Legion

The Dusted Quarter was the epicenter of a celebration. The diablan’s allied with Engañar were reveling in the night before the Emperor’s Clash. Every tent had their own handmade dish, choice of drink, and atmosphere. Bonfires were started in the streets which attracted frenzied dancers that cavorted around the flames, whooping like peace had been declared for all time.

Similar celebrations were being held across the city. Each militia entered in the Clash were having their own feasts to replicate the one being held in the palace on Perforacielo Mountain. None seemed as intense and joyous as the camp of the Bandit King. Legion kept his limbs close together, content to watch from Engañar’s tent. An old man with an eye-patch sat to his left cackling loudly.

“Isn’t this excessive?” Legion asked.

The old diablan slicked back his white hair, which reached the small of his back. “Not in the least! This is what it means to be a Diablan. We are not celebrating, we are defying. There are those who would be utterly content to see us shrink from view until we leave their minds —or this world, for that matter— so we light fires to chase away their shadows. Displaying ourselves in full light and showing that we accept what we are and are not afraid of their eyes.”

The old man talked fast. On knobby legs he stood. The tip of his tail perked high up. After a joyous cry he ran past the bonfires and into the streets beyond.

“Old tío had too much to drink.” Maya commented.

Legion looked suspiciously to the cup in her hand and the quarter-drained bottle of mystery liquor resting against her crossed legs. The old man wasn’t the only one indulging tonight.

“Cid likes inspiring the youth.” Legion caught a whiff of sweet breath. Jayjay, the blue diablan, was leaning close to him. She had painted her cheeks with lilac suns for tonight.

“You should dance Legion.” Jayjay gripped his shoulder with both hands.

“Yes. You should.” Maya concurred with a wry tone.

“No. Sorry.” Legion pulled away. “I don’t dance. Not like...this.”

Jayjay pouted. Her lips looked very soft. “I’m sorry we haven’t found anything about the murderer.”

Legion winced. Engañar had taken pity on Legion’s plight and used his connections in the city to canvass for someone who matched the description. Unfortunately, Legion’s descriptions were vague and unhelpful. He had tracked fifteen different red coatlmade since arriving in Spiral City. None were his father’s killer.

“Don’t blame yourself.” Legion sighed. “It’s my burden to bear.”

“And mine.” Maya interjected while pouring herself a new drink.

Jayjay smiled. She patted Legion on the head and left to dance around the fire. Her dress flowed around her like flower petals. Out of the corner of his eye, Legion could see Maya shaking her head at him. He shot her a questioning look.

“Youth is wasted on the young.” She commented before downing her shot.

She stretched her legs out, groaning in relief. “Do you remember all the artifacts your father kept? Give me a list so I know what I’ll want as payment.”

Legion had to cast his mind back. He hadn’t thought about his father’s collection in detail since he left home. The first pieces of the collection he was ever allowed to interact with were small statuettes made of common stone. They were featureless, but clearly Diablan. The tails were always the most delicate part.

Then there were the scrolls and similar texts by Diablans. His father had Legion study the dead languages they were written in so he could assist in translating any new texts brought in. Legion never breached a vocabulary of more than a hundred words in any of those languages, and the longer he went away from them the more he forgot.

There weren’t many things that were strictly valuable for their materials. Some obsidian and jade crafts were kept in a lockbox. Gold and silver never seemed to be a mineral Diablans worked in and precious jewels were rare on the east coast of Athshin. According to his father, the most expensive artifact he owned was a small obelisk that was crafted from volcanic stone. It weighed more than any person in town could lift alone, or even paired. So much of the text was faded, but the clearest symbol was the mark of Kurtzkith. His father said it belonged to one of the earliest Diablan communities. A seaside cult that worshiped Kurtzkith and was destroyed by outside forces. He never said how much the obelisk cost, but he would wryly mention that it would take years of cutting costs to recoup the loss. The obelisk was displayed proudly in the corner of his museum.

Legion looked to Maya to gauge her reaction to any of these items. It was clear that she had stopped listening several sentences ago. Her head bobbed to either side slightly. She did recognize that he had stopped talking and acted like she had heard the whole thing.

“Assuming it doesn’t take your whole life, what will you do after you’ve caught this guy?”

Legion hadn’t thought about that. This mission was the only thing sustaining him and he could only think of the future in terms of still being on it. “I guess I return home. I take my father’s place and care for the collection.”

Maya scoffed. Her face flashed betrayal and scorn. “What a waste that would be. Here’s my advice: sell it all and buy your way to a good school of magic.”

Legion wrapped his tail around his ankle. “I-I can’t do that. That collection is the work of my fathers life.”

