Master of the Spear
Master of the Spear
Aslan and Rumel walked. Their steps through the dim tomb were far from heavy. One moved with a lightness that bordered on cheer, the other so weightless her footsteps barely registered.
Only one set of footfalls echoed, and the silence of the tomb was interrupted by a solitary thud, thud, thud that rippled through the stillness.
Torches bloomed between those echoes. The flames swept aside as the two figures advanced.
It was an uncanny sight.
The light withdrew at their approach, then flared back to life once they passed. The torches looked ordinary enough from a distance, but their behavior was anything but natural.
And the tomb itself defied expectation.
The tomb was impossibly clean.
Not a speck of dust anywhere.
Nearly a thousand years of neglect should have left their marks, yet the place bore no trace of age.
Rumel found this deeply strange. She turned the thought over in her mind as she followed Aslan, Tormule's white-iron spear firm in her grip.
Rumel was a mercenary.
Her career had been brief, but she had packed more into that single year than most mercenaries did in a decade.
She had fought without rest almost daily, explored even the ruins of the ancient empire. She had seen things.
And even to her eyes, this ruin was profoundly wrong.
"Sir Aslan."
"Yes."
"This ruin is... strange. It looks like it was maintained until just moments ago."
Aslan nodded without turning around.
"That would be because it is being maintained."
"...Is that so?"
Rumel's voice carried genuine surprise. When Aslan glanced back, what he saw wasn't what he'd expected.
Her eyes were alight—not with wariness, but with anticipation, curiosity.
A different breed of curiosity from Angie's.
"Could there be... some sort of intrigue at work here?"
Ah, that was it. Aslan swallowed a quiet sigh of recognition and tilted his head. Rumel's lips curled with expectation.
"A power struggle within House Ashuld, perhaps... or some magical inquiry that strayed into forbidden territory... and the conspiracy continues inside this place..."
"Nothing like that."
Aslan cut her off with a faint smile, and Rumel's expression crumpled with disappointment.
"It's simply that the tomb's owner still tends to it."
"Pardon?"
Her disappointment vanished in an instant, replaced by a furrowed, uncomprehending look. The suggestion that the tomb's occupant was still alive did not sit easily.
Aslan read the look and elaborated.
"The world knows this tomb's master as the Erased One—a dead man whose every record was expunged, leaving nothing behind. That, however, is not the full truth."
His low voice resonated through the chamber. Rumel blinked her brown eyes.
"The master of this tomb is Bolen. A mage by the name of Bolen Ashuld."
A mage.
Anyone from Aslan's original world would have pieced together the implications immediately. In Geladrion, that wasn't the case.
Geladrion had no undead.
"Bolen... Ashuld?"
"Yes. Second head of the Viscounty of Ashuld, founder of the Ashuld Magic Tower—and the first Master of Magic."
The first. The weight of that ancient title made Rumel swallow dryly. Aslan watched her and smiled with his eyes.
"Deeply accomplished in the Restoration and Transmutation Schools, that man created a school of his own. Opinions differ on its name, and little is recorded about what it could do."
"Then..."
"Yes. Everyone believes he failed in his final years and was executed by the Emperor, laid to rest in this tomb. That is not what happened."
Aslan turned to face the long corridor stretching before them. Wind blew from its far end.
Wind that pulled at Aslan and Rumel both.
Wind flowing from a passage that led outside.
Aslan thought of the figure who must have summoned that wind as he spoke. Half his face showed over his shoulder, expression blank.
"He found the underworld. Learned to draw upon its power, and to erase his own name inscribed there. He is an immortal who has truly crossed beyond death and seized what lies past it."
The words, delivered in so flat a voice, felt unreal. In a conventional fantasy world they would have been plausible. In the modern world, they'd have sounded like game lore.
But Geladrion was different.
This mage was the only one who had ever located the precise threshold of the underworld.
"So long as his soul itself is not shattered, Bolen cannot be brought down. No one managed it. In the end, the mages of Ashuld Tower sealed him here—at the cost of many lives."
