"I can't do this," Josef said from the other end of the cells.
"You know what happens if you defy me, Yenhelm."
Two men loitered nearby, not caged. They wore the remnants of Terrelan military uniforms, though the emblems had been cut away and the clothes had seen better days. The Iron Legion glanced their way. "Start bringing me the prisoners, one at a time."
I tried to pull against the metal holding me in place, but I was held tight. I even swung my stump at the Iron Legion, but it brushed against his robes harmlessly and the man shot me a pitying look. I hated him. I just wanted him to die. I heard Josef sobbing, but couldn't see through the gloom to where he stood. Whatever was happening, it was causing my friend, my brother, my other half pain and I couldn't do anything to stop it.
The first of the prisoners was brought forward, a thin woman who couldn't even stand without the soldier holding her up. Her hair was grey and matted, and her eyes dull brown, barely a spark of life within them. The Iron Legion gripped her around the neck with one hand and put his other on my chest. "This might feel a little unpleasant." Even as he said the words, I realised the truth of them. He dragged the woman's spirit from her body. I didn't even think such a thing was possible. But of course, it was. I could use my Necromancy to force a person's soul, their spirit back into their body. Necromancy and Biomancy were always two sides of a coin, it made sense that Biomancy could be used in such a hateful way.
I had a flash of memory as the soul was channelled through me. A brief flicker of another life. A grandmother sitting by a low fire, a daughter beside her and a granddaughter on her knee. Three generations of a family all huddled close near a fire. A house full of love and comfort. The memory was gone as quickly as it had appeared, like a dream leaving only fleeting emotion behind. Forgotten. Gone. I felt the spirit travel through me, had no say in where it went or what it left behind. Through my chest, down my arm, and into the manacle. Into the Source embedded in the metal.
I gasped, still trying to grasp what had just happened. My eyes met the Iron Legion's. "What…"
"Next." He reached for the next prisoner.
He was relentless. Prisoner after prisoner. Life after life. I found myself swamped in fragments of memories, subjected to a hundred different lives. I nearly lost myself in that maelstrom. Here, a young man proud to be a soldier in service of his emperor. There, another man with eyes for a woman who would never love him back. A woman searching for a lost shoe, her favourite pair forever split in two. A young boy stubbing his toe and crying for his mother. A wizened old crone tricking villagers into believing her a witch. A man with lands and title counting his money. A young girl playing with a dog down by a frozen river. Each one fleeting, a shard of memory and emotion, and then gone, replaced by another. And another. And another. I struggled to know where I ended, and the memories of others began.
If the Iron Legion felt the same torment of memories, he did not show it. I think neither he nor Josef felt them. It was unique to me. Two hundred and sixteen people were killed before me that day, and another equal number at Josef's hands. Two hundred and sixteen lives passed through me, channelled into the Source. Two hundred and sixteen souls to measure up to just one Djinn life.
I could not stop what happened next. As the last of the souls passed through me and into the Source, the same process was completed with Josef. The Source attached to my manacle began to glow, softly at first but brighter and brighter and brighter still. A blue glow. Time. Chronomancy. It popped free of the manacle and dropped to the ground. I sagged against my restraints, unable to do anything but watch. Near Josef, the Source was glowing a brilliant yellow and he dropped the sceptre. The Iron Legion rushed forward and collected both Sources, carrying them to the centre of the room where two new pedestals waited, risen from the very rock around us. Josef drifted closer to me, and we could only watch the atrocity we had just committed.
"I'm sorry." Josef said, though he looked more numb than apologetic. I never considered how the taken lives and channelled souls affected him. For me, each one left something with me, a fragment of a memory, the feeling of having lived others' lives. For him, each one took a little something from him on its way, something he could never get back. His sanity washed away in a flood of souls. "Your arm."
"Is gone." The words hissed from me. "Get me out of here."
The lights in the centre of the room were pulsing brighter and brighter, yellow and blue alternating their pulses, casting the laboratory in dizzying hues. Josef moved closer and pulled on the twisted metal of the bars that held me. They didn't budge. He shook his head at me. One of the soldiers chuckled.
"What about this manacle?" I asked.
Josef poked at the metal secured around my wrist and I winced at the pain as it dug deeper into my flesh. Blood welled up fresh and ran along my hand, dripping from my fingers. Again, Josef shook his head.
I sighed. Trapped. Beaten. We had lost. I wished Ssserakis would speak, reassure me we could still fight, even if it was a lie. "What happens next?"
"I don't know." Josef turned his attention to the where the Iron Legion waited in the centre of the room, between the two pedestals and their pulsing Sources. "It's never got this far before. They've always cracked and shattered."
The pulsing of the two Sources was changing, slowing, synchronising. A gradual process of the two forces being brought into tune with one another. A third soldier slipped into the room and paused, staring towards the Sources for a moment, before turning towards us. She wore the same faded uniform as the others but had a beautiful face and glossy raven-dark hair. I thought nothing of it and turned my attention back to the Iron Legion.
"Stop this!" I screamed the words so loud the Iron Legion had to look over. "You don't know what you're doing."
The Iron Legion took two steps toward me. "I am righting a wrong, Helsene. Ending the War Eternal. Fixing the world." He pitched his voice to carry and I realised there was noise escaping the Sources; two vibrating hums slowly merging into one. "Only the Rand and Djinn working together can undo what they did. It requires the union of their powers to close the hole in the world. And it requires them both to undo what their magic has done to me."
"How can you end a war that was dead before any of us were even born? Aerolis and Mezula ended the war, Loran. They conspired together to kill the last of their brothers and sisters because they knew there could never be any other end to the war. Even then, they can't stop trying to kill each other. The Rand and the Djinn may be one, two sides of the same coin, but they are opposite. They will never allow the other to live. You aren't ending the war, you're reigniting it!" My words fell on deaf ears, it seemed, and the Iron Legion turned back to the pulsing Sources. "You're perpetuating it! Giving them a way to kill each other endlessly and bring themselves back using our lives!"
Of course, he didn't care. Lives no longer meant anything to the Iron Legion, perhaps they never had. All he truly cared about was his own vapid life. His declaration of trying to save the world was never anything but justification for the murder of innocents.
Speaking of murder, the third soldier reached us, a grin on her flawless face. I might have realised had my attention not been rooted on the Iron Legion. Though, in truth it wouldn't have mattered, there was nothing I could have done. A knife flicked out, burying itself deep in the first soldier's heart. Before the second could react, the woman stepped close and dragged him down, kicking his legs from beneath him and snapping his neck. Recognition dawned on me far too late.