Chapter Forty-Four—Fire and Sun

As he waved for the Scorpions to go deal with the adventurers still left alive in the throne room, Kahnassi suddenly felt an aura.

He stopped, closed his eyes and took stock of his surroundings, questing outward.

Yes…

It’s those vile Hajja sorcerers coming this way!

He smiled, the thought of ripping them limp from limp with his magicks exhilarating him. Kahnassi was only supposed to reveal himself if Darius was in danger. And now he was—or soon would be.

Something moved above the sun hole above.

Kahnassi opened his eyes and glanced up as a hooded figure stood there. His heart suddenly jumped and his eyes widened as the Hajja sorcerer, its white scaled face mostly hidden, save for the tip of its snout and razor sharp teeth.

Kahnassi snarled. How in the hells—

The Hajja reacted, summing a bolt of lightning to strike him down.

No!

How did this happen?! Why did I not sense his presence!

Making the form to redirect the bolt, Kahnassi moved, twirling his hands and making quick stepping motions.

The bolt appeared, arched through the air.

Kahnassi screamed as he thrust out his forefinger. He caught the bolt of magic and redirected it at the Hajja demihuman!

It arched at the filth and Kahnassi grinned like a mad man.

And then his jaw dropped when the Hajja deflected the bolt into the sky. It exploded harmlessly behind him.

“What?!”

The Hajja moved and something flicked past Kahnassi. No matter. He would summon a fireball and burn this monster to the…

Why is it so hard to move?

He swallowed against the lump in his throat.

Pain welled there on the side of his neck.

With a shaking hand, he reached up toward that pain as the demihuman sorcerer disappeared from his view.

Or was he lying on his back now?

Someone was screaming over him.

A Scorpion Guard.

Something was protruding out of his neck. It was wet.

Blood?

He pulled back his fingers and found them sticky.

But what Kahnassi found there wasn’t blood, but rather a green substance.

“I cannot feel my hand.”

The Scorpion bending over him moved his mouth, but no sounds came out as Kahnassi’s vision began to blur and darken on the edges. It was like trying to peer through a murky tunnel.

As Jessamine’s eyes closed, Shiro too closed his eyes, a deep sense of loss assailing him.

Fighting continued to erupt all around him

It didn’t matter.

Without glancing up, he knew that Debaku was about to be cut down. But what could Shiro do? He no longer felt the explosive magic coursing through his body, and the sword—Jessamine’s sword—had lost its luminescent gold luster.

Swallowing, his throat was so closed, he was having trouble breathing and his stomach was a pit of bile.

Grasping the hilt of the sword, Shiro thought the magic bight return, but it didn’t. The weapon, so bright, so alive with magic and power before, had gone dark.

Dead.

Like Jessamine.

He pulled the sword forward, the blade scraping metallically against the tiles as he laid the hilt into her dead hand.

He wanted nothing to do with the weapon anymore.

If Jessamine was dead, then so too was his connection to her.

“Shiro!”

Almost languidly, Shiro glanced up and found Ali watching with a desperation in his eyes as Debaku and Darius’ continued on fighting. With every sword strike, sparks shot out between their blades as if they were attempting to reforge their swords.

Debaku jumped back, putting distance between himself and Darius. Shiro saw that his blade was a ruin—and it was no ordinary steel weapon. That it should be so damaged was a testament to Darius’ superiority—over Debaku, and over them all.

…

“Shiro!” Ali called. “We must do something!”

He glanced over toward where Debaku had dumped the weapons and saw his Urutai scimitar—a blade that had seemed so sleek and powerful before—now almost appeared to Shiro as if it were forged to cut bread in the kitchens.

He got up and stumbled down the steps and practically dragged his feet past Ali, who watched him without moving. Shiro bent and picked the weapon up, looked at it.

“SHIRO! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

Ignoring his friend, he glanced at Darius. There was nothing left but to die at the sultan’s hands. To die fighting.

With honor.

A samurai’s death.

Hordes of footsteps sounded behind him.

“Look!” Ali croaked.

Shiro turned, saw dozens of Scorpion Guards coming between the colonnades from outside the throne chamber above the dais. As they came down the steps, Shiro snarled, a sudden hot anger taking him.

