The Imaginators (Of Stardust and Aether Book 1)

by M. K. Valley

  Andrus is watching me. His satisfied glare bores into me, beneath the layer of imagiSkin, to sink into the scars and wounds he thinks could never be blamed on him.

  “Andria…” Twig softly beckons me out of the stupor, and I swallow hard.

  It would be so easy to summon the Aether and end the Scorpian dynasty once and for all. As if sensing that, emperor Ander rises to his feet, taking a precarious step forward, a fragile sack of bones and guts that could somehow shield my mother and sister from me. It’s all I can do not to laugh. I could turn them all to bloody mist with a blink, let the numerous cousins and inbred relatives shred Corona apart, battling for control over the power vacuum. But the frosted figurine clutched at my mother’s chest is still cooing, and I know I wouldn’t.

  “I could end you,” I profess in a whisper to no one in particular, eyes roaming across faces that I can no longer recognize. I hear the Marshal draw his weapon, but my father stops him with a gesture. “But instead, I’ll let you live with the memory of what you allowed to happen. Did you disassemble my room?” The question is so sudden that it catches them all off guard. Even Andrus has the decency of looking confused. My father gives an uncertain shake, and it’s all I need. “Twig, north wing, mid-tower, at the end of the diamond hall. You know what to do.”

  He’s swift on his feet, and the Marshal follows him closely after a brisk nod from my father.

  “Daughter…”

  “Don’t call me that.” My eyes cut to Ander, and he hesitates with his hand hanging in mid-air. “You know, I intended for this to be a real parley. Raise my grievances, present evidence, let Scorpio decide on a punishment I wish could be death, but doubt you’d have the stomach for it. It’s not enough. It will never be enough, not unless I see your son dead.”

  “Have you lost your mind completely, aberrant?” Andrus erupts, shaking with impotent rage. “Drunk on the filth of the Infinite Universe’s scum, you think you can come here and make threats, let alone demands? If not for this stupid parley, you would’ve been dead by now!”

  “Oh?” I tilt my head to cast a surprised glance at Andrus. “That’s an imperial tradition you wouldn’t break, then?” Our parents flinch, the incredulous implication landing a blow no ruler could take. They both turn to my brother, his face ashen. “You know, Andrus, once upon a time, I thought you a broken boy who wanted someone to be broken with him. But I grew to realize you’re just a hungry monster. After all, it takes one to know one, brother.”

  “Shut your mouth.”

  “It all makes sense now. Why you’d come for me, ‘take care of me’ when you know you’ll be punished if you’re caught violating a royal decree.”

  “Shut…”

  “No, you shut your mouth.”

  A crack echoes through my bones when I grit my teeth and imagine. At first, nothing happens. We stand, suspended in time, a messy portrait of a ruined family. Then Andrus’ knees buckle, and he slumps to the ground, chest expanding for air that isn’t there anymore.

  I’m no saint. Most of my bones are evil. Delight slithers, dark and coy, through my mind as I watch him claw at his throat, gasping for air. I hear my father draw a handgun, my mother wail in terror, but a sudden wave of uncanny tranquility washes over me when I look into my father’s eyes.

  “You think I’m going to kill him?” I taste death on my tongue, warm and sticky from my bleeding gums. “You think I’ll soil myself with him?”

  I stare the emperor down, and I know that’s just what he’s seeing. I feel it in the bulge of my eyes, in the way my lips curl into a snarl. My darkest impulses coupled with the lapis lazuli that blurs my field of vision. I stare the emperor down, and I know he won’t pull the trigger. Ander never managed to carve me out of his heart in full. Even now, when blood, and wounds, and sweat disfigure my features into the mask of a beast. But maybe it isn’t a mask at all.

  “Let me tell you how your son ‘took care of things’. I experienced him once. I survived him, and I’ll do it again. But if you want to survive him, if you want the diamond towers of Regia to keep standing, Your Majesty, you’ll listen.”

