Sacred Oath

I found Priscilla twenty minutes after her heart had stopped beating.

She lay motionless on the bed of cinders that filled all of Tartarus. Her skin was now pale and clammy, her red coat stained redder with the dark blood leaking from her heart. The black stands of her wing raked the ground beneath her like the stingers of a stranded manta ray. They no longer shone with their iridescent brilliance.

How her wing had failed to stop Apollo's arrow baffled me. I had seen her wing defeat threats from high caliber gauss rifles and full-power kinetic strikes point-blank. Her wing had even stopped a full-power kinetic strike meant to slay dragons.

She wasn't supposed to die like this.

"Priscilla,” I said.

When she didn't respond, I collapsed onto my knees beside her. I always imagined I would be the first to die. For it to happen the other way around wasn't something I was ready to admit.

My hands trembled as they reached for her wrist to check her pulse for the last time. But before I made contact, I dropped my hands to the ground and stared at them.

I had just lost the last person who knew my entire story.

I had just lost my best friend.

I was now alone in a nightmare meant to kill the both of us.

"I'm sorry."

But as I raised my hand to wipe my tears away, Priscilla's arm shot up from the ground and grabbed my left wrist in a vice grip.

I froze, not quite believing what I saw.

But when her hand nearly crushed my poor wrist, any doubt I had of her being dead vanished along with any sense of feeling I had in my left arm.

She should have been dead at least fifteen minutes now, but here she was, still clinging to life with every bit of strength she had left. I had heard stories of how a Seraph's magic would find novel ways to beat the odds and save their master, but to see it with my own eyes was truly something else.

"Priscilla! Hang on!” I cried. “I-I’m going to make a Lifelink.”

A Lifelink enabled someone on the brink of death to stay alive so long as the person who had created it was able to channel magic to them. Not everyone could make one, even those well-versed in healing magic, but thanks to my lineage as a Densus Knight, I was able to make one no problem. Priscilla had already given me permission to create one in case of a real emergency, so all the remained was for me to create the link.

The only catch to establishing a Lifelink was that it could not be severed once it was made. That and the condition that if one half of the link were to perish, so would the other, Seraph or not. Come to think it, Lifelinks had been used on a number of occasions to assassinate several prominent Seraphs, some as recent as within the last half a century. Making such a link was about as serious a decision as one could make.

I bit my lip.

Whether we survived this or not, Priscilla was not going to be happy about this.

Is there no other way? I asked myself.

I felt Priscilla's grasp weaken on my wrist.

I knew what I had to do.

I held our wrists together and prepared the alteration I had practiced countless times in training.

In my magically anemic state, I would not have enough magic to stabilize Priscilla’s condition. Manaburn would rapidly consume any magic I had left to give, and if I tried to push past my limit, I would probably pass out from the pain I would feel before I could accomplish anything meaningful. At best, I could give my lord just enough magic to keep herself alive for a few minutes longer.

I looked up into the void, remembering that Gordon had two elixirs with him in his pocket dimension.

While the elixirs might not have been much help to Priscilla, who wouldn't be able to channel magic any time soon, they would certainly be a big help to me in fighting manaburn, perhaps enough to save her. Unfortunately, there was no way I would be able to bring the elixirs back in time even if I had a way to get back up to the top of the chasm.

“Iris!" I cried.

I clenched my teeth before igniting the alteration to establish a Lifelink. My arms and hands began to burn like they had been dipped in acid. My vision began to blur like the inside of a washing machine on turbo. The stronger a magic was, the more pain it induced, but this pain was something else. Just when I felt like I had gotten the pain under control, it got worse.

After what felt like a minute of mind-numbing pain, I was able to see clearly again.

For a second, a jolt of raw fear tore through my heart as I wondered if I had messed up the alteration.

Then I saw it, a single strand of shining silver thread floating above the palm of my right hand like spider silk. The thread floated in the air but responded immediately to my touch like iron filings to a powerful magnet.

I grabbed the thread with my free hand and held it up for Iris to see.

"You know what happens when one half of a Lifelink dies," I said. "And if I die, you won’t find your prisoner. I doubt you’ll find a capable servant like me any time soon."

Iris had been oddly silent ever since Morpheus left us to die. She didn't strike me as someone who would seek to dispose of me so soon, especially since I had yet to help her find her prisoner. Then again, I hardly knew anything about her. I still didn't know what she wanted from me.

"I like to think that you were helping us out of the goodness of your heart," I said, "But I guess we're going to find out real quick who's side you're on."

I tied the Lifelink first around Priscilla's wrist and then my own with a simple knot.

I raised my wrist to eye level and tried to touch the thread, but my finger passed right through the material as if it wasn’t there.

"Once immaterial, the link is complete," I whispered.

I lowered my hand onto the bed of cinders below.

The link was complete.

There was no fanfare, no spark of magic, nothing to signify the weight of what had been done.

But now Priscilla's life and mine were bound together until the day of our deaths, at least while we were together in the nightmare.

I sat down on the ground beside Priscilla and stared up into the void.

The void started back at, quiet, unfeeling.

I closed my eyes, knowing the pain of over-drafting magic would come before long.

"You have thirty seconds before I run out of magic, Iris,” I said. "Probably a minute or two before I become a pile of ashes. I've enjoyed working with you so far, it'd be a shame if things ended right here for something silly like this. Please help us."

I took a deep breath and then began to channel magic to Priscilla.

Like a floodgate being opened, Manaburn filled my entire body as she drew magic from me like a refrigerator drawing energy from a 9V battery.

The burn was what I imagined being dunked into a pool of lava would be like-incredibly unbearable and growing worse by the half-second.

I screamed as I had never before in my miserable life. It was worse than when I had every nail on my body removed in prison. It was worse than when my femur had been turned into powder halfway through the Watcher Trial.

It was probably what Eleanor felt when she was burnt at stake.

I'm a terrible guardian, I thought. I will always be a terrible guardian. It should never have come to this.

Priscilla was drawing magic from me by the gigawatt, and I gave it to her knowing that it was the only thing keeping her alive. I gave it knowing that the moment I stopped there was a chance I would never see her again.

I told myself I would only have to endure until help arrived.

But help was far away, and there was no guarantee we would ever see it.

The whole thing was foolish, gambling my life on the off-chance that a stranger would help.

But the die had been cast.

All that remained now was our benefactor's response.