“Hai,” he said in a low tone. Then he nodded. “Let’s fight.”

“All right, my friend! That’s the spirit, eh?”

Shiro rushed the black-clad guards and knocked the first warrior’s blade aside, then Shiro thrust his sword though the man’s chest and out his back. The cross guard of Shiro’s blade was the only thing stopping the hilt from reaching though as well.

Reaching up with his foot, he shoved the dying guard off his sword and he fell, the sound of his wet, blood-soaked body smacking the tiles.

“Gods!” Shai’na cried from behind.

Shiro hadn’t even seen her when he went to take up his sword before. She must have been hiding somewhere. He barely had any idea of what was happening with Razul right now.

Was he dead?

Footsteps sounded behind Shiro, followed by a battle cry by Ali. He rushed in, crossing swords with one guard, then two. Following Ali, Shiro lunged in, killing the second guard and preventing him from slashing Ali over the back.

With fast arcs, Shiro climbed the steps, taking another guard’s hand off, then slicing another across the shoulder with a shallow wound. Both men cried out in shock and pain. Shiro pushed the second man aside and thrust his blade forward, taking another Scorpion Guard in the stomach.

For all his loss of power given to him by Jessamine, Shiro was still fast, far faster than when he had gone to the temple of Akarilion in the desert some months past.

His opponent fell away and droplets of blood were flung from the razor’s edge of Shiro’s blade.

A crack—deafening and sharp enough to make Shiro flinch—sounded. The night outside of the throne chamber brightened.

“What was that?” Ali asked, looking up as he took hold of himself. He had recovered from the sudden disturbance far slower than Shiro had.

“I do not know,” Shiro said. Grinding his teeth, he added, “But I am going to find out!”

Climbing the steps where Jessamine still lay motionless, Shiro made it to the top of the dais and moved between the thrones. After he passed between the pillars at the top, a Scorpion Guard crested the top step and his eyes widened. Shiro kicked him in the chest.

With a scream, the warrior flailed as he flew through the air. A sickening crunch followed as he landed across the marble steps and rolled like a sack of wheat.

Surveying the courtyards below where all manner of silken shawls, pillows, goblets of wine and food lay sprawled from the hedonism that had gone on just a short while before now, Shiro back-stepped with sudden surprise.

There were hundreds of Scorpion Guards in the courtyard.

A shaft whistled passed his ear, but he didn’t care. Then another smacked against the column behind him.

“Shiro!” Ali called.

He turned. “What is it, Ali?”

“Debaku needs our help!” He pointed to the inner throne chamber without looking that way. Then he jerked as he crouched slightly when another shaft skittered against the column behind them. Ali’s eyes were wide and imploring. “Shiro—we must help him!”

“It is over!” Shiro spat as he gestured to the courtyards below. “Do you not see?”

A shaft flew over Shiro’s shoulder. Ali’s eyes followed it for just a moment, the look of desperation on his face deepening.

“Shiro… I have a wife. You… you—“

Another crack sounded, but this time the shock of magically energy arced into the throne room and struck someone.

Shiro turned to see who it was and flinched as the sultan cried out and hunched in on himself. Eyes wide, Shiro watched as Debaku took that opportunity and lunged forward, his sword now no more than a melted bar of slack. He struck out, but Darius recovered—grabbed Debaku’s wrist and swung him bodily through the air.

The grunt that left the Black Cobra’s mouth was loud and bespoke of a wound that he would not recover from tonight.

Then Darius slammed the hilt of his sword into Debaku’s chest.

“Hnngah!”

Debaku’s eyes bulged and then his muscled went limp.

“Debaku!” Shiro cried out.

Darius looked up at him, a smile forming on his face, but then his mouth twitched. He was in pain.

He is weakened.

Shiro snarled.

Beside him Ali said, “I guess this is it.”

“Hai!” Shiro exclaimed, then he turned to Ali and put his hand over the man’s shoulder. “It was an honor to be your friend—and to fight with you.”

Ali nodded, his panicky fear subsiding somewhat as a determined demeanor came over him. He raised his sword. “I agree, my friend.”

Then Ali screamed and charged Darius.

