THE KING OF NOTHING

  Chapter 8: Eyes on the Back of Your Neck

  The red sun was at its zenith, an open wound in the sky pouring a coppery, sickly light over Oskara. That glare, forever horizontal, seemed to crush the city, stretching shadows until they became deformed monsters sprawling against walls and cobblestones, black and heavy as if made of solidified tar.

  Fleeing that oppression, and especially the smell of enclosed humanity, they had sought refuge outside the walls. They found it near the murky banks of the River Oska: a clearing where tall grass, of a pale, sickly green, rippled under a wind that smelled of stagnant water and rotten roots. Here, the din of the market and the forges was just a distant buzz, an echo of the world stubbornly clinging to life.

  Elara was at the center of the clearing, planted like a stake, her straight sword of House Vane pointing towards the ground. The sun-shaped pommel was a futile point of light under the ominous red. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, not from physical exertion, but from the seething frustration tightening her throat.

  —Oh, light… please! —she muttered through clenched teeth, squeezing her eyelids so hard that spots of color bloomed in the darkness.

  Nothing. The steel, familiar and cold in her hands, remained inert. No vibration, no warmth, not even that faint tingling that used to precede her small flashes of power at the Academy. Just the metal, mute, alien.

  A cry of pure rage, sharp and ragged, escaped her lips. It was not a cry of fear, but of absolute powerlessness. She lowered the sword and swung it with all her strength against the nothingness, as if she could strike the invisible barrier between her and her power. The air whistled, cut uselessly.

  —It’s useless! —she exclaimed, her voice breaking—. In the basement… I felt a volcano. A whole storm in my veins. Now… now I’m an ornament. A girl with a pretty sword that’s heavier than her worth. A burden!

  Vael, who was sitting on a flat, smooth rock at the edge of the clearing, watching the slow flow of the river with an expression of transcendental boredom, stirred. It wasn’t a quick movement, but a slow and deliberate transition, as if the act of standing up required recalculating the balance of the universe. He walked towards her, his steps silent on the grass. When he stopped beside her, his expression wasn’t his usual vapid smile. It was serious. Flat. His green eyes, without the haze of distraction, watched her with a disconcerting clarity.

  —The problem, Elara —he said, his voice calm, but with a rock-solid firmness beneath the current— isn’t with your power. It’s in your head. That’s where everything lies. And where everything rots.

  She looked at him, her eyes bright with tears of fury.

  —My head? If I could think how to do it, I would!

  —That’s precisely the mistake —Vael continued, unperturbed. He pointed at his own skull with a finger—. Thinking is for philosophers and accountants. For battle, thinking is slow poison. If you doubt, you die. You can’t afford the luxury of thought when the mace is coming down. —His finger moved, now pointing directly at the center of Elara’s chest, where her heart beat against her ribs—. There are things that are on you. Things no one else can do for you. If you are afraid, fear will shatter you. It will break you into pieces like a mirror before a hammer. But fear is not an enemy. It’s a tool. A spark.

  He paused, his gaze intensifying, as if piercing through the layers of her frustration to reach something deeper, rawer.

  —You have to learn to light the fire with that spark. Not to snuff it out. In the basement, you didn’t think. You screamed. And the scream lit something. You have to find that again. Next time, don’t be afraid of the fear. Grab your sword, look at what’s in front of you, and decide, in the bone, in the marrow, that it’s going to be them or you. Without hesitation. Without room for doubt. If you believe in yourself, if you truly believe you deserve to keep living more than they deserve to breathe, that lightning… it will never doubt again. It will come when you call it, not when it feels like it.

  He gave her one last look, intense and charged with a simple, brutal truth, then walked away. He didn’t return to his rock. He sat under the dense shadow of a weeping willow twenty paces away, giving her space, but watching her from the shadows with a silent, total attention.

  Elara was left alone in the center of the clearing. She turned her back on Vael, on the river, on the city. She closed her eyes, trying to banish his voice, his words, but they resonated in her skull with the force of a hammer.

  Breathe.

  The air came in, cold and damp, full of the smell of crushed grass and the river’s muddy breath. In the darkness behind her eyelids, images assailed her, not as memories, but as living specters: the broad back of her father turning towards the fireplace, a gesture of contempt more final than any slammed door; her mother’s gray eyes, cold as river stones, assessing her and finding her lacking; the Laughing Man’s laugh, a wet, metallic gurgle bubbling from the black visor; and above all, the ancient, deep-rooted sensation of being small. Of being expendable. A miscalculation in her family’s great ledger.

  "Don’t doubt."

  "Without hesitation."

  Vael’s words were not a comfort. They were a challenge. A knife placed in her hand.

  Elara tightened her grip on the sword’s hilt. She did it with such force that the leather creaked and the knuckles of her hands became white, painful islands in a sea of taut skin.

