Broken Lands

Chapter 386 – Judgement

Sophia’s eyes locked onto Xin’ri as she thought of her teammate’s friend Mo’ra. “You told people you would give them power and instead gave them death by their own hands to become a tool for you, your Broken Swords.”

Ysalix’s whispers grew louder, as if he were shouting from a long distance. “All serve the Empire. They offered themselves for power; I gave them the power they sought. It was not their choice what form the power takes. My Broken Swords are my tool in the world and my reservoir.” 

The whispers paused, then became even louder, with a background hiss from the miniature thunder that distorted the sound, almost like the clicks and pops of an old record. “And you! I know you! You stole a Broken Sword and stole all the Wisps it held and offered them to your Patron!”

Sophia bit back a comment about how those Wisps were stolen from people who wanted to gain a Hallow from a Patron and thought the Broken Lord might grant their wish. Arguing with the spirit she was here to exorcise would not help; in fact, it might break the ritual. This was a ritual of judgement, not a debate or even a trial. 

The circle of Sophia’s teammates was now about ten feet from Sophia in any direction. That was close enough that Ysalix’s sparks were concentrated within a few feet of Sophia - and more importantly, within a few feet of the jar in front of her. Sophia reached out to the sparks within her aura and dragged them closer, pulling them to the spot directly above the jar. “Ysalix Kestii, called the Broken Lord, hear my judgement as Empress of Kestii.”

“The Tower must fall,” the sparks whispered again. Whatever moment of lucidity allowed the Broken Lord to recognize Sophia was clearly gone almost as quickly as it appeared.

Sophia frowned at the vaguely man-shaped sparks in front of her. She was pretty sure she’d transitioned to the judgement part of the ritual and that meant he really shouldn’t be arguing with her. While all he said was the statement that seemed to be his default, Sophia was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to speak at all after she told him she was issuing the judgement.

Maybe she should summarize what he was being judged for. She’d kind of just done that, but technically those were accusations, not a judgement. She took a moment to pull her thoughts together before she started. Some of what she accused him of was worthy of the judgement of an Empress and some of it wasn’t. 

“Ysalix Kestii, you failed the final task you were given as the heir-designate of the Kestii Empire. You were sent to the Tower to find a way to stop the Maze from spreading and you failed. Failure alone is not a crime, but the plan you concocted to halt the Maze is.” Sophia took a deep breath. She was pretty sure she’d put the pieces together properly between the legends and what she’d gathered from both Ansuz and Ysalix. If she was right, it would strengthen the ritual; if she was wrong but close enough, it might still work. If she was completely wrong, it could invalidate the entire ritual,

Of course, that assumed the Wanderer’s ritual worked the way Sophia thought it did. It seemed likely, but she’d only ever designed one ritual. Worse, this was a civic ritual rather than a purely magical one, and those had a lot of cultural variation. The fact that this one allowed the accused to speak in response to each of the judge’s statements said that this was probably one of the ones where the facts of the situation mattered.

“You had your father, the Emperor, assassinated so that you could take his place when you reached the top of the Tower, then commanded the Tower to fall. You believed this would stop the spread of the Maze and that it was worth it. I neither know nor care if you wanted the sword for yourself. You took it and chose to use it to destroy the Tower.” Sophia was glad she remembered to substitute sword for throne

or crown; using the correct symbol was important.“Breaking the Tower was a mistake, a serious one, but one that was within your aegis as the Emperor, no matter how you gained the position. It failed and made the Maze spread. You commanded those who you could reach to kill the Hallowed, because you blamed them for your own failure.” Sophia really needed to figure out how he did that. He claimed he wasn’t a Patron, but the Broken Lord clearly had some way to communicate outside the Tower. 

Sophia didn’t understand his choices. If it were up to her and she needed a way out of the Maze, she’d have asked people to come get her. Maybe there was still enough of the Tower visible to easily find the way without Arak’s tracking device. Telling them to kill the unconscious wasn’t a good choice. 

Sophia also didn’t understand why those people followed the order. She had no doubt that some would, but surely there would be some who wouldn’t? The Hallowed were honored; that was why they had to keep the deaths secret in Bai’s story. It just didn’t add up to Sophia; someone would have resisted. Eventually, someone would talk, yet according to Bai no one did.

“You enforced the death of the Hallowed across the Broken Lands, to the point where everyone knows that only the Broken Lord gives Hallows; others aren’t spoken of. The Patrons are known but not followed. You killed people for no crime but excelling.” He might not have been the one to actually kill them, but that didn’t matter. The orders were his, which made him responsible. 