“And his life is no more.” Maya said bluntly. Her cheeks were flushed and her speech was coming undone. It reminded Legion of their first meeting in the Mephit’s Thirst. “You mean to tell me that you’re content to never study your magic further? Not everyone is born with arcana, and not everyone who is has a fortune back home to study it on.”

“What if an academy isn’t right for me?” Legion blurted out. “What if the people there reject me, or I don’t learn anything, or can’t do anything with it, or-”

A wooden cup bounced off his head. Maya was still in the follow-through, glaring at him.

“What if? What if? What if?” she barked. “What if you do nothing and never know? Some people in this country break their bones to achieve what you could do easily and you’re paralyzed by a question as stupid as ‘What if?’”

Legion recoiled from her anger. He cupped himself into a ball on the cushion. He spoke softly. “I’ve never been good at studying. Or practicing. I’m terrified of going to a place that’s nothing but that.”

“Pathetic.”

Maya looked away from him. With her cup thrown at Legion she started drinking straight from the bottle.

“My brother...all he wanted was to go to an academy of magic, but that was about six hundred times what either of us could afford. Our parents were broke, died young, and left nothing for me and him. I went from big sister to mother overnight, and a mother’s got to provide, right? Fastest way to make coin in Athshin is to be born with it, or to earn it hunting others. That’s what I did. I made myself one big bruised callus so I could drag in people with prices on their heads. With every bounty I brought in I set aside seven coins for my brother. Even if I collected bounties every day for fifty years I knew it would never reach the cost of tuition, but it gave him hope damn it.”

She dropped her forehead into her hand. Consciously or not, she started pouring what remained in the bottle onto the dirt floor.

“Damn it. Damn it all. That hope-filled brother of mine went behind my back. Found a contract of his own that could give us a big boon to our finances. Lied through his teeth about his proficiency with arcana to someone dumb enough to believe him.”

She shook her head and looked at Legion dead in the eye. “Only it wasn’t a bounty. You know what it was? Go on. Guess.”

“I don’t know.”

Maya pointed to the palace on the mountain. “The last Emperor’s Clash was thirty-four years ago, and thirty-four years ago my brother died in battle. Made the connection yet?”

Legion nodded. Guilt and sadness whelmed his stomach.

“The real knife in the back, the reason I’m the worst person in Athshin to trust your life to, is that I wasn’t there when he died. I was away on one of my little bounty contracts and didn’t return for weeks. By that point he had been buried in an unmarked grave alongside everyone else that died for that stupid throne. I was his big sister, his mother, the person that gave him hope that he could build something out of himself, and I wasn’t there to see the light vanish from his eyes. I don't even know where his bones are.”

She nestled her face deeper into her palm. Legion could hear soft sobs. He didn’t know what to say. He had never seen anyone this emotionally raw before, save for himself the day his father was murdered. He reached out to her and she pulled away like his fingers were molten.

“Diablan or no, there are people who will die for what you have.” She grabbed his shirt collar like she meant to throttle him. “So don’t. Waste it.”

She released him and collapsed onto the empty cushions. Her eyes were shut, closing herself off until she was more sober. Legion couldn’t blame her. For any of it.

Legion decided he would try some dancing. He wouldn’t be getting anymore conversation out of Maya. Within moments of stepping near the fires he was swept up in a whirlwind of bodies. It wasn’t so much dancing as jumping and shouting. Each tent was playing their own music. The battling melodies evened out to a zephyr of sound that alternated chaos and harmony. Jayjay stood at the center of a crowd. Her feet moved in complex steps, like she was cutting shapes in the dirt. It seemed the easiest thing in the world for her, so much so she did it with her eyes closed. These diablans weren’t like those of Refuge, where life was kept small to avoid attention. They were bold, vibrant, and unafraid.

A man ran to Jayjay, breaking her rhythm. The crowd jeered the interloper, but he pulled on Jayjay’s sleeve. He had to shout over the music. There was something in his expression that worried Legion. Like he had seen something he could explain, but couldn’t understand, and whatever it was had unnerved him deeply.

Soon Jayjay had the same expression. She held her closed hands up and called “Soso!” A colloquial phrase for commanding silence. The music closest to them ceased.

“Bart...tell them what you just told me.”

The diablan scratched his gritty hair. “I’m not sure what I saw. My brother Olomew never came back from performing at the Eddadel camp. I went looking for him and when I get there...they’re all dead. Including Olomew. They….They were clutching their chests, or their mugs. I think something bad is happening.”

The murmurs of those listening spread to those still partying. The story rippled across the Dusted Quarter, with Jayjay and Bart at the center. Jayjay anxiously pinched her lips. She looked north, to the main road into the Dusted Quarter. A figure emerged from the shadows beyond the bonfires. Cid, the old diablan. He was running as quickly as a man his age could.

