by Cara Violet
It had taken Xandou and that athletic frame of his, less than three days to finish his aura trials in Forsda and become a Giliou Shielder when he was eighteen. That was the only thing Dersji had been proud of. That was seven years ago. Since then, Xandou, and his new-found aura ability, were always getting in Dersji’s way.
“You have reported me several times before,” Dersji said, “I don’t know why you wouldn’t tell on me now?”
Dersji’s watched Xandou’s temper increase. That dynamic was only ever present when he was around Kaianan. Xandou had become so clingy and caught up in his job to the Gorgon royal family he’d forgotten who he was and what he was about half the time. Dersji couldn’t forget the day he overheard the Queen when she tucked Xandou in for bed. ‘You are family to us, Xandou. Will you do anything for Kaianan?’ Xandou replied straight back: ‘Yes, mam, anything.’
“Sir, you’ve never been one to care.” Xandou had lifted Kaianan from the ground, and there was blood smeared across her face.
Dersji assessed the situation. Kaianan was not pulling it together. They had spent countless hours working together, training, sweating, bleeding. He had grown proud of her efforts and took pride in developing her skills up until this point. Yet something was wrong. But what? He needed to mediate.
“You’re right, Xandou, I don’t care,” he stated coldly. “Go about your job my boy and let me do mine.”
Xandou, at that moment, had fired up in his aura. Light blue sparks flickered out and around him. “I won’t let you hurt her in the process!”
Dersji then heard Kaianan screaming. “Move, Xandou!”
Xandou, let go of his aura and latched onto Kaianan.
Dersji didn’t know what to make of it. “You both rehearsing for the upcoming beauty pageant?”
“Fight me, Brikin, you coward of a man. Fight me now!” Sweat and tears dripped down Kaianan’s bloodied face.
Dersji was repulsed. “Your impure mind has poisoned you.”
“Brikin, there are Felrin Shiek scouting for you in Layos,” Xandou said, hurriedly.
Dersji shot his eyes toward the south of the Swamp Lands, and holding himself from further outburst he inhaled. “I’ve sensed them.” He picked up his robe, shook the grass off of it and swung it back over his shoulders.
A million thoughts ran through him; the main one: uncertainty. He cared about Kaianan. For her to be so self-doubting, hurt him. He’d lived through pain before, lived through being a disappointment, he didn’t want to have to do it again. With one last, long and strained look toward his Menial, he let the purple light form around him and ‘ported out of the Manor training grounds.
At one point, Xandou had admired and looked up to Dersji Brikin. For the first few years after the Liege had bonded with Kaianan, Xandou’s young mind had thought it had just meant Dersji became another protector of hers. It upset him on the day, but the Queen had told him, Dersji was just like Xandou now, giving his life to Kaianan’s protection. It wasn’t until Xandou was involved in one of their training sessions that his mind changed. Dersji was aggressive with her.
The Liege was screaming at her to not only fight him back but to check on her own vitals. How was she breathing? How was she faring? What could she see around her to utilise in her victory?
It was utter madness. She was only ten years old!
A sob broke his thoughts. Tears were trickling down Kaianan’s dirty face when he looked to her. Xandou was so pained by it, he wished he could pummel Dersji right in the gut, but he wasn’t that foolish. He’d grown up with the Liege and he knew all too well he was no match for Dersji Brikin. Even though Xandou had graduated to become a Giliou Shielder, a strong aura user, the truth was he was the protection; Brikin, besides his immortality, taught her Kan’Ging, the strongest aura in the Siliou, and with that type of power, even if the Liege rarely used it, there was just no way anyone could overpower him.
“My lady, what has he done to you this time?” Xandou asked with concern. The same concern that had been with him when she bouldered him over on the street in the Layos Markets this morning.
