant, Adrian thought it would snap completely. To his relief, a single trembling thread remained. Had Kali been trying to kill Heartrender? That didn't make any sense, not when she wanted Heartrender alive.

Kali rose, revealing the bondstone glistening within Heartrender like a dark tumor. Its corrupting influence pressed on the edges of Adrian's mind, smothering Heartrender's will, and he shuddered. Are you okay? he sent through the thin filament that still connected them. He received little more than a flicker of disjointed emotion in response.

"Better," Kali said. "It is as it should be—the daemon domesticated and obedient."

"If you hurt her…" Even as Adrian spoke, he realized how pathetic the threat must sound coming from a man bleeding out on the ground.

"I have no intention of damaging Serenity Corp's property." Kali glanced disdainfully at the pacified daemon. "Rise."

Heartrender obeyed, standing and awaiting a new order in the same lifeless way as Shadowlash did. As Trailseeker once had.

"Why does Serenity Corp care so much about Heartrender anyway?" Adrian asked, desperate to delay for time. "If they don't want Crastley's research getting out, why order you not to kill her?"

Kali studied him, her expression unreadable. Eventually, she shrugged. "I don't know, nor do I care. My orders are clear. Serenity Corp wants the asset recovered, so that is what I will do."

Disbelief drowned out his pain and fear. "How can that be enough for you?"

"Why shouldn't it be?" Her cold eyes flicked away. "When daemons broke through the Bulwark and butchered my family in their cornfields, Serenity Corp took me in. They trained me, gave me a new purpose. The only thing that matters is carrying out my duty."

Duty.

The word tightened his gut. Coming from someone else, he might've thought Kali trying to elicit sympathy. Yet, the way she described her past tragedies was detached, almost clinical. Even so, he couldn't help but feel a twisted kinship with her. The same thing drove them, albeit to two very different ends. Not that that would stop him from resisting her with all his might.

"Aren't you even the least bit curious about what's going on?" he said, trying a different tack. "Like how I manifested two daemons at once?"

Kali hesitated. Was it his imagination, or had a trace of doubt entered her expression?

"I could show you," he offered. "Even if you don't question your orders, learning more about the situation wouldn't hurt, right? I can tell you everything I know, let you come to your own—"

"Be quiet," Kali said, her face smoothing. "No more stalling. I have a mission to complete."

She held up the strange cylinder she'd tried to use on Heartrender earlier and activated it with a pulse of aether. In the blink of an eye, Heartrender's form broke apart, vanishing inside.

"What was that?" Adrian breathed.

"One of the many wonders developed thanks to Serenity Corp's research," Kali replied as she re-clipped the cylinder to her belt. "It simulates an artificial meld with a daemon, allowing easy transportation without the need for a bond."

Spirits above, how is that possible?His eyes fixed on the unassuming device, and he noticed a second cylinder dangling beside it. Unlike the pristine metal of the one containing Heartrender, this one's surface appeared heavily scarred and pitted with rust. An earlier prototype, perhaps?

"Such revolutionary technology might become widespread someday," Kali continued. Her lips curled with distaste. "Assuming you don't burn society to the ground before then."

A shudder racked Adrian's wounded flesh. "All I want is to reveal the truth."

"What is truth in the face of so much pain and loss? Maybe there was once peace between humanity and daemons. But here, now, daemons hunt us like animals. And we return the favor. Serenity Corp is our sole light in that darkness—the bedrock that holds the League together. Destroy people's faith in it, and they'll have nothing left. Society will crumble and collapse." Her jaw tightened. "And I will do whatever I must to stop that from happening."

Adrian didn't respond, stricken mute by her unexpected burst of passion and the growing heaviness in his limbs.

Gathering herself until her face regained its usual cold indifference, Kali pressed a hand over the badge pinned to her chest. "I have secured the target." She waited a moment, then grimaced. "Yes, your precious specimen is safe, seeker."

Adrian's eyebrows rose. Seeker? Was she using her badge to communicate at a distance like Arbiter Janice had done via her daemon? That seemed the most logical explanation, but as with the containment cylinders, he struggled to explain how such a thing could be possible.

Kali trailed off, listening to a voice Adrian couldn't hear. She glanced at him, and his stomach clenched as her eyes narrowed. "I'm afraid the catcher resisted arrest. He died attempting to protect the stolen specimen."

"What?" Adrian's pulse quickened as some of the numbness pervading him fled. "You said you'd bring me in alive!"

Kali ignored him, though her cold gaze remained fixed on his. "I know—such a waste. But perhaps it is for the best." A pause. "Yes, of course. I will return soon with our prize." Dropping her hand from her badge, she stalked toward him. Her gleaming dagger glistened with his blood.

"What about taking me back to your masters?" Adrian asked, hating the quaver in his voice.