“Protect yourselves!” He ordered. “A mob! A mob!”

A thrown spear passed through his chest. The gathered diablans gasped. A low rumble of angry voices and marching feet washed out of the main road. Gradually torches ebbed out of the darkness, lighting the faces of furious non-diablans.

Legion inhaled.

A spell zipped through the mob, striking the bonfire and causing it to explode. Tents caught fire. The Diablans scattered. There was no time to assess what the mob wanted or why. This was instinct for them. The fleeing Diablans were ambushed in side alleys by swarming soldiers. There was no correlation between the uniforms they wore. It seemed all of Spiral City was descending on the Dusted Quarter.

Not all the Diablans fled. Those who traveled with Engañar dashed to their tents to retrieve weapons. Stones from slings traded with arrows from bows. Weapons of every make crossed each other. Two diablans killed one of the assailants with broken bottles before both were impaled by a human on horseback. Jayjay tore her dress for better movement. She shouted orders to those defending their fleeing kin. She had drawn her massive knife and was already wading into battle. Absolute anger flashed in her violet eyes.

An arrow passed Legion’s head. He finally exhaled.

He didn’t know if he should run, or stay and fight. Either way, he had to survive. When anyone who wasn’t a diablan drew close he manifested his exploding ring spell. That disoriented them enough that he could slip away.

He sprinted to Engañar’s tent. Maya was passed out despite the clattering chaos. Legion tried to shake her awake. When that didn’t work he tossed aside cushions. Looking for his traveling pack. With it he found his cutlass, and Death’s End. Both in hand, he turned in time to see the entrance to the tent collapse. Three coatlmade were piled on top of a single diablan. A single blue diablan.

Jayjay had been stabbed relentlessly. The purple suns on her face were smeared by trails of blood. Seeing her still —seeing her dead— Legion found anger he didn’t know he had. He raised his ebony wand high and forced every piece of arcane energy he had into it. He visualized the three men as bloody as they had left Jayjay. From the tip of Death’s End a black crescent blade fired. The blade passed through the coatlmade it struck, cleaving his torso diagonally. Legion was as shocked as the other two coatlmade. They both opened their mouths wide, elemental magic building in their throats.

Legion fired another blade. It was not as potent as the first, only leaving a bloody slash on its target. It took another blade to kill him, and by that time the remaining one was ready to attack. There was a scramble of movement. Maya pounced on the nearest coatlmade, stabbing its mouth shut with her shortsword. She wrestled it to the ground while flailing for her sickle. Once in hand she used it to slit the attacker’s throat.

“Are all Thirteen Hells out there?” She demanded after wresting her blade free of the coatlmade.

“I don’t know what’s happening.”

Their eyes fell on Jayjay.

“She had a lot of life to live.” Maya commented. She took the time to move Jayjay’s body aside, onto one of the cushions. When a diablan dies, the fire in their eyes finally extinguishes, leaving only hollow sockets. With her thumb, Maya closed each eye.

“I wish I had…” Legion began, but he wasn’t sure of how he wanted to end that sentence.

“Youth is wasted on the young.” Maya repeated.

Sparing no more time, they exited the tent. The Diablan forces had been pushed back. Legion recognized the banner of the Order of Suffering at the forefront of the invading mob. A human charged them both with a spear. Maya killed him swiftly. Legion thought of the arcane beam he had used when he was assaulted in Ramuf. He turned his wand on the advancing crowd and fired.

The beam that came from Death’s End was several times larger than it. The magic was black and smokey, but crackled with raw power. The force was so great Legion panicked he might lose control of it and spray wildly. He dropped the cutlass to brace his arm. The beam scattered the mob like a charging bull. Order soldiers were knocked aside with charred wounds from where the beam touched them. The other diablans stopped to marvel at Legion single-handedly delaying the mob.

He felt like a hero.

Then he felt pain.

An arrow had hit his shoulder. Legion had never experienced pain so sudden and deep. It was a shock to his system that caused the beam to fizzle out. He tried to manifest it again, but a second arrow struck him on his left thigh. He fell to one knee, feeling like he might vomit on the dirt.

Maya stood in front of him, taking on anyone that came near. Inspired by Legion’s efforts, the diablans redoubled their efforts to combat the invaders. The fighting was only a stone’s throw from where Legion knelt. He wished he could find the strength to stand. He knew it was the wand that did this as much as the arrows. His vision went hazy. He looked to Maya, fighting with her sword and sickle. He wished he could have held on longer, but his body had other ideas. His head hit the ground and his eyes shut.