A morning that had turned into visiting the Bank of Felrin to withdraw some coin, and maybe purchase Kaianan a present for her birthday, to hearing the locals screaming her name while he was standing in line at the white marble bank. He had been staring at the gold scripture above the five Gorgon preform tellers dressed in Felrin uniforms, sitting behind the impassable glass partition. It read:
Our Riches lie in your commitment to the Felrin way of governance
Be faithful to the love we show, speak our language and work for dough
The more you pledge the more we give,
Coin can be yours, just learn the right way to live
Right at that moment he heard the scream: “Princess Kaianan?!”
Sighing, he pushed his way back through the preform in line, back down the bare white marble walls of the place, past the two guards robed with the Felrin seal standing alongside the two impenetrable stone doors, and out onto the street to hear another voice: “Isn’t she supposed to be getting ready for her ceremony?”
After vigorous searching and an elbow to his chest, he knew she was finally okay and in one piece. Xandou hated Kaianan never took good care of herself. She was so clumsy, and hardly paid any attention to her surroundings. Sometimes he wondered if she just had an ability to switch off and zone out when she was faced with a hard reality. Dersji had hated that about her too, Xandou knew.
“Dersji has done nothing to me, Xandou.” Her voice broke his morning’s recollection.
He shook his head. “Did you at least get what you wanted at the market this morning?”
She said nothing.
“Dersji was lenient today at least? He let you out. I mean it’s your birthday, Kaianan. I would have bought you something—”
“Don’t worry about it, Xandou.” Her eyes were facing away from him, to where Dersji had last been.
“I hate that he is able to ‘port.” Xandou murmured out, thinking about Dersji’s smug expression when he had fired up in portation. “He should be prohibited from it; it offends my race.”
“Xandou, just because the Giliou have the ability of portation and he is a Felrin does not mean he has stolen your skill. It is a gift of Giliou the Wise. He chooses many to take the power, and Dersji was one of them.”
Xandou tried to suppress his anger at hearing this. He hated more so that she was right. But why would Giliou the Wise give Dersji Brikin such a gift? And why did she feel the need to say anything? “Why are you defending him again? He had his Liege blade out. He nearly killed you, Kaianan.”
“Killed me?” Her voice became stern. “He was provoking me to use Kan’Ging. I failed for the tenth time, and I doubt I will last in my Verticals. He is right, this is all just so pointless.”
“You doubt for no reason. You don’t need to go through judgements to become a Shiek, Your Highness. It’s just glorified swordplay … You are to become a full Gorgon on your eighteenth birthday: tonight. It would be impossible to be both.”
“What do you mean, impossible?”
Xandou cleared his throat. What did he mean? That it upset him that she regarded her Liege in such a way… that her parents wanted Xandou to keep a closer eye on her and make sure her only focus was transforming … But all he could actually come out and say was: “I mean … I mean it’s a lot of training. How … how can you possibly be able to prepare for all of it, and still be a queen? Please, come, you must get ready. The King and Queen have special guests arriving before your ceremony.”
She groaned, seemingly out of it. Just like she was every single time they’d sparred. He waited on her common rebuttal. Nothing. For once her mouth did not open.
“Are you okay, Kaia?”
She said nothing, just wiped her face and kept walking. There was no fight left in her. He’d never heard her so. Xandou had never felt so distant. This was his best friend, they were inseparable, why did she not
answer him.
“Kaia?”
He asked again; nothing. He quit asking. When she was ready to talk to him, she would. For now, he would have to respect the silence, something he could not believe she was even capable of doing, and they walked back to the Manor without exchanging another word.
Chapter Three: The Parting of Ways
Kaianan got back to her bedroom in the Manor earlier than she had expected. Instead of ranting and raving to Xandou about Dersji, she had left him at the stairs, confused and blank faced. It was the first time ever she kept her feelings from him. That the torment her Liege fed her was actually called for and she wanted to stop complaining about it. She wanted to stop getting upset with herself. She wanted to fail better.
Tonight she was transforming, and it had nothing to do with either of them. She needed a minute to compose herself and set her thoughts straight. While she undressed out of her dirty clothes, and ran a bath, she went in search of some ointment for her face. She had two deep gashes across her cheek that needed tending to.
