New Cali

by Erik Schubach

  This showed me that Celeste was counting on me to do what only I could do. She always had more faith in me than I did myself. But as Bex stuttered to a stop near me, finally restrained as more Seekers joined in. I was virtually free.

  Now it was my turn to return the favor the brainy man had just done for me. Bex, who looked as if he had fought a war on his own to get to this room, had just saved me, and now I would save him and everyone else by ending this sick sideshow now.

  I grabbed onto all the power I had been storing inside me which had been burning my soul since I was taken. Just touching it with my mind burned and felt like I was channeling lightning again in Far Reach. I knew all of this foreign magic was damaging me in ways I may never fully understand, but I would make it mine!

  My skin erupted into an explosion of white mist and crackling amber energy as I fought to shape it to my will. It fought back, twisting and turning, trying to devour me instead of bending to my will. It... would... be... I screamed out, “Mine!” As the locks I kept on the seething blackness inside of me was burned away by the magic of the mind that was screaming back at me, trying to undo me.

  My scream echoed with a reverberating quality as my vision turned dark purple while my magic blackened with my rage. The bonds which held me disintegrated along with my armor and cloak as I hovered just above the floor. The column started crumbling as the stones below me started smoking and cracking.

  I spun toward Eris and at the last moment, realized Aelwen was standing beside her, so I redirected the energy that had already started to explode from me toward the last of the inner circle. Dianda dove to the side just as magic, black as night, consuming everything in its path, left me in a raging torrent that mirrored my fury and blood-lust. Columns exploded while the floor vaporized, along with the bodies of the last two of the Inner Circle, before they even had a chance to add their screams to mine.

  My rage knew no bounds, I thirsted for chaos and destruction. The world would burn for what I had gone through, for what Eris and her people had done to this land. I would kill them all, I would devour everything.

  The earth shook violently as the black force didn't stop in the building. The back wall blew out as if hit by a dozen catapult projectiles at once, raining stone debris for hundreds of yards. The ground beyond bucked and rippled like some ancient giant woken after an eons-old slumber to punish the world for disturbing it.

  Everyone was bracing themselves as the building shook more violently. A crack in the very Earth outside opened up to swallow the land between us and the Upheaval. Smoke and flame billowed up and with the faraway sound of the planet moaning in protest, the Upheaval shuddered and cracked... and it was over.

  I collapsed. My sweat actually burning and evaporating in black crackling flame and energy. This was me, this felt right, I wanted more. I looked up to see Eris standing there, staring at me in abject terror. I was there before I moved, time slipping, the floor between where I had been and her, melting into molten slag as I lifted her with one hand, her flesh sizzling.

  Her eyes flared with that blinding silverish blue light, but instead of it even touching my mind, it sparked and sizzled as it hit the black power coating me. How dare she try to subvert me again! I reached out into the air in front of her with my other hand and clenched a fist, imagining this new darkness that felt so right, circling around her magic, her mind glow. And I yanked.

  I could feel me pull her magic free from her, tearing it from her very mind like tissue paper, leaving her with nothing, ordinary, powerless. And I pulled her magic into me, making it my own. I wanted more!

  She looked stunned and rasped out as she clawed at my hand, “No! My magic! Give it back! You can't do this! I'll kill you!”

  Who was she to tell me what I could and could not do? I was going to savor taking her life now that I have taken her magic from her. I was going to do it slowly to make her... I stopped and blinked when she made an urking sound and went rigid. I stared down at the point of a familiar blade sticking out of her chest, the light of her life draining from her eyes as Aelwen hissed into her ear from behind as she twisted Anadele's blade, “Nobody kills the gypsy bitch but me.” She must have been freed when I stole the Prime's magic.

  The woman coughed blood once and mouthed, “Kingdom Killer,” and I blinked in incomprehension for a moment as Eris went limp and lifeless, staring into my face, just as I told her she would. She felt unimaginably heavy suddenly as the rage bled away along with the power that had tainted my very soul. I dropped her, then collapsed onto the ground myself. Every cell in my body was on fire, so much pain, and so much exhaustion. My skin... it was bleeding from every pore.

