You are the Creator-blessed Shaper of Earth. You’ve lived for this moment, trained for it, fought for it. He won’t expect an attack in his ally's own home. Even if he does, he cannot expect to be faced with you.
Gritting my teeth, my feet silently slide along the polished wooden floors. The distant sound of other activity strays into the hall from other parts of the estate. We don’t need to remain in secret long, just a precious few moments.
I pull up a few steps short of the door. Something, some instinct, tells me to stop before. Poline halts with me, her sword gleaming in the dim hallway.
Something feels... off. I reach forward with the dust circling us, and it swirls back into my face. I blink. I push the dust forward again, and again, the dust drifts back to me instead of moving forward. It’s almost as if the air itself...
“Go,” I say, and turn my stalk into a sprint. An invisible wall of air, nearly imperceptible to my skin, shatters as I dash the final few steps to the door. The Vengeance maintains a barrier across the hall, much like the near-invisible wall of dust I utilized at the inn. As soon as anyone breaks through the barrier, he’ll know. We can’t give him time to react.
A thick clod of dirt breaks free from my natural armor, forming into a compact and heavy fist, which pummels the door just next to the handle. With a crunch of shattering wood, the door bursts asunder. I dive in when it springs open, rolling into a crouch as the door slams closed from a powerful gust of wind just behind me, clipping Poline on the shoulder and sending her graceful dive into a headlong crash. I won’t be able to count on her for precious seconds.
Wide windows let in a gorgeous view of the rising sun to the east. A desk, over which Poline awkwardly sprawls, occupies the far wall, and a pair of leather chairs sit near the windows. Calladan sits in the chair on the left, his mouth agape. With his brown hair cut short, a trimmed beard lends his face a bit of natural charm he would otherwise lack. My eyes leave him almost before they finish seeing him, the level of threat he represents so low that he doesn’t bear a second thought.
The Vengeance, however, carries all my attention. A slender man, his hair is blond, long, and unruly. His fair skin is tanned dark from the sun, and a few wrinkles around his eyes mar an otherwise youthful face. He could be anywhere from twenty to thirty-five, but I know the weight of centuries sits behind those eyes. His hands loosely hold a sword of a design I've never seen. Reaching nearly to the floor, the blade is long and single-edged, a gentle curve gliding into a deadly point. The edge catches the light in the rising sun, bursting into sparkles unnatural to steel, almost as if the blade is crafted of gemstones.
A piercing gray the color of the ocean in storm, his eyes hold less feeling than nature has for man. There’s no surprise or alarm, no confidence or arrogance; the Vengeance reveals nothing. He just... is. If I thought I was going to surprise this man, this Shaper who has existed for three hundred years of long and perilous life, I was grossly mistaken. His left hand glimmers a shimmering white, a rune of power quietly awakened and prominently displayed. My own shoulder blazes, green light warring with the rays of the rising sun.
“The princess...” Calladan says, his voice strangled. “I never thought he would send her.”
The Vengeance and I ignore him, even as Poline rights herself and holds her blade at the ready to defend me.
“Vengeance,” I say, damning myself for the tremor in my voice. I will stand firm before my enemy. “You will surrender and come with me to face judgment before my father.”
He doesn’t outwardly react, but in his eyes kindle a flame beyond anger. A simmering, palpable hatred, almost as if he can reach across and slay me just with the power of his loathing. His mouth opens, revealing perfect teeth.
“Not likely,” he says, as if discussing the weather. “You'll be coming with me. I'd never thought to find you so lightly protected. Helikos is a fool to let you out of his control.”
“Do not speak my father's name so blithely, bastard,” I spit. “Address him with the proper respect, as is due your king.”
“Father?” the Vengeance answers, his tone just as mild. “King? These are titles that madman has never earned.”
I’m done talking to the man. He murdered half a dozen Shapers of the Council and precipitated the dissolution of a government that lasted for five millennia. Words will do nothing to break his careful facade. Perhaps actions can serve.