“Mam, would you like me to add soap to your bath? Do you need some help?”
The voice startled her. Kaianan turned around, covering her body with her half-off undergarments and bra.
“No.” She replied quickly. “I don’t need you, Seran.” The maiden, with a distorted smile, bowed and left her. “And please, lock the door on your way out.”
Kaianan breathed out when the maiden did, sick and tired of her parents telling her she needed an assistant. She could wash herself. What was so hard about that?
Her eyes scanned her room. It was messy; even though the room was large and maintained a high-ceiling, the soft cream walls and timber architraves and cornices couldn’t distract from the clothes and items scattered across the floorboards and over her unmade white sheeted and white pillowed Stav bed. Or the several wrapper bags from previous visits to Sprindles scrunched up everywhere, some stuffed underneath the elevated Stav’s base.
So what? Kaianan thought. She enjoyed living, was it such a crime? What would the Felrin do? Lock her up?
She found the salve, applied it, hissing in pain, and then slid her foot into the warm water of her full tub in her personal bathroom that was connected to her bedroom. She sunk deeper and exhaled. The feeling of floating overcame her as she submerged under the fuzzy water and back out again. Her neck cracked on either side as she rotated it and the white shiny tiles bounced the Siliou pulsed hanging chandelier around the small room of one silver basin and two separate timber sections for wash. The huge mirror on the only vacant wall, her mother insisted on hanging—that woman and her mirrors.
Her wet strands of hair clung to her body and snaked around in the water at her waist as she exhaled loudly.
What a day it had been. With an even bigger night ahead. It was the year 168 221 on Rivalex or the Felrin year AA 100-16 which was the year they had to go by universally and economically, not that she cared, she was eighteen in Rivalex years and about to transform. She couldn’t contain her eagerness—aside from the nerves which at times threatened to drown her. Dersji helped her get through that during her younger teenage years. She missed her friends for some odd reason. Yes, Archibel and Darayan had left Rivalex through a Euclidean Vector some years ago but maybe tonight they would show face for her coming of age ceremony?
Dersji would say it was wishful thinking. And he would be right.
But was he right about the Necromancers not wanting to trade with the Giliou and Gorgon anymore? Was he right about the Defeated King?
‘He wanted to takeover Rivalex, Kaianan.’
Then why, upon his death, did a plaque appear stipulating information about her birth mark. How was she connected? The Necromancers had been pissed about it. So, so angry, their King Warlowes, who had re-awakened the Silkri aura, who died defending his people, left a plaque about a Gorgon girl in the wake of his demise. It had started one civil war. What else could it do?
Kaianan had fed off Dersji her whole life. Having him there, that was at least some type of routine. A Liege, a living person who could coerce the Siliou as strong as Kan’Ging himself to feed her information, to give her schooling and education, away from the mainstream. Even though this singled her out, it still gave her an understanding of how she could prepare herself and be this Rivalex Mark when the enlightenment came around.
But was Dersji always right? Was he right about her?
She looked down at the small stool next to the large white tub and sighed. The book, spine skyward, pages spread out in the middle, was not the one she wanted to read. ‘Dire Straits’ must have been on her bedside table. She wanted to read on about the romance between two intergalactic ill-fated lovers. Instead, the bland cover she was greeted to was: ‘Felrin Dominance: A Study.’
Read it, Dersji had said. Another thing to add to her homework, another lecture on how the Felrin species was the greatest in the universe; how they ran the political hierarchy and had the support of the Felrin Systems behind them.
She rolled her eyes. Would she ever fit into this system?
A Gorgon Shiek? There had been no such thing. Cultures had maintained boundaries when it came to training aura users. Kaianan knew Dersji had to justify how and why she should be allowed to train as an aura user that was not of her birth right.
She swiped up the book in her hands, the water splashing against her body in the motion. She had pinned several pages with bookmarks where she wanted to go over.
The first was the aura versus aura battle between Kan’Ging and Silas Silkri. She read the whole short page worth of information and besides the fact every word read as if Kan’Ging was a god among preforms, it didn’t talk much about Silas Silkri, just that they both died in duel.