  Some disconnected portion of my brain was aware of Aelwen's distorted and warbling voice, “Truce? Until we can get the fuck out of this godforsaken land? God I really hated that bitch.”

  My head bounced off the stone floor and I saw Dianda slipping out some sort of hidden doorway as the world went black. And the nightmares never came in the darkness, had I finally died? Was it time to be judged for my sins? Finally...

  Chapter 18 – Recovery

  I don't know when I realized I was still alive. I only remember flashes, moments of consciousness after that. An awful lot of people were saying my name in them. Something about burns. About healers. Celeste snapping something about, “No! She's stronger than that, she'll live!”

  My baby girls crying.

  Bex, and Verna... Kristof was there. Had they all survived when the gondola plummeted to Earth? I was glad. They were good people. At least I could die knowing they were still in the world, to fight for what was right.

  Screaming... so much screaming... was that my voice? Hands holding me down. Everything hurt.

  Pounding in my head. A steady clang clang clang. My eyes opened and I turned my head from where I lay, someone was at a makeshift forge a little way away, hammer swinging in a steady clang clang clang. Muscles flexing, sparks flying.

  I couldn't speak over a whisper as I slurred out, “She's as muscled as Verna.”

  Misty said sleepily through a yawn, “Yeah, and Laura's pretty too.” Then she sat up, eyes wide as she looked at me in shock. She started yelling, “Mumsy! She's awake! She's awake!”

  She went to hug me excitedly but pulled back at the last second as she looked nervously at her arms then me, and opted for placing a hand gently on my scarred cheek. I hissed. It was like she was touching raw nerves. I didn't care. I was alive, and my daughter was safe. I leaned into her touch wincing as I did.

  I looked over at the sound of running feet, to see Shanny and Celeste running up to the cot I was on. Celeste knelt and Shan dove at me, stopping herself just as Misty had. My wife just knelt and took my hand gently, causing me to ask, “That bad?”

  People gathered around behind my family as Celeste shrugged and said with humor that was belied by the great tears falling from her cheeks, “About the same as usual.”

  I looked from them to the dozens of people crowding around, then to my other side where Emily and Donovan were propped up on cots of their own, looking gaunt and half-starved but strong. Just beyond them was a huge man in another cot, eyes closed with Sarafine sitting on a crate beside him, holding his hand as healers worked over him.

  I knew they were healers because I could feel their magic bouncing around in my head like screeching feedback on an Avalon radio. I winced at the feeling, it was as if my ability to taste magic was raw and exposed and the foreign magic scraped across it.

  I whispered, “Tennison?”

  Verna stepped up behind Celeste, laying a hand on her shoulder as she looked toward the big man. “He's in bad shape, the healers are keeping him stable but we need Sylvia or Ingr. The magic here isn't as strong as back home.”

  She looked at me and said, “Bex saved us all. When we saw the Kantu go down, he wheeled the Outrider about to see Aelwen's airship gaining on the Highland. We all silently agreed as he swooped us in to interpose the Outr
ider between that damned cannon and the Highland, to give you time to escape.”

  “After the first shot tore through the gondola, Bex told us as he maneuvered our airship right at the bitch's. 'We've got to climb up to the lift envelope. The retaining clamps are damaged and I've lost most of the controls.'”

  Then she shrugged. “So we climbed... it wasn't a moment after I grabbed Bex's hand to pull him up that the gondola tore free and plummeted. It was all we could do to hold onto one of the thin girders encircling the envelope while we made a slow plummet as we lost helium.”

  She grinned. “We roared in satisfaction when you took out that damn gun.” She sobered. “But about a hundred feet from the ground, the damaged girder started tearing away from the envelope, there was too much weight on it with all of us hanging from it.”

  Kristof joined her by her side as he growled out in anger as he looked at the injured knight, “The damn self-sacrificing fool said there was too much weight on it and to tell Sara and Karen that he loved them, then the fucking bastard let go. He fell at least forty feet to the rocks below.”