"It's the specimen they care about. You were only a bonus. Better to tie up loose ends now. As you so helpfully pointed out, I have only the faintest idea what you're capable of." Her smile didn't reach her eyes. "Besides, you didn't accept my offer, remember? Your daemon did."

"Wait!" Nobly sacrificing himself had seemed like a good idea before. But now that the moment had arrived, the gesture felt futile. How did it help Heartrender or anyone else if he died alone in the woods?

Something pulsed through his bond with Heartrender, so faint compared to their usual communication that he almost missed it. He probably would have had he not been so on edge and had their bond not been silent for the past few minutes. As usual, what he received was less a coherent thought than a jumble of emotions and images. Along with the sensations came a thread of aether—as much as she could stretch through their suppressed link.

Adrian appreciated the gesture, even if he didn't see what difference so little aether could make. But when he tugged on it, Heartrender quickly yanked it back. She sent admonishment, and he responded with confusion. What is it? What do you want from me? Sorting through her response left him with an impression of connection—of the union between two disparate parts.

A knee pressed hard into his sternum near his wound, jerking his attention back to Kali as he hissed in pain. She frowned down at him, her dagger poised at his neck.

"Are you even paying attention? I expected more fight out of you." She patted the second dagger still sheathed at her waist. "Care to try your luck again?"

Tuning her out as best he could with her knee slowly crushing the breath out of him, he tentatively stretched his own wavering aether toward Heartrender. They'd cycled their aether together many times before—was that what she wanted him to do now? Rather than accepting his aether, however, Heartrender directed it toward her own outstretched thread. Following her lead, he tried to combine the two streams of aether. But it was like forcing together opposing magnets.

"Hmph," Kali snorted. She sat back, easing the pressure on his chest. Disappointment flashed across her face before she could smother it beneath a veneer of professionalism. No matter what she claimed, he had a feeling this particular duty was more personal than she cared to admit. "So be it. Goodbye, Adrian. May the spirits have mercy on you."

Adrian frantically shoved his aether against Heartrender's, holding the streams in place through sheer force of will when they tried to thrash apart. His daemon's instincts had helped him escape Kali once before. If she thought this could help, he'd put his faith in her again.

A disembodied ringing suddenly reverberated through him. It wasn't sound, exactly—more a kind of shifting resonance within his aether, as if it were attempting to hum at a certain frequency within his veins. It reminded him of how Heartrender and Lockrod had felt when they'd accepted the true bond. Without any conscious effort on his part, his aether attuned to the vibrations. Heartrender's did the same until they both matched it precisely, like a pair of bards singing a perfect duet.

Vertigo gripped him as the two conflicting threads of aether linking them snapped into alignment, vibrating in unison until they had merged into a single, beautiful note. The instant that effervescent note rang through his core, he and Heartrender became one in a way they never had before. The full breadth of her thoughts and emotions flooded his mind while her remaining aether felt as easy to access as his own.

Harmony—that had always been the key.And somehow, with her will partially suppressed and their situation at its most dire, Heartrender had figured that out.

In that moment of absolute connection, their aetheric reserves blending together, Adrian knew what he had to do. With a thought, he conjured a Mirror Image of Heartrender to Kali's right to draw her attention, then anchored another illusion to himself. Shadowlash pounced at the fake Heartrender, passing right through it.

Kali returned her icy gaze to Adrian with a scowl. "I don't know how you're doing that, but it ends now!"

She slashed her dagger across his throat, expecting to slice through flesh. When the blade instead connected with the illusory copy he'd overlaid a hand's width above him, Kali faltered, her eyes widening.

Drawing on Heartrender's aether for strength, Adrian levered his hands around Kali's fingers. Seymour had made him practice the disarming move over and over until he could perform it in his sleep. The dagger slipped from Kali's grasp. He deftly caught it before it fell and faked stabbing at her face.

Her previous wound must have been fresh in her mind because she screamed, fear overwhelming her training as she raised her arms to shield her eyes. At the last moment, he readjusted and swung the dagger down instead, ramming it into her chest. He'd worried her aetherforged tunic might possess some hidden property like the cylinders or her badge, but the dagger easily stabbed through to the flesh beneath.

Kali gasped, struggling to wriggle back while her fingers scrabbled for the second blade still sheathed at her waist. Panic gripped him. He couldn't give her the chance to recover—not again. Fueled by his shared reserve, he averted his eyes and brought the dagger down again and again until the Serenity Corp operative stilled.

The connection between Heartrender and him snapped as abruptly as it had formed. His strength left him in a rush, and he crumpled atop Kali, too weak to shove away. Now that it was over, his stomach churned with the horror of what he'd done. No matter how much he told himself it had been necessary, that did little to temper his remorse.

His last thought before darkness took him was a fervent prayer that his brutal act hadn't been in vain and that Heartrender and Lockrodwould be all right without him.