The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 360

Chapter 360: Blood Relic III

My gaze stayed pinned to Grey’s back as we navigated the labyrinthine tunnels, silent except for Kage’s constant wheedling. Despite now appearing perfectly healthy, it was difficult to dismiss the image of Grey lying motionless, his throat cut…

I squeezed my eyes shut, blinking away the image and instead focusing on the persistent prattle coming from Kage as he guided us toward the hidden exit portal.

“—not really my fault at all now, see? When Rat saw how people would just leave after a while, after they decided the relic couldn’t be claimed, he came up with the idea to close the portal and force people to stay. I just went along with it is all…but what else was I supposed to do?”

“And were you forced to make the female ascenders who found their way into this zone your playthings, as well?”

Kage’s hulking form shrunk under my gaze despite the fact that we hadn’t bothered to restrain him with mana shackles. Still, the dog had some bite left in him, and I could feel his mana flaring in anger.

“Keep walking, grunt,” Regis snapped as he stalked closely behind the scarred ascender.

My eyes found themselves settling on Grey’s back again as he moved mutely behind Regis, letting the shadow wolf herd Kage to our destination.

An uncomfortable, writhing frustration was worming its way through my insides as I considered again what Grey had asked me to do.

He knew that Kage wasn’t a threat to me, but the truth was that Grey still had silently demanded his complete trust. I was left on my own as collateral, like some damsel in distress—a stereotype of weakness and fragility I’d been fighting against my entire life—and Grey had expected me to put myself in a state of vulnerability without even the opportunity to question or understand what he was doing.

It took every fiber of self control to keep myself from killing Kage when he had withdrawn a pair of mana suppression cuffs and announced that we would be following after Rat and Grey together.

I rubbed at the faint bruises on my wrist, the dull aches a physical reminder of the danger in trusting too much—something I had never been guilty of before. I chose to let my power be taken away, trusting in Grey that nothing would happen to me.

Nothing too bad anyway, I conceded as I pressed the bandages against the bloody gash on my palm.

Preoccupied by these thoughts, I found myself nearly bumping into Grey, not realizing that Kage had stopped.

“It’s right here, just so,” he mumbled, giving Regis a gap-toothed grin, like a beaten servant seeking his overbearing master’s approval.

“Do you want a cookie or something?” Regis’s burning mane flickered with annoyance. “Open it.”

Kage blanched before raising his hands to the bare earthen wall. The soil trembled, then melted away to either side, flowing like mud in a sudden landslide to reveal a hidden tunnel. Regis herded our unwilling guide into the passage, which led to a dead end. Kage repeated the spell, opening up a second hidden tunnel, which led to a third and fourth before finally opening into a round cave.

Veins of glowing red rock grew in a circular pattern on the ceiling, lighting the cave with an eerie glow and bathing the portal in rusty light. The portal itself, which sat at the very center of the room, looked like a scarlet curtain falling through the brick-red stone of the frame.

We all walked around Kage, who had stopped dead at the mouth of the tunnel, nervously watching us. As soon as our attention was off him, he spun and sprinted back in the direction we’d come.

Regis watched him go with a look of faint amusement on his lupine face.

Without even looking back, Grey said, “Get rid of him,” and Regis took off at a run.

Grey seemed to have already put Kage out of his mind, his attention entirely on the portal. He walked around it twice, staring into the opaque depth as if he could see what was waiting on the other side.

His clothes were torn where he’d been stabbed, and stained red with blood. I didn’t yet fully understand what had happened. Grey hadn’t explained how he’d deactivated the shield, only how he’d taken the relic and ordered Kage to lead us to the portal. He’d been silent nearly the entire way.

He stopped suddenly and his gaze fell to my injured palm. “I’m sorry about that.”

I flexed my cut hand, which was wrapped in a piece of Grey’s torn shirt. The wound burned, but it wasn’t particularly deep and would heal quickly. “I’ll forgive you if you explain exactly what happened back there.”

“Fair enough.” He turned thoughtful for a moment. “Rat’s demeanor was unnatural for someone being held captive. Little things. But it all really clicked when I saw the glyph and realized they had no idea how to really open it.”

“What do you mean?”

Grey bent down and used dirt from the floor to scour away some of the blood staining his hands. When he looked at me, his eyes were cool and calculating. “I thought about what I’d do if I were in their position. How I would motivate the strong, often intellectual, ascenders who arrived in this zone…”

“But if you figured out the glyphs right away, why let yourself be cut to ribbons?”

Grey’s fingers unconsciously played with the holes in his tunic where Rat’s blade had pierced him. “Because I needed him to. They were right in that it demanded a blood sacrifice, but it had to be from one who had harmed the blood of the djinn.”