  I raise my grievance then, in a calm and calculated voice, a severe juxtaposition to Andrus’ gasping moans. It makes so much sense now that the only thing keeping me from screaming is knowing he’s at my mercy, and there’s no coming back from this. My mother watches and listens, mute for the first time in a long while. Her infuriating babble stuck. My father’s face is a mask of shock and confusion. What Andrus did, shat on everything the empire stands for.

  “And for what? Because he’s a sick little boy who craves his toys. You know, it didn’t make sense. Why would he risk everything to subjugate me once again? Until now. Until I saw her. And I knew he’d want to subjugate her if she turned out to be an Imaginator. And you don’t know what this means, but I do.”

  A shriek ruptures the air, and I release Andrus with a jerk of the hand. The tidal waves of desperate wails rise through the palace’s brilliance. My brother hacks and sputters on his hands and knees, but no one’s helping him, no one’s consoling him. At the edge of my vision, Twig and the Marshal hover, an old gilded mirror hanging between them. And everyone’s staring at the reflection, which is not a reflection at all, but a memory. Some say mirrors not only reflect but capture the soul. Mine did both.

  I remain focused on Andrus. I don’t need to watch because I remember. The screams of the child I was echo, the palace reverberates with the shrieks and lets them wash over the whole of Regia. There’s something else among the horror captured in the reflection. A child. Black of hair, a photo negative of mine. My twin brother. Cheerful, pleased with himself, the diametric opposite of the wretched girl’s face.

  “You’ll never hurt anyone else in your life, Andrus del Scorpio. I’ll make sure of that,” I whisper in the stunned silence that follows the performance. “Admit to what you did back then and what you did not a month ago.” He lifts a defiant gaze and spits at my feet, blood trickling down his chin. My hands go slack as something hardens inside of me, resolute. “Admit.”

  “I’ll admit… Admit that pain suits you,” he hisses, trying to stand. “You forget I’m bound to be emperor. And when this is all over, you’ll kneel and beg for my grace.”

  The silence stretches taut. I know, through the anger and the disgust, that Andrus speaks true. Neither of our parents has uttered a word. Without his explicit confession, no one would lift a finger. He is bound to be emperor, the dynasty needs him. He’d get a slap on the wrist at best. The only way this ends without fratricide on my part is if I can force a confession out of him in front of witnesses who wouldn’t turn a blind eye again.

  I tilt my head, not toward my father or mother but the Marshal. Tomorrow’s harvest. I wonder, was I a necessary sacrifice so that he could push his reforms when he rose through the ranks? Raz del Valdrum meets my gaze, and this time he doesn’t avert his eyes.

  “Admit,” I will again, just as another shriek rips through the air. My brother wouldn’t. Even if I collapse his lungs, if I tear his throat open. That’s why I raise the stakes in one last wild gambit and fill the day with the echoing wails of others.

  A monstrous shadow spills over the palace’s bulk, pooling far below us, over the people of Regia. I sink my mind into the Aether and tug on the gilded veins of the lapis lazuli. And it yields. Atom by atom, the nightmare of a war cruiser pushes reality to the side to make space for itself. Our parents step out of the canopy’s shade to witness its creation. My eyes remain trained on Andrus, and he tries to bolt. But del Valdrum is already there, pushing him to his knees as my father whirls on us all, his gun a kid’s toy against the cannons I bring to bear and aim at the palace.

  To imagine something so complicated in full detail and at full power, I have to have studied its schematics to the last bolt. To be able to keep it afloat, I have to know how to keep an engine running. To make it shoot, I hav
e to be able to summon ammunition out of the Aether. I’m not all-powerful. But they witnessed me suffocate a man without blinking. And now, a war cruiser takes form above their heads. Who says I can’t make it shoot? The blood dripping down my chin? The tremor racking my arm? Who says I won’t just drop it out of the sky, a shell of hardened metal made to withstand cosmic fury, dead and deadly at the same time? That, at least, I know how to make out of thin air.