Aslan turned fully around. Rumel was blinking, visibly struggling to process it all.
"Right now... this entire tomb is his workshop and his fortress. It moves to his will. That is likely why it remains so pristine."
Bolen is a fastidious man. At that added remark, Rumel's awareness slowly returned. She stared at Aslan for a moment, her face going slack, then spoke.
"How do you know all of this?"
As far as Rumel could tell, every piece of that information was impossibly ancient knowledge for one man to hold. Even she, a noble by birth, had never heard so much as a whisper about this tomb.
And she was a woman who had read a great many books out of sheer love for stories.
Whatever had been suppressed here, whatever had been made to be forgotten, Aslan knew it anyway.
That was the question in her mind.
She found her own answer in the sorrowful expression Aslan wore as he glanced away.
That face seemed to speak of deep reasons, tangled histories.
The truth—that it all came from a world-guidebook he'd earned as a game supporter perk—was utterly beyond her reach.
All the novels and adventure tales she'd devoured led her astray.
Unaware that Aslan's mournful look was simply his natural expression, and that the bitterness beneath it was nothing more than homesickness for the modern world, Rumel bit her lip and apologized.
"I'm sorry."
When Aslan's melancholy shifted to puzzlement, Rumel's brown eyes filled with regret.
"I've been discourteous. There must be painful circumstances behind this."
"...I'm not sure I follow."
"I am neither a knight nor a man, but I will follow your orders, Sir Aslan. You saved my life. Here, at least, let me serve as your spear."
And just as Rumel could not perceive his circumstances, Aslan did not register her delusion. He blinked a few times with a bemused expression, then nodded.
Take the good where you find it. She was offering her help—no reason to refuse.
"Thank you."
Aslan smiled, and Rumel smiled back. A gentle, benevolent warmth suffused her face.
That was her natural expression—nothing like the harsh mask she wore among mercenaries to avoid being underestimated. This softness settled on her features as if it had always belonged there.
Aslan took the lead again, Rumel close behind.
The tomb was spotless, but its traps were plentiful.
Arrow-fall traps, flame-spitters, traps embedded with Transmutation magic.
Any normal expedition would have required specialized mages to break through. In Aslan's hands, they were dismantled with casual ease.
He moved through the ruin like a man who had done this a hundred times before.
The magical traps he disarmed by pressing a palm to the wall or floor and bleeding mana into them before they triggered. His mana tattoos glowed faintly, the energy surging into the trap mechanism and wasting its magic against empty air.
For the non-magical traps, he tossed a dagger to spring them at a distance, then slipped through and destroyed them.
With shattered and gutted traps littering the path behind them, Rumel followed and grew convinced that the man known as Aslan knew every trap by heart.
She watched his back and drew her conclusions.
He had been waiting to come to this tomb. What looked like a chance fall into this place had in truth been his destination all along.
So he saved me because... he's a good man? And he feels something for me?
She'd never even seen his face before he removed his helmet, but in the novels she read, love at first sight and eternal vows were far from uncommon.
And the words Aslan had whispered to her.
She had never heard words like that before.
They might as well have been lifted straight from one of her romances.
It would be a waste for you to die here.
That was the same as saying he could not bear to let her die.
Heat rising to her face, she watched his back as he dismantled yet another trap.
He had even worried more about her wounds than his own.
A blade at his throat, and instead of anger he had asked after her well-being before slipping into unconsciousness.
A man that kind would certainly have a compelling reason for returning to this tomb.
She let her imagination wander—and then her lips parted softly.
The sorrow on Aslan's face when he'd spoken the tomb's hidden history. It meant one thing.
He was the adopted son and disciple of the tomb's master.
His teacher, trapped in this tomb through eons untold, had sent his pupil out into the world with a plea to grow strong and return to free him from his bondage—and then had gone mad.
Aslan was that disciple, come back to fulfill his master's wish.
