Hot Obsidian
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“What kind of magic did the boys use to kill the morok?” Sarien interrupted her.
“It was killed with an ordinary sword,” said Aven.
The other mages exchanged puzzled looks behind Aven’s back. The rest of the way, everyone kept silent…
Lots of warm Lihts floating under the ceiling of a detention room filled it with enough light to keep all the night horrors at bay and enough warmth to make it cosy. Bala and Kosta shared that room with several sleeping citizens that had been caught by the guards in the streets after the curfew. What those people did was not a crime and the detention they got was only for their safety because of all the dark creatures prowling around, so the room did not look like a prison cell and the cots there were clean and comfortable.
The morok’s head had indeed allowed Bala and Kosta to enter Firaska at night but it had also alarmed the whole Crimson Guard. There would be questions, lots of them. Tired as they were, the boys were too worried to sleep now.
Kosta walked up to a sink in the corner of the room, grabbed a bar of soap and began scrubbing the dried blood from his hands, hair, face and clothes. The water turned crimson-red; there seemed to be no end to the bloody filth no matter how hard Kosta tried to wash it away.
Bala, feeling sad and useless, sat on his cot, and hid his face in his hands. A swarm of questions he couldn’t answer tortured him. He could make neither heads nor tails of the situation. What kind of disease Kosta had? Why did it pass after the morok had died? Why was Kosta immune to the morok’s horror magic? Who was that boy after all…
For the first time in his life, Bala regretted not having been reading more. The only things he could remember about moroks were a snippet of one of Kangassk Magesta’s incoherent lectures and a couple of his teammates’ bedtime stories.
He knew that moroks were dangerous magical creatures of a dark kind, because they preyed specifically on humans. He knew that the magic they used was not “spells” but rather a limited set of patterns. They knew a few illusion tricks – they used those to fake human appearance – and could spread waves of horror-inducing magic. An ordinary person could resist one such wave at best. Bala could not do even that: the very first wave had paralyzed him. But Kosta… Kosta stood his ground like a breakwater, through all three…
When Aven and Sarien arrived at the detention station, a couple of young Crimson Guardians woke up everyone in the room and escorted them away, leaving Bala and Kosta alone. They were going to be questioned, that was as clear as day, so they prepared themselves. Kosta, now scrubbed clean of most of the bloody filth, hastily combed his hair with his fingers in a feeble attempt to look nice. Bala did his best to put on a brave face; he was the “adult” here, after all, and needed to look like one.
Seeing the “adult” warrior the Crimson Guardians had told her about, the “adult” who in fact was just a teenager scared out of his wits, Sarien got suspicious, to say the least. But learning that this boy wasn’t even the one who had killed the morok and that the younger one – a twelve-year-old! – had done it, made the old mage almost furious. Was Aven Zarbot that incompetent? Obviously, those kids were not the ones who had killed the monster! But who did it then? And why did that person decide to hide? That seemed worthy of Sarien's attention.
“I heard, my dears, that you had killed a morok,” said Sarien sweetly, like a loving grandma would, while her battlemage companions inconspicuously spread around the room, keeping an eye on the boys’ every movement.
“Not we,” said Bala, a shame in his eyes, “Kosta did. To protect me. He is the true warrior here.”
“You?” Sarra gave the younger Lifekeeper a long look, with a very convincing surprised expression on her face. The kid’s clothes were still splattered with blood even though he had tried his best to wash it away.
“Yes,” he nodded with quiet dignity.
“Oh how interesting!” almost cooed Sarien and sat at a cot next to Kosta’s. “I feel that you are telling the truth, my sweet. But it’s all so very puzzling! The morok was killed with a simple sword. It’s so rare! You see how old I am and I’ve seen that done only once in my whole life. Thirteen years ago. I was leading a team of young mages through the Firaskian forest and we met a whole pack of moroks: four ancient monsters hunting together! Their illusion was extremely convincing: they pretended to be a family – wife, husband, two kids – and played their parts so well that it took us long enough to recognize the trap. By the time we did that, we were doomed. My companions were no battle Seven, and a single mage, even a mage of my calibre, was no match for a morok pack. A young woman saved us that day and she, too, like you say you did, killed the moroks with only a sword. Only her sword had a handguard, unlike yours, and was not a katana. But that woman was immune to the horror magic, just like you must be if you’re indeed a morok-slayer. She had raven-black hair, black eyes, and – I never forget a face, my dear! – she even looked somewhat like you.” Sarien looked Kosta in the eye, a silent question in her gaze. “Well, what else? The woman was wounded in the fight and I treated her wounds; it was the least I could do to repay her. That encounter left her four claw marks on her right shoulder. She didn’t say much about herself, not even her name, but she mentioned that she was from the No Man’s Land.”
Aven and her fellow mages were listening to Sarien with bated breath, surprised, to say the least. Why was she suddenly so friendly and open with the boy? Even they, her battle brothers and sisters, had never heard that story!
Kosta Ollardian was silent for a long time but Sarien Sarra didn’t say anything to hurry him up. Aven had no idea that her boss could be so patient.
“That woman was my mother,” Kosta confessed at last.
“Small world!” Sarien smiled admiringly. “Tell me, my dear, are you your mother’s only child?”
“No. I have siblings,” answered Kosta, as honest and vague as Juel was with Aven when they first met.
“Ah, don’t worry, I’m not going to interrogate you about personal things,” said the old mage in a warm, soothing voice. “It’s the way you and your mother resisted morok magic that interests me greatly. Your mother never taught me her secret. Will you?”
“No,” Kosta shook his head.
“But my dear boy,” Sarien chastised him softly, “it can save countless lives. Just think about it!”