  Something changed. It wasn’t a luminous epiphany. It was an adjustment of internal pressures. The fear didn’t disappear; it compressed, grew dense. It stopped being a paralyzing gas filling her lungs and became a solid, burning core in the pit of her stomach. Fuel. She felt a sudden warmth, dry and aggressive, that was born right there, in her center, and began to spread outward, rising up her torso, coursing through her shoulders, rushing down her arms in waves that made her muscles tremble.

  —I don’t want to be a burden —she whispered to herself, and the words were not a complaint, but an oath carved into the air—. Not anymore. Never again.

  She opened her eyes.

  The outside world hadn’t changed. The sun was still a red ulcer, the grass a pale green, the river a brown serpent. But something in her vision was different. Her dark pupils, once clouded by doubt, now shone with a cold, fierce determination, like the edge of a knife freshly sharpened in moonlight.

  —I am Elara Vane —she said, and her voice, at first a thread, gained body, metal, resonance—. Daughter of a House that scorns me. Survivor of a hell that should have killed me. —She took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the clearing’s air—. And I will end anything, living or dead, that dares to stand between me and the light I choose to be!

  The cry wasn’t of fear, nor of uncontrolled rage. It was a roar of defiance that came from the deepest part of her soul, from that place where irrevocable decisions are kept. She raised the sword with both hands, over her head, the muscles in her arms and back taut like bowstrings. And then, with all her weight, all her newly-born conviction, she delivered a perfect vertical slash towards the innocent ground before her.

  CRACK!

  There were no weak flashes, no flickering sparks. It wasn’t the wild, uncontrolled lightning of the basement.

  It was an arc of concentrated, pure, lethal electricity that ran the length of the sword blade as if it were its natural extension. A whip-crack of white-blue energy, as thick as her arm, that shot out in unison with the cutting motion. It didn’t disperse. It stayed cohesive, a tangible bolt that struck the ground with the precision of a divine guillotine.

  The sound wasn’t distant thunder. It was the dry, brutal snap of a giant’s whip tearing the skin of the world. The electricity didn’t explode; it cut. It tore through earth, grass, air, leaving behind a perfect, straight line five meters long. Where it passed, the grass didn’t burn; it vaporized, turned into a fine black ash that rose in a ghostly column. The earth itself was scorched, smoldering, with veins of vitrified crystal where the sand had instantly fused. A sharp smell of ozone and burnt soil filled the clearing, blotting out all others.

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  Elara stood still, the sword still in the final position of the slash, her chest heaving violently. She looked at the black, smoking scar she had opened on the world. It wasn’t an act of destruction; it was a signature. Her signature.

  —I… I did it —she whispered, and the disbelief in her voice was surpassed only by overwhelming awe. She turned towards the weeping willow, her face lit by an expression of pure, savage triumph—. I did it! Vael, I did it! Look!

  Vael, sitting under the tree, stopped chewing the blade of grass he held between his teeth. He spat it out softly.

  Then, he began to applaud.

  It wasn’t an effusive, rapid applause. It was slow, rhythmic, almost meditative. Clap. Clap. Clap. Each clap echoed in the silent clearing, a solemn counterpoint to the crackle of cooling earth.

  On his face, the mask of boredom had dissolved. There was no broad smile, just a small, almost imperceptible curve of his lips. But his eyes… his green eyes showed something rare: genuine curiosity, intense, like a naturalist seeing a new species arise before his eyes.

  —That’s it… —he said, his voice quiet but charged with new meaning—. You did it. On your own. —He nodded, once, slowly—. I’m very glad. Truly.

  He stood up and walked towards her, his eyes examining the scorched line on the ground with the attention of a strategist assessing a new battlefield.

  —Though… —he added, and looking at her, he winked, returning some of the familiar absurdity to his expression—. A practical piece of advice, from farmer to mage: best not do that inside the walls. If you burn some fat counselor’s Persian rug, or singe a guard’s mustache, they’ll throw us in a cell so deep not even the worms would find us before dinner. Let’s go. The smell of burnt earth is making me hungry.

  II. The Steel District

  In the afternoon, as the red sun began its slow drag towards the horizon, the pragmatic need to prepare for a journey whose destination was still uncertain led them to the Blacksmiths’ Quarter. The air here was different, thick and laden: it smelled of penetrating soot, of red-hot metal plunged into water, of leather tanned in tannin, and of the sour sweat of men who worked with fire and brute force. The sound was a constant hammering, a chorus of anvils singing a war song in peacetime.

  Irina walked with clear purpose, her eyes scanning shopfronts and armory entrances. The battle at Grey Gorge, the feeling of helplessness before the Laughing Man’s blow, had changed something fundamental in her tactical approach. The shield had saved her countless times, yes. But it had also made her a static target, a rock that the tide could surround and crush. She needed range. She needed initiative.