Another lightning bolt from the roof above cracked.

Darius raised his sword and the energy coalesced about the blade, popping and cracking with bright flashes.

With his teeth gritted, white-blue cascades all around him, Darius cried out.

Shiro sprinted down the dais steps and lunged ahead of Ali to deliver a blow brought on by this sudden advantage, it all came to nothing as Darius flicked his blade, sending a sphere of crackling energy back the way it had come.

It exploded above them, flashing brightly.

Shiro cried out and covered his eyes, his knees landing heavily onto the tiles as he slid, hotness all around him, burning him.

“Gah!” Ali cried.

Blinking, Shiro’s gaze connected with Darius’s and he looked at Shiro, his mouth a rictus of hate and rage.

“You took my jinni from me!” he said through clenched teeth.

The golden doors burst apart and dozens of Scorpion Guards came into the chamber, their swords and spears clamoring.

They came up short, watching as Shiro, lay across the tiles looking up at Darius. His sword thrummed with hot magic, the air around the blade trailing away in wisps of white smoke.

“You did that yourself when you decided to betray her trust and imprison her!”

“You fool!”

Ali moved, glanced at Darius and Shiro. He was five paces away. There was no way he would be able to get up and save Shiro—and even had he been close enough—he didn’t have the power to do anything to stop Darius.

Razul groaned. Shiro found him, lying almost still on the tiles some paces away, but didn’t move further.

It was over.

Jessamine…

Gomen… nesai…

“You have doomed this empire, you foreigner—you destroyer!”

“What are you talking about?”

Darius snarled. “Find out in the hells, you demon!”

With a scream, he raised his white hot sword.

Shiro closed his eyes.

Kami-sama! he prayed.

And then suddenly there was a wisp of strong wind, cold and foreign and a sound between swords clashing and magic reacting violently. Magic exploded over Shiro, the light outside his closed eyelids flashing so brightly he grimaced and cringed, putting his hands over his head for protection.

It was more of a reaction rather than a thought out sense to defend himself as he fell to the tiles.

“What?!” Darius croaked. “But you—you’re dead!“

The isekai’s heart leapt.

Nani desuka?!

He blinked, then opened his eyes fully and gasped as he found Jessamine kneeling over him, her arms outstretched and her luminescent golden blade shimmering like the sun. She was blocking Darius’ strike that would have come down and sheered Shiro in two.

Squinting against the bright plume of warm light erupting and flickering between the contact of their blades, he squinted to better see through the light.

“Jessamine?!”

“By the gods and goddesses,” Ali spluttered from somewhere.

Darius, seeing Jessamine still alive, did not soften his murderous gaze. “You’re supposed to be dead—you traitorous whore!”

“Even you have a few things to learn about the jinni,” Jessamine spat, and arched her arms, flinging Darius’ sword into the tiles.

Shiro flinched.

The contact of his blade hit so strongly that the snap of sound must have cracked the thick marble underneath.

Then, seeing Darius the way he was, Shiro blinked in shock and scurried back.

Jessamine was still on one knee, her sword buried to the hilt in Darius’ chest as the blade—sticking outside of his back, shimmered and pulsed with bright luminescence.

Eyes wide, Darius groaned. Blood dribbled from his mouth. “H—how…?”

“You might be a famed adventurer,” Jessamine said breathily, “but you’ve never killed a jinni before—sultan!”

And then his eyes closed, the weight of his body slumping against Jessamine. She cried out and thrust his corpse away, her blade coming out in a hiss of blood and bright light.

As the unmoving form of Darius fell heavily to the tiles, Shiro glanced up at Jessamine, then to Ali, then to the carnage in the throne room.

Scoprion Guards were piling past the thrones and down the dais steps like sand in a temple trap. The Scorpion Guards seemed to slow, take pause as they looked on at the corpse of their sultan, utterly in shock.

“Shiro,” Jessamine said.

He looked up at her again. She was holding out her hand. “He took it and she helped him to his feet.”

“How are you—“

“Alive?”

He nodded stupidly.

“I told you to put the sword in my hand, you fool.”

He looked at the blade in her hands. It pulsed with evident magic. She glanced at it as well, and then it went dark, fading into nothingness like something from the dark void.