She moved on to the next section she’d marked, titled: The Roame System, and read down through the list of events, there were only three. She skimmed past: Jugwugbugy Paradise: the Fewdeter Dream, and Waterak: The Impenetrable Atmosphere and flicked opened the last: The Fall of the Defeated King: Saving Rivalex.
She had read this extract a million times:
The Necromancer King, Warlowes, now known as the Defeated King, threatened to dismantle the Gorgon and Giliou thrones on Rivalex. After several trade disputes and a final disagreement in which the Necromancers began not only hindering trade but also firing upon the other cities for continuing to trade their own resources, the Felrin stepped in. It was a long and difficult battle between the Felrin Liege and the Defeated King, as they realised he’d been able to utilise the extinct Silkri aura. Finally, in the midst of the thousands of Giliou and Gorgon assisting the Felrin Liege, the Defeated King was brought down by the Kan’Ging aura of three deadly Liege.
Since then Rivalex has pledged strong allegiance to the Felrin. And the Felrin have been praised for saving Rivalex and bringing about the demise of a man who was near capable of destroying the whole planet. Upon his demise, a plaque appeared in the Hunted Gorge.
Her eyes skimmed downward. The extract at the bottom of the page was specifically about her which had been entered in the updated version of the book several years back:
The Rivalex Mark was born after a thousand years of the plaque remaining dormant. It was on the planet where the plaque rested, this child was born. A princess of Gorgon decent, and rightful elder daughter and heir to the throne of Layos, Kaianan has been under the protection of one of our Felrin Liege since near birth.
The Felrin Congress have guaranteed the Felrin Galaxy that all possible outcomes of this prophecy will fall in accordance with Felrin mandate and law, and this is something that is continually discussed at the Quarter Summit of the Universal Order.
Kaianan had never been to the summit, she would have liked to know what they said about her. She was surprised she had never met any other Liege beside Dersji. The Felrin had only come to Rivalex to speak to Dersji after their bonding. He’d said they’d never bother coming to such an unbalanced planet willingly and that it was a shock they had. He didn
’t seem too happy when they left though.
Dersji never gave Kaianan the exchange of that conversation. He just beat her in swordplay and that was enough for her to know: he didn’t like it.
She went back to the book, this time searching for the other marked events where Dersji’s name was mentioned. It wasn’t mentioned nearly as much as she thought, Dersji did give her warning that he rubbed his Felrin comrades the wrong way.
Under the Havan System. There was one event Dersji had mentioned to her, about the Crucibals of Deloit: The Deloit pest: Mugadeer Population Control. It was about the small, four legged, brown furred animals, the Mugadeer, that ate its own faeces and used its faeces to spray off impostors. The Crucibal’s planet of Deloit was becoming over populated with them. Dersji was given the job to set up boundaries and half their populace. His mission was apparently a success.
All these events in the book gloated about the Felrin’s ability to save and protect them all.
The Felrin were the first Homo captiosus species, they were the ones who had been able to grasp the Siliou the best with Kan’Ging, they were the most advanced species technologically and they kept their preform bodies to do it in without relying on Archaea cells. There was a part of Kaianan that knew Dersji felt indifferent to his own people. That there was something at work that just didn’t quite belong.
“M’lady,” Seran’s voice came from her bedroom, and Kaianan lifted her head above the book, “… your parents have requested you in the Guest Hall in an hour’s time.”
Kaianan observed the foggy air and mirrors in her bathroom and sighed heavily.
“Very well,” she called back and pulled the plug from underneath her.
Dersji sat in the La Merce Inn awaiting the arrival of the Felrin Shiek. He sipped on his illegal rum. He smirked at the preform Gorgon nobles picking at their meals, taking quick glances his way. Whether it was because he was in possession of a banned substance or there was perhaps a sign on the door signalling no foreigners, he was definitely in uncommon territory. He tried his best to keep to himself.