“You controlled people to do your bidding and even make the tools they used to kill themselves at your order.” Sophia hated mind control. There were places where it was acceptable, but there was a reason that even those uses were forbidden in many places back home. It was all too easy to move from small, nagging reminders for someone trying to give up a bad habit to small things that would make your life easier without really hurting anyone and then to things that would.

Sophia blinked at that. The fact that the Broken Lord kept repeating The Tower must fall when it already had was one of the signs of poorly managed mind control, where the suggestion turned into an obsession. It could be that Ysalix had repeated it to himself so often that it was engraved into the memory of whatever was left of him … or it could be that it was planted there by someone else before everything started. 

Mind control definitely wasn’t the only explanation. It wasn’t even a particularly likely explanation; surely the heir-designate would have protection from mind control. It was probably even more likely that Ysalix fell in with a group that believed the Tower was the reason for all of the problems in the Empire. If it appeared when the monsters did, which seemed likely, it was a logical conclusion. It wasn’t that far off to imagine that Ysalix fixated on that, then doubled down on it when destroying the Tower didn’t work.

Outside interests would also explain the convenient death of the Emperor. Ysalix wasn’t there when it happened; he was in the Tower.

Sophia had no way to know what was behind Ysalix’s conviction that the Tower had to be destroyed. In the end, it didn’t change anything; Ysalix was dead and needed to be sent to rest. If someone had triggered his actions with magic as well as words, whoever it was probably got what was coming to them when the Tower fell and monsters spread. Whether they had or not, they were long dead as well.

“No restitution can fix what you destroyed and the people you killed. The only payment you can make for these actions is your life,” Sophia continued. “You are dead; now you must pass on to that which comes next. Enter the container in front of me so that you may pass into Death’s embrace.”

Nothing happened. 

Sophia started to frown; she must have missed something. She’d given the judgement; why wasn’t he following it? Did she need to force him in with her aura or had she forgotten to say something?

She might as well try both. Sophia grabbed at the sparks with her aura, then added, “This is my judgement as Empress.”

Ysalix’s resistance almost vanished. Sophia still had to push him, but it was the difference between moving a man who fought back and a pile of sand that weighed as much as a man … when she had buckets. She couldn’t easily shift him if she tried to move all of him, but she could easily move a little at a time.

The man-shaped figure disintegrated from the bottom up as motes of lightning drifted from it into the jar. The only sound was the crackling of the tiny lightning that whispered “the Tower must fall.” Even that whisper became fainter and fainter as more and more of Ysalix’s remnant power disappeared into the jar.

When it was finally all inside, Sophia swept the room one last time with her aura to find any individual particles she missed, then shoved them into the jar as well. She was probably just gathering sparks of magic left over from the fight, but that was fine. They wouldn’t hurt anything if they were in the jar, while missing a piece of Ysalix might matter.

Sophia pushed the stopper into the jar then secured it with the fiddly metal thing that went over the top before she handed it to Xin’ri. “Please melt this. You don’t need to do anything special or say any words over it; that’s done. We just all need to watch, to witness as the judgement is carried out.”

Xin’ri smiled. “With pleasure.” She sat the container on the cold surface of her brazier and started channeling mana into it to heat it up.

Sophia made her way over to Dav and leaned against him. She was just beginning to realize just how much effort the ritual took out of her. It wasn’t just the mana cost; using her aura like that cost energy beyond just mana, much like any form of exercise. Now that her part was over, she was starting to feel it. 

Dav wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “Do we still need to be quiet?”

“Respectful,” Sophia whispered back, “Not necessarily quiet.”

Dav nodded. “Did it help?”

“It?” Sophia wasn’t sure what Dav meant.

“Walking in circles,” Dav clarified. “I know you didn’t plan that initially.”

“Spirals,” Sophia corrected with a grin her boyfriend couldn’t see. “And yes, definitely. A lot of Ysalix’s power was near where he fell, but some of it was scattered all over; you could see that in the air. I’m…”

Sophia covered the yawn triggered by thinking about how tired she felt. “Ah, I’m pretty tired as you can tell. If I had to do all that, as well as what I did … well, I might have been able to. I think I’d succeed. I definitely have enough mana; it really didn’t take much mana to move him. It was more the concentration that was the problem. Having you there forcing him into a smaller space … yes. It helped.”

“Good.” Dav gripped Sophia’s shoulder tightly for a moment. “The hardest part was staying evenly spaced. With you talking, it was easy to think about the Broken Lord facing judgement, but the spacing? That was a pain.”

Sophia grinned, then pulled Dav down onto one of the surviving seats. It wasn’t particularly comfortable, but it was still better than standing. This was going to take a while.

They watched as Xin’ri carefully made the glass jar collapse in place and turn into a mostly clear puddle instead of a container. It was done.