In a blaze of renewed emerald light, the window behind him shatters into a dozen razor-sharp shards, speeding at his back as quickly as thought. Gracefully, almost casually, he slides to the side, his own mark of power still faint, the shards missing him by inches. I reverse their course, ignoring Calladan as he engages Poline. The glimmering shards dart at the Vengeance from every direction. He spins in place, his sword licking out and shattering the blades. Before long, all of my shards of glass are little more than glittering dust. His hand twirls in a brief motion. The wind picks up, carrying the broken shards out into the morning light no matter how hard I drive my will against his.
His symbol remains dim.
He isn't even exerting himself.
With a growl, I dart forward, glittering blades swirling around me, earthen armor shifting and moving. I leap into the air and come down swinging, a flashy distraction. A pair of glass blades slide along the floor and strike the Vengeance in each calf. Or, at least, that’s what’s supposed to happen. As soon as my feet leave the floor, he raises his hand. A fist of solid air blasts into my chest, and my breath leaves in a whoosh. My momentum halted, I drop to the ground clumsily, struggling to breathe. Even through my armor, the blow hurts.
Scrambling to my feet, I warily edge nearer to the Vengeance, who still holds his blade as if it’s an umbrella and he’s out for a casual stroll. I spin forward, throwing dust towards his eyes, sending blades at his back, and lunging with my own tightly grasped daggers. He lithely spins in place, the blades missing him by a hairsbreadth, his sword almost as an afterthought, deflecting aside occasional ineffectual attacks. A lunge carries me past the man, then again. He’s a ghost. In three strikes, he’s never where I expect him to be. I have to turn the next attack into a forward roll to avoid his blade slicing where my head would have been.
I spin back to face him in a crouch. He still stands calmly, his expression unchanged. I’m gasping, my heart thudding deep in my chest. I force myself to take a calm, deep breath. My pulse slows. Well. I didn't expect to beat the man fairly, did I? I'll need to cheat, to do something he can’t anticipate.
Wading back in, I offer a few more lackluster blows, trying to lull him into believing that yes, these attacks are the best I can do, yes, I really am just a girl playing with her power, yes, I’m beginning to tire, to fear...
As he blocks another attack, I send my energy into the glass. The blade elongates instantly, turning from a dagger into a sword. The man's eyes widen minutely, his face mirrored in the reflection of the swiftly approaching point. At the last moment, Creator, after the last moment, the man moves his head aside, smooth, controlled, and hellishly fast. The edge draws a thin line of blood down his left cheek, missing his eye by the width of a finger.
Just as a feeling of triumph wells in my breast, the Vengeance's sword sweeps up faster than I can register. I blink, and my cheek kisses wood, my eyes now studying the grain of the floor. I struggle to move, some distant part of me recognizing how very dangerous my position is. My vision crosses, then drifts, coming to rest on the sun rising high enough over the windowsill to be seen from the floor. Creator. He hit me so hard I’m facing the opposite direction.
But somehow, I’m not dead. Awareness starts to return to my body, beginning with the trickle of blood wending its way down my cheek. My hands twitch, one twisted awkwardly behind and under my body. Groaning, I lever myself onto my back, spots swimming in front of my eyes like flies around a corpse wagon. The sound of steel clashing brings me rushing back to the present. My head lolls to the side, focusing blearily on a pair of fi
gures dancing back and forth. Their movements are too fast to follow through the blurriness of my vision.
Narrowing my eyes, I manage to sharpen my vision enough to make out how the fight is going. Not well. Poline retreats constantly before the Vengeance's attack, somehow avoiding putting her back to a wall by experience, speed, and luck. She works for more room, using the chairs and the table to avoid being trapped. but the Vengeance is fast, too fast, his sword gleaming and darting, always in motion, always flowing, less predictable than the zephyrs the man controls.
I need to get up. I have to get back into the fight. Calling on reserves I’m not sure I possess, I sit up and shake my head through the pain. A grunt from the side snaps my focus back to the fight. Poline staggers back from a square shot to the temple, blood streaming down her face from the blow. She manages to fend off one attack, her sword desperately sticking in the wooden floor and defeating the Vengeance's strike with a screech of metal grinding.