  He shook his head and said, “He saved our lives. And if a Cristea scout hadn't witnessed our descent, the oaf would have died. The scout brought us to their encampment. Their healers went to work on Tennison right away.”

  That was over a week ago... or was it more? I had lost track of time. And how much time has passed since the battle? “He's still unconscious?”

  Celeste nodded her eyes on on me with unnerving focus. So I asked again. “How bad?”

  She didn't answer so Misty did, “The healers say it looks like every skin cell of your body seems to have burst. They've been making slow progress on reversing it. They say the same about your organs. That magic you used to put an end to Eris' reign, was killing you, mom.”

  Her big, watery tears were almost too much for me to handle. I reached up to wipe her cheek with a thumb and hesitated. My arm looked like raw meat. I dropped my hand.

  I nodded and then asked, “How long have I...”

  Celeste tried to smile as she teased, “You've been sleeping for a week now, lazy head.” She pointed past the open forge area to a looming shadow beyond. “We're almost done with repairs. Bex and Laura say they'll be done tomorrow and ready for flight in a week.”

  She shook her head and said, “Bex is somehow making hydrogen to replace what was lost in the vessel, using water from the Cradle. Electrosis or something he calls it...”

  Shanny offered as she rolled her eyes at her mother, “It's electrolysis mom. You apply an electric current to water and it is broken down into oxygen and hydrogen. Then you just capture the hydrogen gas from the negative terminal.”

  The smirk on my wife's face told me she already knew the science behind it and was letting my daughter show off her aptitude for the brainy things Bex is always spouting. I felt odd, a warmth in my mind and Shan's words felt as if they were melting into my head, the memory already indelible.

  Celeste informed me. “The brainy man has already restored power to their powerhouse. It is a wonder actually, they have these generator turnstiles, where volunteers, the strongest men and women come in to push the long handles on the turnstiles, walking around in a circle to turn the generators.”

  Misty almost spat out, “It was an easy repair and he didn't know why they hadn't fixed it instead of letting it fall into disrepair.”

  I nodded and croaked out, “Their entire infrastructure has been in decline since Eris took over. If it didn't result in her gaining more power, more worshipers, it was inconsequential to her.” I thought on that a bit and offered, “I think she felt like an outcast... she was lonely... and Dianda took advantage of that to craft her into a monster. It just took a little push.”

  Was I feeling sorry for the psychotic woman? No, it was because I was identifying with it. Just a little nudge was all it took for me to lose myself in that dark magic that felt so good, I had wanted the world to burn. I now had that insipid magic locked down in a vault inside me now and I swear I'll never open it again. I was a monster inside and I was terrified that one day it would consume me, that fear was already eating at me.

  A regal looking, silver-haired woman moved over to the other side of the cot. She had a strong bearing, deep intelligent eyes, and heavy laugh lines. She wore the colors of the Cristea, and there was a blade at her hip that was the mirror to the one on Mother Elaineia's hip, Sabie Acasa of New Home. Mother Racina's blade from the time of the Cristea Exodus so many centuries before.

  Her clean crisp magics dragged across my awareness like a rasp over an exposed nerve.

  I rasped out in the tongue of the People, “Mother Loretta I presume?”

  Her wide eyes showed sadness and empathy as she smiled and bowed deeply drawing her blade and offered it to me, her head down. “Great Mother. We thought the old songs were just tales told to wide-eyed children. But here you are. And the others have told that the endless mountains of Father Stone truly exist as well. It is all true.” I placed a hand on her shoulder, refusing her blade. And she looked up tears of joy swelling in her eyes.

  I looked at the blade, realizing why she too had the blade said to be of their mother who ushered her people out to the four points of the compass on an epic journey. She must have had three others commissioned, so each group possessed one. So they all knew she had complete faith in them and their undertaking.

  My whisper seemed to carry all around as I shook my head. “You are the wielder of Mother Racina's blade. Femeie de Sabie of the people, Mother of the New Cali Cristea.”