  They entered a reputable armory, recognizable by the emblem of a hammer and sword crossed over the door. The interior was an ordered cavern of steel: swords, axes, spears, and armor hung from walls or rested on racks, each gleaming with maintenance oil. Irina walked right past the shield section—round, tear-shaped, bearing coats of arms—without even a glance. Her eyes, blue and analytical, stopped on a high shelf near the vaulted ceiling.

  —That one —she said, her clear voice cutting through the murmur of the forge behind a curtain—. I want to see it.

  The armorer, a burly man with arms like tree trunks and a thick beard speckled with trapped metal sparks, followed her gaze. With a long hook, he brought the piece down.

  It was a long, hand-and-a-half sword, a "bastard" of an older style, before the fashion for curved, lighter blades took hold. It wasn’t ornate. It was pure function. The blade, straight and fine as a needle of justice, was of dark-veined, tempered steel, with a deep central fuller to lighten the weight without sacrificing rigidity. The guard was a simple cross, with long, straight quillons designed to trap and break enemy weapons. The pommel was spherical, of solid iron, perfectly counterbalancing the blade. The hilt, wrapped in shark skin blackened by use, promised a firm grip even bathed in blood.

  Irina took it. The armorer watched, professionally interested, as she hefted it, moved it from side to side. She made a lateral cut through the air, a fluid motion coming from the shoulder. The blade hissed, a clean, lethal sound that seemed to cut through the very oppression of the forge-charged air. It didn’t grate. It sang.

  —Defense through offense —Irina murmured to herself, a spark of satisfaction lighting her eyes—. If they can’t get close enough to hit me, I don’t need a wall to stop them. I just need to keep them at bay. Or end the fight before it starts.

  She paid with the silver coins from her leather pouch, savings accumulated over years of service, the weight of every frugal meal, every rejected beer, every small luxury denied. It was all she had. But as she slid the coins across the counter, she knew, with the certainty of the instinct that had kept her alive, that it was worth every one.

  Elara bought nothing. Her family gear—the straight sword, the dark blue armor now repaired and cleaned—was superior to almost anything the district offered. She simply observed, learning, watching Irina transform not with magic, but with decision and steel.

  Vael, for his part, had drifted towards the stalls at the rear, selling lighter, more mobile gear: leather armor, padded gambesons, articulated protectors. He was looking for something specific: freedom of movement. The recruit uniform was in tatters, and the heavy chainmail some wore was a cage he rejected on principle.

  He found what he was looking for in a dimly lit corner: a set of light armor made of black leather, fire-hardened and treated with oils that gave it a dull, sinister sheen. Stitched strategically inside the leather pieces were thin plates of dark metal, probably cold-forged iron, protecting shoulders, elbows, knees, and the center of the chest without adding bulk or rigidity.

  He tried it on over his plain clothes. The leather straps adjusted easily, and the set moved with him like a second skin, no metallic creaks, no restrictions. He could crouch, twist, raise his arms over his head with a fluidity impossible in standard issue.

  When the vendor, a thin man with ferret eyes, named the price, Vael winced. He searched his own meager pockets, pulling out a few copper coins and a worn silver piece. It wasn’t enough. He shrugged, a gesture of genuine resignation, and began to undo the straps.

  A small but firm hand interposed. It placed three gleaming silver Suns on the splintered wooden counter.

  —Consider it —said Elara, who had approached silently— payment for my shoulder. And a strategic investment. I need my… improvised human shield —she added, with a slight smile that softened the words' harshness— not to break or disintegrate at the first serious blow. A punctured shield is worse than no shield.

  Vael looked at her, his green eyes reflecting the faint light of a nearby oil lamp. For a moment, it seemed he might refuse, make a self-deprecating comment. But he just nodded, once.

  —Accepted —he said, and finished tightening the breastplate straps with a firm tug—. Though I warn you, my value as a shield is highly variable and subject to my mood swings and the availability of decent food.

  IV. The Gaze on Her Back

  They left the Blacksmiths’ Quarter as the red sun, now very low, painted the streets and faces a deep crimson, as if the city itself were bleeding light. The shadows were now canyons of darkness between buildings.

  Irina walked a step ahead, the new longsword sheathed diagonally across her back, the pommel peeking over her right shoulder. Her mind was already tracing routes, calculating provisions, assessing threats.

  Suddenly, she stopped.

  It wasn’t a noise. It wasn’t a sudden movement in the corner of her eye. It was something more primitive: an atavistic sensation, a sudden chill that ran down her spine and settled like an ice cube at the base of her skull. The same sensation she’d had in the forest, minutes before an ambush. The sensation of being the deer, not the hunter.