He spins, impossibly fluid, and kicks the blade out of her hand. It sails cleanly through the broken window, catching the morning sunshine in a flash of liquid gold. The Vengeance raises his sword, quickly, efficiently. Poline glares up at him, blinking blood out of her eye and refusing to look away. He pauses. Offers the soldier of the Tide a brief nod of respect. Then, he strikes.
“Poline!” I scream, my voice tearing, my heart burning, my lungs locking.
I don’t know what debilitating, racing fire suddenly arcs through me. The need, the horrible despair, knowing that perhaps the one friend I have in this Eternal-stained world will be gone, never again to stand at my side. I can never be in time, the sword will strike whatever I do, but still I beg the earth to save Poline regardless, casting my entire soul into that aching, burning need. The earth groans, as if the very world will break at my command. The house shakes, the ground splitting asunder, and an unending torrent of earth drives up through the foundations and crashes into the ceiling, a living wall between my friend and the Vengeance.
The explosion of earth clips the Vengeance, spinning him away and slamming his back into the far wall. He lands, somehow still on his feet, sword still in hand. My need to protect Poline turns into a blinding, desperate hatred of the man who would dare to threaten my friend. The wall of earth seeks to smother, to crush, to obliterate the bones and sinews of this enemy before he can recover, before he can ever cause me such pain again.
Quick as lightning, sliding just on the edge of the wall, propelled by a gale of rising wind which drives me flat, just before the edge of the collapsing wall of raw earth, he darts out of the broken window and into the open air. I fight against the wind, struggling to my feet and glaring after him. Unbelievably, the man is nowhere to be seen. The empty grounds beyond the window mock me with their serenity. The grass is no longer even and smooth, but rumpled and broken from the shock of the wall of earth now occupying Calladan's study. Somehow, the Vengeance is gone, no trace of his lean figure on the uneven grass.
I sag, exhaustion striking me as surely as any blade, nearly falling if not for a desperate grab at the windowsill. The action forces my eyes upward, and there he is. Already small and growing smaller by the second, he literally flies through the morning air. His hair flows behind him, his head leading, his sword gleaming like the trail of a comet behind him. He grows to be a speck, then disappears before he crests the horizon, moving so fast that in the space of a dozen heartbeats, he’s gone.
I shake my head in disbelief. The man is legend incarnate. No Master of Air has flown since the days of the Eternal. He could have crushed me under heel with that kind of power. I shudder to think of how close I’ve come to being his prisoner. I would never have seen Donir again, never have seen my father again.
The act of standing up after the massive outburst of power is too much for my drained body. Even as I fall, a pair of strong arms wrap around me and hold me up. I meet Poline's beautiful emerald eyes.
“I thought I was too late,” I say, wonder in my voice.
“You were,” Poline answers, voice thick with emotion.
“What?” I ask, my mind muddled, darkness creeping into the corners of my vision.
“He hesitated. When you screamed my name, he stopped his strike. He... spared me.”
Chapter 12
Bastian
A Day.
A Year.
“We cannot let him live,” a voice echoes, elegant, refined, with an accent I can’t place. Female.
“You know we can't let him die,” another answers, male, with a recognizable Khalintari accent, though it is... off somehow.
“He is loathsome. He abuses the blessing he has been gifted. He is an abomination,” the first voice continues.
“Yes, yes, and in your day, he would have been hunted like a dog. We've been over this,” a third voice cuts in, young, spunky, the voice of a girl.
“Elitrea's vision is clear,” the second voice picks up again. “As distasteful as it may be... he is critical.”
“Pah, bullshit,” a fourth voice, deep and aggressively masculine. Though I understand every word, he’s speaking a language foreign to me. “Her damned visions are not infallible. For all we know, she foresaw this time period and began dreaming of just these very futures in order to convince us to spare him. He could very well be the reason we lose.”
“That is far-fetched, even for you,” the Khalintari says, an eye-roll in his voice. “Elitrea is cunning, yes, but we know she lost her sanity long ago.”