While Rumel's fancies spiraled deeper, Aslan finished disarming the trap ahead and straightened.
The delusion had solidified into a complete and utter falsehood, leaving her more bewildered than ever.
Even at a cursory hearing, it was a tragic master-disciple tale. And there was no visible place in such a story for a noble's daughter who had already finished her vengeance.
Worse, when Rumel thought back over everything they'd faced crossing this tomb, she could not identify a single moment where she had been useful.
Aslan had handled every trap, every path, every direction.
She was a skilled spear-wielder. Was there even anything here for her to do?
She studied Aslan with quiet uncertainty. When he said, "That's the last of them," and turned, she met his eyes.
"May I ask... what I'm supposed to help with?"
Aslan's eyes widened. Rumel held his blue-green gaze and continued, the dark corridor reflected in the rolling brown of her eyes.
"You asked for my help, and I agreed, but... I don't know what I should be doing. The whole way here, I haven't been able to do a single thing for you."
Is this really all right? The woman asked the question, and Aslan gave an abashed smile.
"I hadn't explained. Things were chaotic—I must have forgotten to mention it. Forgive me."
Rumel interpreted chaotic as the turmoil of facing his old master, reached out a hand to comfort him, then pulled it back.
Aslan blinked at the awkward gesture. Rumel simply gazed at him, her expression soft.
"What I need from you, Lady Rumel, is simple. When I meet the master of this tomb... all you need to do is protect me. We'll have to seize this workshop to make our way out."
Rumel nodded without dwelling on the mechanics of seizing a workshop or what exactly had to be taken.
The illusion cradled in her benevolent expression was straightforward.
A disciple, unable to end his master's life himself, entrusting the task to another.
*
Aslan and Rumel pressed on.
They paused now and then to sleep against the walls, to share the dried rations they carried.
By Aslan's internal reckoning, roughly two more days passed before they finally reached the tomb's innermost chamber.
A room of dark blue steel. And at its center, a presence.
If a human being could be reduced to bone and muscle alone, this was what it might look like. Grotesquely elongated arms sprouted secondary forearms, branching like tree limbs, like fish bones.
A being laid bare to muscle and bone. In its original hands and in the extra hands branching from its forearms, it held longswords wreathed in gray, howling wind.
The former Master of Magic, Bolen.
The mage who had made even death kneel.
Fearless Bolen.
He stood at the center of the dim hall.
Bolen turned slowly and looked at Aslan. Where eyes should have been, long, slit-like fissures gaped, so widely torn they seemed deformed.
The closest thing to a true undead in all Geladrion, Bolen registered Aslan's presence and his expression shifted to shock. A shocked face made of exposed muscle sent a wave of revulsion through Rumel beyond anything she'd imagined.
She recoiled from the grotesque figure and her romantic master-disciple fantasy stuttered—then the next words sent it soaring again.
"Ahh... I knew you would come."
The voice practically ached with longing. Aslan stiffened at the words. While Rumel watched him with tender eyes, Aslan's face twisted.
"You... know me?"
Bolen nodded. Rumel's expression turned sorrowful, though only Bolen could see it. Bolen, with no thought for her feelings, answered.
"Lady Valerie told me of you..."
Before the sentence could finish, Aslan moved. The attack was nearly a single motion.
His hand swept out smoothly. From that hand, in a straight line with no spin whatsoever, a feather-shaped dagger flew.
He pulled the hand back with a rotation and lashed it forward again.
A chain of spinning draws, so fast the eye could catch only brass-colored afterimages, snapped six daggers into flight.
The crack of splitting bone. The wet sound of tearing flesh. Six impacts in rapid succession—the sound, to a certain sort of listener, might have been mistaken for machine-gun fire—and Bolen staggered, a pincushion of feathered steel.
Daggers clattered and scraped against the floor as he listed. Past them, Aslan's face contorted with a fury rarely seen.
He bared his teeth and growled low.
"Where is that goddamned bitch?"