  “Admit! Admit it!”

  This time, my father’s voice echoes through his subjects’ shrieks and my mother’s whimpers.

  Yes, admit, brother.

  PHASE FOURTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  “Lady, isn’t that a bit much?” A lazy smile stretches the lips of the man I have up against a wall, black gaze glinting as it travels from the tip of the sword to my face.

  “I won’t have an Earthling judge me!”

  We exchange flabbergasted stares. The light rain patters softly, soaking us through. We’ve been standing in the narrow alley for some time now, the concrete colossi of a city named Aetherdam offering little protection. He leans against the cold body of a skyscraper, head thrown back with a full view of his unprotected throat, slivers of dawn drifting down to his features like ash. He’s more outraged at my qualifiers than the swordpoint that I’m holding him at. I expected some resistance when I came to drag him out of his apartment in the middle of the night. But the translator in my ear told me he’s amused by the lady with the sword. He thinks it to be a weird but fun prank made by his friends and wants the whole story and script.

  “So, what happened?” His voice is a tremor in a rockslide, and my eyes snap to him to watch him tap a knuckle against the imagiSword in my hand.

  “What happened with what?”

  I return my focus on the alley. Aether-fueled communications are a nightmare, especially on such tech-forsaken outposts like the Old Earth, and waiting for Twig’s response has me on edge. I’m the first to arrive, but at least a dozen Assassins are gunning for this Contract, and finding the filthiest and most secluded alley of Aetherdam won’t be a good cover for long.

  “With your brother, of course! Did you kill him?”

  “Do I look like a kin-killer to you?”

  His thick black eyebrows spring up, and he runs a hand through his damp hair, a sheepish smile revealing a tooth or two. I notice a dimple. “A bit, yeah. You still seem pretty pissed with him, even after all these years.”

  I can’t shake off the feeling he’s just playing along, thinking me and my story are a prank, a convoluted plot to embarrass him. “Five, five years. And no, I didn’t kill him. He was put on trial and sentenced to life in prison for breaking a royal decree.”

  The Earthling considers me, eyes traveling from head to toe and back again, and I watch a raindrop slither inside his collar. “Sounds like he got away easy, given… everything,” he gestures and tucks his hand back into a leather jacket’s pocket.

  “He serves time on a ship adrift,” I say, knowing that ‘everything’ is just half of it, my brother’s cruelty still a secret I shared with only a few. “When I think about it, he should be approaching the event horizon of a black hole any day now. Do you know what happens to a person in near proximity to a black hole?”

  “Something bad?”

  I dive into the gory details of spaghettification, knowing my brother’s death would be quicker than I hoped. But he’s spent all this time alone, aware of what awaits, unable to do anything, in silence. Except for my shrieks on repeat as the only background noise.

  The Earthling winces and opens his mouth to object, but Twig’s voice crackles in my ear, and I ignore him. “Andria! Where’s this coming from?!”

  “I’m on Old Earth, Twig,” I whisper-scream through the static, my ear ringing.

  “Wait, didn’t you go after a Contract there half a year ago?”

  I suppress a sigh. For all his intellectual prowess, Twig can be quite daft at times. “That’s exactly why I’m calling. Whenever you and your boyfriend are ready to get some work done, would you mind revoking the Contract?”

  “A contract?” Muses the Earthling, suspicion of the lady with the sword talking to herself quickly replacing the light amusement.

  I shush him, eyes on the shadows in the alley. Through the link I hear our old friend – the normieConsul, muttering unflattering opinions in a very flat, very hostile voice. And here I thought we reached armistice for Twig’s sake.

  “Andria, don’t you think that’s getting out of hand? That makes what, the fifth Contract you’ve asked us to revoke in the last couple of years? Do you know how many have turned to illegal means to assassinate targets on the mere suspicion Ares wouldn’t accept the Contracts? We can’t have you acting as the planet’s moral authority. It’s bad for business.”