“As hesitant as I am to admit it, I agree with the Dedarian,” the first woman again. “To be safe, we should wipe this thing from—”
“Enough,” a girl, her voice cracking like a whip. The command, spoken so powerfully in the voice of a tiny child, is jarring. “We have argued about this long enough. He’s a terrible person, yes. He abuses women, terrifies men, and uses his power for selfish ends. But. He is powerful. We have trusted the Queen's visions for all this time. We will not falter now. He lives.”
“I demand a vote, for posterity,” the first woman declares, miffed to be out maneuvered.
“Very well,” the girl answers with a resigned sigh. “Those in favor of sparing the boy and staying true to the Queen's visions?”
A dozen voices, no, two dozen or more echo suddenly into being, overlapping one another and swirling back and forth like waves before finally subsiding into silence.
“He lives,” the girl says quietly. “Wake up, Bastian.”
The glare of sunlight burns through my eyelids. I send the message to open my eyes, but they refuse. In fact, no muscle responds to my commands, like someone shattered my spine and left me for dead. Slowly, as if from a great distance, the sound of distant children's laughter floats to my ears, along with the creak of wood flexing in the heat of the sun nearby. My skin is hot, clammy, as if I’ve run a long race or languished in a sauna. The air itself moves listlessly across my skin, the gentlest of breezes hardly stirring the hairs on my bare arms. The smells are foreign, wild, yet intoxicating, something of citrus and sunlight.
Finally, my eyes open. They close instantly as I squint against a rising tide of tears. Blast it, that hurt. What I saw isn’t encouraging, either. Slowly, I crack my left eye, enduring a splitting headache as I adjust to even the tiniest bit of light. After a few minutes, I can open my eyes fully, though my head lolls weakly, as if I’m little more than a newborn child.
The sound of wood is a cage, not metal, sinister contraption built of bars and cold steel, but a cage woven of bamboo and held together with what looks like long, durable grass. The sun peeks through large gaps in the bars, large enough I imagine I could slip out with a bit of creative stretching. If I can get my legs and arms to obey my commands, that is. Or even my damn neck. I throw my head forward, or try to, but all I manage is a twitch. My face swings to face the other side of the cage.
The air saturates my skin in a suffocating blanket of humidity and heat. A short clearing of brilliant emerald ferns wave in the gentle breez
e before abruptly ending at a forbidding wall of tropical greenery. Trees stretch up and out of sight into the sky, the space between them choked with an endless variety of plants: flowers, ferns, reeds, bushes, vines, and the like.
A tingling starts in my left hand, slowly spreading upwards to encompass my forearm. Finally, perhaps I’m getting back some of the feeling. I manage to roll my head over and glance down to see if the desperate desire to move is having any effect on my limp fingers.
A thick, hideous worm with a warlike carapace and an endless series of legs crawls up my arm, the arm that remains perfectly peaceful despite my frantic internal screams to move, to fling this horrifying thing off of me, to save myself before the damned thing eats me... I whimper as the ugly creature continues to crawl up, reaching my chest. More than half of its length is still on the ground, its innumerable legs driving its thick mass further onto my body. Two massive antennae stretch from its face, brushing the bottom of my jaw and eliciting a squeal from deep in my chest. It pauses, turning towards me and dragging its feelers up and down my bobbing, vulnerable neck.
It’s going to eat me, it’s going to rear up and bite my throat, and I’ll never have any idea where this Creator-forsaken jungle is or why I’m in a cage or what in the ever-loving fuck happened to paralyze me and allow an Eternal-kissing monster to devour—
The creature disappears as if by magic. One moment, it was preparing to chomp down on my throat, the next it’s gone, the only sign of its disappearance a brown pole bisecting my vision and blocking out the sun. I twitch, sending my dysfunctional head rolling around. My eyes follow the line of the pole, and my dull mind finally recognizes the well-worn haft of a spear. A pair of slender hands grip it, connected to a pair of powerful arms, over which hovers a sneering face.
“Captain,” I say, though my tongue seems to stick in my mouth. I swallow thickly, feeling lucky to be able to do so. “How nice to see you.”
The Crux of Eternity: Eternal Dream, Book 1 (The Eternal Dream Saga) Page 29
