Jackal Among Snakes

Argrave laughed enough that it seemed like everything was okay. But with blood pouring from his body in waves every time he threw his head against the wall, and his clearly involuntarily grunts and shouts of pain, Nikoletta could tell that everything was the opposite of okay. What he did caused pain great enough it was hard for him to even speak. Yet every time he crumpled, in perhaps half a minute he raised his hand up and cast that spell once again, renewing the process from the beginning.

She didn’t know the specifics of what he was doing to ascend to A-rank, as he hadn’t divulged that to her. In the initial confusion of it all, she, Orion, and Vasilisa had pleaded with him to stop, and then to take it slower, and then to take breaks. Even Ganbaatar, unaffiliated with them though he was, cautiously suggested Argrave ease up. None of their suggestions were heeded. Even the gentle cries of his fennec fox pets didn’t sway him from his task. Argrave blazed forth with an iron will, bleeding onto the shore again and again.

With his body still persisting despite the river of blood pouring from it, they settled into an uneasy acceptance of what he did. They tried to do their best to ease this period of intense pain for the king. Nikoletta found it incredibly difficult to watch, almost vomiting her meal as she watched… yet her concern for her cousin prevented her from looking away. She helped him the only way she could—keeping him from falling into the ocean, cleaning the black blood off his body. And all the while, thoughts poured into her brain one after the other. Questions, in truth.

Why? Why was he willing to do this? No matter what power he gained, was it really worth torturing himself in this manner? Nikoletta thought no one would be willing to do something like this—that no one could. Yet second by second, she was proven wrong as Argrave thrust his hand back into the veritable flame again and again, repeating that simple word like a mantra: again.

It was one thing to hear Argrave describe what was going to come, to see the symptoms manifesting all around the world of Gerechtigkeit’s advent. It was another entirely to see his conviction laid bare before her. He pursued this path to stop the calamity with conviction enough to turn his body inside out. And why?

She thought she knew the answer to that. Argrave felt it was his duty.

Nikoletta felt unimaginable guilt for her bitter attitude towards him these past few days. She had seen Argrave whole and happy, Anneliese at his side, his brother supporting him whole-heartedly… and felt what she recognized now was only base jealousy. With her sole parent missing, likely dead… with her strained relationship with Mina… she had acted foolishly toward a man who bled enough to turn the red ocean before them redder.

When Nikoletta realized she was crying, she felt ashamed. She’d thought Argrave had changed when she spoke to him again. And he had. Somewhere along the way, he’d gone from the man who smacked his head on the doorframe because he was too tall… to this. Someone bleeding for his country and for his people.

Argrave bent over, bleeding once again. Nikoletta held his limp body up as he got ahold of his faculties once again. As the distant horn calls of the ivory whales blew across the turbulent ocean in what was almost sorrowful lament, she felt a fiery resolve worm its way into her heart.

I must be more, Nikoletta told herself. I must be better. I am a young girl no longer. How many times must Argrave spill his blood for me to realize what is obvious? If I can do even half as much for him as he does for everyone… it might just be that we make it through this.

Nikoletta’s eyes settled on him firmly, not balking at the blood any longer. Every drop he spills here today is a debt we all owe, she reflected. And I will pay you back, Argrave.

#####

crashed against his throne, sometimes splashing his feet. Still he sat, head leaning against his fist. He looked to

called Your Majesty knelt there in the sand, staring directly at Chiteng. Then he raised his hand up, as if in toast. When he completed that spell of his… pain

waves, likely having failed at whatever he had been trying to do. When he rose again, they pleaded with him, begged him… yet he did not heed their orders. Indeed, they heeded his absolutely, obeying him

humans knew as magic. But every attempt came without hesitation, and in every attempt he stared Chiteng in the eyes even as his salty

like an ant before a mountain, yet even still he traversed it looking for a path his small body could proceed. What was it for? His fellows? Or for himself?

one word—again. Chiteng stared without passion, yet he did not blink as he watched all the same. He and the human stared

down his ruined underclothes. Chiteng watched as an essence of magic—an essence he was well familiar with, having long ago mastered it—pooled into the human’s being. It was the essence of life—vitae. It was

human lifted his head up again, looking Chiteng in the eyes once again as if in message.

#####

his big talk earlier had been invalidated by half a thousand failures. He could practically hear the god thinking, ‘This is the guy that talked about taking down the Qircassian Coalition?

eventually,” Argrave said lightly, cleaning out

his vision, grabbing hold of his shoulder.

rolled his shoulders,

the elven realm’s innate healing ability had kept him whole. It enabled him to act

and the conduits of blood essence would return to where he’d wrenched them from. Perhaps ‘pressure’ was a good term to describe it—after all, just afterwards blood spewed from his body as though forced

several different ways to fix things. He tried one at a time, five at a time, all at once again, keeping them in place… so many methods, and some of them repeated accidentally by failure of will or

to his soul, and then used these now-anchored conduits to quickly monkey-branch down the line with the

and involved experience moving them, he was acutely aware of the

in awe to pay them any bother. It

listening,” Argrave finally heard Vasilisa