  “Twig,” I say very patiently as my audience grows restless and tries to push off the wall but meets the sharp point of the blade. “You know I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have an excellent reason.”

  “Sometimes, I think you do it to torture Illiran and make him destroy his creations.”

  I huff and raise a finger to my lips to cut the Earthling’s protest short, pointing to the shadows to my right. The last thing I care about right now is Illiran and the discomfort of being a Chronicler. He could’ve asked for anything. But when I refused to elope with him, he said a power grab is the next best thing. So, I backed him up, cleared his competition through a series of expensive and ridiculous Contracts, and saw him all the way to the insane building of the Chronicler. A horrible suspicion tells me Illiran’s taught himself how to break the compulsion of a psychic ring. But if not, it’s his problem that he was willing to submit himself to one.

  “Twig, when have I let you down?”

  “Actually…”

  “Don’t finish that sentence, sprout. Please, just do it!”

  “At least tell us why,” snaps the normieConsul, a muffled sound, as if Twig’s keeping him at bay, and I curse.

  Then, three things happen at the same time. I shove the imagiSword, hilt-first, in the Earthling’s chest, a small blaster pops out of the Aether to replace it, and a warm body drops behind my back as I swivel and shoot. Another thud, this time not controlled. It’s over in a blink. I make sure the Assassin’s cold at my feet and no one’s keeping him company, and turn back to the Earthling, his expression twisted in horror.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but that short sword’s mine,” I say when he points it at me, hand shaking. He lets out a soft gasp I’d expect from an Aphroditian when the imagiSword slowly disintegrates in between his fingers. “If you throw your lot with me, I can keep you alive. Bolt, and I’ll tell my friend to keep the Contract active.”

  “That contract…”

  “Is on your head,” I spell out, unnerved by the way he says it, not with a capital letter. Like he hasn’t grasped the situation yet.

  There are two steps separating us. I don’t even need to bridge them to incapacitate and take the Earthling by force. But I’m not here to save his life. No, I’m just curious. And the fact that he looks at me with more anger than fear in his glinting eyes, black like the void, tells me I might be making a mistake, putting too much on my plate. But his existence means the Earth’s no longer Old. That it’s back on the star maps. And someone doesn’t want it to be. So bad, they put a 1-mil prize on his head.

  “Andria?” My ex-partner comes loud and clear this time over the link, and I wet my lips, rainwater dripping from my lashes.

  “Someone’s ordered the assassination of the first Imaginator to be born on Earth in the last three and a half millennia, Twig.” Silence stretches through the Aether, whereas the Earthling scowls. “And you know how I love a good conspiracy.”

  THE END

  The Imaginators will return in

  Of Stardust and Aether

 
Book 2

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A huge thanks to my friends and my SO. You’re always ready and willing to give me what we joke is a reality slap. But you also taught me reality is what I make of it, and here I am – imagining me a great one.

  Thank you to all the strangers online who cheered on and celebrated every small step with me. The road has been long, thank you for every mile you accompanied me on.

  Many, many thanks to my mother. Mom, thank you for being the guiding star I needed when dad died, and I was stuck in open waters, unable to find my way. I’m swimming now.

  And finally, dear reader, if you’ve come this far, you have my heart forever. Whatever happens to The Imaginators next will be all thanks to you. In your hands, you’re holding a piece of my soul. It’s dark and jagged, but it’s warm and gooey like the insides of a heart. Wait...

  BIO

  M.K. VALLEY is the alter ego of an avid reader whose last name doesn’t roll off the tongue and dreams of being a writer. She’s dreamt about it ever since she was a little girl. Now she’s not as young, but she’s still dreaming, conjuring up worlds in various genres. She’s written short stories, epic fantasy, even rom-com. You’re holding The Imaginators – her first officially released book, and if there’s one thing she can imagine is that it won’t be her last.