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Ryson didn’t rush for an answer to what had happened here or why he’d been invited to see it. He looked at the broken arches, and the dead vines that now reflected the light of the sun with greenery and splendor where they crawled from the well. The illusion of the forest had crept in through the water, growing in the heart of the city like a poison ready to spill into the streets. Maybe this had been the true nature of the medallion’s infection. It had dealt the killing blow already and Alina was left to take advantage of it.
“The medallion will be destroyed in Loda,” Ryson said, reasoning with silence that reminded him that the medallion had seemed to ache for passage to Loda, but he’d never gotten true evidence of that intention.
“It won’t deal the fatal blow in Loda that it’s dealt here. I’m guessing you brought the medallion here in the first place, didn’t you? Planted it here.” Ryson continued, eyes searching the shadows as something flickered from the corner of his eye.
“You sound so guilty, and I’ve hardly said a word,” a woman purred, her voice rich with depth and mischief. He instantly recognized the sound, puzzled by the presence of it. He turned where he stood, searching for the source of the voice.
“You hid your body in the Wraithlands,” Ryson whispered as his eyes narrowed. He turned abruptly to his right as he saw something pass between two columns nearby. A figure cloakedin brown rags waded out into the path ahead of him, her tanned feet exposed in the light.
She drew off the hood and he was relieved to see a face he didn’t recognize.
“But the voice is so similar, isn’t it?” Alina said, an adult woman, crossing her feet in front of each other as she walked, biting the tip of her finger. “I saved it for you.”
“You don’t have the strength to start a war, Alina, even with Prince doing your bidding,” Ryson said as she walked around him, still biting her finger with a mischievous smile. Her current body, a beautiful woman, as she was accustomed to selecting, was already breaking down, blood pooling in the corner of her left eye before running down her cheek like a tear. Her toes and fingers bruised and swelled.
“It bothers you that Prince and I have bonded, bonded over a shared hatred of what you took away from us. Does it surprise you? We all saw the sky collapse,” she said, “when cien first fell on the world and civilization burned. One battle after the other, building an army, carving territory through conquest, banishing the other warlords to the ends of the earth. We succeeded because we forged ourselves for such a purpose,” she said and stopped as her fingers played through her hair. She inspected the ends of her curls carefully as she continued.
“Had you sold your heart to cien and preserved another piece then perhaps you would share our dreams, but that was your fatal mistake. You could connect with everyone’s desires but ours.”
“War was not the purpose we forged ourselves for!” Rysonlashed out with his dagger and Alina dodged it—but not before the blade shot clean through her shoulder. Alina dove into him, her body contorted as her twisted soul lashed to the forefront, sinking her teeth into his arm before he brought the blade down into the spine of the host. The woman’s teeth returned to normal as her corpse slumped to the ground, Ryson turning just as another host charged him, fingers torn into claws. Unable to maintain the manifestations of her soul, the body broke down further with every strike she tried to take.
Ryson struck for the neck, killing the second host before two more dove after him. He felled them both after a brief struggle, collecting his breathing in the center of a ring of corpses, and pooling blood.
“Fair attempt, but I have plenty of hosts, all caged nearby and ready to die,” Alina sang, now a man perched up on one of the arches. No matter the body, the serpentine nature of her movements always managed to show through. “Oh, Ryson. How can you say you don’t miss this? Oh, the sweet struggle. You may as well deliver your heart to cien and become a forest beast like the rest who lost their taste for life. I would take such good care of you. I’m sure you’d make a handsome pet.”
The bodies shifted and lifted up, Ryson bracing himself for a battle with the corpses but then they walked off.
I would consider myself largely neutral,Prince’s corpses whispered as if to put Ryson at ease, and as he spoke, the entire city could be heard speaking with him.
Ryson laughed under his breath as he turned his attention back to Alina, “Would you have me kill everyone in this city to get to you?”
Alina’s current host placed his hand on his chest and tilted his body back across the arch, “Oh, you would do that for me?”
Ryson re-adjusted his weapons as Alina’s host rolled from the arch and landed daintily in the dirt, standing with a dramatic and elegant wave of his arms.
“I’m not surprised that you came for me,” she said, walking in a circle around him again as she playfully kicked the dust and dirt at her feet. “You’ve always hated me in your heart. Somehow Prince’s love for death was fine, but my love for terror always seemed…uncontrollable to you. Do you know why you thought of me first when you awoke? You certainly don’t seem to remember why you showed up on my doorstep. I can venture a guess.”
Ryson dodged as Alina struck out at him again, shifting back from several swift blows, Alina growing more aggressive as she sensed his hesitation. She tore into his arm and scratched a deep cut across his face as he tried to determine an alternate strategy to killing the hosts one after the other. If it were up to Alina, he indeed would have to slaughter the entire city first.
They broke apart again as the next corpse expired, crawling away under Prince’s possession. Prince’s corpses collected in rows nearby, some standing, some sitting, all neatly forming an audience.
Ryson waited for Alina’s next taunts as he backed through the rows of columns, making his way to the source of hosts among the rows of cages. He mulled through her words as the pause lengthened out into a long silence.
“You wanted me out of the city to buy yourself more time,”Ryson said at last, shouting into the open as he searched for the next attacker, “You came here in the first place to survive off of hosts. Now that you’ve taken over, you can’t suggest–”
“I’m waiting for my body to be ferried in from the Wraithlands,” she called, now as a woman again in a sackcloth dress, fingertips dragging along the columns as she crossed his path. “I’m done with hiding, Ryson. It’s time I stepped back into the light of society. You see, I’ve formed new alliances. If they ferried my body in safely, I’d give them Virday.”
“New alliances? With who?” Ryson said, working around her as he continued to make his way to the prisoners. He could see the cages now in the distance.
“Old enemies, Ryson. Who else?"
"The Belgears?"
"No. The Iscads. But it's not important. Look. There are plenty of Venennin kingdoms still surviving out in the Wraithlands, ancient Vennenin who have long craved the death of Shambelin. The forest has kept them at bay, but I assured them you were done fighting. I even told them the location of your tomb, but unfortunately it was already empty when they came to kill you. Shame.”
She twisted between two columns, blocking his path forward as she lay her body against it, her face pressed against the stone as her arm extended up the length of the column.
“If you imagined I might be so problematic, why not kill me when I came to you the first time? Why not take your chance then if you never intended to die to begin with?” Ryson asked,still positioned to attack, bloodstained dagger at the ready.