  She looked around then leaned in. “Is it true that more of our band yet lives?”

  I nodded and smiled sadly. “To the west. We know not the fate of the east.”

  Her smile wavered when she noted I had omitted the north, hearing the truth I did not speak. She nodded in understanding. “Perhaps one day our peoples, South and West will meet.”

  Misty blurted. “It is possible now. What took months by land in your original crossing, takes but days in an airship.”

  The woman looked shocked as she just blinked at my daughter as she stood again and sheathed her blade. I changed the subject with a little smirk. “You were a thorn in Eris' side. She ranted about you, which tells me you're someone I would greatly like to get to know.”

  The expression on her face made her look younger and full of mischief as she said, “I did what was needed.” Then in a more serious tone, she said, “The New Calians are our friends. We could not allow such a subversion of their people, by one who was so... broken.”

  Celeste told her, “Mission accomplished.”

  I shook my head. “Not completely... Dianda is still out there somewhere. Something inside me is sure she was responsible for creating Eris.”

  They all didn't look surprised and Loretta inclined her head. “We have people scouring the forests on either side of the Chasm of Tears. She will be brought to justice. The more pressing concern is helping our friends to regain their footing, and start rebuilding their society again now that you have freed them.”

  What? I did nothing. My part in all of this was nothing. I took three lives during this ordeal. It was Celeste, Bex, and the Cristea, even my daughters who were the heroes of this cautionary tale. Hells, even though I am loathe to admit it, even Aelwen played a part in the liberation of New Cali.

  Then I found myself asking, “Chasm of Tears?”

  Celeste chuckled as the girls grinned like mischievous loons. Mother Loretta offered in a matter of fact tone like I should know better, “The wound in the earth from where you struck down the Thief of Minds. It burns with the unnatural fire of the tears the Great Mother shed for the people of New Cali.”

  Verna offered, “The walls of the fissure have been burning since Eris' fall, and they can't extinguish them. You cracked their mountain, runt. A little overkill don't you think?”

  My mouth worked soundlessly as I tried to comprehend what they
were telling me, then I growled when Celeste and my daughters agreed in unison, “Just a little.”

  I grumped out, “I'm not that short,” to everyone's chuckling.

  Then Celeste got serious as she whispered as she gently took my hand again. “I thought I had lost you. You have to stop doing this, I don't know if my heart can take it.”

  All I could do was shrug. It wasn't like I went out looking for this sort of thing, it seemed to seek me out instead, so I couldn't make any promises.

  I winced when there was screeching feedback in the background magic when one of the healers finished with whatever she was doing with Tennison and headed toward me. My wife asked in concern, “What is it? Are you alright?”

  Shaking my head and squinting I asked, “Why is all the magic so loud and grating now? It's like I'm feeling it all without any filters, it is hitting like a hammer on stone on my raw nerves.”

  A warmth spread over me, and I realized Misty's eyes were glowing softly, her magic was cocooning me and I could actually feel what it was she was doing somehow. She was using the defenses she has developed to keep the emotions and overwhelming input from all the life around her to filter the magics for me. How insightful was she? I gave her a warm smile of thanks and closed my eyes for just a moment to bask in the warmth.

  When I woke up again, it was night.

  I lay on the cot feeling a little better. The healers must have worked on me some more. I looked to my right where a hot green magic signature and a violet one were, thinking that they must be asleep because I didn't feel any bleed over of their moods.

  I smiled at Celeste who was sitting in a makeshift chair, Shanicia sleeping on her lap and Misty asleep on the ground beside them, on a bed of green moss and soft leaves that looked to have grown there for her to sleep.

  Hesitating, because it hadn't felt right when I turned my head I reached up and realized they hadn't told me everything. I placed a hand on my head and winced a little at the tender feel of my skin. Well at least it felt not so raw, but I found that I had no hair. Like my clothing and my bindings... and the column and floor, apparently, my hair had burned off in that massive wave of darkness which came from the core of me.