  She turned slowly, amidst the flow of people returning home, laden with purchases and weariness. Her golden mane, now clean and loose, swept around with her, catching the last sickly rays of the sun like precious metal. Her blue eyes, cold and scrutinizing, scanned the scene with the precision of a crossbowman seeking a target: the slate rooftops, the corners where darkness was densest, the high, blind windows on second floors.

  She thought she caught something. A blot of darkness that didn’t move with the evening breeze, framed in an open window on the third floor of a ramshackle inn. It wasn’t a defined figure, just an interruption in the pattern of bricks and shadow.

  She narrowed her eyes, focusing all her attention, holding her breath.

  Nothing.

  Just a dirty linen curtain swaying lazily, pushed by a breeze that didn’t reach the street. And a black cat, thin and stealthy, walking along the stone cornice as if it were its personal kingdom, indifferent to the world below.

  —Irina? —asked Elara, stopping beside her, her hand going instinctively to her sword pommel. She had caught the sudden tension in the lieutenant’s posture.

  Irina remained motionless a second longer, her body a statue of alertness amidst the human flow. The sensation of cold on her nape faded as quickly as it had come, leaving only a residual chill and a deep distrust.

  —Nothing —she said at last, relaxing her shoulders with visible effort—. I thought I saw… someone I know. In the window. But it must be the light. Or nerves. This city… makes your skin crawl even when there are no monsters in sight.

  Vael, who had stopped a few paces back to adjust the leather gloves of his new armor, looked to where Irina had fixed her attention. His face showed his usual expression of distant curiosity. He saw nothing beyond the cat and the curtain.

  —Maybe it was a bird —he suggested, casually—. Or a cloud shadow. The red sun plays tricks. Makes everything seem… watched.

  Irina didn’t reply. She gave a brief nod and resumed walking, but her pace was now quicker, her gaze never ceasing to sweep the high points of the streets they passed. Paranoia, once awakened, was a wolf that did not easily go back to sleep.

  V. The Map and the Night

  Night, the true night, not the perpetual red twilight, fell upon Oskara like a heavy mantle. In the common room of The Silver Swan, now almost empty save for a pair of late drinkers, the trio took their usual table in the darkest corner.

  Irina spread a map of the Empire on the worn wood, a thick, yellowish parchment whose edges were fraying. The light from a tallow candle, stuck in an empty bottle, danced over the ink-drawn lines, illuminating borders, rivers, and the names of cities and fortresses that now sounded like echoes of a world that might no longer exist.

  —Oskara isn’t safe —Irina whispered, her calloused index finger tracing the jagged line marking the northern mountains—. If the northern front collapsed completely, and Grey Gorge was the last peg, the tide will reach here. Not all at once, but it will come. The refugees will flood the city first. Then comes hunger. Then riots. And then… them. —She paused, her gaze lost in the ink stains—. And I have a feeling, stronger with each passing hour, that we are not welcome here. That there are eyes that don’t want us to decipher our book, or even just survive to tell what we saw.

  —Where do we go then? —asked Elara, her eyes following Irina’s finger across the map. Her voice was low, but not trembling. She had lost her fear of hard questions.

  —East —Irina suggested, sliding her finger to the right, towards a chain of jagged, cross-hatched mountains—. The Iron Mountains. The fortresses there are ancient, pre-Imperial. Carved from living rock. The passes are narrow, easy to defend. If there’s a place on this damned continent that can withstand a tide of… whatever is coming from the north, it’s there. And it’s far enough from here that our… admirers will have to work for it.

  Vael, who had been watching the map in silence, elbows on the table and chin in his hands, spoke.

  —Mountains are cold —he commented, his voice a rough murmur—. Colder than the north, because the cold sits there, stagnates between the peaks. But cold preserves meat, they say. And keeps the worms away. —He looked up at Irina—. I suppose it’s a better option than staying here to be slowly eaten by bureaucracy and paranoia. Or quickly by what comes behind.

  Irina nodded, a dry gesture of decision. She rolled the map up with firm movements.

  —Tomorrow. We leave at dawn, or what passes for dawn here. I don’t want to be in Oskara when the official news of the defeat arrives. When the panic starts to curdle in the streets. We leave through the East Gate, like a group of mercenaries with a contract in the mines. Quietly. Without drawing attention.

  Vael nodded, his expression inscrutable in the candlelight. Elara yawned, a deep, genuine yawn that made her jaw ache, exhausted by the day’s tension, by the effort in the clearing, by the constant weight of uncertainty.

  They went up to their rooms in silence. The inn was quiet, sunk in the sleep of those who still believe walls protect them. But Irina, before going to bed, pushed one of the heavy oak chairs in her room against the door, tilting it under the handle. It wasn’t much. But it was something. A physical barrier against the lingering sensation that those eyes she had felt on the back of her neck in the marketplace had not belonged to her imagination.