As he looked into her green eyes, she said, “It takes a lot more than a mere blade to kill a jinni, Shiro.”

Ali, who was on his backside, jumped to his feet and rushed over to his brother. “Raz? Razul, are you all right?”

Shiro glanced at Ali and Razul, then to Debaku, who was still unconscious.

Dozens of the sultan’s men came forward and stopped just short of striking distance to Shiro and Jessamine. Their eyes met Shiro’s and flicked between him and Jessamine, and the corpse of Darius sprawled out across the tiles.

Jessamine strode to the body and picked up the sword with the black ivory hilt and red blade. She thrust it at Shiro. “Take it. It’s yours.”

“But…” Shiro said, feeling hesitant to take the weapon of such an evil man.

“It was never his sword,” she said. Clearly she was reading his emotions. Again… But right now he did not care. “This is my blade, Shiro.” She nodded. “Take it.”

Returning her gesture, he said, “Hai!”

Jessamine turned to regard the Scorpion Guards surrounding them on all sides. “Your sultan is dead!” she called. “Now there will be a new leader at the throne of our glorious empire!”

She raised her hand, her luminescent sword reappearing out of thin air and pulsing with bright light.

The Scorpion Guards gasped and shrunk back. They looked at Jessamine, at Shiro, swallowing. One of the men stepped forward, sheathed his scimitar and bowed with both hands extended, his hands flat as the tiles below his feet. “We obey!”

“We obey!” they called in unison, a chorus that filled the throne chamber.

Swallowing, Shiro glanced about, then down at Ali who looked up at him, a worried but surprised look on his face. “Is Razul alive?”

Ali grinned. “Yes.”

Then Shiro commanded, “Bring physicians and magickers with healing abilities at once!”

“Yes, my lord!” the Scorpion Guard member who had bowed his head first, said. He took off running with some of his men.

Shiro bent to check on Debaku. He groaned, his eyes opening. “Are you alive, my friend?” Shiro asked.

Debaku grunted through gritted teeth.

“Do not talk,” Shiro said. “Healers are on the way.”

A woman, crying out, appeared as Shiro and Jessamine glanced up. It was Shai’na, limped as a trail of blood dribbled down her leg from where the arrow protruded.

“Aid her, you fools!” Shiro commanded. As he gave the Scorpion Guards orders, he left no room for misunderstanding that they now served the victors of their battle—and he was willing to cut down every single one of them to make them understand that.

With his commands, he extended his arms, pointing aggressive fingers. He couldn’t help but feel a sense of anger toward them, even knowing they did as they were told—as part of their warrior training to serve the sultan diligently loyaly.

The Scorpion Guard reacted immediately and ran to the vizier, supporting her with their own bodies. They hauled her forward.

As time passed, more and more Scorpion Guards coalesced about the throne chamber—including some non-warriors who were evidentially part of the Sultan’s Court.

They looked on with horror and shock, their faced dumb with confusion. Some of them scurried away, probably believing that vengeance would be heaped upon them if they didn’t escape the city at once.

And perhaps, with some of them, that would be the truth. But it wasn’t up to Shiro to decide those matters.

“It is over,” Shiro said.

Jessamine’s full lips quirked into a subtle smile.

“How are you still alive?” Shai’na asked breathily.

Jessamine looked at her sword once again, but said nothing, and no one pressed her any further on the matter.

“What now?” Shiro asked.

“Now,” Shai’na grunted. “Someone must take the place of our dead sultan.”

Shiro looked at her and she nodded stoically, then hissed at the pain in her leg.

Men rushed forward. There were physicians and magickers who went to Debaku and Razul’s sides. Two of them came to Shai’na and even more of them spread out and attended to the wounded Scorpion Guards who weren’t already dead.

One magicker, wearing sumptuous robes of high station, his beard scraped clean except for his chin where it formed a nobleman’s point, looked at the sultan, then he glanced up, tears streaming down his face.

“The sultan is dead! I—I don’t… OUR GLORIOUS SULTAN IS DEAD!”

“As well he should be!” Shai’na spat.

The magicker looked at her sharply, his tone tremulous.

“What?”