So you let him stab you? I nearly asked, but I was already putting the pieces together in my mind. Villains were often predictable, after all. All Grey had to do was give Rat a reason to spill his blood, making Rat himself the key to unlocking the relic. But then, that meant…

“So, you have ancient mage—djinn—blood?”

Grey shrugged nonchalantly. “I imagine plenty of people do. But the Relictombs called me “descendant” before, and confirmed I had a djinn ancestor…I guess that’s all it took.”

I opened my mouth to ask about this ancient mage ancestry, but slowly let it close again. Although I wanted to know more, I could tell by the way Grey was growing more deadpan and terse that I wouldn’t get the answers I craved. It was beyond frustrating that he continued to live behind this veil of mystery after I’d shown such trust in him, but then…I knew what I had signed up for when we made our agreement.

A brief moment of silence passed before I let out a deep breath. “What drives you to such lengths?”

Grey’s brows rose in surprise. He cleared his throat and stood suddenly. He was silent so long I didn’t think he was going to answer, but then a sad smile crept across his features, an expression that contained so little yet so much emotion. “I owe it to everyone I left behind to come back strong enough to take care of them.”

I tried to fit this answer into the broken mosaic that was my picture of Grey’s life—filled with gaps that represented everything I didn’t know about him—but it did little to resolve the mystery of what drove him to such extremes.

Before I could decide if I wanted to pry further, a scream, followed by a deep, booming voice resounded down the tunnel. “Only I get to call him princess!”

The tunnels trembled, and a light trickle of dust fell on us from above. I met Grey’s wide, golden eyes, and we both broke into a quiet fit of laughter.

Shaking my head, I asked, “So? Are you going to check out the relic or are tattered rags a part of your new image now?”

He rolled his eyes, but activated his dimension rune and withdrew the relic.

I stifled a laugh as he held up the set of ancient heavy battlerobes. The gray-brown robes were much too long for him, and would drag behind him like a wedding gown. “Try it on, Grey,” I said, unable to help myself. “Perhaps a pretty dress for the pretty princess will actually help you stay incognito…”

He ignored me as he investigated the robes, his fingers trailing along the rows of embroidered runes. The touch was gentle, a curious caress, and I could see his lips moving though he did not speak aloud. I knew he must be able to sense something from the robes, although I could feel only a small charge of mana within them, little more than the ring he wore on his finger.

Grey let the robes drape over one arm and pressed his hand down into the fabric. “I think…”

The battlerobes vanished, leaving behind a vague nimbus of purple light that faded away a moment after.

“What happened?” I asked, unsure if he had simply stored the robed away again, or activated some kind of aether-based ability that I couldn’t sense.

The corners of his mouth twitching, Grey did something—a kind of mental flexing that pressed against the air around us and made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck—and the robes reappeared, now draped over his frame. He held his arms out to his sides, examining the effect.

He looked ridiculous. I opened my mouth to tell him so, but froze. The robes were moving, the dry fabric rippling like muddy water, shrinking to fit his frame.

The brown-gray coloring darkened to a brilliant black, and the heavy fabric that hung down to drag on the ground separated and reformed into individual legs. The relic—no longer a robe at all—continued to tighten until it fit Grey like a second skin. The material hardened into small, liquid-black scales that clung to his body, highlighting his lithe but muscular frame. Gold glittered between the scales, running along the length of his body like shining tendons.

Scaled sabatons molded around his boots, the overlapping blades held together by a gold mesh, just barely visible when he moved, and ridged pauldrons formed to cover his shoulders. Clawed gauntlets grew over his hands and up his forearms.

The robe’s cowl transformed into the same black scales, but shrank to cover Grey’s throat, chin, and the sides of his head, leaving his bright hair to hang over the void-black armor and keeping his face visible. Just as I thought the transformation was complete, obsidian horns formed over his ears, growing out of the armor and sweeping forward and down to frame his jaw.

I gasped, sucking in a choked breath as I realized I had forgotten to breathe.

ARTHUR LEYWIN

I flexed my hands, which were entirely encompassed by the clawed gauntlets, and conjured an aetheric blade. The long dagger shivered, its form momentarily jagged, then stabilized. I could feel the pressure of it against my palm, uninhibited by the gauntlets. Dismissing the blade, I raised my arms and rotated my shoulders, then lashed out at the air with a series of kicks and punches.

The armor moved with me perfectly, leaving my motions unhindered.

A dark shape in the corner of my eye caught my attention, and I raised my hand to touch the horn growing from the half-helm.