Chapter 478 - 478: Finding the third duke

Jolthar and Haryntha moved through the swarm at a steady pace, surrounded on all sides by the pressing mass of nynthralls that slid and scraped against Haryntha's barrier without ever finding a way through it.

The sphere of her shield caught the creatures and pushed them aside like water splitting around the prow of a ship, pale bodies tumbling away only to be replaced immediately by more pale bodies pressing in from behind. The sound of them against the barrier was constant and wet and deeply unpleasant, a noise that lived in the back of the teeth rather than the ears.

Jolthar walked with his hands loose at his sides, his breathing measured and deliberate. It took him a day extra to move again.

Three days of rest had done most of what it needed to do. Not everything — the roughness Haryntha had described was still there in his channels, a texture that hadn't been present before the Void Requiem and the Yan engagement had done their combined damage — but enough.

Enough to move, enough to think clearly, enough to feel like himself again rather than like a hollow version of himself that had borrowed the right face.

The three days had been unexpected. He had planned for two and his body had quietly refused that plan, the damaged channels making their position known every time he tried to access anything beyond basic function, the message consistent and non-negotiable.

So he had no choice but to take rest for another day.

Haryntha had not said I told you so. She had simply sat nearby and let him work through the frustration of it without adding to it, which he appreciated more than he said.

"Your uncle seemed like a decent man," Haryntha said, her voice conversational and easy.

"He is," Jolthar said.

She looked at him from the side, studying his profile as they walked through the shifting mass of creatures beyond the barrier.

"Now that he pulled you out of that situation with Yan, also, you two seemed to have talked quite a lot. So will you go back to the clan?"

Jolthar turned his head toward her and smiled.

It was a small smile. Quiet and certain and entirely complete in itself, the kind of smile that doesn't need words behind it because the words are already contained within it for anyone who knows how to read a face.

Haryntha read his face.

She understood immediately and completely and didn't push any further, returning her attention to the path ahead and accepting the answer for exactly what it was.

Just because he talked with his uncle, it doesn't mean the things of the past have changed. And he had clearly told Caelum that he would soon kill his sons. Jolthar was certain that Lorryll would come after him and Orimus too would come. When that time comes, he wouldn't hesitate to kill them. That's what he said to Caelum. And going back to the clan, there was no need to.

They walked for a while longer, the Depths pressing in around the shield's edges, the corrupted ground shifting subtly underfoot with the particular unreliability of earth that had been wrong for so long it had forgotten what being right felt like.

The twisted landscape moved past them on both sides, blackened trees leaning at angles that made no structural sense, the sky overhead maintaining its permanent bruised quality, somewhere between purple and sickness, never committing fully to either.

"Do you know how long we have been in here?" Haryntha asked after a while, as she saw Jolthar was being unbothered.

Jolthar glanced at her. "How long?"

He had forgotten the number of days he had been in here.

"Twenty eight days," she said.

The number arrived in the space between them and sat there with considerable weight.

Jolthar didn't respond immediately.

He kept walking at exactly the same pace, his expression not dramatically changing, but something settled behind his eyes that hadn't been there the moment before.

"Well, that was something. I didn't even know; the days just went by."

"In these depths, its hard to keep track of time."

"How would you know then?"

Then he shook his head as he thought he was asking an obvious question.

"Of course, you are a goddess after all."

Haryntha just smiled, not an arrogant smile, though.

Jolthar went back to his thoughts.

The Emperor had given him thirty days.

Two days remained.

One duke left to find and kill and then the journey back through the Depths to the Veil, and then whatever distance separated them from the capital, and all of that to be accomplished in forty eight hours.

"Right, I don't have the two heads of the dukes. Shit!" He just realized that he had wiped them out completely, without leaving anything behind.

The voidwrath power had erased their bodies, leaving nothing behind. He was supposed to bring their heads but there was no heads now.

"I should have at least cut off their heads first."

"You are thinking of it now. I was wondering when you are gonna ask for it," Haryntha said with a sarcastic tone.

"Those ministers would eat my brain again," Jolthar said as he heaved a sigh.

"Don't worry, darling. I have a way to help you."

Jolthar looked at her as he saw her smiling.

"After all, you are the mortal who managed to steal a goddess's heart. Compared to that, dealing with a few ministers should be easy."

He said nothing, though a faint smile appeared on his face.

Haryntha watched him absorb it and said nothing more about it.

*

They walked for a full day through the northeastern sector, the landscape gradually thickening around them as they moved deeper into the region Caelum's scouts had marked.

The corrupted ground became denser, the black moss heavier on every surface, the nynthralls more numerous and more tightly packed, as though the deeper they went, the more the malice concentrated and the more creatures that concentration attracted.

The malice pressing against Haryntha's shield was noticeably heavier here than anywhere else they'd been since the spire. It pushed with a persistence and a weight that suggested proximity to something significant, the way temperature rises as you approach fire even before the fire itself is visible.

But Jolthar felt no duke.

He walked and he felt carefully outward with his senses and what came back was thick malice and thick nynthrall presence and the general deep wrongness of the Depths doing what it always did. No specific intelligence concentrating itself behind the noise. No ancient awareness was sitting at the center of the swarm the way the spire's dukes had announced themselves even before he'd stepped through the entrance.

He stopped walking.